The Big Meow

Hw’aa threw his brown tabby-striped self backwards, letting go the strings he’d been holding apart. As he did, gray Jath swept his claws through the near-invisible catenary strings that were all that now remained of the worldgate’s connection to the main power structures in the Downside, severing them. The gate-weft collapsed in on itself in midair, burning in a bright and alarmed-looking jumble of colors – wavering and wobbling in even Urruah’s view as the structure of space bent and twisted slightly around the deranging gate. Off to one side, a small Person-shape began to glow bright where she sat, white patches blazing, even the dark ones seeming to acquire extra depth, a darkness with power moving underneath it: and a shell of the same dark-and-light-patched fire appeared out of the air and clamped itself down around the collapsing, contracting ball of burning hyperstrings –

Busy now, Urruah said, and the imagery vanished. Rhiow looked down the street and saw a tall dark-haired ehhif in a parka and baseball cap and headphones nodding as he picked up the cue. He looked into his “camera” and gestured at another ehhif. “Lights!”

All the film lights surrounding the cordoned-off intersection burst into full ferocious fire, painting the buildings all around with long black equipment-shadows.

“Speed!” the ehhif in the parka shouted.

“Got speed!” the answer came back from somewhere among the crew.

A young ehhif boy held up an electronic clapper-board, snapped it shut for the sync: the red numbers on it started racing, and someone else yelled, “Blue Harvest, take one, scene sixty-five – action!”

A hubbub of thought broke out underground among the members of the amalgamated gate-tech teams. It was difficult for even Rhiow, well used to this chatter from their numerous rehearsals, to make sense of more than a scrap of thought here or there. Is it cohering? Watch out for the secondary root – no, not like that – over here, over here! – okay, there we go, here comes the backlash. Too much expansion? No, wait — !

And up on the street, something unusual began to occur. A fizzle and stutter of a new light, like lightning, painted the buildings further up Eighth Avenue with a sudden multicolored glare. A great rumble, like an incoming subway train, but much, much bigger, shook the whole area.

There were not many people who actually lived in this neighborhood, which was probably as well. Rhiow looked up around her and was clear that any of the residents, if they were even conscious right now, would simply think that the one of the many subway lines under Penn was making an unusual amount of noise this morning…probably something to do with the construction in the new Penn building, which had been going on for months and was famously noisy. It was a mistake that Rhiow would have been happy to encourage. But after the rumble came something that even on quite a bad day could not have been attributed to subway trouble.

Down Eighth Avenue, several storeys above the sidewalk, a huge head peered around the corner of Thirty-fourth Street. Only a very alert observer would have been able to see that the terrible face – fanged, scaled, dramatically striped in blood-crimson and gold, the wicked eye glinting with a burning gold of its own — somehow looked a little uncertain. But then the face recovered its composure. Down in the street, several of the waiting cameras pushed in on it.

The huge jaws opened, revealing fangs like mighty knives. A roar issued forth from that gigantic maw, belling an awful challenge. Windows rattled for blocks up and down Eighth. The cops standing around the “director” goggled, impressed against their will, as the dinosaur – bigger than any Godzilla or Gorgo, impossibly large – came striding out into the intersection of Eighth and Thirty-fourth, its clawed forelegs working, its long tail swept out behind it for balance.

Behind the “dinosaur” came a herd of his people – all smaller far than he: but then the Father of his People could afford the power to manifest himself in a variation of the form that had once destroyed the Lone Power that was gnawing at the roots of the feline world. Now that outrageous and gigantic form, and about fifty smaller “dinosaurs”, came rampaging down Eighth. The ground shook as they came. The cops stood there shaking their heads, impressed: the Film Board lady, in the middle of texting somebody on her mobile, stopped to stare, her mouth hanging open. The greatest dinosaur stopped about halfway down the block, directly between the Felt Forum and Madison Square Garden and the Post Office building, then put his tail briefly down and let out one magnificent roar that once again rattled all the plateglass for hundreds of meters around like a Space Shuttle landing – a histrionic and ferocious ophidian shout of defiance.

And slowly, up through the street, the Sun rose.