The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

She could have hissed at her own clumsiness, but that would have disturbed the Silent Man and Sheba too. Rhiow staggered a little, found her footing, headed toward the door.

Hwaith put himself halfway through the door and held it in part-immaterial state for her. Rhiow staggered through gladly, made her way back into the living room and sat down hard in the middle of the floor, uncaring who might be there to see her. She sagged, almost woozy, and crouched down on all fours before she fell down.

“Nasty,” Hwaith said after a moment.

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Yes it was.” She shook her head: her ears were still buzzing with the ugly buzzing tumor-voices.

Then she glanced up. Hwaith had sat down by her and was looking at her with concern. “It’s all right,” she said. “Just the usual exertion. You pay more when you have to construct a wizardry on the fly.” Rhiow shook her head once more at the buzzing. “I just hope I didn’t burn out anything vital with that last flash –”

“I doubt you did,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow laughed helplessly. “The trouble is, it’d be hard to tell whether I destroyed something, he’s already so ripped up inside! Oh, Hwaith, it’s one thing to know that surgery isn’t so far along in this time, but with this poor ehhif, the doctors couldn’t do anything for him but literally go down his throat with a sharpened spoon and cut off the worst bits of the malignant tissue they found, and half the contents of his throat with it! All the rest of what’s killing him is still in there. The cancer’s spread everywhere in him. It’s seeded all through his lungs, it’s in his lymphatic system and getting into his liver and his bones…”

She fell silent. “You should drink something,” Hwaith said after a moment.

“Yes I should,” Rhiow said, and got to her feet. She felt a little better already. “Just the reaction…” she said, and headed over to the water bowl that was set out by the Neverending Buffet.

She put her face down in the water, and the scent of it suddenly made her aware that she was ragingly thirsty. Rhiow drank for almost a minute straight, and with every gulp after a few laps thought sadly of the Silent Man’s throat, of how it now felt like a great gaping bottomless hole to him, a ruined instrument that he had once played like a virtuoso but would now never use again as it had once been used. That’s why he keeps putting all that scalding hot coffee down him, she thought: for she’d noticed with some surprise over the past couple of days how hot the Silent Man drank it. It’s the only way he can feel anything there any more except pain. Or at least it’s a pain he controls. And that’s why he eats with such gusto. He’s convincing himself that this at least is still all right. And it’s not. His gut’s so ruined by the cancer that it’s a question how much good he gets out of his food at all any more. That’s why he’s so thin…

She shook water off her whiskers and sighed, then walked back to where Hwaith sat, feeling a little better. Rhiow sat down by him and washed her face a little. “How did you find me?” she said after a moment.

“Well, you weren’t here, or in the spare bedroom, or up on the windowsill where you usually go, so I –”

She gave him a look. “Hwaith.”

Hwaith flicked an ear at her. “Sorry…” He rubbed at one ear. “I heard you.”

“You heard me from out here? When I was in there??”

“I told you, I have the Ear, a little.”

“Not so little,” Rhiow said, “if you can find me inside an ehhif’s dream of his insides. Especially when they’re that complex…”

Hwaith looked away. There was something so self-effacing and somehow weary about the way he did it that Rhiow had a sudden impulse to go over to him and lick his head a little by way of apology. A second later, she blinked at the concept: sudden impulses of that sort weren’t normally in her repertoire. Especially with someone you’re just getting to know. I’m tired. We’re all tired. And it’s only going to get worse. But he didn’t have to come in after me…

“…You didn’t have to,” Rhiow said.

“Oh, I know. You would have handled them — ”

“Hwaith, I was going to say that it was a good thing you did come in after me,” Rhiow said. “Otherwise…”

He looked up at her again. Rhiow looked at him a little sideways. “I’d probably have gotten out,” she said, “but I wouldn’t be in the great shape I am now.” And she put her whiskers right forward.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. Hwaith’s jaw dropped in a slight smile.

“But thank you,” she said. “And for letting me dump on you, too.”

“Come on… you know you’re more than welcome.”

Rhiow sighed. “It’s just that the rest of my team… They’re in my head so much of the time, Hwaith: it can’t be helped, considering what we do, what we’ve done together. But I can’t let them bear that burden too. I have to handle at least my coping myself. Otherwise we’d never get our jobs done at all.”

Hwaith bumped her with his head: then stood up and turned away toward the buffet dishes, waving his tail. “Might be smart to have a few bites in peace before the crowd starts to arrive,” he said.

