The Book of Night With Moon (19 page)

"Right," said Ehef. "Well, because Rhiow suggests it, I'll cut you a little slack. You can't help it if you were raised in a sewer, a lot of us were. So what you say is, 'Of your courtesy, may I hunt on your ground?' And then I say, 'Hunt, but not to the last life, for even prey have Gods.' So come on, let's hear it."

Only a little sullenly— for there was a faint, tantalizing rustling and squeaking to be heard down at the bottom of the stacks— Arhu said, "Of your courtesy, may I hunt on your ground."

"Was that a question? Who were you asking, the floor? One more time."

Arhu started to make a face, then controlled it as one of Ehef's paws twitched. "Of your courtesy, may I hunt on your ground?"

"Sure, go on, you, catch yourself some mice, there's a steady supply, I make sure of that. But don't eat them all or I'll skin you before anybody's gods get a chance. Go on, what are you waiting for, don't you hear them messing around down there? Screwing each other, that's what that noise is, mouse sex, disgusting."

Hurriedly, Arhu got up and scurried off. Rhiow and the others looked after him, then sat down with Ehef.

"Thanks, Ehef," Rhiow said. "I'm sorry he's so rude."

"Aah, don't worry about it, we all need a little knocking around in this life before we're fit to wash each other's ears. I was like that once. He'll learn better; or get dead trying."

"That's what we're hoping to avoid…."

Saash blinked, one ear swiveling backward to follow the rustling going on above. " 'I make sure there's a steady supply'? I wouldn't think that's a very professional attitude for a mouser."

"I got more than one profession, you know that. But the day I eat every mouse in the place, that's the day they decide they don't need a cat anymore."

"And, besides," Saash said dryly, " 'even prey have gods.' "

"Sure they do." Ehef settled himself, stretched out a paw. "But ethics aside, look, it's not like the old times anymore, no more 'jobs for life.' With the budget cuts, if these people want to give me cat food, they have to pay for it themselves. Bad situation, nothing I can do about it. So I make sure they think I'm useful, and I make sure I don't have to go out of my way to do it. Why should I go hunting out when I can eat in? I bring the librarians dead mice every day, they bring me cat food, everybody's happy. Leaves me free for other work. Such as consultation, which reminds me, why didn't you call to make sure I was available first?"

Rhiow smiled. "You're always available."

"The disrespect of youth."

"When have I ever been disrespectful to you? But it's true, you know it is. And I usually do call first, but I had a problem."

Ehef's ears swiveled as he heard the scampering downstairs. "So I see. Not the one I thought, though." His whiskers went forward in a dry smile. "Thought you finally figured out what to do with that spell."

"What? Oh, that." Rhiow laughed. "No, I'm still doing analysis on it, when I have the time. Not much, lately. The gates seem to take up most of it… and that's the problem now."

"All right." He blinked and looked vague for a moment, then said, "I keep a sound-damper spell emplaced around the desks: it's active now, he won't hear. Tell me your troubles."

She told him about their earlier failure with the gate. Ehef settled down into a pose that Rhiow had become very familiar with over the years: paws tucked in and folded together at the wrists, eyes half-closed as he listened. Only once or twice did he speak, to ask a technical question about the structure of the gate. Finally he opened one eye, then the second, and looked up.

So did Rhiow. It was very quiet downstairs.

"He couldn't get out of here, could he?" she said.

"Not without help. Or not without turning himself into a mouse," said Ehef, "which fortunately he can't do yet, though I bet that won't last long. But never mind. Pretty unsettling, Rhi, but you have to see where this line of reasoning is going to take you."

"I wasn't sure," she said. "I thought a second opinion—"

"You hoped I would get you off the hook somehow," Ehef said with that slightly cockeyed grin that showed off the broken upper canine. "You've already talked this through with Saash, I know— otherwise you wouldn't waste my time— and she couldn't suggest anything at our level of reality that could cause such a malfunction." He glanced up at Saash: she lashed her tail "no." "So the problem has to be farther in, at a more central, more senior level. Somewhere in the Old Downside."

