The Big Meow

“I had time for a snack before I came,” Aufwi said.

“Some snack,” Rhiow said. “The Eye can’t have been up more than an hour or two in LA, cousin! I wish more of my breakfasts were like that – “

“I moved into a hHaha’hnese restaurant,” Aufwi said. “They had a vermin problem…I solved it.” He looked smug. “And apparently my coloring’s lucky for them.”

That interested Rhiow. Aufwi was shorthaired and mostly white-furred, but also sported the occasional patch of red-brown or gray. “You need to tell me more about that when you have time,” Rhiow said. “But first tell me what brings you out all this way.”

“Well,” Aufwi said, “at first sniff, anyway, I’d say that the L.A. gate is finally trying to spawn.”

Rhiow blinked at that. “Iau’s name, I thought Great Rhoua would wink before that happened! Though I can’t say I mind being wrong. When did this start?”

“A few weeks ago,” Aufwi said. “At first I thought it was another ‘false labor:’ you know how many of those we’ve had over the years. All these little shudders and discontinuities in the main gate’s function, they build up, they build up some more, and then…nothing!” His tail thumped in mild frustration, and some embarrassment: he’d reported quite a number of these “fleabites” to Rhiow over the past year and a half.

“But this has been different, I take it,” Rhiow said.

“A lot,” said Aufwi. “There hasn’t been anything small about these discontinuities. The gate’s connection to its power sources in the Downside starts wavering, as if something’s pulling power off it – “

“Which is impossible,” Urruah said, “under normal circumstances.” He gave Rhiow a look over Aufwi’s shoulder. Together they had lately been through some very non-normal circumstances involving their own gates, and power-loss or diversion had routinely been a symptom.

“But it always comes right back again,” Aufwi said, tilting one ear back at Urruah. “Then, right after that, you get a spacetime tremor somewhere in the neighborhood, never outside a thousand-meter radius. And never very big, a little shallow gravitational dimple — exactly the kind of thing you get when a new gate’s about to manifest. It even displays the right kind of offset.” That was a peculiarity of new gates when they opened: they often pushed themselves a little off to one side of the largest local population concentration, rather than appearing right in the middle of it. “And then – “ His tail started to thrash.

“Nothing?” Rhiow said.

“Repeatedly,” said Aufwi. His green eyes narrowed with his annoyance: it was as if he thought this was all his fault somehow. “I can’t get rid of the idea that I’ve been doing something wrong at the management end.”

Over Aufwi’s shoulder, Urruah gave Rhiow a look that was half irony, half sympathy: once upon a time, he’d been full of such complaints himself, before Saash whacked him into some kind of confidence in his own abilities. “So far,” Urruah said, “it all sounds like it came right from the Whisperer to your ear. You can’t hurry a gate; especially not this one. We all know it’s had a peculiar developmental history. I can’t see any way you’ve misstepped.”

“You’re kind to say that,” Aufwi said. “But this last time – the day before yesterday – the pattern changed a little, and I started to get concerned. It took the main gate something like an hour to get back to normal – in terms of the power conduit to the Downside re-establishing itself – and that could have been big trouble, if I hadn’t been able to shut it down before anyone started a transit through it. Also, the gate jumped out of its normal position.”

“But it’s always doing that,” Urruah said.

Rhiow waved her tail in agreement: the LA gate was famously peripatetic for any worldgate associated with such a large population center. “It’s just that Los Angeles has never had enough people concentrated tightly enough together to convince the gate to put down a permanent spatial root,” she said. “The city’s so spread out…”

“Believe me, I know,” Aufwi said. “It’s the story of my life. Is the gate in Union Station today, or has it rolled over to Olvera Street again, or jumped over to Wilshire? I get a lot of exercise.” This time Aufwi at least looked amused as well as annoyed. “But this time it jumped a lot further than usual, right into Chavez Ravine. And it was active when it jumped.”

Jath abruptly glanced up, looking interested. “Were they playing?” he said.

Urruah blinked. “Playing what?”

“Vh’aisss’vhall,” Jath said.

Rhiow knew about the game, but only vaguely: it was something Iaehh often watched on the imagebox in the apartment. For the moment, though, her eyes widened as she thought of a live worldgate falling into a stadium full of unsuspecting ehhif. “You caught it and brought it back, of course….”

“Sure. The gate’d gone quiescent again by then. But they could never find out what happened to the ball that the ehhif at bat hit into it–”

“How did they score that?” Jath said, actually sitting up as if the proceedings were now of some interest to him.