The Book of Night With Moon (34 page)

"Uh, hunt's luck, Rosie," Arhu said, still staring.

"Luck food not great stomach noise scary," Rosie said sadly, settling back into his nest of cardboard and old clothes. All around him, under the cardboard, were piled plastic shopping bags stuffed full of more clothes, and rags, and empty fast food containers; he nestled among them, arms wrapped around his knees, sitting content, if a little mournful-looking, against the purring warmth of the compressor-pump that would service the fire hose coiled above him.

Arhu couldn't take his eyes off the
ehhif
. "Why is he
down
here?" he whispered.

"Alalal neihuri mejhruieha lahei fenahawaha,"
Rosie said, in a resigned tone of voice. Arhu looked at Rhiow, stuck about halfway between fear and complete confusion.

"Rosie speaks a lot of languages, sometimes mixed together," Rhiow said, "and I have to confess that some of them don't make any sense even when I listen to them with a wizard's ear, in the Speech; so some of what he says may be nonsense. But not all. Rosie," she said, "I missed that one, would you try it again?"

Rosie spent a moment's concentration, his eyes narrowing with the effort, and then said, "Short den full
hai'hauissh
police clean up."

"Ah," Rhiow said. "There was a big meeting of important people in town, a 'convention,' " she said to Arhu, "and the cops have stuffed all the shelters, the temporary dens, full of homeless people, so they won't make the streets look bad. Rosie must have got to the shelter too late to get a place, huh Rosie?"

"Uh huh."

" 'Homeless—' " Arhu said.

"We'd say 'denless.' It's not like 'nonaligned,' though; most
ehhif
don't like to wander, though there are exceptions. Rosie, what have you had to eat since you came down here? Have you had water?"

"Hot cloud
lailihe ruhaith memeze
pan
airindagha."

"He's
sshai-sau,"
Arhu said.

"Maybe, but he can speak cat, too," Rhiow said, "which makes him saner than most
ehhif
from the first pounce. You've got a pan down there in the steam tunnel, is that it, Rosie? You're catching the condensation from the pipes?"

"Yeah."

"What about food? Have you eaten today?"

Rosie looked at Rhiow sadly, then shook his head. "
Shihh,"
he said.

"Rats," said Rhiow, and hissed very softly under her breath. "He knows the smell of food would bring them. Rosie, I'm going to bring you some food later. I can't bring much: they'll have to see me, upstairs, when I take it."

There was a brief pause, and then Rosie said, with profound affection: "Nice kitty."

Arhu turned away. "So this is one of the the People-eating
ehhif
I heard so much about," he said. There was no deciphering his tone. Embarrassment? Loathing?

"He's one of many who come and go through these tunnels," Rhiow said. "Some of them are sick, or can't get food, or don't have anywhere to live, or else they're running away, hiding from someone who hurt them. They come and stay awhile, until the transit police or the Terminal people make them go somewhere else. There are People too, who drift in and out of here… many fewer of them than there used to be. This place isn't very safe for our kind anymore… partly because of the Terminal people being a lot tougher about who stays down here. But partly because of the rats. They're bigger than they used to be, and meaner, and a lot smarter. Rosie," Rhiow said, "how much have the rats been bothering you?"

Rosie shook his head, and cardboard rustled all around him. "Nicht nacht night I go up gotta friend rat dog, dog, dog, bit me good, no more, not at night…"

"Rats bad at night," Arhu said suddenly.

Rhiow gave him an approving look, but also bent near him and said, too softly for an
ehhif
to hear, "Speak normally to him. You're doing him no kindness by speaking kitten."

"Yes bad, heard them bad, loud, not two nights ago, three," Rosie said, his voice flat, but his face betrayed the alarm he had felt. "Smelled them, smelled the cold things—" There was a sudden, rather alarming sniffing noise from under the cardboard, and Rosie's eyes abruptly vanished under the awning of cardboard, huddled against a sleeve that appeared to have about twenty more sleeves layered underneath it, alternately with layers of ancient newspaper. Rhiow caught a glimpse of a familiar movement under the bottom-most layer that made her itch as if she had suddenly inherited Saash's skin.

