It was the morning of 6 June 1874: sunny and hot, one more baking hot day in the middle of one of the most prolonged hot spells to manifest itself in the British Isles for nearly fifty years. Temperatures had been in the eighties every day for the past two weeks. The Times reported that a stationary high was in place over the Isles and showed no signs of moving in the immediate future.
A small stout woman on horseback came riding sedately up through Windsor Home Park at an easy canter. She wore a long black riding dress, and rode sidesaddle with some grace and ease. She rode around the path that skirted the East Terrace Garden, and came up to the George the Sixth Gateway, clattering through under the archway and into the wide, graveled space of the Upper Ward. Grooms ran forward to take her horse as she stopped near the little circular tower which marked the entrance to the State Apartments. One groom bent down to offer his back as a step to the woman dismounting: another took her by the hand and helped her down.
“He is breathing better this morning, Rackham,” she said to one of the grooms. “Perhaps he will not need the mash any more this week.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
She swept in through the entrance to the State Apartments and up the stairs, then bustled down along the hallway which ran down the length of the first floor, making for the day room attached to her own apartments there. Maids curtsied low and footmen bowed as she passed: one of them rose to open the door to the day room for her.
The Queen stepped into the room, and then stopped, very surprised. Tumbling about on the carpet were two small cats, one mostly white with black patches, one more black with white patches, wrestling with each other. As the Queen looked at them, they rolled over and gazed at her with big innocent golden eyes.
“Meow,” said one of them.
The Queen’s mouth dropped open, and she clapped her hands for delight. One of the maids appeared immediately. “Siddons,” said Queen Victoria, “wherever did these darling kittens come from?”
“Please, your Majesty, I don’t know,” said Siddons, a beautifully dressed young woman who immediately began to wonder if she was going to get in trouble for this. “Maybe they came in from outside, your Majesty.”
“Well, we must make inquiries and see if we can discover to whom they belong,” said the Queen, “but they are certainly very welcome here.”
She went over to them, knelt down on one knee and stroked one of them, the kitten with more black than white. They were really a little larger than kittens, but were not yet full grown cats. The one she was stroking caught her hand in soft paws and gave it a little lick, then looked up at her with big eyes again.
“Darling thing!” said the Queen, and picked the little cat up in her arms, holding it so that it lay on its back. The small cat patted her face gently with one paw and gazed up at her adoringly.
“What was that you said? ‘Meow’?” said Siffha’h, still rolling and stretching on the floor. “Look at you, squirming around like you’ve still got your milk teeth. How shameless can you get?”
“Well, it says here that a cat may look at a King,” Arhu said. “So I’m looking.”
“Well, this is a Queen. And it doesn’t say anything about being truly sickeningly sweet to the point where Iau Herself will come down from broad Heaven and tell you you’re overdoing it. You’re going to do bad things to my blood sugar.”
“You’re a wizard: adjust it. Meanwhile, at least she smells nice. Some of the ehhif around here could use a scrub.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, come on, don’t just lie there. We’ve got to get ourselves well settled in. Find something to be cute with.”
Siffha’h got up and headed for a thick velvet bell-pull with tassels. “All right, but I’m not sure this isn’t going to stunt my growth.” She started to play with the tassels.
The Queen burst out laughing and put Arhu down. “Oh, my dear little kitties,” said the Queen, “would you like something to eat?” She turned to look over her shoulder, toward the butler standing in the doorway. “Fownes, bring some milk. And some cold chicken from the buffet.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Now for once Urruah was right about something,” Arhu said. “Milk and cold chicken. I don’t suppose they’ve invented pastrami yet ... “
Siffha’h inclined her head slightly to listen to the Whispering. “You’re on the wrong side of the Atlantic. They do have it in New York ... “
“Dear Mr. Disraeli is coming to see me before lunch,” she said to the cats. “You must be kind to him and not scratch his legs. Mr. Disraeli is not a cat person.”
“Uh oh,” Arhu said.
“I wish she hadn’t said that,” Siffha’h said. “I won’t be able to resist, now ... “
“Don’t do it,” Arhu said. “He might nuke something.”
“Please,” Siffha’h said. However pleasant the surroundings, none of them had been able to stop looking up at the sky for that quiet reminder of which Power seemed to be busiest in this universe at the moment.
“Have you been in the bedroom yet?” Arhu said.
“No.”
“Better take a look, then.”
“OK.”
“Hey! Don’t walk—scamper.”
Siffha’h scampered, producing another trill of laughter from the Queen. Arhu went after her the same way. A door opened out of the day room into the anteroom, and from the anteroom, to the right, into the royal bedroom. The bed was quite large, and beautifully covered all in white linen.
Siffha’h looked it over critically, walking around it. “It’s a good size,” she said to Arhu. “But not so big that we can’t put a forcefield over it that would stop a raging elephant, not to mention a guy with a knife.”
“We’ll have to be careful how we trigger it, though. If she gets up for something in the middle of the night, she’ll bang herself on it and get upset.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Siffha’h said. She walked around to look at the elaborately carved headboard. “Hey, look at the nibble marks. She’s had mice in here.”
“Yeah, well, we need to make sure she doesn’t have another one,” Arhu said. “With much bigger teeth.”
“Your Majesty,” said a servant who appeared at the day-room door and bowed, “the Prime Minister has arrived.”
“Very good. Bring his usual tea. Where is the cats’ chicken?”
“Coming, your Majesty.”
“Here, kitties,” the Queen called, “come and have some milk!”
They glanced at each other. “I am not used to this kind of thing,” said Siffha’h. “Let her wait a few minutes.”
“Why? You’re hungry.”
“If we come when she calls us, she’s going to get the idea that we’ll do that all the time. We’re People, for Iau’s sake.”
“Well, she’s a Queen, and she’s used to people coming when she calls. All kinds of people. Come on, Sif, humor her a little.”
“Oh, all right.” They trotted into the day room together. The Queen was holding a bowl of milk, which she put down for them.
They drank. “Oh, sweet Iau, where are they getting this stuff?” Arhu muttered, and practically submerged his face in the bowl.
“Real cows,” said Siffha’h. “Not pasteurized. Full fat. They may know what cholesterol is here, but it doesn’t bother them ... “
Footsteps came from down the hall. A few moments later, the man who had his finger on the Victorian nuclear trigger came in and sat down. He was long and rangy and had the abundant beard that seemed so popular at this point in time. Arhu looked up at him from the bowl and got an immediate sense of thoughtfulness, subtlety, an almost completely artificial sense of humor, and dangerous intelligence. At the same time, behind the sleek and well-behaved facade lurked emotions which, though carefully controlled, were not at all mastered. This was the kind of man who could hold a grudge, teach it to think it was a carefully thought through opinion, and then turn it loose to savage his enemies.
“I wouldn’t shed on him if I were you,” Arhu said softly. “I think you might pull back a bloody stump.”
“Mr. Disraeli,” said the Queen, “have you seen my two lovely young guests? I am hoping they will stay with me and enliven my sad days a little.”
“Ma’am, anything which brings joy to your days is a joy to your humble servant,” said Disraeli, and bowed.
Siffha’h gave him an amused look. “Pull the other three,” she said, “they’ve got bells on.”
“He can’t help it,” Arhu said. “He has to say things like that to her all the time now, or she wonders what’s wrong with him.” He put his whiskers forward.
