“All right. But watch yourself down there.”
“I will, Advisory.”
“Anything else I need to know about this?”
Rhiow sneezed, a residual effect from the foul rodent-smell down on the tracks, not to mention the way she smelled herself.“A lot of rats down there, Har’lh. Alot.”
Carl raised his eyebrows.“The early spring,” he said, “combined with this hot weather? That’s what the paper says. Some kind of screwup in the normal breeding season—”
Rhiow laid her whiskers back, a“no” gesture. “A lot of ratssince yesterday.In fact, to judge from the quality of the smell, since this morning.—That’s the other thing: we found a hurt youngster back there.”
“Feline? Human?”
“Feline. About the same age for us as a human child of nine. I think he ran into those rats: he’s all bitten up. Urruah and Saash are seeing to him. He should be all right, after some care.”
“Very well.” Carl picked up the magazine section. “The other gates are behaving themselves?”
“No signs of trouble.”
“You don’t think I need to declare them off-limits till you can look into this in detail?”
Rhiow thought. There were three other worldgates associated with the Terminal. Taking them offline would throw the whole weight of the area’s extraspatial transit on the Penn Station gates. Penn was underequipped to handle such a load—its two gates normally handled only onplanet work, and one of them would have to be extensively restrung at very short notice if the Grand Central gates went down. Jam, Hwaa, and Fhi’ss, the technical team handling Penn, would not thank her at all.
But it wasn’t a question of their feelings: what mattered was safety. Still, the nodes and string structures around the other two track-level gates, seen at a distance, looked fine; and she had Saash’s report…
“I’ll double-check them shortly,” Rhiow said. “But Saash says the gates at Thirty-two and One-sixteen, and the Lexington Avenue local gate, are patent and functional, and their logs and access-transit structures answered properly when interrogated. Her snap assessment is likely to be as accurate as my more leisurely one. If I find anything when I go Downside, I’ll advise you. But on present data, I would advise you to leave the gates as they are.”
Carl nodded.“I’ll take One-sixteen home and check it,” he said.
“Don’t be seen,” Rhiow said. “Nothing runs on the lower levels on Sunday.”
Carl smiled slightly.“There are more ways to be invisible than to sidle,” he said. “Let’s talk tomorrow morning, then.” He sipped at his cappuccino, then squinted briefly at her. “Rhi, what is that all over you? You look awful.”
She smiled slightly at him.“Occupational hazard. I told you the rats were thick down there … about an eighth of an inch thick, at the moment. —You on call all alone this weekend?”
Carl nodded.“Tom’s in Geneva at the Continental-regionals meeting; he’ll be back Wednesday. I’m handling the whole East Coast, just now.”
“Not much fun for you,” Rhiow said, “having no one to split shifts with.”
Carl waved the cappuccino at her.“I drink a lot of this. I get jangled, but I survive.”
Rhiow got up and shook herself again, not that it helped.“Well, give T’hom my best when you hear from him,” she said. “Go well, Advisory … and watch out for that caffeine.”
“Dai stiho,Rhiow,” Carl said. “Stay in touch. And mind the rats.”
“You gotthatin one,” she said, and headed down the stairs. *
When Rhiow got back down to the tracks, she found that Saash and Urruah had moved over to the far side, near the wall. Between them lay the killing, now curled into a tight ball. He was cleaner: Saash was washing him, and looked up from that now as Rhiow came over.
“How is he?” Rhiow said.
“He woke for a moment,” Saash said, “but went right out again—understandable. No bones broken, no internal injuries. He’s just bitten up and shocked to exhaustion. Sleep’s best for him, and a wizardry to kill the filth in the bites. But not here.”
“No, indeed not,” Rhiow said, glancing around. Noehhifterminal staff were out on the tracks as yet, but it wouldn’t do for any to come along and find this kitling. Theehhif’s relations with terminal cats had become somewhat difficult over the last few years. Every now and then the place was “swept,” and sick or indigent cats found there were taken away, along with sick or indigentehhif whohad also taken refuge in the tunnels for shelter rather than food.“Well, he’s got to have somewhere to rest. But I can’t help: the outside places near my den are too dangerous for a kit.”
“I live in a Dumpster,” Urruah said, with execrable pride. “There would be room… but I don’t think it’s the place for him if he’s sick.”
“No,” Rhiow said, “but it’s good of you to offer.” She didn’t say what she was thinking: that attempting to keep a youngtom barely out of kittenhood in close company with a tom of siring age was a recipe for disaster, whether the tom lived in a Dumpster or a palace, and whether he was a wizard or not. Mature toms couldn’t help their attitude toward kittens in general, and male ones in particular, no matter how they tried.
“I think I can put him up,” Saash said. “There are a lot of places way down and back in the garage where theehhifnever go. One big high ledge that I use sometimes will serve: it’s four levels down. None of theehhif godown there except to fetch cars out, and not often—it’s long-term storage space. This kitling won’t be heard, even if he cries, and if I have to, I can lay a barrier to hold either him or the sound in till he’s well enough to go.”
“You’ll have to spend some time there to be sure he’s settled,” Rhiow said, “and if he catches you, Abha’h will powder you again—”
Saash hissed softly, but the sound was resigned.“I suppose it’s in a good cause,” she said. “And I have to eat sometime; he’d catch me then anyway. Will you two lend a hand with the jump? I don’t propose to carry him all the way home in my mouth.”
“No problem. Urruah?”
“As long as she does the circle,” Urruah said, emitting a cavernous yawn. The morning’s exertions were beginning to catch up with him.
Rhiow yawned, too, then laughed.“Quick,” she said, “before we all fall asleep where we stand…”
Saash glanced around her, eyeing the area, and with a quick practiced flick of her tail laid out the boundaries of the spell, sweeping the area clean of random string influences and defining the area where she wanted the new ones to anchor. When the anchors were in place, looking like a cage of vertical bright lines around the edges of the circle, Saash added the only ingredient needed: the words. She said one word in the Speech, and the anchors leaned inward above them, knotting into the tip of a cone. Then three more words—the medium-precision versions of Saash’s and Rhiow’s and Urruah’s names, and a fourth generic medium-precision term for their “passenger,” with only the physical characteristics of his size and color added in, since they didn’t know his name or anything about his personality. With the details completed, the dirt and cinders under their feet went webbed with more bright lines, the anchors that would hold the four of them inside the spell. “Location’s coming,” Saash said to Urruah. “Ready?”
He turned and snagged one of the anchor strands in his teeth, ready to feed power down it.“Go.”
Saash recited a string of coordinates in the Speech, and then said the last word that knotted the spell closed and turned it loose. Urruah bit hard on the string, feeding power down it. The whole structure blazed: the“cone” of strings collapsed down on them, pushed them down and out through its bottom. A moment when the world was a tangle of lines of fire—
Then dimness reasserted itself. The four of them stood and sat and lay on a concrete shelf four feet wide and ten feet long, high up at the far end of a room much longer than it was wide. The shelf’s edge was a sheer drop of twenty feet to a floor painted with white lines and covered with blocky machinery, in whichehhif’scars were stacked three high.