The Big Meow

One of the spells lying dormant in her mind was a diagnostic. Silently Rhiow wove together its words in the Speech, then knotted the spell into action with the Wizard’s Knot. In that interior darkness, the queen-ehhif’s body began to describe itself in networks and areas of light, a shifting play of interwoven energies. Bloodflow traced itself outward from the heart in a slowly throbbing network; a faint stuttering lightning of neural fire ran up and down the nerves. This pattern in particular looked very uneven to Rhiow, and it was one she’d seen before in some of the unfortunates who wound up collapsed on the tracks down in Grand Central. Drugs, she thought. And there were all those pill bottles scattered around by the sink. But at the same time – what pill works so fast? It makes no sense –

In the spell’s darkness, Rhiow got up and paced over to more closely examine the simulacrum of the queen’s bodily processes. The breathing was steady enough for the moment, but still very slow: too slow for Rhiow’s liking. Urruah, she said, do me a favor. Go smell her breath.

Rhiow looked more closely at the bloodflow, then reached into the lightweave of the diagnostic and hooked a claw into one of the Speech-words which would shift the view so that it focused on the ehhif’s body chemistry, pointing up anything that didn’t belong there. Immediately, as she concentrated on the big vessels around the heart, where the volume was best for diagnosis, she saw the subtle glittery light of a myriad tiny shapes floating in the blood: not only the expected lines and tangles of alcohol molecules, but a lot of something else, a shorter molecule, with a double branch at one end and hydroxyl radicals hanging off it. Outside the darkness, That’s strange! Urruah said.

What?

Her breath. It’s a fruit smell, I’d say. Pears. But I didn’t see anything with pears in it downstairs…

Since when would you be interested in the fruit salad? Arhu said from behind him.

Oh, come on, I don’t want to eat it but I’d have noticed –

Our resident foodie has you there, Rhiow said. Where’s Helen?

Coming, said Helen’s voice in her head, sounding unusually dark and grim. Did you say you smelled pears on her breath?

He did. Helen, what is this? Her respiration’s very depressed: I’ve got to do something before it stops. But what kind of stuff acts this fast? It’s too early for what your kind call date rape drugs, and anyway those don’t act this way —

If Urruah’s smelling pears, then it’s chloral hydrate, Helen said silently. Maybe something else as well, though I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter: chloral by itself can act really fast if it’s concentrated enough. It was a favorite ingredient in what they used to call a Mickey Finn— knockout drops was another name for it. And she’d been drinking, too: that’d speed things up considerably. What are her eyes doing?

Wait a moment, Urruah said. Rhiowcould feel him walk carefully up to the queen-ehhif’s face, put a cautious pad against one eye and pull on it a little, just enough so that the eyelid moved. The pupils – they’ve gone very tiny. Don’t think I’ve seen an ehhif with such tiny pupils, ever –

Pinpoints, Helen said. That’s it: it’s either chloral or an opiate. But no opiate they’ve got right now works so fast – at least none you’d take by mouth.

All right, Rhiow said, and thought hard for a moment, looking again at the ehhif’s breathing. It was slowing. I’d just pull all those drug molecules out of there if I had more time to make sure I wasn’t compromising her blood plasma, but I don’t have that kind of time. Makes more sense to just break the molecules so they’ll stop functioning. Might as well break the alcohol as well – it’s only making things worse. Her liver’ll detox the fragments soon enough —

Abruptly the diagnostic image moved, like a puppet of light that had had its strings suddenly tugged upward: the body was being lifted off the floor. Rhiow ignored this for a moment, being more occupied with finding the Speech-words she needed to ask the chloral hydrate and alcohol molecules to kindly break themselves into pieces. What’s happening out there?

Some more ehhif are in here, Urruah said. This one’s a tom. He’s picked her up a little. Another one’s just given him a bottle, they’re waving it under her nose –

Oh, not really, Helen said, and her interior grimness lightened a little. Smelling salts! What a time this is. Be there in a moment –