“Sit, please,” said the Queen, and Disraeli did so and started chatting with her informally about the state of affairs in the Empire, particularly in India. Here, as in their own universe, he was trying to convince her to accept the title of Queen-Empress, and she was presently in the stage of coyly refusing it.
“But, ma’am, the nations over which our benevolent influence is extended wish only to have you assume this title as a token of their esteem ... “
“If esteem is to be discussed,” said the Queen, reaching for a piece of chicken, “then I would sooner discuss the sort which France is expressing at the moment.”
“Ah, Majesty, their inflammatory republican comments are intended for their own people and their own politicians” ears. They have no import here.”
“They do when the French suggest that the British monarchy is superannuated and without merit,” the Queen said mildly, while this time giving Siffha’h the piece of chicken she was holding, and reaching for another one for Arhu. “No, don’t grab, my darling, there is plenty for you both. And when they threaten my cousins on the various thrones of Germany. I have no desire to seem as if we wish to expand our Empire—which is broad enough at the moment—at the expense of others.”
“If those others will not comport themselves wisely, those of them who live on the Empire’s doorstep,” Disraeli said gently, “surely it is in our interest to explain to them the likely results of their destabilization of the nations of Europe. We have no desire to seem threatening, of course—“
“Indeed we do not,” said the Queen, looking up rather sharply from the distribution of the next piece of chicken. “And I require you to see that we do not. My diplomatic boxes have been full of disturbing material of late: complaints from neighbors who feel that our purpose is to destabilize them. I will not leave Europe in a worse state than I found it, Mr. Disraeli.”
“Indeed, ma’am,” Disraeli said, “the general opinion is that it would be left in much better state if more of it were British.”
The Queen sniffed. “A state of which my royal father would never have approved. We are the most powerful nation on the globe: all respect us, and those who do not respect us, at least fear us, which unfortunate situation at least keeps my subjects safe. Let France provoke as it please, let Italy rattle her spears. They are too short to fly far. As for France, the English Channel is now a tie that binds us, not a protective barrier. She will do nothing but harm to her own trade by cocking a snook at us across the water.”
“Ma’am,” Disraeli said, “these direct attacks on the monarchy are being taken, by some, as direct threats to your royal person. There are those in Parliament who have begun calling for war.”
“They do that every year around tax time,” the Queen said mildly. “Some distractions are worth more than others, especially in a year which presents the possibility of a general election. As for my people’s opinion, they love to talk about conquering Europe, but they are not eager to do it themselves.”
“They would be if you asked them to,” Disraeli said softly.
The Queen gave him a cool look. “I have no interest in spending their blood,” she said, “for no better reason than a few vague threats. I am a mother too, and I know what the blood of sons is worth.”
Disraeli bowed at that. “Yet it brings us to another matter, ma’am,” he said. “You are a mother not only of princes and princesses, but of a people. And those people greatly desire to see you take up your public role with more enthusiasm. We have spoken of this before—“
“And doubtless will again,” said the Queen, turning away from him. “Mr. Disraeli, I know your concerns. But I cannot make a show of myself when my heart would be insincere, no matter what public opinion would make of it. You cannot possibly know the pain I suffer for the lack of my dear Albert ... how I long for him ... how that longing makes so many things, the splendors, the pleasures, as nothing but ashes in my mouth. I will not pretend to be what I cannot be ... and my people, who love me, will understand.”
He bowed again, slowly, reluctantly: and gradually their talk passed to other things. Arhu, meanwhile, rubbed against the Queen’s skirts, then headed back into the bedroom.
Siffha’h followed him in. “Well?” she said. “I didn’t follow all of that.”
“It gets complicated. But that was the lead-up, all right,” Arhu said. “The circumstances are lining up as predicted.”
“You’re looking smug.”
“Smug?” Arhu shook his head until his ears rattled. “No. I like a high accuracy rating: it makes me a lot less nervous ... especially when I hear the words ‘necessary expansion’ from someone who has nuclear weapons when no one else does. Nope,” Arhu said, “we’re in the right place at the right time. Now all we have to do is wait ... “
The timeslide gatings which first transported the London and New York teams to 1874, and then had dropped Siffha’h and Arhu in the Queen’s rooms, had both run into trouble, as Ith had predicted. The resistance to them had been staggering, an order of magnitude greater than the last time it was tried. But Whoever was handling the resistance had not been prepared for a power source which for the first time, simply ran into it, and through it, as if it was not there. The timeslide had first aligned itself with the time and place where Artie had stumbled upon them: they left him off in time for tea with his Uncle Richard, and making their farewells, they gated once more and popped directly out into Old Jewry in the late evening of July the eighth. There, under the scarred and tarnished Moon, the teams made themselves at home, as best they could, in the Mark Lane Tube station.
Rhiow found its trains surprisingly modern: the station was clean and safe, and more handsomely decorated than its contemporary counterpart. The worldgates were not there, though. As Rhiow had suspected, they were presently up in the Fenchurch Street mainline rail station, and Rhiow and Huff had both been unwilling to tamper with them or to try to contact any London-based gating team which might be supervising the gates at this time. There were already enough complications to deal with.
They waited, and saw the City as best they could, and became very expert of ridding themselves of mud in short order. In particular, they spent a fair amount of time visiting with Ouhish and Hwallis at the British Museum. Hwallis had been delighted to hear about the recovery of the full spell for protection against the Winter: but the news about what was required to activate it had come as a blow.
The intervention, however, was Rhiow’s and Huff’s main care, and they made their preparations slowly, despite the impatience of some members of the team. Look, it’s been two days now, Arhu said, late on the eighth, and I don’t know how much more petting we can stand. If it’s not Herself, then it’s the princes and princesses. And all the servants are trying to make friends with us too.
I should think you could do very well out of this ... Urruah said. Like the others, he was down on the twin of their ‘derelict’ platform, where the timeslide spell was ‘stabled’ until they would need it again.
Do you mean food? Please! Don’t even mention it, Siffha’h said. I’m so stuffed I’m losing the ability to scamper.
Huff smiled at that. A historical moment, he said.
Have you heard from Auhlae?
Yes. Nothing unusual as yet. So far the gates are behaving themselves.
Rhiow put her whiskers forward, glad to hear it. She had also been glad when Auhlae volunteered to mind the gates during the intervention. It had taken a weight off Huff’s mind: he had been very nervous indeed of the prospect of bringing her here.
Just hold on the best you can, you two, she said. It’s only a couple of days more. Have you seen the Mouse?
Yes. A very inoffensive-looking little ehhif, Arhu said. It’s no wonder he was so good at the second-story work before McClaren hired him for this job: he’s pretty small. He works in the gardens every day, putting plants in pots and taking them out again, and no one gives him a second look.
Well, you’re ready for him ...
There are more protections waiting to be activated around that bed than any ehhif needs, Siffha’h said. And we’re there too: she insists on us sleeping with her. But he’s not going to have a chance to make it this far, anyway. Come tomorrow afternoon, he’s going to find himself locked in the Albert Tower with no way out ... and the morning after, the police will take him away.
They’ll probably charge him with suspicion of theft when they find out what kind of work he used to do, Arhu said. I won’t mind. I see the way his little eyes look at things. It’s not a mouse he reminds me of: it’s a rat.
Rhiow shivered a little. The image of a rat’s mind in a man’s body bothered her. Well, she said, keep an eye on things. Urruah has gone to the House to see about that letter.
Good, Arhu said. This is a nice place ... but I’ll be glad when this lady is safe. She’s got her problems, but none that deserve being killed for.
There’s also the slight problem of what would happen after she was killed ...
Don’t remind me. Well, keep us up to date, Siffha’h said. It really will be kind of a relief to get out of here. She cries about Albert every night, like it’s a ritual, and the pillows get all wet. I’m amazed she doesn’t catch cold.
Rhiow’s tail twitched. “Do what you can for her,” she said. “A purr at the right time can do wonders.”
We will.
Rhiow sighed and lay back on the concrete. She was missing Iaehh already, and she was beginning to get that twitchy, uncomfortable feeling that comes of staying out of one’s home time too long. In addition, she was beginning to feel peculiarly ... exposed. I just wish I knew to what. But the feeling of something watching them, with bad intent, was getting very strong.
No matter. It won’t take very long now. Urruah will sort that letter out ... and then we can frame the Mouse and go home.
But something kept suggesting to Rhiow that it would not be that simple ...
The morning of the ninth of July came up, hot and still, with crickets creaking in the crevices of stone walls and under the foundations of houses. It was hot everywhere, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Nearer the John O’Groats end of things, just after the time when the milk arrives after dawn, the postman came up the walk of a small neat semidetached home in Edinburgh city. Before he could knock, the latch was lifted, and a small dapper man came out. The postman handed him several letters, which the man went through swiftly. One of these he opened: then, as the postman was on the way down the walk to the street, the small man called him and stepped back inside the door of the house for a moment. When he emerged, he handed the postman another letter. The postie took it and went his way.
In the Palace of Westminster, unseen, a gray-striped tabby cat walked calmly down the Commons’ Corridor, looking at the paintings that adorned the walls there: the last sleep of the Duke of Argyll, the acquittal of the Seven Bishops in the reign of James II, Jane Lane helping Charles II to escape.
Marvelous stuff, Urruah thought to himself, but is it art? Most of it, he thought, was the kind of painting which a partisan of a subject does to try to convince other people that it’s of as much historical or cultural value as he thinks it is. Figures of old-time ehhif gestured heroically or stood in stoic silence, and all of them, to Urruah’s educated eye, had ‘Establishment’ written all over them. Urruah walked among them with amusement, heading for the House of Commons, and restraining his urge to sharpen his claws on the more bombastic of the murals.
He was sidled, naturally, and therefore had to sidestep to miss the occasional ehhif parliamentarian making for the House. They seemed to hold their meetings very late. It was nearly midnight: even bouts of hauissh, the feline pastime which most nearly includes politics, did not usually take place quite this late. Whatever, Urruah wasn’t terribly concerned about what hours they kept, except as it involved one man: McClaren.
He paused by the doors to the House, a little off to one side, and listened before going in.
“ ... because the expense would be so great,” an ehhif was saying in a great deep rolling voice; “whilst perhaps in the next parish there might be a clergyman who turns to the east when he celebrated the Holy Communion. If a parishioner called upon the bishop to prosecute in that case, then there would be no difficulty, it would be easy to prosecute for the posture ... but by no means easy to prosecute for the doctrine. Is it not a monstrous proposition that when unsound doctrine is preached, one must proceed by the old, slow, cumbersome ecclesiastical law, and yet there should be a rapid prosecution for gestures ... “
Urruah stood there trying to make head or tail of this for some minutes. It seemed that the ehhif was talking about communicating with the One, which was certainly a courtesy and a good idea generally: but these ideas of ehhif as to how the One liked to be communicated with seemed amazingly confused, and also seemed to be very hung up on obscure symbology which had to be exactly observed and duplicated, or else there would be no communication. If they really think this, Urruah thought, maybe it’s no wonder they’re so asocial. The Universe must seem to them like a place run by ants. Rude, illiterate ants ...
“ ... among the leading churchmen I have found extreme distaste and dissatisfaction with the bill. It is said that the bishop, in the ninth clause, must appear ‘in a fatherly character’, but before the canons come in, he must practically have pronounced that some offense had been committed which ought to be proceeded against. Thus the power of the bishop as arbitrator can never commence until he has pronounced and sanctioned the prosecution—“
Urruah reared up and peered through the glass of the doors. His view was largely blocked by frock-coated men standing between him and the floor of the House, and talking nonstop.
Well, vhai’d if I’m going to stand here all night, he thought. Very carefully Urruah slipped through the wood paneling of the lower half of the door, slowly, so as not to upset the grain of the wood, and being careful not to become strictly solid again until he knew exactly where the legs of the ehhif on the other side were. Fortunately none of them were too close.
Once in, Urruah stood there at the back of the House and listened for a few more minutes ... finally wondering why in Iau’s name anyone would come here late at night to hear this kind of thing ... unless indeed they were all insomniacs in search of treatment. Up in the stranger’s gallery, various visiting ehhif were either asleep or on their way to being so: on the other side, journalists were scribbling frantically in notebooks, trying to keep up with what the ehhif who spoke was saying. Urruah wondered why anyone would bother. The man had the most soporific style imaginable, and in this hot, still room, made hotter yet by the primitive electrical lights, the effect produced put the best sleep-spells Urruah knew to shame.
Urruah peered about him again, looking for any sign of McClaren. The ehhif was tall and had a big beard, but unfortunately that described about half the ehhif in here: this was a very hairy period for ehhif males in this part of the world. McClaren also had a long hawkish nose and very blue eyes, but again Urruah’s view was somewhat blocked.
He’s probably not here, Urruah thought. Still ... I’ll take a look around. And the impish impulse struck him.
He unsidled.
At first no one noticed him. It was late, and he was walking softly down the carpeted floor of the gangway on the Opposition side. He knew where he was headed: toward the center of the room, the “aisle”, where he could get a good view of both front benches. McClaren was a government minister, and would normally have been sitting there on the left-hand side of the Speaker as Urruah was facing the Speaker’s Chair.
He looked around him at the weary, complacent faces as he came down the gangway ... and they began to look at him. Urruah put his whiskers forward as the laughter started. That’ll wake them up, he thought: this’ll probably make the papers tomorrow ... He came down to the aisle, took a long leisurely look across at the Government benches ... and saw McClaren there.
Urruah stopped short, with the laughter scaling up all around him.
What’s he doing here?!
For he was not supposed to be here. He should have been up in his office—writing a letter—
Sa’Rrdhh in a five-gallon bucket, Urruah thought, no—
He bolted toward the Government benches, ignoring the surprised or shocked faces turned toward him, and jumped up on the back of the first front bench, almost getting into the beard of the surprised minister sitting nearest. Urruah jumped with great speed from there to the first of the back benches, and to the next and the next, going up them like steps in a staircase and not particularly caring whose leg, shoulder or head he stepped on in the process. The laughter became deafening. There was a door at the back of the last of the benches, at the very top. Urruah jumped down and went straight through it, this time without the slightest concern for the grain of the wood.
He raced out through the West Division lobby, through it into the little hallway at the corner of the Lobby and up the staircase two floors. He knew well enough where McClaren’s office was. Through that wooden door, too, he went, sidled again this time.
There was no one in the office.
