When the weather report came around for the second time, Rhiow looked up at Iaehh and saw that he was dozing. She put her whiskers forward:why else would he have been sitting still so long?she thought. Even Iaehh sometimes ran out of that nervous energy that kept him running all day and made him sleep poorly at night.At least,sometimesthat’s why he sleeps badly.Other times, when he wept himself asleep after lying awake a long time, Rhiow knew quite well that there were other reasons. At such times she sometimes wished she could speak to his neurochemistry, as she had done with Mr… Illingworth, and spare him the pain: but Rhiow knew that that would not have been within the right use of her powers … Toease pain,the Oath said, indeed: but when pain was what led to the growth that wizardry was also supposed to guard, one did not tamper. Herehhif’spain was difficult for her to bear, but Rhiow was not such a youngster in the exercise of the Art as to mistake the comforting of her own hurt for the salving of Iaehh’s.
Now, though, he sat with his mouth slightly open, snoring very softly, while on the TV the Mayor of New York complained about one of the City Commissioners: and Rhiow let her eyes half-close and let the sound wash over her like running water or wind or any other noise which might have content, but not any content that she needed to pay attention to at the moment. There were more important things on her mind than City politics.
Time travel bothered her, as it bothered many wizards whose work sometimes necessitated it. For one thing, it was rarely quite so simple or straightforward as“going back in time”. Even the phrase “back in time” was deceptive: the directionality of time was a variable, though the relationship of the past to the present was nominally a constant. No matter how careful you were, the possibility of careless action setting up unwelcome paradoxes was all too obvious … and unraveling such tangles was worse, inevitably involving more backtiming and the possibility of making things worse still.
The complications had fascinated Arhu all the way home: he had delightedly plagued Urruah with questions about a subject which until now had been off limits, about everything from what you fastened a timeslideto,to that ancient imponderable, the“grandfather paradox’. Urruah had mentioned it, and Arhu had actually had to stop walking while he figured it out, or tried to. “It’s weird,” he said. “I can’t see what would happen. Or, I mean, I can see two ways it would go—”
“What? You mean, if you went back in time and killed your grandfather?” Urruah had said. “Well, one way, if you’re still there afterwards, it means you’re a by-blow. A ‘bastard’, as theehhifwould say. But then howelsewould you describe someone who would go back in time and kill their own grandfather? I ask you. And if you go the other way, and you succeed, then you’re not there at all. And serves you right forbeinga bastard …”
At that, Arhu had become so confused that he actually became quiet: and shortly thereafter they were at Grand Central, and Arhu went off to his dinner, ending the day’s questioning. Rhiow had smiled somewhat wearily at that as she and Urruah parted, for the “grandfather paradox” served well enough to illuminate how difficult it could be to alter history, especially if you viewed it linearly. But in this line of work you would eventually have to deal with the question of what happened when events in some original timestreamhadactually been altered. Then you would have alternate universes to deal with. By themselves, they were bad enough. But they also brought with them the possibility that, in dealing with them, you would find yourself going back inplace …which was more complex than merely backtiming, and potentially more dangerous.
Quite a few locations on Earth had a“back in place” as well as “back in time”. There were other downsides than the Old Downside, less central in the hierarchy of universes, perhaps, but no less important to the creatures who loved or hated the realities to which those places were related. History, or the realities of which history is a shadow, was in full flower in these less central “downsides”, fully expressed there no matter how they might be repressed elsewhere—in fact, usually more vigorous in expression in direct proportion to how vigorously they had been repressed in the “real world”.
And going back inplaceinvolved an entirely different set of dangers. You ran the risk of somehow altering the basic“mythological” or “archetypal” structure of a place, which could be immensely important in the minds of thousands or millions of sentient beings. Tampering with the mythological essence of a place—a Rubicon or a Valley Forge, in theehhifmetaphor, a Camelot or a Runnymede—could change not just history, but theperceptionof it as good, bad or indifferent … a far more perilous business than changing the mere structure of time. Such shifts could create ripples and harmonics through the “noo-string structure” which would be capable of ripping whole worlds apart. The thought of going back in both time and placeat oncewas dangerous enough to make Rhiow shudder.
But they might wind up doing just that, for London was definitely a Place, one of those hinges ofehhifhistory in this part of the world. Not that the history of place wasn’t mostly anehhifmanifestation, anyway. Humans weighed hard on the world, and imprinted it with history and personality. But People stepped more lightly. Feline history tended to take place within individual cats, who, according to their nature, saw place as merely something they moved over or through: it was rare for one of the People to become attached to one field, one tree. Granted, your den for this season—or this week of this season—was something you would defend, for the sake of the kittens or the local hunting. But sooner or later time or loss or boredom seeped into every den like water, and you moved out, perhaps with mild regret, to escape the creeping damp and find yourself somewhere else more warm or dry. Memories of those dens you took with you, as the worthwhile part of the transaction: but the dens themselves held little interest unless your kill or your kittens were in them.
What kept People in one place, if anything, was theehhif they companioned: sometimes much to the Person’s embarrassment—and Rhiow glanced up in affectionate amusement at Iaehh, who sat there with his head slightly to one side and his eyes closed, his mouth open, and the tiny snore emitting from it at decorous intervals. The whole business of companionment was a tangled one. Some People felt thatthe only way theehhif-Peoplerelationship could be viewed was as slavery: others, mostly those already in such a relationship, tended to see it otherwise, in a whole spectrum of aspects from pity (“Someone has to try to teach them better”) to simple affection (“Mine are well enough behaved, and they’re nice to me, what’s the problem?”) to cheerful mercenary exploitation (“If they want to feed us, why shouldn’t we enjoy eating their food? Doesn’t cost anything to purr afterwards, either.”).
The People who raved most about slavery and freedom found all these views despicable: starving in a gutter, they said, but starving free, was far superior to a full belly in the den of the oppressor. Rhiow,ehhif-companioned for a good while now, found such an attitude simplistic at best. Yet there was no denying the existence of People who had no knowledge of themselves as such: taken from their dams too early, perhaps, too soon even to drink in with the first milk and their mother’s tale-purring the truth of what they were or where in the worlds their own kind came from—People who were barely self-aware, merely receptacles for food and excreters of it, dull-brained demanders of strokes and treats, “pets” in the true sense of the word: slaves to their most basic instincts, but in service to nothing any higher at all.
Rhiow shuddered a little.But it’s not that simple,she thought.Even among People who are self-aware, People for that matter living wild and“free”, you’ll find those for whom the gods and the life of the world doesn’t matter at all, or matters far less than their last rat or a warm place to sleep. Which is worse? A cat who doesn’t know she’s a cat—just eats and sleeps and lives? Or one whodoesknow, and doesn’t care … ?