This agreed with Rhiow's opinion, and it was not at all reassuring. Wizards most frequently tend to rank universes in terms of their distance to or from the most central reality known— the one that all universes mirror, to greater degree or lesser, and about which all worlds and dimensions are arranged. That most senior reality had many names, across existence. Wizards of the People called it
Auhw-t,
the Hearth:
ehhif
wizards called it Timeheart. It was the core-reality of the universes: some said it was the
seed
-reality, parent of all others. Whether this was the case or not, worlds situated closer to the Hearth had an increased power to affect worlds farther out in life's structure. The Old Downside was certainly much more central than the universe in which Earth moved, so that what happened there was bound to happen here, sooner or later. And a failure in the effect of the laws of wizardry in a universe so central to the scheme of things had bad implications for the effectiveness of wizardry here and now, on Earth, in the long term.

"You mean," Rhiow said, "that something is changing the way the Downside gating structures behave?"

Ehef shrugged his tail. "Possible."

"Or else something's changing the locks on the gates," Saash said suddenly, with a peculiar and disturbed look on her face.

"That would probably be the lesser of the two evils," Ehef said, "but neither one's any good. Worldgating's one of the things that keeps this planet running… not that the world at large notices, or ought to. If wizards in high-population areas like this have to start diverting energy from specialized wizardries just to handle 'rapid transit,' they're not going to be able to do their jobs at peak effectiveness… and the results are going to start to show in a hurry. Someone's going to have to find out what's going wrong, and fast." Ehef looked up at Rhiow. "And you found the problem… so you know what that means.
You
get to fix it."

Rhiow hissed very softly. "Which means a trip Downside.
Hiouh.
Well, you can tell the Powers from me that they're going to have to find someone else to mind the baby while we do what we're doing. He's on Ordeal, but he doesn't understand the ramifications of the Oath as yet, and we're not going to have time to teach him
and
do this at the same time. Nor can we take the chance that he might sabotage something we're doing in a moment of high spirits—"

"Sorry, Rhi," Ehef said. "You're stuck with him. The 'you found the problem, you fix it' rule applies to Arhu as well. Your team must have something to offer him that no other wizards now working have; otherwise he wouldn't be here with you."

"Maybe they do," Rhiow said, starting to get angry, "but what
about
my team, then? How're they supposed to cope, having to do their jobs— and particularly nasty ones, now— while playing milk-dam to a half-feral kitten? He's an unknown quantity, Ehef: he sounds
odd
sometimes. And I have no idea what he's going to do from one moment to the next, even when he's
not
sounding odd. Why should my team be endangered, having to look out for
him?
They're past their own Ordeals, trained, experienced, and necessary— who's looking out for
their
needs?"

"The same Ones who look after them usually," Ehef said. "No wizard is sent a problem that is inappropriate to him or to his needs. Problems sent to a team are always appropriate to the
whole
team… whether it looks that way, at this end of causality, or not. Right now, you can question that appropriateness… what wizard doesn't, occasionally? But afterward, things always look different."

"They'll look a
lot
more different if we're dead," Urruah said softly.

"Yeah, well, we all take that chance, don't we? But even crossing the street's not safe around here, you know that. At least if you die on errantry, you know it was for a purpose. More assurance than most People get. Or most other sentient beings of whatever kind." He glanced up at the stairway to the next level of the stacks, where scampering sounds could be heard again. "As for him, he's almost certainly part of the solution to this problem. Look at him: almost
too
young to be doing this kind of thing… and all the more powerful for it. You know how it is with the youngest wizards: they don't know what's impossible, so they have less trouble doing it. And just as well. We learn our limits too soon as it is…."

"If we survive to find them," Saash said, dry-voiced.

"Yeah, well. I didn't hold out much hope for
you
when we first met," Ehef said. "You'd jump at the sight of your own shadow." Saash glanced away. "And look at you now. Nice work, that, yesterday: you kept cool. So keep cool now. That might be what this youngster's been sent to you for. But there's no way to tell which of you will make the difference for him." He glanced at Urruah, somewhat ironically.

Urruah closed his eyes, a you-must-be-joking expression, and turned his head away.

