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 leaped in fury into the cage with sa'Rráhh, 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. The People of the ancient days were streaming out of the icosaract, 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 icosaract, 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. As Ith lowered his head toward him, Arhu clouted the saurian a good one more or less over the ear, 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 is 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 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 surrendered 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 icosaract. "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 in the entry to the District Line platform, looking around him with astonishment. His trainers were covered with mud, but there was no mud anywhere in sight: nothing but the platform directly in front of him, and a lightbulb 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 ahead to the platform.
Behind him, whiskers went forward: and Rhiow went back to fetch her team, with its new part-time member, and go home.
Epilogue
In the preceding narrative, only one liberty has been taken with "genuine" history— the history of our own present timeline, at least. There is no concrete evidence that E. A. Wallis Budge was yet working officially at the British Museum at the age of nineteen (which was his age in 1874): but he was often there "behind the scenes." Budge had finished university and was then permanently resident in London, where for several years previously he had been working intensively with museum officials, to whom Budge had been introduced by Disraeli because of an early demonstrated genius for translation. This early foundation-work would lead quickly to Budge's seminal translation of the Theban recension of The Book of the Dead, and to a long career at the museum. There he served as curator of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities between 1894 and 1924, meanwhile collecting vast numbers of cuneiform tablets, Egyptian papyri, and Greek, Coptic, Arabic Syriac, and Ethiopic manuscripts, while always remaining at the cutting edge of any effort to decipher newly discovered ancient languages.
Otherwise, all dates, locations, and actions attributed to nonfictional persons are genuine. Arthur Conan Doyle, in particular, was in London for some time in 1874, visiting his uncle, the famous artist Richard Doyle (the man responsible for the creation of "Mr. Punch," as well as for thousands of Punch cartoons, and for illustrations in hundreds of children's books of the period). Doyle was a fairly lively diarist in his youth, but there are periods during this visit about which his diary falls unusually silent. However, acquaintances at the Jesuit school in Austria that he attended after this time mention that he suddenly began to read history voraciously, and also discovered (and fell in love with) the fantastic writings of Edgar Allan Poe.
Finally, the appearance of a gray tabby in Parliament on July 9, 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." Ho
wever, there is no clear explanation of how a cat would have gotten all the way down from the residences into the Commons chamber, unobserved— unless it was not quite an ordinary cat.
A Very Partial Ailurin Glossary
A
aahfaui (n) the "presence" quality in hauissh
Aaurh (pr n) another of the feline pantheon: the "Michael" power, the Warrior; female
aavhy (adj) used; also a proper name when upper case
ahou'ffriw (n) the Canine Word: key, or "activating," word for spells intended for use on dogs and other canids
Auhw-t (n) "the Hearth": the Ailurin/wizardly term for what humans refer to as "Timeheart"—the most senior/central reality, of which all others are mirrors or variations
Auo (pr n) I
auuh (n) stray (pejorative)
auw (n) energy (as a generic term): appears in many compounds having to do with wizardry and cats' affinity for fire, warmth, and energy flows
auwsshui'f (n) the "lower electromagnetic spectrum," involving quantum particles, faster-than-light particles and wavicles, subatomics, fission, fusion, and "submatter" relationships such as string and hyperstring function
D
D does not appear by itself as a consonant in Ailurin, only as a diphthong, dh
E
efviauw (n) the electromagnetic spectrum as perceived by cats
ehhif (n) human being, (adj) human
eiuev (n) veldt: a large open space. As a proper noun, Eiuev, "the Veldt," means the Sheep Meadow in Central Park
eius'hss (n) the "control" quality in hauissh
F
ffrihh (n) refrigerator (cat slang: approximation)
fouarhweh (n) a position in hauissh, described as "classic" by commentators
fvais a medium-high voice among cats; equates with "tenor"
fwau (ex) heck, hell, crap
H
Hauhai (n) the Speech
hauissh (n) the Game
he'ihh (n) composure-grooming
hhau'fih (n) group relationships in general
hhouehhu (v) desire/want
Hhu'au (pr n) the Lion-"God" of Today; nickname for ehhif "Patience," one of the carved stone lions outside the New York Public Library main branch
hihhhh (excl) damn, bloody (stronger than vhai)
hiouh (n) excreta (including both urine and feces)
hlah'feihre (adj) tortoiseshell (fur)
houff (s n) dog
houiff (pl n) dogs
Hrau'f (pr n) daughter of Iau, the member of the feline pantheon most concerned wih creation and ordering it; known as "the Silent"
hruiss (n) fight, in compounds with words for "tom-fight," etc.
hu (n) day
hu-rhiw (id) "day-and-night"; idiom for a black-and-white cat
hwaa (n) drink
hwiofviauw (n) the "upper electromagnetic," meaning plasma functions, gravitic force, etc.; "upward"
I
iAh'hah (n) New York: possibly an approximation of the English name
Iau (pr n) the One; the most senior member of the feline pantheon; female
Irh (pr n) one of the feline pantheon; male (Urruah refers to his balls)
O
o'hra (n) opera (approximation)
R
ra'hio "radio"; a feline neologism
Reh-t (n abstract) the future; also, the name for the Lion-Power guarding it, the Invisible One of the Three guarding the steps to the New York Public Library main branch
rhiw (n) night. Many compounds are derived from this favorite word, including the name Rhiow (the actual orthography would be rhiw'aow, "nightdark," but the spelling has been simplified for the purposes of this narrative)
rioh (n) horse (but in the countryside, also ox, or any other animal that works for humans by carrying or pulling things; "beast of burden"). A cat with a sense of humor might use this word as readily for a taxicab, shopping cart, or wheelbarrow
rrai'fih (n) pride relationship implying possible blood ties
ruah (adj) flat
S
sa'Rráhh (pr n) the ambivalent feline Power; analogous (roughly) to the Lone Power
Sef (pr n) the Lion-"God" of Yesterday; nickname for "Fortitude," one of the lions outside the New York Public Library main branch
sh'heih (n) "queen," unspayed female
siss (n) urine; a "baby word" similar to ehhif English "pee pee," and other similar formations
sshai-sau (adj) crazy
sswiass a pejorative: sonofabitch, bastard, brat, etc.
sth'heih (n) "tom," unneutered male
U
uae (n) milk
ur (n) nose
Urrua (pr n) the Great Tom, son and lover of Iau the Queen (from the older word urra, "scarred")
urruah (id) "flat nose" (compound: from ur'ruah)
V
vefessh (n) water; also (adj) the term cats use to indicate the fur color humans call "blue"
vhai (adj) damn, bloody
Diane Duane, To Visit the Queen
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends