“Oh, I heard Her, it’s just—”
“It isn’t ‘just’. If you’re feeling obstructive, take it up with Herself … but you’ve got to resolve whatever conflicts you have about this work before you do anything further.”
Fhrio turned away and began to wash. So did Arhu, with great intensity and at speed.
Rhiow breathed out in relief.“Somewhat unorthodox technique”,she thought then, slightly amused.Well, Arhu’s off the sharp end of the claw for the moment. But what if “unorthodox” means me and Urruah too … ?
Huff got up and walked to the edge of the circle, looking at the sleepingehhifhalf-sitting there.“He’sa long way from home,” he said.
“I’d say he’s from the middle of the century before last, asehhifcount time,” said Urruah. “The location is nearly congruent with this one, at least: but the exact time is proving elusive. It’s somewhere within the spread of the previous micro-openings, though. No guarantee of whether it coincides with any of them.”
“He spoke of bombings,” Auhlae said, going over to stand by her mate.
“He was talking about the Queen, too,” Arhu said, looking up from his own composure-washing and sounding a little bemused. “I wouldn’t have thoughtehhifknew about Iau—”
“With him wearing those clothes, I would say he probably meant theehhifQueen who was ruling then,” Huff said. “A different usage of the same word we use for Her, and for shes. Hffich’horia, this Queen’s name was. A lot of theehhifon this island count themselves as of the same pride, though they’re not blood-related except distantly: and they have a kind ofhwio-rrhi’theh,a‘pride of prides’ who’re supposed to care for all the otherehhif,help them find food and do justice among them and so forth … though as usual forehhif,it’s never quite that simple. Thisehhif-Queenwas a daughter of that chief-pride … which theehhif thenapparently found a little unusuaclass="underline" for a long time toms had run that chief-pride, not queens.”
“Peculiar,” Rhiow said. “Even amongehhif,queens still run things a lot of the time, no matter that the toms say otherwise …”
Huff grinned at that.“I’ve never understood that, myself. You’d think they’d be glad to have someone relieve them of the responsibility …” He threw an affectionate look at Auhlae: she half-closed her eyes in amusement. “Anyway, thisehhif-Queenis still famous for the things done by her pride and the great ones of the prides under her: today’sehhifcall that whole time period after her.”
“He said she was assassinated, though,” Urruah said.
Huff twitched his tail back and forth.“Certainly otherehhiftried to kill her several times,” he said, “but none of them ever succeeded. She died of age and illness … in our world. But inhis—” Huff looked at theehhif.
“We really need to know when he comes from,” Siffha’h said, “if this is going to make any sense.”
“Yes, but if you’ve already had to tranquilize him, I don’t think he’s going to be much more help,” Huff said. “If we try to get more information out of him, we might damage him, which contravenes the Oath, no matter how much we think may ride on what he knows.”
“I’d have to agree,” Rhiow said. “He was getting very distressed indeed.”
“Well, at least we have other ways to get this information … since now we have a positive lock on where this particularehhifcame from. We can put him back where he belongs, and we can compare the gate’s present configuration to the older gate logs … then see if we can find out how or why they’ve been malfunctioning and giving us less than useful records of these transits. Any other thoughts on this? Hlae?”
Auhlae waved her tail in negation.“Let’s do it.”
“Thrio? Siffha’h?”
Fhrio said,“I don’t like this gate being locked open … and even less do I like it when the other end may be anchored in an alternative reality. One gate stuck in the open position can begin to affect all the others in odd ways … and our sheaf of gates is sensitive enough in that regard.”
“I understand your concern,” Huff said, “and you’re right. But in this particular case, we’re going to have to take the chance. As soon as we can put someone through to confirm the temporal coordinates at the other end, and get them home again, we can close it down again. Sif?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Siffha’h said.
Huff turned to Rhiow.“Do you concur?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“All right,” Huff said. “Let’s send this pastling home, then. Do you think you need to alter his memories, Rhiow?”
“It wouldn’t be easy,” she said, “for the same reason Auhlae wasn’t willing to go after abstract information. I might mess something up, and leave him worse off than he would have been if I hadn’t meddled. But from the way he was answering us, I think it’s likely enough that hewilldismiss all this as a dream.”
“All right. Siffha’h, you like the big showy physical spells—”
“This isn’t showy,” Siffha’h said, and without twitching so much as a whisker, or making any alteration to the “physical” spell-circle she sat on, Mr. Illingworth levitated gently into the air and toward the gate.
“Would you make it patent, and give me visual?” Siffha’h said. “I don’t want to drop the guy …”
Urruah, looking over his shoulder at her, grinned a little and slipped one claw behind into the patency bundle, pulling gently.
A moment later they were looking into a dark vista which might have been a street: walls were visible not too far away, and a faint yellow wobbling light came off from one side.
“Gaslight …” Auhlae said softly, waving her tail in fascination. Theehhifdrifted slowly through the gate, into the darkness on the other side: Urruah edged sideways a little to let him pass unhindered.“How far down is the ground?” Siffha’h said.
“About your body’s length.”
Theehhifdropped down below the boundary of the gate, out of Rhiow’s sight: Urruah craned his neck to see. “All right,” he said, “he’s down. I’m going to turn this nonpatent again and leave it locked.” He started pulling strings again. “If we can—”
The gate shimmered and rippled—and all the length of itheaved,a bizarre sight like some huge beast’s skin shivering convulsively to get rid of a biting fly. Even the boundaries of the gate, which should have remained unaffected, twisted and warped. Urruah threw himself backwards, twisted and came down on his feet—just. Behind him, color drained from the warp and weft of the gate, and it steadied: after a moment it hung in the air in its default configuration again, nonpatent, in “standby”—though its colors looked very muted, almost drained.
“What in the Queen’s name wasthat?”Huff said, staring.
No one had any answers. Fhrio padded up to the gate, looked at it … then looked angrily over at Urruah. “What did you do to it?!”
“Nothing that you didn’t see,” Urruah said, getting up and shaking himself. “I’ve seen catastrophic closures before, but they didn’t look anything likethat.I wonder, though, if that was some kind of reaction to Mr… Illingworth being put back where he belonged all of a sudden … ?”
“You mean you don’t think these gatings are accidental,” Siffha’h said. “So it was like whatever engineered the opening, from way back then, didn’twanthim back …”
“Meaning that he was meant to increase whatever imbalance in our universe is already present,” said Auhlae, “from the pastlings who’ve come through and not yet been found again …”
There’s another nasty possibility,” Rhiow said. “That transit might have been balanced for him alone … and when someone else either tried to accompany him through it, or follow him to source using the same “settings”, they could have been damaged. Or possibly even killed.”
“You’re suggesting that it was a trap?” Huff said.