“Well, that’s certainly a different sort of problem,” Hhuhm’hri said. “At first I’d thought perhaps you were one of the People who’s just been added to the standing committee on rat control.”
Rhiow restrained herself from laughing. “No, the problem’s a little different from that …”
“Certainly a little more interesting. I must say I wouldn’t want our timeline to be wiped out, either, so I’m at your disposal. Though I must admit that the temptation to alter just one piece here or there, with an eye to improving things, must be very strong …”
“By and large it doesn’t work,” Rhiow said. “There are conservation laws for history as well as for energy. Remove one pivotal event without due consideration, and another is likely to slip in to take its place—often one that’s worse than the one you were trying to prevent.”
“Conservation of history …” Hhuhm’hri mused for a moment. “That’s the only odd thing about this, to me: if such a principle exists, why isn’t it protecting you in this case?”
“Because of the nature of the Power which has intervened to cause the change,” Rhiow said. “Mostly time heals itself over without a scar if the change is small, or made by a mortal. But when the Powers that Be become directly involved … and in this case, one of the oldest and greatest of them—the fabric of time is entirely too amenable to Their will. It’s unavoidable: They built time, after all …”
Hhuhm’hri blinked. “Yes,” he said. And then he added, “You’ll forgive me a second’s skepticism, I hope. One doesn’t often expect to run into one of Them, or Their direct deeds, in the normal course of the business day.”
“Of course,” Rhiow said, at the same time thinking that, from the wizard’s point of view, that was all anyone ever ran into: but this was not the moment for abstract philosophy.
“Sa’Rrahh, eh,” Hhuhm’hri said after a moment. “So the bad-tempered old queen’s at it again. Well, I’ll help you any way I can: we’ll play the Old Tom to her Great Serpent, and put a knife or two into her coils before we’re done. I may not be walking the corridors of power any more, but all my contacts are still live … in fact, I have rather more of them since I came out to the green leafy confines of suburbia.”
Rhiow cocked her head. “I’d heard something about your retirement,” she said, “from the Knowledge: but even the ehhif in New York noticed it. A lot of talk about you being thrown out of Downing Street—and then maybe murdered—”
Hhuhm’hri put his whiskers right forward and sprawled out, blinking at Rhiow like a politician after a three-mouse lunch followed by unlimited cream: and he smiled like someone who could say a lot more on the subject than he was willing to. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “At least, as far as political scandals go …”
Though a lot of ehhif had thought it was. The new Prime Minister’s wife, a suspected ailurophobe, had dropped a few remarks on moving into Number Ten which indicated that she thought cats were, of all things, “unsanitary”. The remarks had provoked so massive an outbreak of ehhif public concern for “Humphrey” that an official statement from the government had been required to put matters right—making it plain that Humphrey’s normal “beat” was the Cabinet Office and Number Eleven, and his position was not threatened. Shortly after that had come the photo opportunity. Rhiow had been looking over Iaehh’s shoulder at the television one night and had chanced to catch some of those images: the lady in question looking conciliatory, but also rather as if she very much wished she was elsewhere, or holding something besides a cat: while “Humphrey” gazed out at the cameras, as big-eyed in the storm of strobe-flashes as a kitten seeing a ball of yarn for the first time. “Glad it wasn’t me,” Rhiow said. “I wouldn’t have known what to do in a situation like that.”
“You hold still and pray you won’t walk into anything when she finally puts you down,” Hhuhm’hri said, amused. “Sweet Queen above us, ten minutes straight of flash photography … ! I was half-blind at the end of it. But other than that, I did what I had to. I shed on her.” He put his whiskers forward in a good-natured way. “What else could I do? What kind of PR advice was she getting, to take a photo call with a black and white cat in a black suit? Did they expect me to stop shedding in one color? She should have worn a print, or tweed … Well, she was only new to the job. She’s learned better since. While I stayed there, I steered clear of the children, by and large, which is mostly what she was worried about. No point in tormenting the poor woman. Then my kidneys began to kick up, and I thought, why should I hang about and distract these poor ehhif? They’ve got enough problems, and my replacement’s trained. So I took early retirement—and there was a press scandal about that too, unavoidable I suppose—but I was happy enough to let “Harold” move in at Number Ten, and go off to get the kidneys sorted out and settle into domestic life. I still have more than enough to do.”
“Not just the rats, in other words.”
“Oh, dear me, no. As I said, now that I’m quartered out here, People who might otherwise attract notice if they came to see me in Downing Street don’t feel shy about it any more. No more cameramen hanging about all hours of the day and night …” He yawned. “Sorry, I was up late this morning. Tell me what kind of help you need from me, specifically.”
“Advice on personalities,” Rhiow said. “I need to know what People can best help us in that time, in the eighteen seventies … ideally, in the target year itself, where their intervention will do most good. We think it’s eighteen seventy-five. The possible error, my colleague thinks, is a couple of years on either side.”
“Eighteen seventy-five,” Hhuhm’hri said. “Or between eighteen seventy-three and eighteen seventy-six. Not a quiet time …”
He mostly-closed his eyes, thinking, and for a few minutes he lay there in the warm dappled shade and said nothing. Rhiow waited, while above a growing chorus of small birds scolded at them, and her mouth began to water slightly at the thought of foreign food, whether she could talk to it or not.
“Well,” Hhuhm’hri said suddenly, as Rhiow was beginning to concentrate on one small bird in particular, a greenish-yellow creature with banded dark wings and a bright blue cap which was hanging temptingly close on a branch of a dwarf willow. There are certainly a fair number of resources: though the Old Cats’ Network was really only getting started, then. One in particular should be of best use to you, though. ‘Wilberforce’ told me about something that had come down to him from ‘George’, or maybe it was ‘Tiddles’, the one who owned Nelson … something concerning the British Museum’s cat at that point. ‘Black Jack’, the ehhif called him. An outstanding character: he worked at the Museum for something like twenty years, and what he didn’t know about the place, or about things going on in the Capital in general, wasn’t worth knowing. He passed everything he knew down to his replacement, ‘young Jack’—and it’s through that youngster that a lot of information about that time comes down to us. Either one of them would be the one you’d want to talk to: but I can give you a fair amount of the information which has come down from them, so that you’ll start to get a sense of what questions you need to ask. How much background do you need?”
“All you can give me.”
“Is your memory that good?” Hhuhm’hri said, looking thoughtful.
“It can be when it has to be,” Rhiow said. “I can emplace everything you say to me in the Whispering, as I hear it. I won’t be much good for conversation while you’re at it, but it’ll be accessible to me and the rest of my team afterwards, and any other wizards who need the information.”