“Well now, I would think some people might consider that a personal question,” Har’lh said, giving her an amused look. “But let’s just say I won’t be able to stop going to the gym any time soon. My looks don’t change down there the way People’s do. Pity.”
Rhiow put her whiskers forward at him.“Is Tom back from Geneva yet?”
“Later tonight. I’m glad he’ll be getting back… Between work and Work, I’ve been getting short of sleep.”
Rhiow had figured that out already: Har’lh’s rugged good looks had acquired a rather brittle edge over the past few days. “The way you keep pouring cappuccino down yourself, are you surprised?” she said, and whisked her tail back and forth in atsk, tskgesture.“Your body isn’t going to thank you, Har’lh.”
“All right, now, you wait just a minute, Miss Cream Junkie,” Har’lh said, smiling slightly. “You’re lecturingmeabout my body?”
Rhiow put one ear back in the mildest annoyance. Hhuha had discovered that Rhiow was very partial to whipping cream… and Rhiow had not exactly talked her out of it It was a couple of weeks after that time that Rhiow had first heard the bizarre adjective “plumptious.” Shortly thereafter Hhuha had stopped bringing cream home and had subjected Rhiow to a very annoying withdrawal (“Is it smart to just do this ‘cold turkey’?” Iaehh had asked, and Rhiow had practically shouted, “Cold turkey would be very nice in these circumstances, yes,give me some!”—to no avail). There had followed a course of what purported to be diet cat food, but which Rhiow firmly believed to be textured, compressed sawdust in a shiny gravy consisting mostly of lacquer. Next to it, the foul disgusting tuna of recent days could actually have been considered an improvement, though that was not something that Rhiow was ever going to let Hhuha know.“Life aroundehhifcan be a little too fat-free sometimes,” she said. “I’m just grateful she didn’t try to turn me vegetarian.” She shuddered, knowing cats whose well-meaning but very confusedehhif hadtried this tack. Mostly the People involved had found themselves short a life very quickly, unless they managed to get away and start over elsewhere.
“Completely the wrong lifestyle for you guys,” Har’lh said, and glanced down. “I wish my kind wouldn’t keep trying that crap. —Hey, Urruah, how they shakin’?”
“In all directions, as usual,” Urruah said, and jumped up on the railing next to Rhiow. “ ’Luck, you two.” He leaned over toward Arhu, breathed breaths with him. “Is that mozzarella I taste? Rhi, you spoil this kit.”
Arhu looked at Urruah, and said,“Half a quarter pounder with cheese and bacon. Youatethelettuce?”He grimaced.“What a big bunny!”
“Oh yeah? So how doyouknow what lettuce tastes like?”
“I’m going Downside,” Har’lh said, “before something gets out of hand here. Give Saash my best, Rhiow. I’ll talk to her as soon as I get topside again.”
“ ’Luck,” Rhiow said, and Har’lh strode away toward the stairway, swinging his briefcase idly.
Urruah was looking at Arhu a little oddly.“Haifaquarter pounder?” he said. “How do you know?”
“I see you eating it,” Arhu said.
“Saw,” Urruah said pointedly.
“No. I see you eating itnow,”Arhu said. He was looking at the blank marble wall as if there was far more there to see.“The MhHonalh’s down in the subway, at Madison and Fifty-first. A tom-ehhif and a queen-ehhif are eating outside it, and talking. Then talking louder. Real loud. All of a sudden they start fighting—” Arhu’s look was blank but bewildered. “He hits her, and tries to hit her again but she ducks back, and then he comes at her again, now he’s feeling around in his jacket for something, but all of a sudden he trips over something he can’t see and falls down, and he’s getting up and feels in his jacket again—and then the transit cops come around the corner: he gets up and runs away, and the queen is standing there—’crying’—”
Urruah’s eyes were very round as he looked over at Rhiow. “It reallyisthe Eye, isn’t it?” Urruah said softly.
“Theehhif’sdropped his quarter pounder on the floor there,” Arhu said, as if he hadn’t heard. “I see you pick it up and take it away behind the garbage can. No one else sees, they’re all looking at theehhif-queen and the cops—”
Rhiow looked at Urruah, her tail twitching thoughtfully.“That was a nice move,” she said.
“I might have done it only for the burger,” Urruah said, looking elsewhere.
Rhiow put her whiskers right forward at the phrasing, for the one thing wizards dare not do with words is lie.“Of course it’s the Eye,” she said. “The symbol for it was in the spell. We worked the spell… and spells always work. I think he may have had this talent in latent form, before … but the presence of the symbol in the spell reaffirmed it, and now it’s really starting to focus.”
Arhu was looking at Rhiow again.“I see you now,” he ( said, a little desperately. “But I seethat,too. And other things. A lot of them at once…”
“It’s the ‘eternal present,’ ” Rhiow said. “I heard about it once from Ffairh: if you ever get stuck in a gate, in an artificially prolonged transit, you can start seeing things that way. Not a good sign, normally…”
“But I’m not normal,” Arhu said, suddenly sounding very weary.
“No,” Rhiow said wearily. “And neither are we. We are all weirdoes together… but the ‘together’ is the important part.”
She sighed then.“ ’Look, I could use a small dose of normalcy myself. Let’s all go back to my neighborhood; they’re starting the day’s bout ofhauissh,and we can sit and just kibitz for a while. You two skywalk over: Arhu can use the practice.No birds,”she said to Arhu, at the sight of that gleam starting to creep back into his eye.“I have a little something to take care of here; I’ll meet you there in half an hour or so. Yarn’s stoop, maybe?”
“Sounds like a plan. Come on, youngster, let’s you and the Big Bunny show them how we do it uptown.”
And Urruah turned and strolled straight out onto the air over the main concourse, forty feet up, heading for the front doors.
Eyes wide, suddenly delighted, Arhu scampered out across the air after him. Rhiow stood there, absolutely transfixed with horror lest they be seen. But no one looked up. No one in the city ever looks up.
She watched them go, unnoticed; then let out a long breath at the lunacy of toms and headed back toward the Italian deli. *
When Rhiow got home, she found that herehhifhad been out as well, to dinner and a movie, and apparently had been back only a little while: Iaehh was going through the freezer, apparently hunting a frozen pizza. Rhiow walked over into the little kitchen and found her food bowl empty. She looked meaningfully at Iaehh, and said loudly,“I wouldn’t keepyouwaiting foryourdinner.”
Iaehh shut theffrihhand started going through the cupboards.“Sue?”
No answer.“Sue?”
“Oh, sorry, honey…” came the voice from the bedroom. “My mind was elsewhere.”
“I was looking for that tuna stuff.”
“Oh, there isn’t any … the store was out of it”
“Thankyou, Queen of us all,” Rhiow said, heartfelt, and put her face down in the bowl. It was a nice hearty mixture, beef and something else: rabbit? Turkey?Who cares? Delightful.
“I’ll pick up some of it tomorrow.”
“I’ll enjoy this while it lasts,” Rhiow muttered.
“She seems to like this all right, though.”
“Good…” Hhuha said, as she came back into the living room.
“You sound tired.”
“Iamtired. Another day of fighting with the damn system, and the damn network, and the damn air conditioner…”
He came over to her and held her.“I wish you could find a way to get out of there.”
Hhuha sighed.“Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about that, too. It’s making you as unhappy as it’s making me.”