To Visit the Queen (46 page)

He sits down on the green marble bench under the scriptural bas-reliefs with their thirty kinds of inlaid marble, and begins, very quietly, to weep.

Just outside the bars, the darkness smiles and walks away on little cat feet.

Out in the Home Park, a black brougham waits until 2 A.M. precisely: then, slowly, quietly, moves off into the night.

There was a tremendous fuss the next morning when the burglar was found downstairs. There was less certainty about his status as a burglar when the lady-in-waiting found, dropped next to the queen's bed, a switchblade knife of terrible length and keenness. The police came, and the police commissioner with them: he questioned the queen with the utmost respect. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing. Her dear little kitties had been sleeping with her all night: she woke up and went to her toilette... and then all these horrible discoveries began to make themselves plain. The policemen took time to stroke the cats, which lay about on the white linen coverlet with the greatest possible ease and indolence, and a fairly smug look on their faces. The cat-scratches present on the "burglar's" head and neck and hands made it fairly plain where he had been, and (probably) what he had been up to. As a result, all that morning, the cats were petted and fussed and made much of. Instead of running away, as anyone might have expected with such young creatures, they stood it with astonishing stolidity.

It was nearly ten in the morning before the queen finally saw the final visitors out of her apartment, sent her lady-in-waiting away, and shut the door to have a few moments' peace. She slipped back into her bedroom, where the two young black-and-white cats had been asleep on the bed. One of them was lying on her back with her feet in the air, utterly indolent: the other had rolled over on his side and was watching her come with an air of tremendous intelligence.

"Ah, my dears," she said, and sat down on the bed beside them. "How I wish you could speak and tell me what happened last night."

The slightly larger one, the male, gave her that unutterably wise look. The queen turned her head to look out at the bright summer morning, which she might not have lived to see. The other cat rolled off her back and blinked at the queen lazily.

"Madam," she said, "do you think this life is a rehearsal? It's
not.
"

The queen's mouth dropped open.

"She's right, Queen," Arhu said, getting up and sauntering toward her. "You're acting like you've got as many lives as we have... and you don't. Don't you think it's time you stopped hiding in here— time you got out there and started making some use of yourself? Honestly, I'm sorry you lost your big tom with all the fur on his face. He sounds like he was nicer than the usual run of
ehhif
. But as far as I know, he's with the One now, Who'll certainly know how to treat him right: and if what I hear is anything to go by, he wouldn't like you sitting here grieving for him while you have all this work to do."

"But..." the queen finally managed to say. "But, oh, my dear little puss, how can you possibly know anything of the kind of pain I suffer when I think of— "

"
I'll
tell you what I know," Arhu said. "Sif, let's show her."

They showed her: the pain they knew all too well, and shared.

The queen sank back into the chair beside the bed, a few seconds later, staggered. Tears began to roll down her face.

"Beat
that,
if you can," said Siffha'h at last.

The queen hid her face in her hands.

"So don't think you have a corner on the suffering market," said Arhu. "Or on being lonely. Or that other people 'can't know.' When the sun comes up at last, we're all stuck in our own heads by ourselves. Everyone around you feels the pain of it, sooner or later— the Lone One's claw in their heart. Some feel it a lot worse than you, even if you
are
the dam to a pride of millions. So stop acting as if you're so special."

Even through the queen's tears, her jaw dropped open at that.

"And stop shirking your work," said Siffha'h. "Bad things will happen to your pride if you don't come out and do the things you were reared to do. They've started happening already. If you act now, you can stop the process."

"Oh," Arhu added, "and by the way, lay off the nuclear weapons. I know Dizzy likes them, but
this
is what will happen if you don't."

He showed her.

The queen went ashen at the sight of the Winter.

For several long minutes she was speechless: possibly a record. At the end of it, all she could whisper was, "You are little angels of God."

"Please, madam," Arhu said, "don't get confused. We're
cats.
If you mean we're messengers of the One, well, so is everybody: it's hardly an exclusive position. But this is the word.
No nukes.
You really ought to get rid of them, lest someone later be tempted to use them who isn't as morally upright as you are."

Flatterer.

She's susceptible. A good wizard uses the tools that are available.

"And make sure you don't let them get out of control while you're having them destroyed," Siffha'h said. "Some people might be tempted to get light-fingered, try to sell a few to somebody else on the grounds that no one will notice since they're being destroyed anyway."

The queen looked suddenly determined. "I have never liked them," she said softly. "I will begin work at once, if you say so."

"It would be a project," Arhu said, "that would probably be productive of some good."

