The Book of Night With Moon (18 page)

"Then they're just dumb animals," Arhu said, "and we should take what they've got whenever we like."

"Oh, stop it," said Rhiow. "Just because we were made before they were doesn't mean we get to act superior to them."

"Even if we
are?"

She gave him a sidelong look. "Queen Iau made them," Rhiow said, "even if we're not sure for what. Ten lives on, maybe we'll all be told. Meanwhile, we work with them as we find them…." Arhu opened his mouth, and Rhiow said, "No. Later. We have to get moving if we're going to catch Ehef during his business hours."

"Who's Ehef?" Arhu said.

"Our local Senior wizard," Urruah said. "He's five lives on, now. This life alone, he must be, oh, how old, Rhi?"

"A hundred and sixty-odd moons-round," Rhiow said, "thirteen or so if you do it by suns-round,
ehhif
-style. Oldish for this life."

"A hundred and sixty
moons?"
Arhu goggled. "He's
ancient!
Can he walk?"

Urruah burst out laughing. "Oh, please, gods," he said between laughs, "let him ask Ehef that. Oh please."

"Come on," Rhiow said.

T
he walk down to Fifth and Forty-second is never an easy one, even on weekends: too many window-shoppers in from out of town, too many tourists, and even a sidled cat has to watch where it walks on Fifth Avenue on Sunday. But by nine-thirty on a Sunday night, almost everything is closed, even the electronics shops that litter the middle reaches of Fifth, festooned with signs declaring CLOSING-OUT SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! and attracting the unsuspecting passersby who haven't yet worked out that, come next week, nothing will be gone but their money. As a result, a pedestrian, whether on two feet or four, can stand for a moment and gaze across at the splendid Beaux-Arts façade of the New York Public Library's Forty-second Street building— especially in the evening, when it glows golden with its landmark lighting— and enjoy the look of the place without being trampled by man, machine, or beast.

The four of them crossed with care in the lull between red lights, and Arhu stood looking up the big flight of steps, and from one side to the other, at the massive shapes of the two lions carved out of the pale pink Tennessee marble. Feral Arhu might have been, but no cat with brains enough to think could have failed to recognize the two huge, silent figures as images of relatives.

"Who are they?" Arhu said.

"Gods," Urruah said pointedly. "Some of
ours."

Rhiow smiled. "They're Sef and Hhu'au," she said, "the lion-Powers of Yesterday and Today."

Arhu stared. "Are they real?"

Saash smiled slightly. "If you mean, do they exist? Yes. If you mean, do they walk around looking like that? No," Saash said. "But they're
like
that. Big, and powerful… and predatory, each in his or her own way. They stand for the barriers between what was, which we can't affect, and what will be— which we can, but only by what we do in the present moment."

"Except if you get access to a timeslide," Urruah said, "when you can go back in time and—"

"Urruah," Rhiow said, glaring at him, "go eat something, or do something
useful
with that mouth, all right?" To Arhu she said, "We do
not
tamper with time without authorization from
Them,
from the Powers That Be. And even They don't do it lightly. You can destroy a whole world if you're not careful or else you can wipe yourself out of existence, which tends to have the same effect at the personal level even if you're lucky enough not to have caused everyone else not to have existed as well. So don't even
think
about it. And you'll find," she added, as the smug we'll-see-about-that expression settled itself over Arhu's face, "when you ask the One Who Whispers for details on time travel anyway, that you won't be given that information, no matter how you wheedle. If you press Her on the subject, your ears will ring for days. But don't take
my
word for it. Go ahead and ask."

Arhu's face went a little less smug as he looked from Saash to Urruah and saw their knowing grins: especially Urruah's, which had a little too much anticipation in it. Rhiow looked sidewise at Saash.
This "heavy-pawed dam" role isn't one I ever imagined myself in,
Rhiow said silently.
And I'm not sure I like it….

Saash glanced at her, a little amused.
You're betraying a natural talent, though….

Thanks loads.

"If they're Yesterday and Today," Arhu said, "then where's Tomorrow?"

"Invisible," Urruah said. "Hard to make an image of something that hasn't happened yet. But he's there, Reh-t is, whether you see him or not. Like all the best predators, you never see him till it's much too late. Walk right through him, feel the chill: he's there."

Arhu stared at the empty space between the two statues, and shivered. It was a little odd. Rhiow looked at him in mild concern for a moment.

They went in, trotting up the stairs and weaving to avoid the
ehhif.
Arhu kept well over to the right side, skirting the pedestal of Sef's statue.
You scared the child,
Rhiow said to Urruah.

It's good for him,
Urruah said, untroubled.
He can use some scaring, if you ask me.

They came up to the top of the steps, and Rhiow took a moment to coach Arhu in how to handle the revolving door. Inside the polished brass doors, they stood for a moment, looking up at the great entrance hall, all resplendent in its white marble staircases. Then Rhiow said, "Come on, this way…" and led them off to the left, under the staircase and the second-floor gallery, and past the green travertine marble doorway that opened into the writers' room; then right, around the corner to a door adorned with a sign reading STAFF ONLY, and an arrow pointing down with the word CAFETERIA.

Arhu sniffed the air appreciatively. "Don't get any ideas," Urruah growled, "that's today's lunch you're smelling, and it's long eaten."