The sniffing continued, and Arhu stared at Rosie and actually stepped a little closer, wide-eyed. The cardboard spasmed up and down, and a little sound,
huh, huh, huh,
came from inside it. "Is he sick?" Arhu said.

"Of
course
he's sick," Rhiow muttered. "
Ehhif
aren't supposed to live this way. He's hungry, he's got bugs, he keeps getting diseases. But that's not the problem. He's
sad.
Or maybe afraid. That's 'crying,' that's what they do instead of yowl. Water comes out of their eyes. It makes them ashamed when they do that. Don't ask me why."

She turned away and started to wash, waiting for Rosie to master himself. When the sobbing stopped, Rhiow turned back to him and said, "Did you see them come through here? Did they hurt you? I can't tell by smell, Rosie: it's your clothes."

The cardboard moved from side to side: underneath it, eyes gleamed. "They went by," he said, very softly, after a little while.

"Did you see where they came from?" Rhiow said.

The head shook again.

"Which 'cold things,' Rosie?" Rhiow said.

"They roar… in the dark…"

Rhiow sighed. This was a familiar theme with Rosie: though he
would
keep coming down here to hide, trains frightened him badly, and he seemed to have a delusion that if they could, they would get off the tracks and come after him. When life occasionally seemed to ratify this belief— as when a train derailed near enough for him to see, on Track 110— Rosie vanished for weeks at a time, and Rhiow worried about him even more than she did usually.

"All right, Rosie," she said. "You stay here a little while. I'll come back with something for you, and I'll have a word with the rats… they won't come while you eat. Will you go back to the shelter after the convention's done?"

Rosie muttered a little under his breath, and then said, "
Airaha nuzusesei lazeira."

"Once more, please?"

"Try to. No purr not long tired lie down not get up."

Rhiow licked her nose; she caught all too clearly the
ehhif
's sense of weariness and fear. "We have got to get you some more verbs," she said, "or adjectives, or something. Never mind. I'll be back soon, Rosie."

She turned and hurried away, thinking hard about Rosie's clothes, and putting together a familiar short description of them in her head, in the Speech, and of what she wanted to happen to them, and what was inside them. "Come on, Arhu. You don't want to be too close to him in the next few seconds."

"Why? What's the matter? What's he going to—"

Well down the hallway, Rhiow paused and looked back. In this lighting, it would have taken a cat's eyes to see what she and Arhu could: the revolting little multiple-branched river of body lice making their way in haste out of Rosie's clothes, and pouring themselves very hurriedly out every available opening, out from under the cardboard and out across the floor, where they pitched themselves down a drain and went looking for other prey.

"I wonder if they like rat?" Rhiow said, and smiled, showing her teeth.

She loped back out of the corridor, with Arhu coming close behind her, and together they made their way back to the fire exit.

"But
that,"
she said softly to Arhu, turning to look at him just before she slipped ahead of him through the metal of the door, "was entropy."

Out in the concourse again, the air seemed much fresher than it had a right to in an enclosed space where diesel fumes so often came drifting out of the track areas; and the sunlight pouring through the windows was doubly welcome. Rhiow paced along up the staircase to the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance; sidled again, she and Arhu jumped up on the cream marble colonnade railing and walked along it to where they could perch directly over the big escalators going up into the MetLife building. There Rhiow started a brief wash, a real one this time.

"That was completely disgusting," Arhu said, staring out and down at the shining brass of the information kiosk in the middle of the concourse floor.

"What? The lice? I guess so. But I always do that when I see him. It's a little thing. Can't you imagine how he must have felt?"

"I can imagine it right now," Arhu said with revulsion, sat down, and started scratching as if he too had had Saash's pelt wished on him.

