To Visit the Queen

OTHER BOOKS BY DIANE DUANE

The Book of Night with Moon
available from Warner Aspect

The "Middle Kingdoms" Quartet:

The Door into Fire

The Door into Shadow

The Door into Sunset

The Door into Starlight*

The "Young Wizards" Series:

So You Want to Be a Wizard

Deep Wizardry

High Wizardry

A Wizard Abroad

Novels Set in the
Star Trek
™
Universe:

The Wounded Sky

My Enemy, My Ally

The Romulan Way

Spock's World

Doctor's Orders

Dark Mirror

Intellivore

Novels Set in the Marvel Comics
™
Universe:

Spider-Man: The Venom Factor

Spider-Man: The Lizard Sanction

Spider-Man: The Octopus Agenda

X-Men: Empire's End*

*FORTHCOMING

TO VISIT THE QUEEN. Copyright © 1999 by Diane Duane. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Aspect[®] name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

For information address Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

A Time Warner Company

ISBN 0-7595-4143-4

A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 1999 by Warner Books.

First eBook edition: February 2001

Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

MANY THANKS TO:

Chris Pond, in the Public Information Office at the Palace of Westminster; the Public Information Office, Number Ten Downing Street; the Yeoman Ravenmaster, Her Majesty's Tower of London.

Ailurin is not a spoken language, or not
simply
spoken. Like all the human languages, it has a physical component, the cat version of "body language," and a surprising amount of information is passed through the physical component before a need for vocalized words arises.

Even people who haven't studied cats closely will recognize certain "words" in Ailurin: the rub against a friendly leg, the arched back and fluffed fur of a frightened cat, the crouch and stare of the hunter. All of these have strictly physical antecedents and uses, but they are also used by cats for straightforward communication of mood or intent. Many subtler signs can be seen by even a human student: the sideways flirt of the tail that says "I don't care" or "I wonder if I can get away with this..." the elaborate yawn in another cat's face, the stiff-legged, arch-backed bounce, which is the cat equivalent of making a face and jumping out at someone, shouting "Boo!" But where gestures run out, words are used— more involved than the growl of threat or purr of contentment, which are all most humans hear of intercat communication.

"Meowing" is not counted here, since cats rarely seem to meow at each other. That type of vocalization is usually a "pidgin" language used for getting humans' attention: the cat equivalent of "Just talk to them clearly and loudly and they'll get what you mean sooner or later." Between each other, cats subvocalize using the same mechanism that operates what some authorities call "the purr box," a physiological mechanism that is not well understood but seems to have something to do with the combined vibration of air in the feline larynx and blood in the veins and arteries of the throat. To someone with a powerful microphone, a cat speaking Ailurin seems to be making very soft meowing and purring sounds ranging up and down several octaves, all at a volume normally inaudible to humans.

This vocalized part of Ailurin is a "pitched" language, like Mandarin Chinese, more sung than spoken. It is mostly vowel-based— no surprise in a species that cannot pronounce most human-style consonants. Very few noncats have ever mastered it: not only does any human trying to speak it sound to a cat as if he were shouting every word, but the delicate intonations are filled with traps for the unwary or unpracticed.
Auo hwaai hhioehhu uaeiiiaou,
for example, may look straightforward: "I would like a drink of milk" is the Cat-Human Phrasebook definition. But the people writing the phrasebook for the human ear are laboring under a terrible handicap, trying to transliterate from a thirty-seven-vowel system to an alphabet with only five. A human misplacing or mispronouncing only one of the vowels in this phrase will find cats smiling gently at him and asking him why he wants to feed the litter-box to the taxicab?... this being only one of numerous nonsenses that can be made of the above example.

So communication from our side of things tends to fall back on body language (stroking, or throwing things, both of which cats understand perfectly well) and a certain amount of monologue— which human-partnered cats, with some resignation, accept as part of the deal. For their communications with most human beings, the cats, like so many of us, tend to fall back on shouting. For this book's purposes, though, all cat-to-human speech, whether physical or vocal, is rendered as normal dialogue: that's the way it seems to the cats, after all.
*

One other note: two human-language terms, "queen" and "tom," are routinely used to translate the Ailurin words
sh'heih
and
sth'heih.
"Female" and "male" don't properly translate these words, being much too sexually neutral— which cats, in their dealings with one another, emphatically are not. The Ailurin word
ffeih
is used for both neutered males and spayed females. — DD

*Cat thoughts and silent communications are rendered in italics.

In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way: nor will I change any creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is fitting to do so— looking always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they proceeded....

Patel went slowly up the gray concrete stairs to the elevated Docklands Light Railway station at Island Gardens; he took them one at a time, rather than two or three at once as he usually did. Nothing was wrong with him: it was morning, he felt energetic enough— a good breakfast inside him, everything okay at home, the weather steady enough, cool and gray but not raining. However, the package he was carrying was heavy enough to pull a prizefighter's arms out of their sockets.

He had made the mistake of putting the book in a plastic shopping bag. Now the thing's sharp corners were punching through the bag, and the bag's handles, such as they were, were stretching thinner and thinner under the book's weight, cutting into his hands like cheesewire and leaving red marks. He had to stop and transfer the bag from right hand to left, left hand to right, as he went up the stairs, hauling himself along by the chipped blue-painted handrail. When he finally reached the platform, Patel set the bag down gratefully on the concrete, with a grunt, and rubbed his hands, looking up at the red LEDs of the train status sign to see when the next one would be along. 1, the sign read, BANK, 2 MINUTES.