“All right, all right, be patient,” Iaehh said, and reached Rhiow down a piece of bacon. “Here.”
Rhiow took it gladly enough; she just wished she wasn’t falling asleep on her feet “You spoil that cat,” Hhuha said, getting up and going over to the ffrihh.“Iknow what she wants. She wants more of that tuna. You should have seen her dive into it this morning! We’ve got to get some more of that.”
“Oh Queen Iau,” Rhiow muttered around the mouthful, “give me strength.” She cocked an eye up at Iaehh. “And some more of that before I go have a nap…”
Chapter Four
The hour’s main news stories, from National Public Radio: I’m Bob Edwards… The South Kamchatka oil spill has begun to disperse after Tropical Storm Bertram shifted course northeastward in the early morning hours, Pacific time, causing near-record swells between the Bay of Kronockji and Shumshu Islandat the southern end of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The spill from the crippled Japanese tankerAmaterasu Maruthreatened the economically important fishing grounds off the disputed Kurile Islands, and had significantly increased tensions between Russia and Japan at a time when the disposition of the Kuriles, claimed by Japan but occupied by the Soviet Union since the end of World War Two, had been thought by diplomatic sources to be nearing resolution.—President Yeltsin’s special envoy Anatoly Krischov has returned to Moscow from Teheran after talks aimed at resolving the escalating border crisis in the Atrek valley between Iran and Turkmenistan, where rebel tribesmen have clashed with both Iranian and Russian government forces for the fourth day in…”
Rhiow rolled over on her back, stretched all her legs in the air, and yawned, blinking in the late afternoon light. The sound of thera’hiobeing turned on had awakened her.A long day,she thought. Idon’t usually oversleep like this…
She twisted her head around so that she was looking at the living room upside down. A soft rustling of papers had told Rhiow even before her eyes were open that Hhuha had just sat back down at the other end of the couch. Iaehh was nowhere to be seen; Rhiow’s ears told her that he was not in the sleeping room, or the room where he and Hhuha bathed and did theirhiouh.So he was out running, and could be gone for as little as a few minutes or as long as several hours.
Rhiow knew in a general way that Iaehh was doing this to stay healthy, but sometimes she thought he overdid it, and Hhuha thought so, too; depending on her mood, she either teased or scolded him about it.“You’re really increasing your chances of getting hit by a truck one of these days,” she would say, either laughing or frowning, and Iaehh would retort, “Better that than increasing my chances of getting hit by a massive cardiac, like Dad, and Uncle Robbie, and…” Then they would box each other’s ears verbally for a while, and end up stroking each other for a while after that. Really, they were very much like People sometimes.
Rhiow yawned again, looking upside down at Hhuha. Hhuha glanced over at her and said,“You slept a long time, puss.” She reached over and stroked her.
Rhiow grabbed Hhuha’s hand, gave it a quick lick, then let it go and started washing before going for her breakfast.So,Rhiow thought while the news headlines finished,there’s still an oil spill.This by itself didn’t surprise her. Timeslides, like any wizardry meant to alter the natural flow and unfolding of time, were rarely sanctioned when other options were available. Probably the Area Advisory for the Pacific Region had noticed the availability of a handy alternative instrumentality: natural, “transparent” in terms of being unlikely to arouseehhifsuspicions, and fairly easily influenced—of all the languages that humans use, only the wizardly Speech has no equivalent idiom for “everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”
Oh well,Rhiow thought.One less thing to worry about.She spent a couple more minutes putting her back fur and tail in order, then got down off the couch, stretched fore and aft, and strolled over to the food dish. Halfway across the room, her nose told her it was that tuna stuff again, but she was too hungry to argue the point.
Wouldn’t I just love to walk over to you,she thought about halfway down the bowl, looking over her shoulder at Hhuha,and say to you, loud and clear,“I’d think that last raise would let you spend atleastsixty cents a can.” But rules are rules…
Rhiow had a long drink, then strolled back to jump up on the couch and have a proper wash this time. She had finished with her head and ears when Hhuha got up, went to the dining room, and came back with still more papers. Rhiow looked at them with distaste.
As Hhuha sighed and put the new load down on the couch, Rhiow got up, stretched again, and carefully sat herself down on the papers; then she put her left rear leg up past her left ear and began to wash her back end. It was body language that even humans seemed sometimes to understand.
Rhiow was pretty sure that Hhuha understood it, but right now she just breathed out wearily. She picked Rhiow up off the pile and put her on the couch next to it, saying,“Oh, come on, you, why do you always have to sit on my paperwork?”
“I’m sitting on it because you hate it,” Rhiow said. She sat down on it again, then hunkered down and began kneading her claws into the paperwork, punching holes in the top sheet and wrinkling it and all the others under it.
“Hey, don’t do that, I need those!”
“No, you don’t. They make you crazy. You shouldn’t do this stuff on the weekend: it’s bad enough that they make you do it all day during the week.” Rhiow rolled over off the paper-pile, grabbing some of the papers as she went, and throwing them in the air.
“Oh, kitty, don’t!” Hhuha began picking the papers up. “Not that I wouldn’t like to myself,” she added under her breath.
“See? And why you should pay attention to that stuff whenI’mhere, I can’t understand,” Rhiow muttered, as Hhuha picked her up and put her in her lap. “See, isn’t that better? You don’t need this junk. You need a cat.”
“Talk talk, chatter chatter,” Hhuha said under her breath, straightening the paperwork out. “Probably you’re trying to tell me I shouldn’t bring my work home. Or more likely it’s something about cat food.”
“Yes, now that you mention—” Rhiow made a last swipe at one piece of the paperwork as it went past her nose in Hhuha’s hand. “Hey, watch those claws,” Hhuha said.
“I would never scratch you, you know that,” Rhiow said, settling. “Unless you got slow. Put that stuffdown…”
Hhuha started rubbing behind Rhiow’s ears, and Rhiow went unfocused for a little while, purring. There were People, she knew, who saw the whole business of “having” anehhifas being, at best, old-fashioned—at worst, very politically incorrect. The two species really had no common ground, some People said. They claimed that there could be no real relationships between carnivores and omnivores, predators and hunter-gatherers: only cohabitation of a crude and finally unsatisfactory kind. Cats who held this opinion usually would go on at great length about the imprisonment of People against their will, and the necessity to free them from their captivity if at all possible—or, at the very least, to raise their consciousness about it so that, no matter how pleasant the environment, no matter howtasty the food and how “kind” the treatment, they would never forget that they were prisoners, and never forget their own identity as a People presently oppressed, but who someday would be free.
When allehhifcivilization falls, maybe,Rhiow thought, with a dry look.Make everyehhifin the city vanish, right this second, and turn every cat in Manhattan loose: how many of them will be alive in three weeks? Cry“freedom!”—and then try to find something to eat when all you know about is Friskies Buffet.
She made a small face, then, at her own irony. Maybe it would be better if all cats lived free in the wild, out of buildings, out ofehhifinfluence; maybe it would be better if that influence had never come about in the first place. But the world was the way that it was, and such things weren’t going to be happening any time soon. The truth remained thatehhifkept People and that a lot of People liked it… and she was one.