The Big Meow

“Didn’t look like it was much interested in the Formic Word,” Rhiow said, as Urruah joined them in sauntering down the middle of the street again. From behind them and off to the left, where there was more high ground, mist had begun rolling gently down the hillside. It started to slip across the road as they walked, so that shortly they and the big ehhif vehicles by the curbs were hock-or half-wheel-deep in it.

“No,” Urruah said. “My mistake. Can we bring about five million of those things home with us? Think what they’d do to the pigeons!”

Hwaith chuckled. “I wish,” he said. “Our pigeons don’t seem all that impressed. But if you think it’d make a difference…”

They headed downhill, and the yards around the increasingly magnificent houses started to resemble significant portions of Central Park. “It’s not like they use any of this space…” Urruah said.

“But they could.” Hwaith said. “I think that’s the message.”

“Typical ehhif,” Rhiow said. “Prove how important you are by having lots of ground and keeping other ehhif from having it.”

“It’s true,” Hwaith said. He sounded regretful, as they stopped at another intersection. The country around them had flattened out now; above their heads, looking southward, a little spiky-headed forest of palms reared itself against a sky slowly growing violet-blue with the light of the dawn at its back and the reflected light from the unseen sea beneath it. “At least some of them are that way. Not all. The one whose house we’re going to: he’s one of the ones who don’t seem to care. He’s all about ehhif, and not about where they are, if I understand it. And his house is friendly to People.” Hwaith looked up the cross street and down it, like any New Yorker, but with (from Rhiow’s point of view) far less need, for there still wasn’t a car in sight.

“Does one of our People live with him?” Rhiow said as they crossed the wide street.

“Absolutely. She’s such a gossipmonger: there’s nothing happening in these hills, and the businesses around them, that Ssh’iivha doesn’t know. That’s why she’s our first stop.” He paused once more, glancing around him. “Come on; we’ll go in the back way.”

He headed off to the right. As they went, Rhiow saw that each block of the broad clean street had a kind of shadow block behind it; a little blank bare alley with a gutter down the middle of it, to carry runoff water when it rained, and – behind each house – a gate behind which the ribbed metal bins where ehhif put their castoff stuff stood ranked. Here and there such bins stood with their lids askew, but (rather to Rhiow’s surprise) no People were patronizing them. As they walked by the first few gates and bins, Urruah sniffed appreciatively. “High-end stuff in there,” he said. “Smells like Zabar’s.”

You would know better than I would, Rhiow thought, but didn’t say. Hwaith led them past one pair of garbage cans to one high gate in a property’s back wall. It had a hinged People-door cut into it. “Right through here,” Hwaith said, and led the way through.

Rhiow slipped through behind him, followed a second later by Urriah. They found themselves standing at the rear of a back yard as beautifully groomed as the front yards they’d been seeing, but much smaller. Here and there a few lawn chairs stood around on the grass, and a round table with an umbrella and a couple of seats set beside it. Past them was a patio area with potted palms set out at its ends, and on the far side of the patio, a large pink-stuccoed bungalow with high glass doors looking out on the back yard. Between those doors and the smaller back door, under the windows, a row of bowls was set out – about twelve of them, it seemed.

Hwaith led them up to the house. “If it’s been a while since you’ve had a snack,” Hwaith said, “feel free to tuck in. That’s what they’re out here for.”

Urruah walked among them, inhaling appreciatively. “Can you smell this stuff?” he said under his breath. “No coloring agents! No preservatives! No weird chemical agents with numbers instead of names! No vegetable additives snuck in by confused animal activists! No vhai’d rice or ‘roughage’ — nothing but meat! All kinds of meat!” He looked briefly confused. “And now that I think of it…what kind of meat is that I’m smelling in this stuff?”

“Probably mink,” said an amused voice from off to one side. “After they make coats out of them, what’s left over winds up in the canned People-food….”