“What?”

He looked over his shoulder and flicked an ear at Rhiow again.

“Really,” she said. “Well, I suppose I could eat something…”

Rhiow followed him, thoughtful. And so it was that she’d eaten her fill, and was sitting in the middle of the empty living room washing again, before there was a bang that blew all the curtains in the room awry, and Urruah was standing there glancing around him. “Rhi! Hey, it’s a good thing you’re up. Listen, I –”

Bang! Aufwi was standing off to one side, looking around him. “Rhiow? Oh, you’re here too, Urruah? That’s handy, because –”

Bang! Siffha’h and Arhu were standing side by side and back to back in the middle of the room, Sif looking satisfied, Arhu looking unusually grim. “Rhi,” and “Rhiow,” they said more or less in unison. “Just wait till you hear what we found out, those ehhif are going to…”

They fell silent, seeing that Rhiow wasn’t looking at them, but at Hwaith, sitting next to her. He flicked one ear back and forth, gazed up at the ceiling: then looked back at Rhiow.

BANG! On the sofa by the window, Helen Walks Softly – with her hair down and wearing a very fetching long blue satin bathrobe — was sitting with her legs curled underneath her and a cup and saucer in her lap. She looked around at the assembled People and smiled the wan smile of an ehhif who hasn’t had a lot of sleep. “And here I thought I might be showing up too early,” she said.

“Not at all,” Rhiow said. She glanced at her team. “So why don’t you all have some breakfast and tell me what you’ve found, and we’ll start working out what to do next…”

The Big Meow: Chapter Nine

Naturally matters were never going to go as smoothly as that. Some members of the team insisted on debriefing while they were still eating, in defiance of the etiquette of most People: and Rhiow wasn’t surprised when Urruah turned out to be the worst offender in this regard. He’d hardly had as much as half of one of the bowls of food laid out by the patio before stopping to look over his shoulder at Helen Walks Slowly, who sat finishing her coffee while the others ate. “Look at you,” he said. “Where did you den last night?”

Siffha’h and Arhu paused in their eating just long enough to throw a look of disbelief and resignation at Urruah and each other. Helen just smiled. “Freddie put me up in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“All by yourself?”

Helen laughed at his attempt at a casual tone. “What are we going to do with you?” she said. “Do you ever think about anything but sex?”

“Food, sometimes,” Urruah said.

Helen burst out laughing, put the cup down on a nearby coffee table and lounged back on the sofa. “You missed your calling, cousin. Or maybe your time. Here you’d fit in perfectly as a gossip columnist.” She stretched, then pulled her legs up under her again and started massaging her feet, making a face. “Heels! … but it looks like when I’m doing things for my cover story, I’m going to be wearing them most of the time.” She gave Urruah an amused look. “Freddie and I were up until late down by the pool at the hotel, sorting out what our contractual relationship was going to be and hammering out a plan of action for dealing with the studios. All in plain sight, but not where anyone could hear: the only other people down there were the late bar staff, and though they tried ever so hard, they couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Funny about that.” She waggled her eyebrows.

Rhiow lashed her tail in amazement. “Queen among us, is there nowhere in this place where everybody’s not out to discover everyone else’s secrets?”

Helen shook her head. “I’m sure the hotel staff don’t make so much that they mind augmenting their income by passing hot tips about the stars to those two proto-media ladies,” she said. “Anyway, we didn’t finish our discussion until, oh, it must have been three-thirty or four… and then Freddie said, ‘No point in putting you on the road so late.’ Which was considerate of him. Though I think he also doesn’t mind knowing exactly where to find me in a hurry this morning if he needs my help in sorting something out with Paramount.” Helen glanced over at Hwaith. “In aid of that, after the front desk dug this up for me –” and she lifted a little of the robe’s satin skirt, dropped it– “I followed your lead and had a word with the hotel switchboard. The things it’s heard in its time: my stars, my stars!” Her smile went wicked. “Anyway, we had a lovely chat, and after I did a little wizardly enabling, it agreed to forward any incoming calls to my cellphone. If anyone calls the room, I can gate right out of here and be back there in a hurry.” She stretched her legs out again. “Satisfied?”

“I was just curious,” Urruah said.

Helen raised her eyebrows. “You’re a Person. What else is new? …But after that mob scene last night, maybe you have reason to ask.” She smiled that feral smile again. “Anyway, if the phone rings, I’ll need to take it. Freddie says we’re going to have a very busy day today. We’ll see about that, though, as my film career definitely takes a back seat to what we’re working on.” She glanced around. “Speaking of back seats: where’s our host?”

