Urruah began muttering something vague about the artistic temperament. Rhiow immediately perceived that this was something Urruah had noticed, and it bothered him, too. “Well, look,” she said. “Maybe he’ll get himself straightened out. Meanwhile, we’re almost at the Met. They’ll be on the steps, if I know Saash. Anything you need to tell me about today’s work before we meet up with them?”
He stopped, looked at her. “Rhi…”
She let him find his words.
“How do you cope?” he said finally. “My memory’s not clouded about last time. We almost died, all three of us. Now we’re going to have to go down there again—and it may even be the same place this time. Am I wrong?”
“No,” Rhiow said, “I don’t think so. It could well be the same spot: the gate we’re servicing this time has its roots in the same catenary.”
“It could be an ambush,” he said. “Another sabotage, better planned than the last. Certainly the problem’s more serious. If someone caused it on purpose, they’d know a service team would have to be down there very quickly. Not like the last tune, where there was enough slack in the schedule that we might have come down any time during the space of a week or two. Half the lizards in Downside could be waiting there for us.”
“It’s a thought I’ve considered,” Rhiow said. “Though the Whisperer didn’t seem to indicate it was going to be quite that dangerous. She usually gives you a hint…”
“… If she knows,” Urruah said.
There was that too. Even the gods were sometimes caught by surprise… “Ruah,” Rhiow said, “I’m as well prepared as I can be. So are you. Saash will be, as well.”
“That leaves only Arhu,” Urruah muttered. “And what he might do, I’ll bet the gods don’t know, either. Irh’s balls, but I wish we could dump him somewhere.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Rhiow said. “He may save your skin yet.”
Urruah laughed. They looked at each other for a moment more, then made their way around to the steps of the Met.
Saash and Arhu were waiting for them in the sunshine, or rather, Saash was sitting scratching herself and putting her fur in order, alternately, and Arhu was tearing back and forth across the steps, sidled, trying to trip the ehhif going up and down. Fortunately, he was falling down the steps as often as running successfully along them, so the ehhif, by and large, weren’t doing more than stumble occasionally. As they walked over to Saash, and Rhiow breathed breaths with her and wished her hunt’s luck, Urruah looked over at Arhu, who, seeing Rhiow, was now running toward them. “You sure you want to stop with just the Met?” Urruah said, loudly enough to be heard. “I’d take him across the park, afterward. Natural History. Some skeletons there he ought to see—”
“No,” Rhiow said, a touch angrily. “He’s going to have to make up his own mind about what we see. Don’t prejudice his opinions … and whatever it is he’s going to be good for, don’t make him less effective at it.”
Urruah grumbled, but said nothing further. Arhu looked from Urruah to Rhiow, a little puzzled, and said, “What are we supposed to do?”
“Courtesy first,” Rhiow said. “Hunt’s luck to you, Arhu.”
“I had some,” he said, very proud. “I caught a mouse.”
Rhiow looked at Saash: Saash flicked an ear in agreement. “It got into the garage this morning,” she said. “Out of someone’s car: I think it had been eating some fast food crumbs or something. He did it right in front of Zhorzh, too. Very clever.” She threw him a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed, and Rhiow put her whiskers forward in slight amusement.
“Well, good for you,” Rhiow said. “Nicely done. Let’s go in, then, and see the gods. We have a busy day ahead of us, and we want to be out of here before lunchtime.” So that you won’t be tempted to start stealing sandwiches out of ehhif hands…
Sidled, they slipped in through a door that some poor tom-ehhif found himself holding open for about seven ehhif-queens, one after another. Ehhif were gathering at the turnstiles where people made contributions to the museum; Rhiow and her team went around them to one side and went on up the white marble steps to the next floor. Rhiow led them sharply to the right, then right again along the colonnade next to the stairs, then left to pass through the Great Hall, and toward the wide doorway over which a sign said, in ehhif English, egyptian art.
The right was dimmer, cooler, here. The walls were done in a shade of deep blue-gray; through the skylights above, the sun fell pale, as if coming through a great depth of time. Against the walls, and on pedestals and in glass cases in the middle of the great room, were ancient sculptures and tombs and other things, great and small, belonging to ehhif who had lived in a very different time.
Arhu lagged a little behind the others, looking in (for once) undisguised astonishment at the huge solemn figures, which gazed out cool-eyed at the ehhif strolling among them. Rhiow paused a moment to look back at Arhu, then turned to join him as he looked at the nearest of the sculptures, a massive sarcophagus in polished black basalt, standing on end against a wall. Nearly three feet wide, not counting the carven wig surrounding it, the serene, lordly ehhif face gazed at, or past, or through them, with the imperturbability of massive age.
“It’s big,” Arhu said, almost in a whisper.
Rhiow wondered if what he was really thinking about was size. “And old,” she said, “and strange. These ehhif used to keep their dead in containers like this; it was to keep their bodies safe.”
“Safe how?”
“I know,” Rhiow said, “after a body dies, the further processes of death tend not to have any trouble finding it. But these ehhif did their best to give it difficulty. I’m afraid it was from something we told them, or rather our ancestors did. About our lives—”
They walked along a little. “You get nine,” Arhu said, looking around at the everyday things in the glass cases: a glass cup here, rainbowed with age and exposure; a shoe there, the linen upper and leather sole still intact; a little farther on, a crockery pot shaped like a chicken, intended to magically produce more chicken in the afterlife.
“We do,” Rhiow said, “but it seems that ehhif don’t. Or if they do, there’s no way to tell because they don’t remember anything from the last life, as we do—none of the useful memories or the highlights, the People you knew or loved … anyway, ehhif don’t think they come back. But when People back then told them how we did, and told them about the Living Ones, the ehhif got confused, and they thought we meant that they were going to do something similar.…”
They caught up with Saash and Urruah, who were standing in front of a massive granite sphinx. “What’s a ‘Living One’?” Arhu said. “Is that another kind of god?”
Rhiow smiled slightly. Should an uninstructed young wizard see such a being going about its business, he could be forgiven for mistaking it for a god. “Not quite so elevated,” Urruah said. “But close.”
“After your ninth life,” Saash said, “well, no one’s really sure what happens… but there’s a story. That, if in nine lives you’ve done more good than evil, then you get a tenth.”