Arhu looked at the paper, reached out and carefully turned the middle leaf of it over with his paw.“I don’t see any specific pride names,” he said. “Maybe they expect everybody to know what they’re talking about.”
Huff sighed.“There’s no question that this is useful,” he said, “but it’s not nearly enough to base an intervention on. How I wish the Whispering could throw some light on this …”
Rhiow shook her head.“She seems unable to discuss what’s happening in an alternate universe,” she said. “Is it possibly outside the Whisperer’s brief? Would it be speculation, even for her?—which as we know is something she won’t indulge in. Or is this simply something we’re supposed to have to find outfor ourselves … ?”
“Whichever,” Urruah said, stretching, “the result is the same. But I wouldn’t take too long about it. That other universe has ‘become real’ … and now it and ours are going to be starting to fight it out for primacy between them, though we can’t feel the effects at the moment.”
“We will soon enough,” Fhrio growled. “The gates will be the first symptom. When something starts going wrong with them—”
“You mean, besides what’s going wrong already,” Arhu said.
Fhrio sat up, glaring at Arhu, and lifted one paw. Urruah looked over at Fhrio.
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Anybody gets to shred his ears for tactlessness, it’s me. Arhu, don’t you think your tone was a little snide?”
“Sorry,” Arhu said, not sounding very much so. Rhiow sighed.
Arhu had gone back to reading the back page of his paper. Rhiow watched this process with amusement that she hoped was well concealed. Besides being useful, the paper had given him an excuse not to try to speak or even to look at Siffha’h for the whole early evening so far. “Hey, listen to this,” he said, and began reading aloud with some difficulty: not so much because of the words themselves, as because of how odd some of them seemed in context. “If its what Mr… Illingworth was talking about.”
“What?” Rhiow said. Even Siffha’h sat up at that.
“I think it is, anyway.
“ ‘Maskelyne and Cook—Dark Seance. The latest novelty and most startling performance ever presented to the public … the seance includes the floating of Luminous Instruments, distribution of flowers with dew, appearance of materialized spirit forms, spirit hands, spirit arms, strange and apparently unearthly voices, music extraordinary, the inexplicable Coat Feat, all accomplished by Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook while bound hand and foot, the ropes secured with knots executed by the most perfect adepts in the art of rope-tying, elected by the audience.’ ”
He paused and looked up.“But that doesn’t sound like such a big deal.”
“It does if you’re anehhifand not a wizard,” Urruah said. “We haveehhiflike that at home: they do shows where they pretend to be wizards. Without the ethical element, anyway. It’s ‘magic’ rather than wizardry: mostly they pretend to do things that would normally kill them, and make things disappear.”
Fhrio muttered something under his breath. Rhiow, having occasionally shared what she suspected was Fhrio’s sentiment, had to put her whiskers forward just a little. “ ‘In addition to the great sensation the Dark Seance and exposes of so-called spiritualism,’ ” Arhu said, “ ‘the following leading features amuse the audience at the present program: Mr… Maskelyne’s extraordinary comical illusions, extraordinary Chinese plate-spinning, lady floating in air, the animated walking-stick, the Tell Tale Hat, etc. The original and inexplicable Corded Box Feat is performed at every representation. Every afternoon at three, every evening at eight.’ ”
Arhu looked up again.“ ‘Spiritualism?’ ”
Rhiow shook her head and started to tilt her head sideways to listen to what the Whisperer might have to say: but Siffha’h said suddenly, “It’s whereehhif used to think that their dead still stayed around to speak to them after they were gone. The liveehhifwould try to get advice from their dead ones, and ask them what was going to happen in the world … things like that.”
“But it doesn’t work that way forehhif,surely,” Auhlae said, sounding dubious. “When they go, they’re gone, aren’t they?”
A pang went through Rhiow. She stared at the floor for a moment while trying to manage it, aware of Urruah looking at her but not saying anything, just being there.
“And no matter what happens to them, I wouldn’t think the advice of the dead would do the living much good in any case,” Auhlae said. “Surely that must have occurred to evenehhif.Their priorities would be very much different …”
“Nonetheless, some of them wouldn’t care,” Rhiow said. “Some of them miss each other very much, and they don’t have the kind of knowledge we have, it would seem, about what happens to them afterwards. All they have are a lot of different stories that mostly disagree with one another.” She swallowed. “It makes them feel very afraid, and very alone …”
Auhlae was looking at her.“I’m sorry,” she said. “My apologies, Rhiow. I hadn’t realized …”
“It’s all right,” Rhiow said, though how long this statement would stay true, she wasn’t sure: she tried to keep a grip on herself. “She’s somewhere safe, myehhif:though I haven’t any idea of what she does there, how she is or what she knows … probably any more than she would normally have had of what awaited me after any given life. Maybe it’s a privacy thing that the Powers preserve between species. Our paths cross, we live together, we part … is it really ourbusiness whereehhif go? Or theirs, what happens to us?”
Auhlae said nothing, merely looked at Rhiow with eyes thoughtful and a little sad. Rhiow sat still for a moment and did her best to master herself, while the back of her mind shoutedYes it is, yes!She held very still and concentrated on her breathing, and on not looking like an idiot in front of the others.
“Well,” Huff said after a moment, “we still have a fair number of problems to deal with.”
“You’re not kidding,” Urruah said. “I’m still trying to work out what in the worlds ‘The Tell Tale Hat’ might be.”
“Besides that,” said Huff. “Mr. Illingworth, who has been to see Maskelyne and Cook, is one of them. You said you didn’t find any trace of him in that universe.”
“No,” Urruah said, “and I’m at a loss to know why. The most likely possibility that occurs to me is that thatwasn’tthe universe we were heading for, but a close congener.”
“Analternatealternate universe?” Siffha’h said.
“You might as well call it that,” Urruah said. “When you start messing with timelines, altering them, whole sheaves of new universes are created from each branching point—some of them very likely, some of them less likely, some of them hardly there at all. The more likely they are, the morelikely you are to come across them. Think of them as ‘waves’ in a wave tank which is chiefly populated by the two universes which are trying to achieve equilibrium. You get troughs and crests of probability and possibility as the two universes attempt to absorb one another’s energy—and matter, though that’s a more problematic process. The sheaves of alternates don’t persist for long. As one universe or the other starts winning the argument, the other’s ‘alternates’ vanish. Then, last of all, the universe that spawned them vanishes too: dissolves into the other one, all its energy absorbed. I think Illingworth came from the sheaf of ‘possibles’ surrounding the main one.”
“So you’re going to have to alter your timeslide’s settings to find the ‘core universe’, the one which engendered all these others,” Fhrio said.
“Yes,” Urruah said, “and as yet, I don’t knowhowthey’re going to have to be altered, or how to construct a spell to tell it how to manage the alteration. Also, I don’t understand why the ‘settings’ I saved from Illingworth’s gating didn’t lead us straight back to his home universe. Add that to your list of problems …”