Rhiow opened her mouth, then closed it again, seeing Ehef's expression— annoyed, but also very concerned. "Rhiow," he said, "you know the Powers don't waste energy: that's what all this is about. If you found the problem,
you're meant to solve it.
You're going to have to go down there, and I'm glad it's not me, that's all I can say."

Rhiow made a face not much different from Arhu's earlier one. "I was hoping you could suggest something else."

"Of course you were. If I were in your place, I would too! But it's my job to advise you correctly, and you know as well as I do that that's the correct advice. Prepare an intervention, and get your tails down there. Look around. See what's the matter… then come home and report."

Down below, the soft sound of squeaking began again. Ehef wrinkled his nose. "I wish they could do that more quietly," he muttered.

"Oh?" Rhiow said, breathing out in annoyance. "Like toms do?"

"Heh. Rhi, I'll help every way I can. But my going along wouldn't be useful in an intervention like this. Adding someone else on wouldn't help… might hurt."

"And him?" Urruah flicked an ear at the stacks above them. "
He
sure got added on."

"Not by me. By
Them.
You gonna argue with the hard-to-see type standing out there between those two big guys out front? Or with the Queen? I don't think so. She has Her reasons."

"What possible
good
can he be?"

"What do I look like, Hrau'f the Silent? How would
I
know? Go down there and find out. But go prepared."

They thought about that for a while. Then Ehef said to Urruah, "Toms. That reminds me. You going to that rehearsal tomorrow morning? I heard tonight's was canceled."

"Uh, yes, I'm going."

"You know Rahiw?"

"Yeah, I saw him earlier."

"Fine. You see him there, you tell him I have the answer to that problem he left with me. Tell him to get his tail back up here when it's convenient."

"All right. You're not going, though?"

"Aah, that kind of thing,
ehhif
stuff, I know multicultural is good, but I got no taste for it, my time of life. You youngsters, you get out there, have a good time, listen to the music, maybe make a little of your own, huh?"

Urruah squeezed his eyes shut, a tolerant expression, eloquent of a tom dealing with someone who'd been
ffeih
for so long that he couldn't remember the good things in life. Ehef grinned back and cuffed Urruah in front of one ear, a lazy gesture with the claws out, but not enough force or speed to do any harm. "You just lick that look out of your whiskers, sonny boy," he said. "I knew you when you didn't know where your balls were yet, let alone how many of them to expect. I've got other things to do with my spare time lately." He threw an annoyed glance at the computer.

Rhiow smiled, for this was hardly news, although getting Ehef to talk about this new hobby had been difficult at first. She had known what was going on, though, for some years— since the library installed its first computer system and announced that it was calling it CATNYP.

"I wouldn't have thought you were the techie type," Saash murmured.

"Yeah, well, it grows on you," Ehef said. "Horrifying. But we have an
ehhif
colleague working with the less, shall we say, 'visible' aspects of the CATNYP system. She's been busy porting in the software for putting
The Book of Night with Moon
online."

Rhiow blinked at that.
The Book of Night with Moon
was probably the oldest of the human names for what cat-wizards called
The Gaze of Rhoua's Eye,
the entire assembled body of spells and wizardly reference material, out of which Hrau'f whispered you excerpts when you needed them. Humans had a lot of other regional names for the
Book,
many of them translating into "the Knowledge" or a similar variant.
Ehhif
wizards who got their information from the Powers That Be in a concrete written or printed form, rather than as words whispered in their ears or their minds, often carried parts of the
Book
as small volumes that were usually referred to casually as "the Manual," and used for daily reference. "Wouldn't have thought it was possible," Rhiow said. "The complexity… and the sheer volume of information that would have to be there…"

"It works, though," Ehef said, jumping up onto one of the nearby desks with a computer terminal on it. "Or at least it's starting to… the beta-test teams have been working on it for some years now. There was some delay— I think the archetypal 'hard copy' of the
Book
was missing for a while— but a team out on errantry found it and brought it back. Since then the work's been going ahead steadily on versions tailored to several different platforms, mostly portable computers and organizers. This is the first mainframe implementation, though. We're trying to give it a more intuitive interface than previously, a little less structured: more like the input you get from the Whisperer when you ask advice."