Urruah stood very still for a moment and licked his nose three times in rapid succession. Then he glanced around him, and looked up into the box on the bookcase.
No letter.
He jumped up onto the desk, covered with the same leather and paper blotter that Arhu had seen. There were no writings on it, but there were faint depressions as of writing.
Urruah looked across to the small narrow fireplace at the other side of the office. Perfect, he thought.
He did a very small wizardry in his mind and put his paws down on the blotter, electrostatically charging it. Then he glanced over at the fireplace, and spoke courteously in the Speech to the soot up in the chimney.
Tidily, in a thin stream, it made its way across the room to him. Urruah guided it down onto the blotter, then levitated the blotter a little way up on its edge to let the soot slide down it.
It adhered here and there on the blotter, mostly to signatures. But one recent piece of writing showed up most clearly where the soot clung.
MR JAMES FLEMING
14 KENNISHEAD AVENUE
EDINBURGH
Dear Mr. Fleming,
Thank you for yours inst. the 6th of July regarding passes to the Speaker’s gallery. Such may only be granted by the Speaker after introduction by the applicant’s own member of Parliament. In your case this would—
Oh, no, Urruah thought.
It’s gone. It’s gone already. How can it be gone?
He ran out of the office again, through the door, his heart pounding and his mouth dry with terror.
Everybody! Everybody! Windsor, now, hurry, now!
... He unlatches the door with one gloved hand, slips in through it, shuts it gently behind him. Stands still in the darkness, and listens. A faint hiss from the hot-water boiler behind the coal stove: the tick of cinders shifting in the box: no other sound.
He takes his twelve steps across the kitchen, reaches out his hand ... finds the shut door. He eases its latch open, slips through this door too, pulls it gently to behind him. Six stairs up to the hallway. Two steps out into the middle of the carpet in the hall; turn left. Sixty steps down to the second landing, and out onto the carpet. In the darkness he passes by the doorways he knows are there, to the Picture Gallery, the Queen’s Ball Room, the Queen’s Audience Chamber. Silently past the Guard Chamber: no guards are there any more—the place is full of suits of armor, some of them those of children, and silken banners and old swords and shields, the gifts of kings. No more kings after tonight, he thinks, with the slightest smile in the dark. No more queens ...
Fifty-nine steps, and there is the change in the sound. Sixty. His toe bumps against the bottom step. Five stairs up to the landing: turn right: three steps. He puts his hand out, and feels the door.
Gently, gently he pulls it open. From up the winding stair comes a faint light: it seems astonishingly bright to him after the dead blackness. Softly he goes up the stairs, taking them near the outer side of the steps: the inner sides creak.
Something brushes against his leg. A gasp catches in his throat: he freezes in place. A minute, two minutes, he stands there.
Nothing. A cobweb. Even a place like this, with a hundred servants, can’t keep all the stairwells free of the little toilers, the spinners of webs. Softly he goes on up again, one step at a time, at the edges, with care.
The remaining fifteen steps are steep, but he is careful. At the door at the top he halts and looks out of the crack in it where it has been left open. In the hallway onto which this stairway gives, next to a door with a gilded frame, is a chair under a single candle sconce with a dim electric bulb burning in it. There should be a footman in it, but there’s no sign of him. The chair is tilted back against the wall, and down by the foot of the chair is a stoneware mug: empty. The footman has gone to relieve himself. And the door in the gilded frame is slightly open.
Perfect. Down the hallway, now, in utmost silence.
Swiftly now, but also silently. Reach up and undo the bulb from its socket. No one will think a thing of it: these newfangled things burn out without warning all the time. Wait a few seconds for night vision to return. Then, silently, push the door open and step in.
The outer room is where the lady-in-waiting has a bed. She is not in it. Now the footman’s absence suddenly completely makes sense, and in the darkness, he smiles. The nightwalker makes his way toward what he cannot see yet in this more total darkness, the inner door. He feels for the handle: finds it.
Turns the handle. The door swings inward.
Darkness and silence. Not quite silence: a faint rustle of bedlinens, off to his left, and ahead. A little rasp of noise, soft. A snore? She will sleep more quietly in a moment ...
Now, only now, the excitement strikes him, and his heart begins to pound. Ten steps, they told him. A rather wide bed. Her maids say she still favors the left side of it, leaving the right side open for someone who sleeps there no more.
Ten steps. He takes them. He listens for the sound of breathing ...
... then reaches for the left side.
One muffled cry of surprise, as the knives pierce his hand, and other knives catch him from behind, on the neck and the back of the head, a flurry of abrupt, terrible, slicing pain. He staggers back, his arms windmilling, the knife trying to find a target in the darkness. Only the training of many years, the usual number of accidents—broken glass, banged shins—keeps him quiet now as he stumbles back to find his balance again. For just a moment his hand is free of the pain, but now the front of his neck is pierced by furious jaws that bite him in the throat, claws that seize and kick. He fumbles at his throat to grab something furry and throw it away with all his might—
and suddenly he simply can’t move: he’s frozen, as if he were a stick of wood or one of the carved statues downstairs. Like a statue with its pedestal pulled out from under it, he topples, unable even to catch himself, or to turn so that he falls face down and not on his back.
Yet at the last minute he doesn’t fall. Some force far stronger than he is stops him, holds him suspended in air. He can’t breathe, can’t move, can only lie here gripped by something he can’t begin to understand, and by the terror that follows.
The pain, at least, drops away from the back of his head. But suddenly there is a pressure on his chest. His eyes, wide already in the dark, go as wide as they can with shock as a face, grinning, like the face of a demon, becomes just barely visible before him.
It is the face of a black-and-white cat. From the very end of its tail, held up behind it, comes the faintest glimmer of light, like a will-‘o’-the-wisp. It looks at him with a face of unutterable evil, a devil come to claim him: and, impossibly, in a whisper, it speaks.
“Boy,” it says, “have you ever picked the wrong bedroom.”
It sits there on his chest while invisible hands lift him. A brief whirl of that ever-so-faint light surrounds him, going around the back of his field of vision, coming up to the front again, tying itself in a tidy bow-knot. For a second or so that light fills everything.
Then it is gone again, and he falls again, coming down on the floor with a thump. His head cracks down hard, and he almost swears, but restrains himself.
But there’s no carpet on this floor. This is hard stone. Slowly, when he discovers that he can sit up again, he feels the floor around him. Marble, and old smooth tile—Hesitantly he gets to his feet, begins to feel his way around.
What he feels makes no sense. A stone figure, lying on its back, raised above the floor—Much other carving reveals itself under his hands, but nothing else. He would swear out loud, except that he may still be able to get out, and someone might hear him.
It is a long while before the tarnished, waning Moon rises enough for its light to stream through the stained-glass windows surrounding him with their illustrations of Biblical texts, and for him to realize whose the reclining figure is. There, entombed in marble, Prince Albert lies in the moonlight, hands folded, at rest, on his face a slight grave smile which, in this lighting, takes on an unbearably sinister aspect.
The memory of the demon face comes back to him. He swallows, feels for his knife. It’s gone. Dropped upstairs in the bedroom. There’s nothing he can use on the locked, barred ornamental gate to get out. There’s no way he can get rid of the silken rope. They will find it on him in the morning, when they call the police. There is a specific name for the charge of being found with tools which might be used for burglary: it’s called “going forth equipped”. It’s good for about twenty years, these days, on a second offense.
