“The Whisperer says we’ll have as much support time from the other gates as we need,” Rhiow said. “It’ll be all right.”
“And meanwhile, at least we have one ‘illicit’ gate transit that we caught live and can use for its coordinates,” Urruah said. “More than that: Mr… Illingworth, whenever he is, will still be carrying some hint of wizardly ‘transit residue’ about him that we can isolate and track … and possibly get a better sense of who or what pushed him through that gate. Maybe even why, if we’re lucky.”
“The oldest lostlings’ residue will have already worn off, though,” Auhlae said. “Even after all the other problems are solved, we’re still going to have to find them somehow. And when we do … are they native to the same universe Mr. Illingworth is?”
It was a problem which had been nagging at Rhiow. Theoretically, the number of potential alternate universes was almost infinite. Even postulating a completely cooperative ehhif, once found—and that itself was none too likely—the two teams would then have to identify correctly which universe was that ehhif’s home. If they accidentally sent the ehhif “back” to the wrong world, their own home universe’s problem would be solved, but the same problem of growing instability would be created for some other world…
“It’s something we’re going to have to sort out,” Rhiow said, “but at the far end of this process, not the near end. I’d say what we must now do is construct Urruah’s ‘parasitic’ timeslide, plug into it the coordinates he saved from Mr… Illingworth’s transit, and see where it takes us: then find out what we can about that universe … especially about this Queen of theirs, and what happened to her. You said there had been other attempts on her life,” she said to Huff.
“At least three or four,” Huff said. “We’ve got to discover whether this assassination is one of the attempts which, in our world, failed: or if it’s a new one, never recorded …”
“Perhaps never recorded,” Urruah said, “because in the past someone else has already stopped it … Us, perhaps?”
“That would be reassuring,” Auhlae said. “But somehow I don’t think we can count on it …”
There was quiet for a moment. Huff sat gazing thoughtfully at the floor, a weary reddish carpet which over much time had become an amalgam of stomped-in chewing gum, spilled beer, and other substances that Rhiow’s nose flatly refused to identify, this far along in their evolution. “Well,” Huff said finally, “I concur. It only remains to decide exactly who makes the first incursion into the past.”
“Assuming that none of you are particularly eager,” Urruah said, “I think it should be us.”
The London team looked at him with expressions varying from Huff’s thoughtful interest to Auhlae’s surprise to Siffha’h’s faint confusion: Fhrio put his whiskers forward, positively (and to Rhiow’s mind, oddly) amused.
“Why?” Huff said. “Though I think probably none of us are all that eager …”
“I am!’ Siffha’h said.
“Hush,” Auhlae said. “You’re young for this kind of work yet, Siffha’h.”
“I am not! I’ve got all my teeth—”
“No.”
“Why not?!”
“Not now.”
“As for the ‘why’—” Urruah said.
“We’re more expendable than you are,” Arhu said dryly.
“Arhu!” Rhiow said.
“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way,” Urruah said, putting his whiskers forward, “but in a way he’s right. When it comes down to the feet and the tail of it, Huff, these are your gates, and you know them better than we do. If something goes wrong with a timeslide anchored to one of your gates’ power sources, you have a better chance to successfully troubleshoot the situation than we would. And another matter: the Powers sent us to intervene. Implicit in that, to my mind, is the suggestion that we may be best equipped, one way or another, to deal with whatever problems we uncover while working with you.”
“Or it might just be ego,” Fhrio said, one ear forward and one ear back. It was a joke, Rhiow thought … just.
“Urruah? Ego?” Rhiow said, and then stopped herself from saying “Perish the thought”, since that could have implied that it wasn’t ego. “Well, Fhrio, if you want to relieve him of the glory, I’m sure you’re welcome to change places with him, and he’ll stay here and mind your gates for you.”
Huff threw Rhiow a very covert and very amused look as Fhrio put his other ear forward. “Oh, no indeed,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to deprive him …”
“All right, then,” Rhiow said to Huff. “I think we’ll need some hours to put together what spells we want to carry with us, and to make sure things back at home are all right before we set out. If you can keep the gate in inactive mode until we get back, that’ll probably be best.”
“No problem with that,” Fhrio said. “I’ll just disconnect it from the power source entirely until you get back—when? tomorrow?—to set up the parasitic timeslide.”
“Tomorrow let it be,” Rhiow said, “about this time, if that suits you all.”
They all got up. “And meanwhile, thanks for the work you’ve done,” Huff said. “We’re further along than we were, though the problem looks worse than it did: at least there’s been a change in status, which you were begging for, Fhrio, as I remember. So you may owe Arhu one after all.”
“Though, Fhrio, I must admit that he overstepped the bounds,” Rhiow said. “And my apologies to you for that.”
Fhrio took a not entirely ceremonial swipe at Arhu’s ear. “Let him behave himself after this, then.”
“I will do so,” Arhu said with abrupt and brittle clarity, “insofar as you so do as well, when we come into the dark and you cannot find the way: when others see the path that you do not, and you rebel …”
Rhiow blinked. It was not anything like Arhu’s usual turn of phrase: she heard foretelling in it, and her fur stood up on her. She hoped Fhrio’s was doing the same, for there was no mistaking the Whisperer’s Dam when She chose to speak out loud … as she sometimes did, using Arhu as Her throat.
The resonances trembling around his words faded themselves out on the air, leaving the London team looking at one another. “I’m sorry,” Rhiow said, “but it’s another recent development. Arhu is a visionary, though the talent is still training. When it comes out so forcefully, though, we’ve learned to listen …”
Fhrio shrugged his tail. “We’ll see what happens,” he said, sounding skeptical, but cheerfully so. “Are we all done? Then I’ve got a gate to see to, and a pride to go home to. See you all tomorrow …”
He stalked out, leaving them all looking after him. Auhlae looked after him with some concern and said, “He goes my way home, for a little distance: I’ll go with him. Siffha’h, come with me?”
“Sure,” said the youngster. Auhlae rubbed faces quickly with Huff, saluted the others with a flirt of her tail, and headed off after Fhrio. Siffha’h trotted off after Auhlae, leaving Arhu gazing after her.
Rhiow lashed her tail once or twice, then said to Huff, “Truly, I am sorry if we’ve caused any trouble—”
“If the way he acts makes you think so,” Huff said, giving her an amused look out of those big green eyes, “don’t. Fhrio’s always like the one flea down in your ear that you can’t get at. But for all that, he’s good at his job. Come on …”
They all made their way out, slipping behind the bar and down a corridor behind it to a heavy metal door with a small cat-door installed in the bottom of it: then out into a small untidy yard stacked high with steel beer barrels and plastic soft-drink crates. At the back of the yard, a corrugated steel gateway in a high wall had a small improvised cat-door cut into the steel and hinged. “Convenient,” Urruah said.