Rhiow heard his stomach growl, and carefully didn't chuckle out loud. She reared up and pushed the door open: outside of opening hours, it wasn't locked. It leaned inward with the usual squeak, and they trotted in and up the stairs to the central level of the stacks.

When they were out of the stairwell, Arhu loped over to the edge of the inner stack corridor and looked down through the railings. "Wow," he said, "what
is
all this stuff?"

"Knowledge," Rhiow said, stepping up beside him and looking up at the skylights and four stories of books, and down at three stories more: four and a half miles of shelving, here and in the tunneled-out space under Bryant Park, pierced here and there by the several staircases that allowed access between levels, and the selective retrieval system that moved between levels, its vertical conveyor arms picking up books that had been called for and dropping off books to be returned. It was the genius of this building, its arrangement in such a way as to hide this great mass of shelf space— so that even when you knew it was here, it was always a shock to see it, as much cubic space as would be in a good-sized apartment building, and not an inch of it wasted.

In the center of it all, on the level at which they had entered, was a large pitlike area filled with desks and carrels, with a wide wooden-arched opening off to one side. Right now this opening, where
ehhif
would come from the main reading room on the side to pick up books, was shuttered and locked, in case thieves should somehow get in through the great reading room windows by night and try to steal books for collectors. The rarest books were all now up in little wood-paneled, iron-grilled jails in the Special Collections, second-floor front, isolated from the main reference stacks by thick concrete walls and alarm systems. Ehef had told Rhiow once that you could hear the books whispering to each other in the dark through the trefoil-pierced gratings, in a tiny rustling of page chafing against page, prisoners waiting for release. Rhiow had come away wondering whether he had been teasing her. Wizards do not lie: words are their tool and currency, which they dare not devalue. But even wizardry, in which a word can shape a world, has room for humor, and there had been a whimsical glint in Ehef's eyes that night….

She smiled slightly. "This way," Rhiow said, and led the way over to the central core of carrels, where the computers sat two to a desk, or sometimes three. Several of the monitors were turned on, casting a soft blue-white glow over the desks; and on one desk, sprawled comfortably with one paw on the keyboard, and looking thoughtfully at the screen in front of him, lay Ehef.

He looked over at them with only mild interest as they came, though when his eyes came to rest on Arhu, the expression became more awake. Ehef's coloration was what People called
vefessh,
and
ehhif
called "blue"; his eyes, wide and round in a big round platter of a face, were a vivid green that set off the plush blue fur splendidly. Those eyes reflected the shifting images on the screen, pages scrolling by. "Useless," he said softly. "Not even wizardry can do anything about the overcrowding on these lines. Phone company's gotta do something.— Good evening, Rhiow, and hunt's luck to you."

"Hunt's luck, Senior," she said, sitting down.

"Wondered when you were going to get down to see me. Urruah? How they squealin'?"

"Loudly," Urruah said, and grinned.

"That's what I like to hear. Saash? Life treating you well?"

She sat down, threw a look at Arhu, and immediately began to scratch. "No complaints, Ehef," she said.

"So I see." He looked at Arhu again, got up, stretched fore and aft, and jumped down off the desk, crossing to them. "And I smell new wizardry. What's your name, youngster?"

"Arhu."

Ehef leaned close to breathe breaths with him: Arhu held still for it, just. "Huh. Pastrami," said Ehef. "Well, hunt's luck to you too, Arhu. You still hungry? Care for a mouse?"

"There are
mice
here?"

"Are there mice here, he asks." Ehef looked at the others as if asking for patience in the face of idiocy. "As if there's any building in this city that
doesn't
have either mice, rats, or cockroaches. Mice! There are hundreds of mice! Thousands!… Well, all right,
some."

"I want to catch some! Where are they?"

Ehef gave Rhiow a look. "He's new at this, I take it."

Arhu was about to shoot off past Rhiow when he suddenly found Urruah standing in front of him, with an attentive and entirely too interested expression. "When you're on someone else's hunting ground," Urruah said, "it's manners to ask permission first."

"If there are thousands, why should I? I wanna—"

"You should ask permission, young fastmouth," said Ehef, his voice scaling up into a hiss as he leaned in past Urruah's shoulder with a paw raised, "because if you don't, I personally will rip the fur off your tail and stuff it all right down your greedy face, are we clear about that? Young people these days, I ask you."

Arhu crouched down a little, wide-eyed, and Rhiow kept her face scrupulously straight. Ehef might look superficially well-fed and well-to-do, but to anyone who had spent much time in this city, the glint in his eyes and the muscles under his pelt spoke of a kittenhood spent on the West Side docks among the smugglers and the drug dealers, with rats the size of dogs, dogs the size of ponies, and
ehhif
who (unlike the tunnel-
ehhif
) counted one of the People good eating if they could catch one.

"Please don't rip him up, Ehef," Rhiow said mildly. "He's a little short on the social graces. We're working on it."

"Huh," Ehef said. "He better work fast, otherwise somebody with less patience is going to tear his ears off for him. Right, Mr. Wisemouth?" He moved so fast that even Rhiow, who was half-expecting it, only caught sight of Ehef's paw as it was just missing Arhu's right ear; the ear went flat, which was just as well, for Ehef's claws were out, and Arhu crouched farther down.