This is his fifth.
He sits down on the green marble bench under the scriptural bas-reliefs with their thirty kinds of inlaid marble, and begins, very quietly, to weep.
Just outside the bars, the darkness smiles and walks away on little cat feet.
Out in the Home Park, a black brougham waits until two a.m. precisely: then, slowly, quietly, moves off into the night.
There was a tremendous fuss the next morning when the burglar was found downstairs. There was less certainty about his status as a burglar when the lady-in-waiting found, dropped next to the Queen’s bed, a switchblade knife of terrible length and keenness. The police came, and the police commissioner with them: he questioned the Queen with the utmost respect. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing. Her dear little kitties had been sleeping with her all night: she woke up and went to her toilette ... and then all these horrible discoveries began to make themselves plain. The policemen took time to stroke the cats, which lay about on the white linen coverlet with the greatest possible ease and indolence, and a fairly smug look on their faces. The cat scratches present on the burglar’s face and head made it fairly plain where he had been, and (probably) what he had been up to. As a result, all that morning, the cats were petted and fussed and made much of. Instead of running away, as anyone might have expected with such young creatures, they stood it with astonishing stolidity.
It was nearly ten in the morning before the Queen finally saw the final visitors out of her apartment, sent her lady-in-waiting away, and shut the door to have a few moments’ peace. She slipped back into her bedroom, where the two young black-and-white cats had been asleep on the bed. One of them was lying on her back with her feet in the air, utterly indolent: the other had rolled over on his side and was watching her come with an air of tremendous intelligence.
“Ah, my dears,” she said, and sat down on the bed beside them. “How I wish you could speak and tell me what it is that happened last night.”
The slightly larger one, the male, gave her that unutterably wise look. The Queen turned her head to look out at the bright summer morning, which she might not have lived to see. The other cat rolled off her back and blinked at her lazily.
“Madam,” she said, “do you think this life is a rehearsal? It’s not.”
The Queen’s mouth dropped right open.
“She’s right, Queen,” Arhu said, getting up and sauntering toward her. “You’re acting like you’ve got as many lives as we have ... and you don’t. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped hiding in here—time you got out there and started making some use of yourself? Honestly, I’m sorry you lost your big tom with all the fur on his face. He sounds like he was nicer than the usual run of ehhif. But as far as I know, he’s with the One now, Who’ll certainly know how to treat him right: and if what I hear is anything to go by, he wouldn’t like you sitting here grieving for him while you have all this work to do.”
“But—“ the Queen finally managed to say. “But, oh, my dear little puss, how can you possibly know anything of the kind of pain I suffer when I think of—“
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Arhu said. “Sif, let’s show her.”
They showed her ... the pain they knew all too well, and shared.
The Queen sank back into the chair beside the bed, a few seconds later, staggered. Tears began to roll down her face.
“Beat that, if you can,” said Siffha’h at last.
The Queen hid her face in her hands.
“So don’t think you have a corner on the suffering market,” said Arhu. “Or on being lonely. Or that other people ‘can’t know’. When the sun comes up at last, we’re all stuck in our own heads by ourselves. Everyone around you feels the pain of it, sooner or later—the Lone One’s claw in their heart. Some feel it a lot worse than you, even if you are the dam to a pride of millions. So stop acting as if you’re so special.”
Even through the Queen’s tears, her jaw dropped open again at that. “And stop shirking your work,” said Siffha’h. “Bad things will happen to your pride if you don’t come out and do the things you were reared to do. They’ve started happening already. If you act now, you can stop the process.”
“Oh,” Arhu added. “And by the way, lay off the nuclear weapons. I know Dizzy likes them ... but this is what will happen if you don’t.”
He showed her.
The Queen went ashen at the sight of the Winter.
For several long minutes she was speechless: possibly a record. At the end of it, all she could whisper was, “You are little angels of God.”
“Please, madam,” Arhu said, “don’t get confused. We’re cats. If you mean we’re messengers of the One, well, so is everybody: it’s hardly an exclusive position. But this is the word. No nukes. You really ought to get rid of them, lest someone later be tempted to use them who isn’t as morally upright as you are.”
Flatterer.
She’s susceptible. A good wizard uses the tools which are available. “And make sure you don’t let them get out of control while you’re having them destroyed,” Siffha’h said. “Some people might be tempted to get light-fingered ... try to sell a few to somebody else on the grounds that no one will notice since they’re being destroyed anyway.”
The Queen looked suddenly determined. “I have never liked them,” she said softly. “I will begin work at once, if you say so.”
“It would be a project,” Arhu said, “which would probably be productive of some good.”
The Queen looked around with some surprise, for suddenly the bedroom seemed to have a lot more cats in it, and she had no idea where they might have come from. A huge gray tabby: a small neat black cat with golden-green eyes: a massive gray-and-tan tabby with astonishing fluffy fur: a small tidy marmalade cat with a slightly sardonic expression. All of them looked at her with interest.
“Our colleagues,” said Arhu. “We have been here on errantry on your behalf: the errand’s over. They just wanted to look at you before we all left.” Arhu smiled slightly. “It’s in the job description.”
“But, but my dear kitties,” the Queen said, “you cannot go now, you must stay!” Perhaps she already read the answer in their eyes. “I command it!”
“Majesty,” said the black cat, with a nod of what might have been respect, “our People have their own Queen, to whom we answer: a higher authority, I believe, than even yours. We cannot stay: we have other errands to perform for Her. But She wishes you well, by us. Do well by your people: and farewell.”
And then they were all gone.
The Queen wept a little, as was her habit, and then started to put herself right after the events of the morning. She did not get around to reading The Times until almost bedtime. When she did, it took her a while to get to the parliamentary report, which she was about to skip, since for some days it had contained an interminable report about the Public Worship Regulation Bill. But suddenly, in the middle of the dry, dry text, she began to smile.
The right Honorable Gentleman was at this moment startled by a burst of laughter from the crowded house, caused by the appearance of a large gray tabby cat, which, after descending the Opposition gangway, proceeded leisurely to cross the floor. Being frightened by the noise, the cat made a sudden spring from the floor over the shoulder of the members sitting on the front Ministerial bench below the gangway, and, amid shouts of laughter, bounded over the heads of members on the back benches until it reached a side door, when it vanished. This sudden apparition, the cat’s still more sudden disappearance, and the astonishment of the members who found it vaulting so close to their faces and beards, almost convulsed the House.
The Queen folded up the newspaper, put it aside, and went to sleep ... determined to start making some changes the next day.
“The only thing about this that still bothers me,” Urruah was saying, “is where that letter went. I can’t imagine how he got it out of there so fast.”
“But that’s the problem,” said Hwallis to the London and New York teams, earlier that afternoon. “A day for a letter to get to and from Edinburgh? A whole day? You must be joking.”
The New York team looked at each other. “It’s easy for us to forget,” Huff said, “that once upon a time, when this country had a rail network it could be proud of, and before there were telephones, the mail could come seven times a day—in London, in some parts, as many as twelve times a day. And pickups were much more frequent than they are now.”
“The Houses of Parliament have a pickup for members at midnight,” Ouhish said. “That letter would have been on the train to Scotland half an hour later. It would have been in Edinburgh, and delivered, with the first post ... some time after five in the morning. No later than seven, anyway. If a reply was passed directly back to the postman, that letter would also have gone on a train within an hour or so, and the reply would have been in London—Windsor, in this case—by the two o’clock post at the latest.”