The queen looked around with some surprise, for suddenly the bedroom seemed to have a lot more cats in it, and she had no idea where they might have come from. A huge gray tabby; a small, neat, black cat with golden-green eyes; a massive gray-and-tan tabby with astonishing fluffy fur; a small, tidy marmalade cat with a slightly sardonic expression. All of them looked at her with interest.

"Our colleagues," said Arhu. "We have been here on errantry on your behalf: the errand's over. They just wanted to look at you before we all left." Arhu smiled slightly. "It's in the job description."

"But, but my dear kitties," the queen said, "you cannot go now, you must stay!" Perhaps she already read the answer in their eyes. "I command it!"

"Majesty," said the black cat, with a nod of what might have been respect, "our People have their own Queen, to whom we answer: a higher authority, I believe, than even yours. We cannot stay: we have other errands to perform for Her. But She wishes you well, by us. Do well by your people, and farewell."

And then they were all gone.

The queen wept a little, as was her habit, and then started to put herself right after the events of the morning. She did not get around to reading the
Times
until almost bedtime. When she did, it took her a while to get to the parliamentary report, which she was about to skip, since for some days it had contained an interminable report about the Public Worship Regulation Bill. But suddenly, in the middle of the dry, dry text, she began to smile.

"The only thing about this that still bothers me," Urruah was saying, "is where that letter went. I can't imagine how he got it out of there so fast."

"But that's the problem," said Hwallis to the London and New York teams, earlier that afternoon. "A day for a letter to get to and from Edinburgh? A whole
day
? You must be joking."

The members of the New York team looked at each other. "It's easy for us to forget," Huff said, "that once upon a time, when this country had a rail network it could be proud of, and before there were telephones, the mail could come seven times a day— in London, in some parts, as many as
twelve
times a day. And pickups were much more frequent than they are now."

"The Houses of Parliament have a pickup for members at midnight," Ouhish said. "That letter would have been on the train to Scotland half an hour later. It would have been in Edinburgh, and delivered, with the first post, sometime after five in the morning. No later than seven, anyway. If a reply was passed directly back to the postman, that letter would also have gone on a train within an hour or so, and the reply would have been in London— Windsor, in this case— by the two-o'clock post at the latest."

Rhiow shook her head. "And we think our
ehhif
have technology," she said softly. "Sometimes retrotech has its points."

They spent the afternoon at the museum and said their farewells to Ouhish and Hwallis around four: then went for one last meeting, in Green Park. Artie was out for one last afternoon in London: the next morning he was due to catch the train back to Edinburgh, and after that, he would be heading off to a school on the Continent. He was sorrowful, but his basic good cheer would not let the affair be entirely a sad one.

"But will I never see you again," Artie said, "or Ith?"

"For our own part, it seems unlikely," Rhiow said. "Mostly wizards don't do time-work without permission from the Powers. There are too many things that can go wrong. But you will remember us for a long time."

Probably not forever,
she thought but didn't say. One of the factors that protected wizardry from revelation was the tendency of humans' minds to censor themselves over time, forgetting the impossible, recasting the improbable into more acceptable forms. Childhood memories, in particular, were liable to this kind of editing, as the adult mind decided retroactively what things could have happened in the "real world" and which were dreams. Yet Artie was a little unusual. There was something about him that suggested he would not easily let go of a memory, and that no matter how impossible something was, if it was true, he would cope with it... and hang on.

"But Ith is another story," Urruah said. "His time isn't precisely our time: the universe where he lives is closer to the heart of things, and so a little easier to get in and out of, for him. Also, he outranks us." Urruah smiled. "He's a Senior now, and Seniors have more latitude."

"No matter what else happens," Fhrio said, "remember that you helped save the queen, and many millions of people you'll never know. You'll never be able to prove it to anybody. But without you, we would not have been guaranteed entry into this timeline... and we couldn't have been sure to save the others. You did that. It might have been an accident at first, but afterwards, you did it willingly. We won't forget that, or you... and neither will the Powers."

Artie smiled at that. "I guess it's better than nothing."

"Immeasurably," Rhiow said.

They parted as sunset drew on, and made their way back to the Mark Lane Underground, where they had lodged the timeslide. As they went underground for the last time in this period, Rhiow looked up into the dirty sky. There was no Moon there, tarnished or otherwise. Depending on whether or not they managed to track back the "seed" event of this chain, it might always wear those terrible scars. But at least now there was a good chance that the world would not.

"So what's next?" she said to Huff as they made their way down to the "derelict" platform.

"That book," he said. "Fhrio, think we'll be able to wring what we need out of the gate logs when we get back?"

"I feel certain of it," he said. "And with Siffha'h to power the gating, the way she's doing now, there shouldn't be anything that can interfere."