Theehhif letthe note go. The last chords of accompaniment crashed to an end, and the technical staff responded, some of them, with a chorus of good-natured hoots and applause. After that torrent and slam of sound, the hoots of boms and the city’s rush seemed a little muted.
Theehhifspoke a few words to the short round curly-hairedehhif conducting the musicians, then waved the cloth casually at the technical people and retreated to the back of the stage to have a long drink from a bottle of water. Theehhifconducting the musicians turned to talk to them now, and Rhiow looked a little sidewise at Urruah, a feline gesture of reluctant agreement.“It reminds me a little,” she said, “of the part in theArgumentwhen the Old Tom sings. Innocent, though he’s all scars: and hopeful, though he knows whose teeth will be in his throat shortly.”
Urruah nodded.“That’s one connection I’ve thought of, yes…”
“I can see why they’ll need all these fences,” Rhiow said as they got up and strolled away. “Theshe-ehhifwould be all over him afterward, I’d think. Probably wear him out for any more singing.”
“They don’t, though. It’s not meant personally.”
“That’s the strangest part of it, for me,” Rhiow said. “I don’t understand how he can sing likethatand have itnotbe personal. That was real fighting stuff, that last note. He should have had his claws in someone’s guts, or his teeth in someone else’s scruff, afterward.”
Urruah shook his own head as well.“They’re not us. But later on in the story, there’s a fight.”
“Another tom?”
“No, in the story this tom fights with the queen. She has this problem, see…”
Rhiow half-closed her eyes in good-natured exasperation, for he was off and running again. Like most toms, Urruah had trouble grasping how, for queens, the fascination with song in any of its forms was strictly seasonal. When you were in heat, a tom’s voice was, admittedly, riveting, and the song it sang spoke directly to your most immediate need. Out of heat, though, the tendency was to try to get away from the noise before you burst out laughing at the desperate, impassioned cacophony of it—a reaction not at all appreciated by the toms near a queen in heat, all deep in the throes of competitive artistic and erotic self-expression.
Most of Urruah’s explanation now went over Rhiow’s head, as they walked back uptown, but at least he had something to keep his mind off what the rest of the day’s work was going to involve. He finished with the tale of the tom fighting with the queen—after which the queen apparently surrendered herself to the tom(What a crazy fantasy,Rhiow thought)—and started in on some other story, many times more complicated, that seemed to involve a river, and a piece of some kind of metal. “And when you take this piece of metal and make it into ahring,it makes you master of the universe…”
Rhiow had to laugh at that.“Ehhif?Run theuniverse?Let alone the world… What a dream! They can’t even run the parts of it they think theydorun. Or at least none of them who aren’t wizards seem able to. Look at them! Half of theehhifon the planet go to bed with empty stomachs: the other half of them die of eating themselves sick…” She gave Urruah a cockeyed look. “And what about your greatehhif-tom there? No way he’s that size naturally. What does he mean by smothering a wonderful voice like that with ten fur coats’ worth of fat? Whicheverehhif-godis in charge of mistreating one’s gifts should have a word with him. Probably will, too, if he doesn’t get off his great tail and do something about it pretty soon.”
Urruah began muttering something vague about the artistic temperament. Rhiow immediately perceived that this was something Urruah had noticed, and it bothered him, too.“Well, look,” she said. “Maybe he’ll get himself straightened out. Meanwhile, we’re almost at the Met. They’ll be on the steps, if I know Saash. Anything you need to tell me about today’s work before we meet up with them?”
He stopped, looked at her.“Rhi…”
She let him find his words.
“How do you cope?” he said finally. “My memory’s not clouded about last time. We almost died, all three of us. Now we’re going to have to go down there again—and it may even be the same place this time. Am I wrong?”
“No,” Rhiow said, “I don’t think so. It could well be the same spot: the gate we’re servicing this time has its roots in the same catenary.”
“It could be an ambush,” he said. “Another sabotage, better planned than the last. Certainly the problem’s more serious. If someone caused it on purpose, they’d know a service team would have to be down there very quickly. Not like the last tune, where there was enough slack in the schedule that we might have come down any time during the space of a week or two. Half the lizards in Downside could be waiting there for us.”
“It’s a thought I’ve considered,” Rhiow said. “Though the Whisperer didn’t seem to indicate it was going to be quitethatdangerous. She usually gives you a hint…”
“… If she knows,” Urruah said.
There was that too. Even the gods were sometimes caught by surprise… “Ruah,” Rhiow said, “I’m as well prepared as I can be. So are you. Saash will be, as well.”
“That leaves only Arhu,” Urruah muttered. “And whathemight do, I’ll bet the gods don’t know, either. Irh’s balls, but I wish we could dump him somewhere.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Rhiow said. “He may save your skin yet.”
Urruah laughed. They looked at each other for a moment more, then made their way around to the steps of the Met.
Saash and Arhu were waiting for them in the sunshine, or rather, Saash was sitting scratching herself and putting her fur in order, alternately, and Arhu was tearing back and forth across the steps, sidled, trying to trip theehhifgoing up and down. Fortunately, he was falling down the steps as often as running successfully along them, so theehhif, by and large, weren’t doing more than stumble occasionally. As they walked over to Saash, and Rhiow breathed breaths with her and wished her hunt’s luck, Urruah looked over at Arhu, who, seeing Rhiow, was now running toward them. “You sure you want to stop with just the Met?” Urruah said, loudly enough to be heard. “I’d take him across the park, afterward. Natural History. Some skeletons there he ought to see—”
“No,”Rhiow said, a touch angrily.“He’s going to have to make up his own mind about what we see. Don’t prejudice his opinions … and whatever it is he’s going to be good for, don’t make him less effective at it.”
Urruah grumbled, but said nothing further. Arhu looked from Urruah to Rhiow, a little puzzled, and said,“What are we supposed to do?”
“Courtesy first,” Rhiow said. “Hunt’s luck to you, Arhu.”
“I had some,” he said, very proud. “I caught a mouse.”
Rhiow looked at Saash: Saash flicked an ear in agreement.“It got into the garage this morning,” she said. “Out of someone’s car: I think it had been eating some fast food crumbs or something. He did it right in front of Zhorzh, too. Very clever.” She threw him a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed, and Rhiow put her whiskers forward in slight amusement.
“Well, good for you,” Rhiow said. “Nicely done. Let’s go in, then, and see the gods. We have a busy day ahead of us, and we want to be out of here before lunchtime.”So that you won’t be tempted to start stealing sandwiches out ofehhifhands…
Sidled, they slipped in through a door that some poor tom-ehhif found himself holding open for about sevenehhif-queens, one after another.Ehhif weregathering at the turnstiles where people made contributions to the museum; Rhiow and her team went around them to one side and went on up the white marble steps to the next floor. Rhiow led them sharply to the right, then right again along the colonnade next to the stairs, then left to pass through the Great Hall, and toward the wide doorway over which a sign said, inehhif English, egyptian art.