Rhiow shook her head. “And we think our ehhif have technology,” she said softly. “Sometimes retrotech has its points.”
They spent the afternoon at the Museum, and said their farewells to Ouhish and Hwallis around four: then went for one last meeting, in Green Park. Artie was out for one last afternoon in London: the next morning he was due to catch the train back to Edinburgh, and after that he would be heading off to a school on the Continent. He was sorrowful, but his basic good cheer would not let the affair be entirely a sad one.
“But will I never see you again,” Artie said, “or Ith?”
“For out own part, it seems unlikely,” Rhiow said. “Mostly wizards don’t do time-work without permission from the Powers. There are too many things that can go wrong. But you will remember us for a long time.”
Probably not forever ... she thought, but didn’t say. One of the factors which protected wizardry from revelation was the tendency of humans minds to censor themselves over time, forgetting the “impossible”, recasting the improbable into more acceptable forms. Childhood memories, in particular, were liable to this kind of editing, as the adult mind decided retroactively what things could have happened in the “real world”, and which were dreams. Yet Artie was a little unusual. There was something about him which suggested that he would not easily let go of a memory, and that no matter how impossible something was, if it was true, he would cope with it ... and hang on.
“But Ith is another story,” Urruah said. “His time isn’t precisely our time: the universe where he lives is closer to the heart of things ... and so a little easier to get in and out of, for him. Also, he outranks us.” Urruah smiled. “He’s a Senior now ... and Seniors have more latitude.”
“No matter what else happens,” Fhrio said, “remember that you helped save the Queen, and many millions of people you’ll never know. You’ll never be able to prove it to anybody. But without you, we would not have been guaranteed entry into this timeline ... and we couldn’t have been sure to save the others. You did that. It might have been an accident at first ... but afterwards, you did it willingly. We won’t forget that, or you ... and neither will the Powers.”
Artie smiled at that. “I guess it’s better than nothing.”
“Immeasurably,” Rhiow said.
They parted as sunset drew on, and made their way back to the Mark Lane Underground, where they had lodged the timeslide. As they went underground for the last time in this period, Rhiow looked up into the dirty sky. There was no Moon there, tarnished or otherwise. Depending on whether or not they managed to track back the “seed” event of this chain, it might always wear those terrible scars. But at least now there was a good chance that the world would not.
“So what’s next?” she said to Huff, as they made their way down to the “derelict” platform.
“That book,” he said. “Fhrio, think we’ll be able to wring what we need out of the gate logs when we get back?”
“I feel certain of it,” he said. “And with Siffha’h to power the gating, the way she’s doing now, there shouldn’t be anything that can interfere.”
He sounded positively cheerful, Rhiow thought. She found herself wondering, a little ironically, whether this was because of how well the mission had gone, or whether it was because soon Urruah and Arhu would be leaving.
An unworthy thought. Never mind. It’s all worked out nicely. How good it’s going to be to get home to Iaehh, and let life go back to normal: our own gates to take care of, no commuting ...
And Rhiow smiled at herself then. Entropy was not about to stop running. Almost certainly something would go wrong with one of their own gates as soon as they got home, something finicky and pointless that would take weeks to put right ...
To her horror, the thought was delightful.
They came down to the dark and quiet of the platform, and Urruah woke up the timeslide: its wizardry blazed up into the familiar “hedge” around them as everyone took their appointed places. Rhiow looked around her as Siffha’h stepped into the power point and Fhrio hooked one claw into the wizardry. “Ready?” he said. “Anybody forget anything? Now’s your last chance.”
Tails were flirted “no” all around. “All right, Siffha’h,” he said. “On standby—“
“Now!” she said: reared up, and came down.
The pressure came. Rhiow surrendered herself to it for a change, familiar as it was. For home was on the other side ...
They came out into darkness: darkness so black that not even a Person’s eyes could make anything of it.
For a few moments there was nothing but silence. Then Urruah said, “What in the Queen’s name -- ?”
The timeslide wizardry collapsed around them, as if something had stomped it flat. All of them looked around them in shock.
“What is it?” said Arhu. “Where’s the light? What’s gone wrong down here?”
“Nothing,” said a soft voice from away off in the darkness. “But something is finally about to go right.”
“Uh oh,” Arhu said, and fell very abruptly silent.
“Auhlae?” Huff said. He stepped forward carefully out of the circle: Rhiow could feel him brush past her. “Are you all right? What’s happened down here?”
“Nothing that hasn’t been promised for a long time,” came the soft voice. Rhiow strained to hear it better. It was Auhlae ... but it wasn’t.
“What’s the matter?” Huff said. “Has something gone wrong with the gates?”
Laughter came out of the dark. “That’s always your first question, isn’t it? No, of course not. The gates are fine.”
“Oh ... good.” Huff stopped, unable to see where he was going. “Then maybe you can help us find our way out of here, it’s kind of dark ... “
“Yes,” Auhlae said ... or something using Auhlae’s voice. “A refreshing change, isn’t it? This is the way it should always have been from the beginning. No garish stars, no dirty little life-infested planets, nothing but the cold and the night.” And indeed it was feeling rather cold down here: much more so than it should have even in London in September. “And shortly this is what it will be like on Earth as well. Perhaps not this dark. But no Sun, no heat. Peace and quiet on this worthless little mudball at last.”
A faint spark of light came up from behind them: Arhu making a light. Before them, away off in the darkness, they could see two blue eyes looking at them, gleaming green in the light Arhu made. Those eyes were further away than it should have been possible for them to be, in a direction that should have been solid wall. And the sound of the place had gone all wrong. The close, underground feeling of it was gone: or rather, pushed back a long way ... much further than should have been possible, as if someone had scooped out a great cavern here to replace the tunnels.
“Auhlae,” Rhiow said, feeling the fur stand up all over her at the look in those eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“You,” said the voice. “That you should ask. How very glad I am that you made it back. We have business to settle.”
“What are you talking about?”
There was bitter laughter in the darkness. “You think I haven’t noticed you trying to steal him from me? Poor simple Huff. He never was able to tell when someone was making a play for him.”
Arhu’s light was still dim, though Rhiow could feel him trying, vainly, to make it brighter. She could not see Huff clearly, or the look in his eyes. “Auhlae,” Rhiow said, “you’re completely mistaken. No one has ever had a better mate than Huff is to you, or a more faithful one. And as for me, what possible good would he do me even if I did want him? I’m spayed!”
The laughter again. “As if that matters,” Auhlae snarled. “Do you think I’m such a fool as to think someone’s affections can’t be stolen without a uterus? How coy you were about it. Oh so sweet and noble and intelligent, and then when that starts to work, then the weak little queen act, oh-dear-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up ... and all of a sudden Huff is washing your ears and whispering sweet nothings in them. There’ll be precious little left of them to whisper in when I’m through.”
Rhiow actually took a step backwards in the blast of raw jealousy: it burned like a winter wind howling down Park Avenue.
You, she thought. The Lone Power always hated love, in whatever form. It would try to destroy it whenever It could, as sa’Rrahh had rebelled against her divine Dam’s love in the beginning of things. That love was still waiting: but sa’Rrahh, for the most part, was unconcerned.
