The Big Meow

Urruah leaped up carefully onto the desk and balanced there on the edge of it, looking at what the ehhif was typing. The ehhif spared him no more than a glance, just enough to make sure that Urruah wasn’t going to disarrange anything or get in the way. You just stay there, fella, he said, and don’t get in the paper drawer – And then he went back to his typing.

“Ssh’iivha,” Rhiow said softly, “forgive him: he’s such a snoop. And a bit besotted with ehhif culture. He’s far better than the rest of my team at reading their writing, even without the Speech to help him: it’s become a hobby. Back home he’s endlessly translating their posters and ads, whether we want to know what they’re about or not – “

“And menus, I suspect,” Hwaith said, with a sly grin.

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward. “Au, cousin, you have no idea,” she said. “The foods he’s gotten me interested that it was far better I didn’t know about…” She looked back over at Ssh’iivha. “But forgive me: you were telling us about the fire that started when the earthquake hit – “

“Well, it’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?” Ssh’iivha said. “Those poor homeless ehhif – They do get into the backlot, over some wall, or through some freight gate that’s open a few minutes longer than it should be. There’s so much of the lot, they can easily move from place to place and avoid the ss’huhio’s own security people. Not us, though. There must be a hundred People working on the Lion’s backlot, and it’s impossible for us not to be able to tell what ehhif have been where, and when, and for how long. And in the case of those poor strays, you know how they smell – “

“I do,” Rhiow said. “I have a few under my care, back home.”

Behind them, the typewriter went ding! one more time, a page was ripped out, another was rolled in. “He’s so fast,” Rhiow said.

“You have no idea,” said Ssh’iivha. “You should see him when he really gets going. He’ll be doing that hour on hour, never gets up, never looks away from the machine. I worry about him sometimes, but there’s no stopping him: besides listening to other ehhif talk, it seems to be his life.” She let out a slightly sad breath.

“And there’s not another ehhif for him?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha looked pensive. “No,” she said, “not for a while now. Not the one he wants, anyway – “

“Rhi?”

She looked up. At the desk, the silent ehhif was still typing away, but Urruah was gazing down at the the page he’d just taken out of the typewriter. He glanced up at Rhiow. “You need to see this,” he said: and he sounded alarmed.

Rhiow gave Ssh’iivha a bemused look. “I’m assuming this isn’t just some attack of fannishness,” she said. “Excuse me a second– “

She leapt up quietly onto an empty spot in the bookshelf to the right of the desk, so as not to upset the ehhif, and looked over his shoulder. He was still rattling away at top speed. “Amazing how fast one of them can work with only two toes,” she said. Her own Iaehh worked the same way, but at no speed anything like this. “So what am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That last page,” Urruah said. “No, wait a second – “

He looked at the three pieces of paper to the right of the typewriter. Rhiow felt, under her skin, the small wizardry Urruah was doing. The barest breeze moved through the room, easily mistakable for a random draft; and at the same time the topmost piece of paper slid smoothly to the side so that Rhiow could see the one under it.

“Very slick,” she said, squinting at the paper. “What am I looking for, exactly?” And her tail lashed a little. “This is just so strange…” For she was much more used to Iaehh’s laptop now, and the ehhif letters that burned up clear and sharp onto the shining page, than this strange mechanical way of putting one’s thoughts into fixed form with little hammers and an inked ribbon. Yet at the same time there was that strange, retro feeling of mass and solidity about all this, the same feel one got from the cars in front of the houses and the huge stoves in the kitchen: something triumphant, a victory of intention over resistant matter. Not a wizardly mindset at all, indeed something very ehhif-ish – but you had to admire it all the same.

“Look through my eyes,” Urruah said. “It’s faster.”

She purred at his courtesy, crouched herself down compactly on the bookshelf, let her eyes go unfocused, and did the small twist and knot of wizardry that for a moment would let her share Urruah’s eyes. It always took a moment for her to synch in, for toms do not see the world the same way queens do: nearly everything has an additional edge, being judged as either enemy or potential conquest. But Urruah was both tom and wizard, and therefore knew that some things, like ehhif print, were essentially neutral in content if not context. Rhiow squinted her eyes a little, as any Person does to see more clearly, and read on the first paper: