“Completely the wrong lifestyle for you guys,” Har’lh said, and glanced down. “I wish my kind wouldn’t keep trying that crap. —Hey, Urruah, how they shakin’?”
“In all directions, as usual,” Urruah said, and jumped up on the railing next to Rhiow. “ ’Luck, you two.” He leaned over toward Arhu, breathed breaths with him. “Is that mozzarella I taste? Rhi, you spoil this kit.”
Arhu looked at Urruah, and said, “Half a quarter pounder with cheese and bacon. You ate the lettuce?” He grimaced. “What a big bunny!”
“Oh yeah? So how do you know what lettuce tastes like?”
“I’m going Downside,” Har’lh said, “before something gets out of hand here. Give Saash my best, Rhiow. I’ll talk to her as soon as I get topside again.”
“ ’Luck,” Rhiow said, and Har’lh strode away toward the stairway, swinging his briefcase idly.
Urruah was looking at Arhu a little oddly. “Haifa quarter pounder?” he said. “How do you know?”
“I see you eating it,” Arhu said.
“Saw,” Urruah said pointedly.
“No. I see you eating it now,” Arhu said. He was looking at the blank marble wall as if there was far more there to see. “The MhHonalh’s down in the subway, at Madison and Fifty-first. A tom-ehhif and a queen-ehhif are eating outside it, and talking. Then talking louder. Real loud. All of a sudden they start fighting—” Arhu’s look was blank but bewildered. “He hits her, and tries to hit her again but she ducks back, and then he comes at her again, now he’s feeling around in his jacket for something, but all of a sudden he trips over something he can’t see and falls down, and he’s getting up and feels in his jacket again—and then the transit cops come around the corner: he gets up and runs away, and the queen is standing there—’crying’—”
Urruah’s eyes were very round as he looked over at Rhiow. “It really is the Eye, isn’t it?” Urruah said softly.
“The ehhif’s dropped his quarter pounder on the floor there,” Arhu said, as if he hadn’t heard. “I see you pick it up and take it away behind the garbage can. No one else sees, they’re all looking at the ehhif-queen and the cops—”
Rhiow looked at Urruah, her tail twitching thoughtfully. “That was a nice move,” she said.
“I might have done it only for the burger,” Urruah said, looking elsewhere.
Rhiow put her whiskers right forward at the phrasing, for the one thing wizards dare not do with words is lie. “Of course it’s the Eye,” she said. “The symbol for it was in the spell. We worked the spell… and spells always work. I think he may have had this talent in latent form, before … but the presence of the symbol in the spell reaffirmed it, and now it’s really starting to focus.”
Arhu was looking at Rhiow again. “I see you now,” he ( said, a little desperately. “But I see that, too. And other things. A lot of them at once…”
“It’s the ‘eternal present,’ ” Rhiow said. “I heard about it once from Ffairh: if you ever get stuck in a gate, in an artificially prolonged transit, you can start seeing things that way. Not a good sign, normally…”
“But I’m not normal,” Arhu said, suddenly sounding very weary.
“No,” Rhiow said wearily. “And neither are we. We are all weirdoes together… but the ‘together’ is the important part.”
She sighed then. “ ’Look, I could use a small dose of normalcy myself. Let’s all go back to my neighborhood; they’re starting the day’s bout of hauissh, and we can sit and just kibitz for a while. You two skywalk over: Arhu can use the practice. No birds,” she said to Arhu, at the sight of that gleam starting to creep back into his eye. “I have a little something to take care of here; I’ll meet you there in half an hour or so. Yarn’s stoop, maybe?”
“Sounds like a plan. Come on, youngster, let’s you and the Big Bunny show them how we do it uptown.”
And Urruah turned and strolled straight out onto the air over the main concourse, forty feet up, heading for the front doors.
Eyes wide, suddenly delighted, Arhu scampered out across the air after him. Rhiow stood there, absolutely transfixed with horror lest they be seen. But no one looked up. No one in the city ever looks up.
She watched them go, unnoticed; then let out a long breath at the lunacy of toms and headed back toward the Italian deli.
When Rhiow got home, she found that her ehhif had been out as well, to dinner and a movie, and apparently had been back only a little while: Iaehh was going through the freezer, apparently hunting a frozen pizza. Rhiow walked over into the little kitchen and found her food bowl empty. She looked meaningfully at Iaehh, and said loudly, “I wouldn’t keep you waiting for your dinner.”
Iaehh shut the ffrihh and started going through the cupboards. “Sue?”
No answer. “Sue?”
“Oh, sorry, honey…” came the voice from the bedroom. “My mind was elsewhere.”
“I was looking for that tuna stuff.”
“Oh, there isn’t any … the store was out of it”
“Thank you, Queen of us all,” Rhiow said, heartfelt, and put her face down in the bowl. It was a nice hearty mixture, beef and something else: rabbit? Turkey? Who cares? Delightful.
“I’ll pick up some of it tomorrow.”
“I’ll enjoy this while it lasts,” Rhiow muttered.
“She seems to like this all right, though.”
“Good…” Hhuha said, as she came back into the living room.
“You sound tired.”
“I am tired. Another day of fighting with the damn system, and the damn network, and the damn air conditioner…”
He came over to her and held her. “I wish you could find a way to get out of there.”
Hhuha sighed. “Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about that, too. It’s making you as unhappy as it’s making me.”
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly.”
“I would. So, listen… I’ve got an appointment in a couple of days.”
“Oh? Who with?”
“A headhunter.”
“You didn’t tell me about this!”
“I’m telling you now. The guy’s been on the phone to me a couple of times over the last year. At first I didn’t want to do anything; you know, I thought things at the office might improve.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, I did. But the other day I thought, ‘Okay.’ ” She snickered. “You should have seen me sneaking out to a pay phone at lunchtime, like some kind of crook.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be great for you if they heard you talking about it in the early stages of the negotiations, I admit.”
“In any stages. Someone else in the company was that dumb, last year. They were pink-slipped within minutes of the word getting out. I don’t plan to have that happen, believe me.”
“So who’s he headhunting for?”
“A couple of different companies, apparently. He’s willing to arrange interviews with both if my resume holds up. We’ll be talking about that day after next. Lunchtime appointment.”
“Hey, wow. Good luck!”
A brief silence while they nuzzled each other. “It’s a little scary,” Hhuha said after a little while. “Jumping before I’m pushed…”