Don’t say if! said a desperate voice in her mind.
Rhiow stood up and made a great show of stretching, fore and aft, as she thought.“Then the case is proven, at least enough for a start. All right,” she said. She looked over at Jath. “Cousin, we’re going to be busy a while, it seems. You’re going to have to mind the gates at Grand Central while we’re sorting this out. Are you willing?”
The question was more ceremonial than anything else.“I accept with good cheer,” Jath said.
I bet you do, especially since you’ve been wanting to get your paws on my gates for– how long now? Since Ffairh went out-of-skin, anyway. It was one of those minor irritations that had been nibbling at the end of Rhiow’s tail for a long time. Jath had always seen himself as heir-apparent to the master supervisory position forthe New York gating facilities…especially since it brought with it supervision of all the other North American gates. He’d taken it badly when, on Ffairh’s nomination of her, Rhiow had succeeded to the position: but there had been nothing he could say or do, as the Powers that Be had “confirmed in silence” by raising no objection, and Harl’h, as the involved Supervisory wizard, had done the same. Rhiow had found dealing with the situation difficult, early in her career. But over time her ears had become more resistant to the claws Jath had tried to hook into them, and finally he’d given up bothering her and gone back to watching his own mousehole.
“I thank you,” Rhiow said, “and the Powers lay Their tails over your back as They walk this path with you.” Because They’ll need to!– for the Grand Central gates were not only more central and more senior than the Penn group, but famously cranky and difficult to manage. But then again, Rhiow thought, putting her whiskers forward somewhat belatedly, and possibly for the wrong reasons, maybe this small adventure will give you a sense of why I’m running Grand Central, and you’re not.
That was an unworthy thought, though. Rhiow turned away from it…but with just a few whiskers still forward. “Aufwi,” she said, “you know the here-and-now Los Angeles gate better than any of us: we’ll need you to act as anchor for us here, and consultant, so that we can talk to you when we’ve looked at Hwaith’s gate and have a realtime baseline tojudge it by.”
“No problem with that,” Aufwi said, glancing down at where the dislocated gate still hung, gently stirring, from its branch. “When I get it back in place, I’ll run another diagnostic before I take it offline, and compare the recent logs against the ones from Hwaith’s time. That way we cansee if the gate’s showing any signs of acting the way it was back then.”
“Just what’s needed,” Rhiow said. “Thanks, cousin. Do you know the area where this last quake was?”
Aufwi got that stricken look again.“No,” he said, “not really–”
Rhiow laughed as she got up, even though she staggered a bit– it was as if her legs had become suddenly unwilling to trust the solidity of the branch underneath her. “Calm down,” she said, “it’s not as if we expect you to know everything — !”
Arhu had sat up too, and still had his head tilted a little to one side.“I can see it,” he said. “There’s a gateway, and a hill. And I hear water coming down nearby…”
Rhiow put her ears forward, pleased that he’d so quickly found where they needed to be. Though he’d possessed the Eye, the visionary gift, from his first hours as a wizard, controlling it was another story. “We’ll do a short-jump transit, then,” Rhiow said, “and see what’s going on up there.” She glanced down and around to make sure there were no ehhif nearby, but they were mostly in other parts of the plaza– for all she knew, they’d been concerned that the tree might fall on them during the earthquake. “Probably that parking lot behind these buildings will be a good place,” Rhiow said: “it won’t be too full yet. Siffha’h, will you go lay out a transit circle for us? Arhu will pass you the coordinates.”
“Right,” Siffha’h said, and vanished with a small inrush of air. A second later, Arhu did the same.
Aufwi jumped down to the next branch, over which the gate was hanging, and sank his claws into the weft of it.“Call me when you need me,” he said to Rhiow; then he pulled the gate up from the branch and dove through it, taking it with him as he vanished.
Jath got up and stretched, a long casual gesture meant to suggest that earthquakes were nothing in particular to him. I saw your eyes, though, Rhiow thought. Why are you bothering with this petty point-scoring…? Or am I overly sensitive at the moment because the Earth just tried to kick me off like a flea?
“You’ve got your claws full with those two,” Jath said.
Under any other circumstances Rhiow would have immediately agreed: but with her nerves in their present state, she was unwilling to give Jath the satisfaction.“They’re both extremely talented,” Rhiow said, “and living proof of the old saying that sometimes the Powers mean the trainers to be the trained as well.” She put her whiskers way forward. “Meanwhile, the Track Thirty-Two gate at Grand Central will be running its pre-peak diagnostic shortly. I wouldn’t like to make you miss that…”
Jath’s expression went concerned…and acquisitive. “No,” he said, “of course not — Hunt’s luck to you, Rhiow, Urruah–”
He too vanished. Urruah gave Rhiow a look.“You sent him off to watch an automated log dump?” Urruah said. “Half an hour of figures as dry as a roadkill squirrel? You’re cruel.”
“Powers forbid I should deny him any of the joys of managing Grand Central,” Rhiow said, as they walked down the air together, glancing around at the plaza, where the upset ehhif were slowly regaining their composure. “If he’s going to covet something of mine, let it be an informed covet.”
At ground level they glanced around, then made their way toward the archway that led back to the parking lot.“Sounding a little possessive today…” Urruah said.
Rhiow hissed under her breath as they made their way under the arch, past a group of ehhif in broad hats, tuning up stringed instruments.“Aaah. ‘Ruah, it’s just that he’s so obvious about it sometimes… and so willful about ignoring the facts: as if Ffairh and I were in some kind of cosmic plot with the Powers that Be to deny him his Iau-given rights. As if any of us would have time for such a thing, let alone inclination–”
They strolled over to where Arhu was sitting by the glowing lines of a completed transit circle, all neatly done inside a single parking space well off to one side of the parking lot. Siffha’h was sitting in the middle of the circle and glowing slightly around the edges herself, an indicator that she had the wizardry powered up and ready to go, with herself as power source. As Rhiow and Urruah paced up to the circle, Siffha’h said, “Did you see the way he was staring at you?”
Rhiow glanced over at her.“’He?’” she said. “You little eavesdropper, haven’t I told you before this to stay out of my head?” She took a not-very-serious swipe at Siffha’h’s head. “Powerful you may be, but be responsible about it: leave your teammates their privacy. And ‘he’ who? Jath? As if I care.”
“Jath!” Siffha’h let out a hiss of derision. “That dried-up old hairball? I meant Hwaith.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it,” Arhu said, as Rhiow stepped into the circle and sat down on the small sub-circle marked out for her. “He just sat there twitching and staring, like he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
Rhiow jerked her tail in dismissal, then wrapped it around her feet where she sat.“Oh please! I’ve spent half the day, already, feeling as if everyone’s staring at me. I’m starting to think I put my ears on backwards when I got up. And as for Hwaith, he was watching me because I was the one who’d be making the decision. Yes, he was twitchy, but why wouldn’t he be? Nobody dares stay out of their proper time for very long: things get damaged.”