"He's a sad case," Rhiow said. "One of many. The
ehhif
would say that he fell through the safety net." She stopped washing, sighed again: Rosie's sadness was sometimes contagious. "When we're not minding the gates… we try to spread our own net to cushion the fall for a few of those who fall through. People…
ehhif
… whoever. We take care of this place, and since they're part of it for a while… we take care of them too."

"Why bother?" Arhu burst out. "It won't make a difference! It won't stop the way things are!"

"It will," Rhiow said. "Someday… though no one knows when. This
is
the Fight, the battle under the Tree: don't you see that? The Old Tom fought it once, and died fighting, and came back with the Queen's help and won it after he'd already lost.
All
these fights are the Fight. Stand back, do nothing, and you
are
the Old Serpent. And it's easy to do that here." She looked around at the place full of hurrying people, most of them studiously ignoring one another. "Here especially.
Ehhif
kill each other in the street every day for money, or food, or just for fun, and others of them don't lift a paw to help, just keep walking when it happens. People do it, too.
Hauissh
goes deadly, toms murder kittens for fun rather than just because their bodies tell them to…. The habit of doing nothing or of cruelty, believing the worst about ourselves, gets hard to break. You meet People like that every day. It's in the Meditation: ask the Whisperer. But you don't have to be the way
they
are. Wizards are for the purpose of breaking the habit… or not having it in the first place. It's disgusting, sometimes, yes. You should have tasted
yourself
when we found you."

Arhu turned away from Rhiow. "It's sick to be so worried about everybody else," he said, refusing to look at her. "People should care about themselves first. That's the way we're built."

"You've bought into the myth too, have you," Rhiow said, rather dryly. "Sometimes I wonder if the
houiff
started that one, but I'm not sure they're that subtle. I suspect the concept's older, and goes back further, to our own people's version of the Choice." She looked at him, though, saw the set, angry look of his face, and flirted her tail sideways, a
why-am-I-bothering?
gesture. "I think your stomach is making you cranky," she said. "Let's go down and see about a bite more of that cheese— Oh. Wait a moment—"

An
ehhif
in a suit, and carrying a briefcase, was coming along the colonnade. Arhu stared at him with alarm, for the
ehhif
plainly saw them and was making directly for them. He got ready to jump—

"Not that way!"
Rhiow said three hurried words in the Speech, and hardened the air behind Arhu just before he launched himself straight out into the main concourse. "It's all right, sit
still!"

Arhu sat back down, shocked, digging his claws into the marble. The approaching
ehhif
paused, glanced around him casually, put the briefcase down, then turned around and leaned on his elbows on the railing, and stared out across the concourse himself.

"Nice to see you, Har'lh," Rhiow said. "Thanks for the backup yesterday."

"Don't mention it. I would have come myself, but I was otherwise occupied." He glanced sideways, only very briefly. "Good to meet you, Arhu," he said. "Go well. An excellent job you folks did. Nice going with that, Rhiow."

"Thanks, Har'lh. I could have done without the last part of it, but at least we brought our skins home whole. Going down to inspect the catenary?"

"I doubt I'll need to go down that far… I just want a look at the main matrices up top."

"All right. But Saash thinks the whole thing needs to be rewoven."

"So she said. When she makes her full report, I'll look into it in more detail and have a word with the Supervisory Wizard for the North American region," Har'lh said. "It's not a job I'd care for, though. Logistically it would be something of a nightmare. Not to mention unsafe for Saash if the job started to get more complicated than she thought."

"Don't things usually?" Rhiow said. Then, a little mischievously, she added, "I'm curious, though, Har'lh. You don't seem much bothered by these inspection runs. What happens to
your
physicality, Downside?"

"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 cappucino down yourself, are you surprised?" she said, and whisked her tail back and forth in a
tsk, tsk
gesture. "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 lecturing
me
about
my
body?"