The Big Meow

“I’d say you were right,” Rhiow said. “Many of our people were involved. Many died, trying to prevent what almost happened…and didn’t. We’re busy with that job again; or still. But the scale is considerably larger.”

Larger than the Second World War? said the Silent Man. …But then, what was it she said? ‘The sheaf of the sheaves of worlds?’ Drunks and crazies repeat themselves, sometimes. But the Lady in Black didn’t look drunk. And crazy… He shook his head. Crazy covers a lot of ground. Especially in this town. His eyes glinted with cynicism. Around here no one notices your crazy much, if your wallet’s fat enough. And there are fat wallets in plenty.

“That’s another issue,” Hwaith said. “Cults…”

We’ve got enough of those around here, the Silent Man said. … and I’d be the wrong man to ask why. Lots of people smarter than me have to have been asking themselves that question for years now. Maybe it’s just — He leaned back in his chair, waving his hands in the air in the first really casual gesture that Rhiow had seen him make since he walked in the door. This is California, after all. The Gold Rush mentality has never really died. People come here from every place where things aren’t working to get away, start over, leave old lives behind. And then when they get here, they start to find out how lonely that is. He folded his arms, leaning back further. Or they fail… and then they go looking for friends. After a while, somebody tells them about this great place they’ve found, this temple or churchlet or secret club, where people tell you how to act, what to do to have everything come out right. The lost and failed and frightened are glad to find a place like that. Soon enough they start thinking that person who runs that place is something special. Maybe not even quite human…

The Silent Man smiled. It was a surprisingly grim look. And then the person in whom the poor patsies have placed all this trust starts pulling the strings. He or she starts getting them to do things they’d never otherwise have done. Hand over everything they own, their houses and the contents of their bank accounts. Desert their husband or wife and marry somebody they’re told to. Give up their children to be raised by someone else, according to someone’s ‘holy word’. And then, while they’re not looking, the compassionate and enlightened leader of the Ultimate Tabernacle of Divine Confusion runs off to Rio with a carpetbag full of his poor dumb disciples’ money.

“Maybe,” Urruah said, “such people — the victims, anyway — are just looking for meaning in their lives.” He flicked a glance at Rhiow, not having to say aloud what she knew he was thinking; that it was hard on a species not have any clear sense of whether or not the One existed. To be sure, there were People who didn’t believe in Queen Iau, but not many; a far more common reaction for holders of the feline worldview was simply to have no time for Her. Independence ran deep in the feline psyche, sometimes enough so that a given Person might feel her or his essential felinity was best expressed by denying the authority of Deity — if necessary, to Her face. There were numerous stories among People of the Queen dealing kindly, even humorously, with such free thinkers…knowing them to be intent on being true to themselves and their nature. But such defiance was not an option that would’ve been open to Rhiow; it would have been an essential denial of a command structure that she had long accepted.

In a world full of death and pain, the Silent Man said, a world full of lies and corruption and theft and cruelty, where good people get cheated and bad people prosper, can you blame them?

“Hardly,” Hwaith said. “Nonetheless, despite how well they might mean, such innocents can still do great harm if they’re led into it. Or misled.”

“Which brings us to your Lady in Black,” Rhiow said. “Your friend had seen her often before. But no one tried to follow her before? No one had tried before to find where she’d come from?”

If they tried, the Silent Man said, my sources didn’t mention it.

“I think we should find out,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow lashed her tail. “I concur. The things she spoke of – “ She flicked an ear at Urruah. “There are some troubling implications.”

What, you mean besides the destruction of the ‘sheaf of sheaves of worlds?’

Urruah laughed under his breath at the ehhif’s dessicated humor. “You wrote that your companion said she’d been seen three months running – “

That’s right. Always a couple weeks after the full moon.

“In other words,” Hwaith said, “when the moon’s dark.” She gave Rhiow a thoughtful sidewise look.

Rhiow’s tail lashed. Moondark was not an unequivocally dangerous time; but when the Tom’s Eye was most tightly shut, there was a tendency for the darker influences to scurry about and make themselves noticed, like rats scratching and running inside the walls of the world. And for straightforwardly natural reasons, the new moon’s one of the nodes of the month that favor earthquakes…