Urruah, though, was looking across at the broken word, and his whiskers were pushed right forward.“You know,” he said, “even if they do fix it, somehow I suspect it’s not going to matter…”
They walked away.“What an incredible mess,” Rhiow said. “The patching’s going to be a nightmare.”
Urruah shrugged his tail.“It could have been worse,” he said. “Try patching a whole planet, or a whole region of space. But the Planetary’s on it, and he won’t dawdle: not with as many casualties as there were. Bad enough that they happened, and people suffered them. But after the master patch team’s done, things here will be back to normal instantly… as far as any ehhif here can tell. They’ll just reset the whole LA basin to sunset local time.”
“’Just!””
Urruah chuckled.“I’m not minimizing the work involved,” he said. “But it beats the alternative…”
“No argument,” Rhiow said.
Aufwi finished the circle, and everyone crowded into it, even Ith, who curled his tail carefully into it with a sigh, and Arhu promptly walked up it and sat on his head again. A second later they were in the Silent Man’s back yard, and he came out the French doors and looked at them, shaking his head.
I did not think I was going to see you people again, he said. When the hillside started falling down, I pretty much thought that was it. Yet it didn’t fall down, quite. Or on any of the other houses around here.
“Oh well,” Arhu said, clambering down off Ith again and heading for the house with his tail up, “we didn’t want to mess things up too much.” He paused by the Silent Man and gave him a sassy look. “But you should have some better cracks in your front walk now.”
To Rhiow’s astonishment, and also to Arhu’s, the Silent Man picked Arhu up and dangled him in front of him like a doll, grinning from ear to ear. And I thought I was a cat person before, he said. I want to hear about everything that happened. But first you should all come in and have something to eat.
There was no arguing with that. They did.
The storytelling went on late into the night, despite how wrecked the wizardly exertions should normally have left them all.“I have a feeling,” Helen said, stretched out luxuriously again on the white couch with Sheba on her lap, “that the Queen has been busy awarding dispensations of energy to the deserving…”
The Silent Man had been taking notes nonstop for at least three hours when they ran out of details for him, or at least details that would make sense. He looked at the pile of flip-notebook pages full of shorthand and shook his head, and stretched, being careful to avoid Ith’s head where it lay sticking into the living room through the open French doors. I have no idea what to make of most of this.
“I’m not sure we do either,” Urruah said. “It’s going to take a year’s worth of digesting.”
But will I be able to do that? the Silent Man said. If your‘patching wizards’ are going to put everything back the way it was before the big quake started… will I remember?
“Everything that happened up to then, surely,” Arhu said. “But you might want to leave town before the reset… and take your notes with you. Otherwise you won’t know how it came out.”
“I’ll let you know when it’s about to happen,” Hwaith said.
The Silent Man looked surprised. What– you’re not going back to the future with Blackie?
Rhiow looked away.“No,” Hwaith said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.” He was sitting up with his tail curled around his toes: now he became very interested in the end of the tail. “Sometimes we just have to do our job, that’s all.”
The Silent Man said nothing for a while. Then he looked at Rhiow. I need to let you know, he said, that the tinkering you did with my innards has just about worn off. That tells me that it’s about time I left town and headed back east. He glanced around. Sheba and I were just about finished with this town, anyway….
“There’s no harm in letting you know,” Urruah said, “that they won’t be finished with you for a long, long time. And you’ll make a lot of ehhif happy over time.”
The Silent Man bowed to him from where he sat in the wooden chair by the desk. There is no higher praise, he said.
Urruah sighed.“Someone’s going to have to go get the gate set up for the slide tomorrow.”
“That’ll be me,” Hwaith said. He glanced around at the others. “I’d sooner not move it: there are diagnostics to do, and anyway the patching teams wouldn’t thank me – “
“Hwaith, don’t bother,” Aufwi said. “I’ll handle it. You get some rest.” He glanced around at the others. “No point in wishing anyone the luck of the hunt: we’ve had it! I’ll see you all in the morning. Two hours after Eyerise?
“That sounds fine,” Rhiow said.
Aufwi vanished.
And what about you? the Silent Man said to Helen Walks Softly. What about your film career? What about your agent?
“I’ve already called him,” Helen said. “I’ve explained an urgent need to go home to see relatives in the Midwest. Which I do really have.” She smiled. “He made up half the story for himself before I could even finish misdirecting him – he’s used to having starlets break without warning under the strain of public attention.” Helen shrugged, and then smiled a little sadly. “I will miss LA, though. This LA. It’s been… a trip down Memory Lane.”
The Silent Man nodded slowly: then stood up at last. No long goodbyes, he said, and looked around at them all. If I don’t see you in the morning — I’ll see you in the papers.
“Not the funny ones?” Urruah said.
The Silent Man smiled. Never my style, he said.
He went from one to another of the People, petting them goodbye, and finally stopped by Rhiow. Don’t suppose you’d thank me if I picked you up and held you upside down… he said.
She dropped her jaw at him in the human-smile gesture.“Perhaps not,” she said. “Go very well, cousin; see you around the Worlds.” Who knows, it might be true…
He stroked her head, then straightened up to take Helen’s hand. You would’ve been great in the movies… he said. Oh well. Be a good cop.
“That’s the way I roll,” Helen said. “Go well…”
The Silent Man picked up the sleepy Sheba and headed down the bare little hall, and the bedroom door closed behind him.
“I don’t know about you,” Rhiow said, “but I’m ready for my nap.” She glanced idly over the others, but not too closely, all too aware of the sorrow or pity they were keeping from showing in their eyes, and unwilling to see it surface to everyone’s embarrassment. “Hwaith?” she said, turning to him. “A last debrief?”
“Of course,” he said.
And the two of them walked down the hall to the guest bedroom, tails high, as if everything was fine.
They were, after all, People.
Much later, in the guest bedroom, Rhiow was lying on the broad windowsill, looking out into the dark: and Hwaith was beside her, sprawled, snoring gently.
It was all over; over at last. Yet now there was something that wasn’t over. Or over before it’s fairly begun…
Rhiow looked out the window into the street, where in other houses lights were ablaze as people picked up after the quake. To think, she thought, that I sat there telling the story of Aifheh and Sehau so casually. How did I never see that this was coming for me?
Yet now that she did, she felt unable to know how to react, like some Person who’s never seen traffic before and freezes in the middle of the road when she sees the first headlights. I’m caught in something that sounds just like a Middle Lives tale for the Two of them, Rhiow thought. For there were endless variations of the basic story, regional variations, some of them even verging on the comedic – since when the Two began playing sa’Rrahh’s ugly Play back at her, humor was unquestionably part of the strand.