“It was you then,” Rhiow said. “You were the one who let the first few microgatings through. You saw them, and you didn’t do anything to stop them.”
“I didn’t see them!” the enraged voice yowled. “What kind of obsessive would read gating logs so carefully? Do you think I’m the kind of sad case you and your team are: do you think I don’t have a life? By the time I noticed them, there had already been three or four. And I didn’t think much of it. All gates have these sporadic faults; they go away if you don’t try to micromanage them. But then it started happening regularly. The problem went chronic. Even then it still wouldn’t really have been a problem: I could have explained it, we could have cleared it up. But then the Ravens noticed—what business was it of theirs? -- and they told the Powers, and the Powers called you in. As if it was any of your business either! And after that, how could I let Huff see the gate logs, or let him know I knew anything about what had been going on? He wouldn’t have understood why I didn’t do anything sooner. You have no idea the kind of fuss he would make. And I couldn’t let him know that I’d seen the earlier ones—“
Huff was still standing there silent and astonished at all this. “So you tampered with the logs,” Urruah said. “Right down to the end. And I thought I was an expert.” He put his whiskers forward, ironic. “My compliments.”
“You think you’re such a great one, you,” Auhlae sneered. The voice in the darkness was getting softer, more venemous: but the eyes seemed larger, somehow. “Urruah, the conqueror of every heart. I didn’t want you!”
“I didn’t want you,” he said, rather mildly.
There was a breath’s pause of sheer disbelief, and then a scream. “You did! You did!! How could you not want me, when Huff did!”
“Auhlae,” Rhiow said softly, “Huff didn’t care whether other toms wanted you or not. He wanted you. That was more than enough for him. Don’t you see that even now?”
“As if you know anything about him, or me,” Auhlae hissed. “I know why you came. One failure and that’s it, isn’t it? And They were glad enough to give you an excuse to move in. No forgiveness from Their high and mighty quarter, oh no! They were all too glad for you to lever me out of my place with my team, and take my spot. And take Huff. Well, it’s not going to happen. I found help where I least expected it.”
The eyes were larger. He will never find out, the voice said now, Auhlae’s voice ... but not quite so much so any more. Everything will be the way it was again. When all of you are dead, or gone, or lost in backtime ... everything will be fine here.
“For a while, Auhlae,” said Rhiow desperately. There may still be a chance to call her back, just a chance ... “Only for a while. All you can imagine is you and Huff, happy together ... no matter what the price. But sa’Rrahh will brook no rivals. Her only love is destruction ... like the one she’s planning now. You can still oust her if you try: she cannot live in the unwilling heart, any more than wizardry can—“
The laughter from away down in the darkness was deafening.
Rhiow stood up straight, though she was shaking. “Fairest and Fallen,” she said, “greeting and defiance, now and always!” It was the language which the protocol required: there was no need to be rude to the Lone One, no matter what might follow. “State your intentions: and then beware, for we are on the Queen’s errantry, and you meddle with Her worlds at your peril!”
The laughter came again. I meddle with them as I please, said the Lone Power, said sa’Rrahh, out of the middle of the darkness and Auhlae’s surrendered body. It is when others meddle that the peril begins. You have deprived Me of My darkness, long planned, and of the cold that would have fallen a hundred years ago. Very well: you have chosen. Instead that darkness shall fall now.
It was not so much that the blackness around them began to break: it was more that something was advancing toward the gating teams, slowly and pleasurably, which made the darkness look horribly less dark by comparison. There was fire in it, but not the kind that gave any light: and many sorts of night which had at one time or another fallen over London, but not the kind with stars. The smoke of the Great Fire was there, and the blackness of the Plague: the fire-shot smoke of the destruction which had fallen from the sky in the second World War, and the eye-smarting thick gray smoke from the burning thatch of the most ancient settlement by the already-oxbowed river. But most of all Rhiow was reminded of the billowing blackness in the uprising mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion ... and it occurred to her that, even now, there were atomic weapons stationed in a few places within the ring of the M25 in London. They were supposed to be safe at defense establishments ... but when the Lone Power Itself was walking, how safe could anything be?
Slowly the dark shape stalked toward them. It was feline: it was sa’Rrahh indeed, in the fullness of Her fury, the Mistress of the Unmastered Fire, intent on their destruction. And they were totally unprepared. Defiance indeed, Rhiow thought. What now?
The light from behind her was at least getting a little stronger. The Lone One’s influence was damping down every other wizardly power but Its own as It advanced slowly on them: but Siffha’h’s new-found strength had not yet settled into channels where even sa’Rrahh could easily muzzle them. She was feeding Arhu power, and Arhu was making light, if nothing else: and in that light, Rhiow looked over at Huff, and said, It’s now or never, cousin. Do what you can—
He looked at Rhiow, and stepped forward. “Auhlae,” Huff cried, “I don’t want her! Do you hear me? I never wanted her. You’re all I want. This is all for nothing. Cast it out, or everything we’ve worked for all this time will be destroyed!”
Rhiow was desperately trying to assemble wizardry after wizardry in her mind, but it was no use: they were all being damped, every structure collapsing as she began to build it—and sa’Rrahh drew closer, the terrible feline shape towering over them in the darkness now, the size of a house, growing seemingly bigger by the second, filling the whole field of vision with that deadly dark burning. “We’ve worked for? Laughter again.
It hasn’t been worth anything anyway. When this is all over, the gates will be destroyed, and we won’t have to do that kind of work any more. We can settle down and just be wizards again—
Huff took a long breath. “I will not be the kind of wizard that serves what you serve,” he cried: “and I will not be the mate to that kind of wizard either!”
And he launched himself straight at sa’Rrahh’s throat.
One great paw lifted and slapped him aside as if he were nothing. Rhiow, flinching, heard the bones crack: saw the body fly past her to come down hard on the seamed concrete which was all that was left of the real world.
Sa’Rrahh looked down at Huff’s body, put her whiskers forward, and smiled ...
... and the smile twisted strangely. The lips wrinkled. From inside the burning eyes above them, just for a moment, something that might have been Auhlae once looked out: enraged ... betrayed. She screamed, a yowling roar that drove Rhiow crouching down to try to escape it: a terrible squall of betrayal and loss—
and then the light broke through.
All around the huge terrible form, like a cage, a four-dimensional figure appeared, a massive four-dimensional truncated icosahedron, its “extra” sides and volumes unfolding out all around it. The Lone Power looked around it in first astonishment and then growing rage, and began to throw itself against the “bars” of the cage. The cage shook, but it held.
Sa’Rrahh roared. It will not benefit you! The fire comes now, and then the Winter—
There will be no Winter, came another great voice—one which was, bizarrely, not one voice, but a union of many. This is the land of the Sun. We are the People of the Sun, and of our Mother Whose sigil the Sun is. By this spell worked, and this summons wrought, we ban the Winter, we ban the Unmastered Fire: we ban the One Who bears it!
Rhiow and the others stood still and stared as the stars began to fall.
At least they looked like stars at first. There had been none in the impenetrable darkness. But all around the struggling, roaring shape of sa’Rrahh, bright fires started to fall from far above. They fell in pairs. As they came to the ground, they started to acquire shapes of their own: bodies formed around them. Hundreds of bodies, thousands of bodies, tens of thousands of them, all shining each like its own small sun.
