Arhu took a few steps toward the biggest of the mounted skeletons … cocked his head to one side, and listened. After a moment, he said, “And those are real bones?”
“They dig them up and wire them together,” Rhiow said. “It always struck me as a little perverse. But then, they have no way of seeing what we saw last night.”
They walked on. “This place looked a lot different, the other night,” Arhu said.
“If it’s any help, it never looks the same way twice to me,” Rhiow said. “I mean, the physical structures are always the same, obviously—well, not always, not with all this renovation and with exhibitions coming and going out in front But night and day pass, the light changes, the ehhif here are never the same ones at any given moment… Though the city still isn’t as big as you might think: you’ll glimpse the occasional familiar face…”
“That’s not what I meant,” Arhu said, more slowly, with a puzzled expression. “It was bigger, somehow. It echoed.”
“It does that more at night than in the daytime,” Rhiow said. “Emptier.”
“No,” Arhu said. “It was full; I saw it full. Or I think I do now.” He stopped and stared at the concourse before him: a late lunchtime crowd, the crush easing somewhat. “I heard something … a lot of noise. I walked in to find out what it was. Then—” He shook his ears as if they hurt him. “I don’t want to think about that,” he said.
“You’re going to have to, sooner or later. But come on,” Rhiow said. “Pastrami first.”
Rhiow came unsidled long enough to do her “trick” again for the man in the Italian deli, and he gave her not only pastrami but cheese as well. She shared the pastrami happily enough with Arhu but never got a chance to do so with the cheese: as soon as he smelled it, he immediately snatched the whole thing and gobbled it, almost choking himself—a topologically interesting sight, like watching a shark eat a mattress. “Oh, this is wonderful,” Arhu attempted to say around the mouthful, “what is this?”
“Solid milk,” Rhiow said, just a little wistfully, watching it vanish. “They have a lot of kinds. This one’s called ‘mozzarella.’ ”
“What a terrific invention!”
“So ehhif are good for something after all?”
He glanced sidewise at her, and his face shut down again. “Not much besides this.”
Rhiow held her peace until he finished the cheese. “Come on, get sidled,” she said, “and we’ll come back and see him again later: he’s a soft-hearted type.”
They strolled a little way out into the concourse, sat down by the east wall, out of the way of people’s feet, and well to one side of the cash machines. Arhu craned his neck back in the bright noon light and looked up at the ceiling again. “It is backward.”
“Yes … and you saw that before. Seeing is going to be a problem for you now … and a gift.”
“If it’s a gift, they can take it back,” he said bitterly. “I can’t stop seeing things now. Though you were right about the chewing.”
“What kinds of things?”
“I don’t know what most of them are,” Arhu said. “It’s like when the Whisperer… when she tells you stuff… but there’s always more than just what she tells you. I see pictures of things behind things behind things, and it all keeps changing. I don’t know where to put my feet.”
“Images of alternate futures,” Rhiow said, wondering if she now was beginning to understand Arhu’s clumsiness. Arhu looked at her strangely.
“Anything can change a future,” Rhiow said. “Say one thing, do one thing, and it goes one way. Do something else, and it goes another. What would have happened if the Whisperer had offered you the Oath, and you’d said no? What if you’d slipped off the brickwork, the other night? What if the police-ehhif had come and caught you trying to steal the pastrami, and they had taken you away to an animal shelter? Each of your futures would have been different. And there are thousands more.”
“But which of them is real?” Arhu muttered.
Rhiow swished her tail slowly from side to side. “All of them… until you make the choice, perform the act. You’re only seeing possibilities.”
“But it’s not just things behind things,” Arhu said. “There are other images, things that stay.”
“The past,” Rhiow said softly. “That at least holds still. . . some ways, anyway. Are you seeing your past lives?”
“No,” Arhu said, and then added, very surprised, “I think this is my first one.”
“We all have to start somewhere,” Rhiow said.
“How many have you had?”
She gave him a look. “That’s a question you don’t usually ask. If the Person you’re talking to volunteers the information—”
He scowled, turned away. “That’s what Saash said when I asked her what her Ordeal was like.”
“And she was right to say so,” Rhiow said. “That’s personal business, too, as personal among wizards as the issue of lives is among People. Go around asking People questions like that and you’re going to get your ears boxed.”
Arhu looked scornful. “You guys are sure sensitive. Won’t talk about this. Can’t do that, somebody’s feelings might get hurt. How do you ever get anything done?”
“If there were more People in the world concerned about being sensitive,” Rhiow said, rather shortly, “we’d have a lot less work to do… Look, Arhu, you’ve had a bad time of it so far, I’d say. But we’re trying to teach you the rules so that you’ll have a better tune later. All I can do is warn you how People are going to take the things you say. If you still say them…” She shrugged her tail.
They were quiet for a moment. “As to lives,” Rhiow said then, “I don’t think all that much about my last ones. Most of us don’t, I suspect, after the first few, when the novelty of the change wears off. The really persistent memories—big mistakes, great sorrows or joys—they intrude sometimes. I don’t go digging. What you stumble across, from day to day, you’re usually meant to find for some reason. But caching memories is as sick as caching food, for one of our People. Better to live now, and use the memories, when they come to mind, as a way to keep from making the same mistakes all over again. Use the past as a guide, not a fence.”
“The past…” He looked out into the golden light of the concourse, toward the sunlight spilling through the south windows. “I don’t remember much of mine.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do,” Arhu said, somewhat painfully. “You don’t trust me.”
There was no answer to that, not right now: and no question but that he was seeing at least some things with surprising clarity. “Arhu,” Rhiow said, “it’s just that if your gift is seeing … and it looks that way … you have to try to manage it, use it… and especially, you have to try to accept what there is to see about yourself, when it comes up for viewing. You are the eye through which you see. If the eye is clouded, all the other visions will be, too … and at this dangerous time in your life, if you don’t do your best to see clearly, you won’t survive.”
He would not look at her.
He sees something, Rhiow thought. Something in his own future, I bet. And he thinks that if he doesn’t talk about it, it won’t happen…
“For the time being, you just do the best you can,” Rhiow said at last. “Though I admit I’d be happier if I knew you were coming to some kind of terms with your Oath.”
“I said the words,” Arhu said after a little while.
“Yes. But will you hold by them?”