The Big Meow

“The kind of fine that means People can come through it after you’ve shut it down?” Urruah said. “I’d say that is the wrong kind of fine.”

But Hwaith was already lashing his tail “no”. “Not that one,” he said, and licked his nose again, nervous. “My Los Angeles gate.”

Rhiow’s eyes went wide. “Hwaith, you’ve timeslid, haven’t you? When are you from?”

“2432022.873981,” Hwaith said.

At the sound of the middle three digits before the decimal point, Rhiow blinked, then said silently to the Whisperer, Would you check me on this?

A twenty-digit conversion of the Julian date was slipped into her mind, including cognates in ehhif and cetacean eras. Rhiow blinked again. Are you sure? she said silently.

Inside her head, the Mistress of the Whispering made a small demure coughing sound like someone giving polite warning that she was getting ready to dispose of a hairball, or a ridiculous question. Sorry, Rhiow said, for one did not casually query the soundness of the advice of Hrau’f the Silent when on errantry. Sorry, reflex…

“That would be nineteen forty-six, as the ehhif make it,” Rhiow said. “Cousin, you know the rules about front-timing – “

“And you know it’s impossible in the first place if someone from the front-time hasn’t given you the necessary coordinates and conditionals,” he said. “You did that. Will do it.”

“Not without a fair amount of explaining,” Urruah said.

“And the Powers have sanctioned it,” Hwaith said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Please, cousins, you’re needed to put right what’s gone wrong! You’re the answer.”

This response left Rhiow, as usual, very unnerved as to the possible nature of the question. But at least this was a nervousness she knew what to do about – unlike having the Earth move under her. “What’s needed, Hwaith?” she said. “What’s the problem?”

He looked at her for a moment as if wondering where to begin. “Something’s trying to subvert our gate,” he said. “Something that wants to use it for its own purposes.”

Jath looked annoyed. “The Lone Power,” he said.

“Again,” Arhu and Siff’hah said in cranky and slightly bored-sounding unison.

“No!” Hwaith said.

They all stared at him. “No,” Hwaith said again. “Something else. Something worse.”

“Worse than the Lone One?” Rhiow said, astounded.

Hwaith let out a long breath and sat down, his tail thumping on the ground. “Much worse,” he said. “Something from outside.”

Rhiow sat down too, the world rocking under her in a way that had nothing to do with the San Andreas Fault, but was nonetheless not much of an improvement. “Tell us,” she said…

The Big Meow: Chapter Three

“I know it sounds insane,” Hwaith said a few minutes later. The plaza at Olvera Street had already begun to fill up with more and more ehhif, so everyone had taken the simplest available option and climbed the biggest of the peppertrees, perching or couching themselves on one or another of the big thick outthrust branches twenty feet or so above the ground.

“Worse than the Lone Power…!” Arhu was muttering under his breath. He had to mutter louder than usual, as from maybe twenty feet above his head, and everyone else’s, various muted screeching and grinding-gear noises were coming from the many annoyed, glossy-black grackles in the tree, all now perched well out of reach and emitting avian curses.

“I know how it sounds. But think about it,” said Hwaith, glancing over at Rhiow as if hoping for support. “It’s evil, yes, and does evil, often enough, from our point of view: it’s entropy embodied, no arguing that. But at least it’s a force native to our sheaf of universes, something interior.”

“I’ll grant you,” Rhiow said, “things exterior to the sheaf wouldn’t be something I’d spend a lot of time thinking about on a daily basis.”

“Who would?” Hwaith said. “We have enough troubles inside.” He sat up and scratched emphatically behind one foreleg.

“I take it you’ve done all the usual diagnostics,” Urruah said. “And the problem’s not with the gate.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Hwaith said; “the problems we’ve been having aren’t the L.A. gate’s usual problems.” He glanced over at Aufwi: Aufwi put his ears back and looked away, a gesture of shared annoyance. “You know the way the thing jumps around. That was my first hint that something was going wrong: it started to stay put.”

Aufwi looked back, going rather wide-eyed with incredulity. “Where?” he said.

“Beechwood Canyon,” Hwaith said, “up by Mount Lee — just south of Mulholland Boulevard. It rolled up there one morning in the middle of an earthquake, and started putting a root down into the hillside.”