Rhiow stared in wonder. They were the People of the ancient days: the hundreds of thousands of cats of the Egyptians, who had mummified them and laid them to rest. Their souls had been in the Tree, or about the One’s business, for all these thousands of years: their bodies had lain in the sand for a long long time. Now they were in the gardens of Essex and Sussex, they were under the lawns of the Home Counties, they were in flowerpots outside old townhouses and scattered among the roots of the trees in Green Park: they were all over the City of London, and all around it, for miles and miles in every direction. It did not matter that the mummies of the cats of Egypt had been ground to powder along with the bandages and the amulets which held each its fragment of the protective spell. They had been in contact with them too long, in their long rest in Egypt, not to have become indelibly contaminated by the wizardry. The Great Cemetery of the city of Bubastis was now in England. And its inhabitants remembered the ehhif they loved, who had fed them fish and milk, and stroked them, and loved them in return. They would not let these ehhif perish simply because they were not the same ones.
The Lone Power struggled in Her cage, while around Her, for what seemed great distances, stars fell thick from the sky, and became People, all burning with glory. The fire of the Sun persisted in their eyes, which they turned on the Lone One where she roared and crashed about in the cage. Softly, a huge and concerted yowl began to go up from the hundreds and thousands assembled. It built until Rhiow had to crouch down again from the sheer weight and rage of the sound ...
... and the People of the ancient world leapt in fury into the cage with sa’Rrahh, filling it until the Lone One could no longer be seen: and the cat fight to end all cat fights broke out under the streets of London. The noise soon became like the crash of ocean or of thunder, impossible to hear as anything but a vibration, something that got into the bones and shook the listener into submission. Rhiow lay flat, prostrate with anger, but also with wonder. And the yowl, the roar, the noise, went on and on ...
She could not really tell when it stopped. What Rhiow did notice, though, was the gradual lightening of the scene. Slowly the People of the ancient days were streaming out of the icosahedron, now: they pooled around it for a while, and then slowly began to fade, like a promising dawn fading into a gray and cloudy morning. The physical surroundings began to come back, and Rhiow pushed herself to her feet. The hexaract, finally, was empty. The last few sparks of divine fire in the eyes of the ancient People faded away, taking them with them. And in the middle of it all, on what was left of the platform, stood Ith, his foreclaws neatly folded together, and looking thoughtful as usual.
Rhiow staggered over toward him: but someone else was ahead of her. “What took you so long?” Arhu was saying to Ith, rather loudly: he was as deaf as Rhiow at the moment. He clouted the saurian one in the head, a gesture of affectionate annoyance. “I thought you were never going to get here.”
“At least you were able to See, on however short notice, what was coming,” Ith said calmly. “I did not want to arrive with the spell half-set. Our Enemy would have denatured it in a second if it had not arrived already running. Also, I would have found it hard to do so until the Lone One was distracted. And moving such a spell from one place to another while it is active is no small matter.” He looked around at where the sea of radiant eyes had surrounded them. “But I must say the effect was most impressive ... “
Rhiow breathed out in immense relief. Her ears were ringing so badly that she could hardly hear: she and her team would be near-deaf for a day or so, she thought. But we got away easy, Rhiow thought sadly, looking down at Huff’s body.
“Look at this mess!” Fhrio said, or shouted, as he came along to join her, slowly, with Urruah behind him. “What in the world are the ehhif going to make of this?” For a huge scoop of tunnel and brick and earth had simply been blasted out of the whole area.
“They’ll probably think it’s some kind of terrorist bomb or something,” Rhiow said, looking around her at the destruction, the torn-up track and tangled jutting rods of reinforcement metal sticking out of the concrete. She sighed wearily and looked down at Huff again. “And what will we do with him?”
“I can bring him somewhere where that body may lie easy,” Ith said. “Auhlae ... “ He looked around. “There is no trace. She will have surrended herself willingly ... “
“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Though by the Queen’s mercy, who knows where her soul may be? She and Huff might yet be together sometime, somewhere ... And he saved us.” She looked one more time, sadly, at his body, as Ith picked it up.
“And that worked, too,” Urruah said, looking at the icosahedron. “Nice job.”
“The time was right. The place was right. The rest of it—“ Ith shrugged. “A spell always works ... “
“Come on,” Rhiow said. “Fhrio, let’s check your gates ... and then go home.”
It was some hours before that happened. The London team was going to need restructuring: Fhrio agreed readily enough, as its de facto team leader, that Rhiow and her team would come in occasionally to assist until new placements were arranged by the Powers. “I think it would have to be that way anyway,” he said, glancing over at Arhu and Siffha’h. “I don’t think they’re going to be apart much for a while ... “
“No, I think they’ve got some exploring of roles to do,” Rhiow said. “Meanwhile, we’ll have your ‘bad’ gate up and running again within a couple of days. But before we go ... there’s one more thing we have to do.”
Fhrio actually put his whiskers forward at Rhiow. “With pleasure,” he said, and went off to bring up the timeslide again so that they could take care of it.
Urruah was standing talking to Ith. Rhiow wandered over to him, and as she came he turned to her and said, “ ‘Artie’ ... Don’t ehhif usually have more than one name?”
“Some places,” Rhiow said.
“So what was his? Did we ever find out?”
“Doyle,” Arhu said. “Actually he had two last names ... unusual. Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“A very nice boy,” Urruah said. “I wonder what he’ll make of himself in the world.”
“Hard to say,” Rhiow said, “but he certainly likes dinosaurs ... “
“Rhiow?” said Fhrio. “Ready.”
Patel was standing on the District Line Tube platform, looking around him with astonishment. His trainers were covered with mud ... but there was no mud anywhere in sight: nothing but the platform in front of him, and a light bulb high in the ceiling.
He clearly heard a voice say, from somewhere down low, “Sir? You’ve dropped your book ... “
He looked for the voice ... but saw no one. Only his copy of Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia sat in its plastic bag on the floor nearby.
“Uh,” Patel said. “Uh, thanks ... “ He picked it up, staring again at his trainers: spent a fruitless moment or so trying to scrape the stinking mud off them: and then went on down the Tube platform.
Behind him, whiskers went forward: and Rhiow went back to fetch her team, with its new part-time member, and go home.
AFTERWORD
In the preceeding narrative, only one liberty has been taken with “genuine” history—the history of our own present timeline, at least. There is no evidence that E. A. Wallis Budge was yet working at the British Museum at the age of nineteen (which he was in 1874): but it’s at least possible—he had finished university and was resident in London at the time, where he was a constant visitor to the museum, working closely with the Oriental Studies department, and Disraeli was his patron. Otherwise, all dates, locations and actions attributed to nonfictional persons are genuine. A.C. Doyle, in particular, was in London in 1874 at the age of fifteen, visiting his uncle, the famous children’s book artist.
The appearance of a gray tabby in Parliament on 9 July 1874 is not mentioned in Hansard, the official Parliamentary publication, but is covered in some detail in The Times of London for the next day. Chris Pond at the Public Information Office of the Palace of Westminster says, “In the nineteenth century there were eleven private residences in the building, and I imagine the residents of some of these may have kept a cat, if for no reason other than to control mice numbers.” However, there is no clear explanation of how a cat would have got all the way down from the residences into the Commons chamber, unobserved ... unless it was not quite an ordinary cat.