“He had a late night too,” Rhiow said. “And maybe a little excitement that he wouldn’t have been expecting. Nothing next to yours, though, I’d say….”

Rhiow was trying to sound casual about it, but she was no more successful at this than Urruah had been. Now he looked up from the bowl again, and Rhiow knew she was in trouble: anything that could make Urruah stop eating was going to be problematic. “What happened?”

Arhu and Siffha’h still had their heads down in the bowls, but now Aufwi had stopped eating and was looking at her too. Hwaith began washing one ear. “Maybe this can wait until everyone finishes –”

“Rhiow,” Urruah said.

It wasn’t a tone she heard from him often. So she had no choice but to tell him what she had been up to, and how and where Hwaith had found her.

Various shocked looks were exchanged among her team while she was getting through the tale. Rhiow did her best to ignore them. Finally Urruah, who had sat quiet by the food bowl during the whole recital, gave her an annoyed look and said, “Did you think to ask any of us along on this little jaunt??”

Rhiow sighed. “Ruah, everyone was out, and the moment presented itself, and I took that moment. Like you’ve never misjudged a wizardry in your life. Do I have to remind you again about the Oyster Bar incident?”

Urruah’s tail twitched. “All right,” he said. “Point taken.”

“And that didn’t even involve anyone else’s quality-of-life issues – so keep your sense of proportion about you.”

“Yes, O Queen.”

Sarcasm, Rhiow thought: that’s better. “All right. Does anyone else care to take me to task for my night’s work? Last chance.”

Arhu and Siffha’h looked away from each other and began examining the ceiling. Aufwi washed his face. Helen started braiding her hair.

“Fine,” Rhiow said. “So, you two. About Dolores and Ray – “

“A boring night,” Arhu said.

“All this ehhif moaning and boning and rolling around,” Siffha’h said, rolling her eyes. “Urruah, you’d have loved it.”

Urruah put his ears back.

“But finally they finished up with that and our tom started working again on convincing his weak-minded little queen that he knew what was best for her,” Arhu said. “I’m sorry, Rhi, don’t look at me like that, but this one was not bred for brains, whatever else she might be good for. Otherwise she’d see that all this tom wants her for is her sshi’fth.”

It was slang again, and Rhiow once more started feeling grateful that she didn’t understand some of what the kits were saying. “Or maybe something else,” said Siffha’h.

“Such as?” Aufwi said.

Sif was bristling a little. “I don’t know,” she said. “But when they were talking after they finished, she kept trying to get him to discuss what life would be like for the two of them after she got her career running again…”

“And he didn’t want to talk about that very much,” Arhu said. “It wasn’t like he was avoiding the subject on purpose. It was more like he didn’t believe it was ever going to happen. Like something impossible. I Looked at him — ” Arhu’s tail lashed. “And whatever I could get from his images of his future life – which were pretty murky except for pictures of having lots of things – one thing’s for sure: she wasn’t there.”

Siffha’h gave him a look. “So when they started doing it again — ”

“I got bored and I left,” Arhu said, in the tone of voice of someone telling on himself so another party wouldn’t have the pleasure of doing it first. “And what I found!”

“What?” Urruah said. “Where’d you go?”

“Back to the house where all the ehhif were partying.”

“Why in the Queen’s name?”

“Because that’s where their meeting is tonight,” Siffha’h said. “They’re going somewhere more important after that, but he wouldn’t say where. Wouldn’t even think about it.”

“Really,” Hwaith said.

“And because Ray was thinking about that house all the time, even in the middle of the most physical stuff,” Arhu said. “And about the little guy.”

“Who,” Helen said, “Elwin Dagenham?”

“Him,” Arhu said. “As if he’s really important somehow.”

“Indeed,” Rhiow thought. Suddenly her thoughts about the party’s host were falling into many new shapes, some of them most unusual.

“But not important in the public relations sense,” said Aufwi.

“Absolutely not. In Ray’s mind, he’s this big dark shape. Dangerous.”

Rhiow’s tail twitched slowly. It was hard to imagine the inoffensive, almost shy figure she’d seen last night as any kind of dangerous. “And you couldn’t See why.”

Arhu sighed. “Not then,” he said. “He was way too full of ehhif sex-think for me to See anything else right then. Which is why I left.”