“You’re right there, cousin,” Auhlae said, and sighed once more. “Let me go see if the child needs anything. She tends to give off her power in these big bursts, and then needs a lot of time to recuperate. I keep telling her she should pace herself, but does she listen … ?”
“I know the problem,” Rhiow said.
Auhlae went off to tend to Siffha’h, and Rhiow stood up and had a good stretch and went to the youngehhif:Arhu came along behind her, and behind him, Urruah.“Are you all right, Artie?” Rhiow said.
“I’m rather hungry,” he said, very woefully. “I was on my way to get a bun for lunch when I saw you.”
“Well, I’ll get you something,” Rhiow said.
“Where?” Arhu said. “You’re going to have to steal.”
“No. Well, not exactly.” Rhiow sighed. “Artie, would you like a sandwich?”
“A what?”
“Never mind,” Rhiow said. “Do you like cheese?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get you a pizza.”
“From where?” Arhu said.
“Hey, bring me one too,” Urruah said.
Rhiow gave him a look.“Get your own pizza. I have enough problems. Are you and Fhrio in agreement about the timeslide?”
“He’s looking at it for the moment,” Urruah said. “The idea of him catching something in the spelling that I missed seems to appeal to him.”
She put her whiskers forward at him.“Now who says you’re all good looks and no brain?” she said. “I’ll be back in a little.”
Rhiow trotted over to where Auhlae was lying by Siffha’h. “Auhlae, where’s one of the gates thatisfunctioning? I need to run an errand.”
“Back up the stairs the way we came,” Auhlae said, “down the hallway and turn left to the access for the northbound Circle Line train. It’s down off the left-hand end of the platform.”
“Great. Right back,” said Rhiow.
Sidled, she followed Auhlae’s instructions and made her way up to the Circle Line platform, past the unnoticing travelers waiting for the Tube train, and down the stairs at the very end of the platform. The gate’s tracery was very visible: some other wizard passing through had just used it, she saw from the status-and-log weft, for a transit to Vladivostok via Chur. She reached into the control weave, got her claws into the spatial location webbing, and wove its hyperstrings together until they matched the string-coordinate qualities of the roof of her apartment building.
Normally Rhiow preferred not to do gatings of this kind: they were wasteful of energy, when you could walk. But at the moment, walking was out of the question, and everything seemed to be happening at once, and she couldn’t spare the time. Rhiow pulled the control weave taut, watching as the scene within its oval boundaries snapped into place. Gray gravel, ventilators sticking up…
Rhiow locked the gate coordinates in place, set it for selective nonpatency except for her own return, and jumped through: came down on the gravel. Hurriedly she sidled, then trotted over to the square shape which was the outlet for the building’s fire stairs. The door was locked from the inside.
She walked through it, feeding the atoms of her body past the atoms of the door, and ran down the stairs a couple of flights: then walked through a second door, the one which led to the hallway where her apartment’s front door was. Rhiow galloped down the hall, and walked through one last door, her own.
There was no sign of Iaehh, which was just as well. Rhiow ran over to the refrigerator, did a very small-scale skywalk up to the handle of the freezer, and put one paw through it, pulling hard. No good. She sat up on her haunches, put both forefeet through, and pulled again. This time the freezer door came open, almost knocking her down. She ducked sideways out of the reach of the swinging door and looked inside.Thank you, Iau,she thought, for there were about five pizzas stacked up in there.Hmm. Pepperoni … not for a first-timer. Meatball … no. Pieces might fall off in transit. Plain with extra cheese…
Her mouth was watering as she levitated the pizza out of the freezer down onto the counter.It’s been too long since I had pizza,Rhiow thought; but the hunger in Artie’s eyes suggested to Rhiow that it was going to be a while longer. She first did a small wizardry which would release the catch of the microwave oven and push the door back: then, while that was working, she spoke to the coefficient of friction at the end of the pizza box where the glue was, thenlevitated the box up on its side and shook. The pizza slid neatly out onto the rotating tray in the oven.
Rhiow ran her wizardry backwards and shut the microwave door: then jumped down to the counter and stared at the controls. Youhave to be a rocket scientist to run these things,she thought, annoyed, trying to work out which control pad to push. Finally she succeeded in programming in five minutes’ run on “high”, and started the microwave going: then took a moment to take the empty pizza box and push it down into a briefly opened pocket in spacetime, off in a corner of the kitchen. She would empty the pocket out and get rid of the box later.
The air started to fill with a very appetizing smell indeed. Rhiow’s mouth watered more earnestly.The only bad thing about this,she thought, isthat he’s going to notice it’s gone. I think.Iaehh could be slightly vague about the contents of the freezer: he and Hhuha had had some pretty heated discussions on the subject.Either way … I’m going to have to replace it with one of the same kind as soon as I can. One more thing to think about…
The oven dinged. Rhiow ran her wizardry again, forward this time, and levitated the pizza out into the air again. It was tricky: the thing was no longer solid, but kept trying to flop over in one direction or another.
Rhiow stood there for a moment considering her options. She might be sidled, but the pizza could not be, not while she was handling it either directly or with a wizardry. She was not going to walk back down the apartment’s hall, invisible, with a visible pizza floating along behind her.Logistics …she thought.
Oh vhai.She walked through the air over to the glass doors that opened on the terrace, the pizza trailing along obediently behind her, and straight out into the air to one side of the apartment.Let the neighbors think they saw a levitating pizza,she thought rebelliously …If any of them are even looking.With the pizza in tow, Rhiow skywalked up to the roof of the building, and back through the worldgate, which she shut down behind her and left in standby configuration.
That only left the Tube station to deal with. Rhiow went down the stairs, then hung an immediate left and walked straight through the wall, trying to keep the directions back to the abandoned platform straight in her head. She took a few false turns, but finally found where she wanted to be: and had the satisfaction of seeing young Artie’s mouth drop open as she walked straight through a wall not far from him, the pizza floating along behind her.
She put it carefully down on the floor.“It’s fairly clean here,” she said: “sorry I couldn’t bring a plate. Here, just pull it apart with your hands. Watch out, it’s still hot.”
Artie pulled his first slice off, bit it tentatively: finished it immediately and pulled off another.“Good,” Rhiow said, and went over to Urruah, who was lying nearby. “Now then. What’s next?”
He looked at the pizza.
“Don’t even think about it,” Rhiow said. “I went to a lot of trouble over that. How’s he doing?” She glanced over toward Fhrio and the timeslide.
“How would I know? I’ll wait until he tells me. He might genuinely be in the middle of something I don’t want to disturb.”Or I might just not want to get my head bitten off.
Rhiow put one ear forward and one back, a wry expression.“Is Siffha’h all right, did Auhlae say?”
“Recovering,” Urruah said. “She’s just exhausted after doing two big power feeds close together—and apparently the fact that something knocked us ‘sideways’ affected her too: she tried to force us through anyway, and so she took the brunt of what hit us.” His tail thumped on the concrete. “She tries real hard. It’s not like she has to prove anything to anyone …”