That’s the problem, of course,she thought.We’re embarrassed to admit enjoying interdependence. Too many of us have bought into the idea that we’re somehow “independent” in our environment to start with. As if we can stop eating or breathing any time we want…
She sighed and stretched again while Hhuha paused in her scratching and started going through her papers once more.Anyway, what’s the point,Rhiow thought,in making sure People are so very aware that they’re oppressed, when for most of them there’s nothing they candoabout it? And in many cases, when they truly don’t want to do anything, the awareness does nothing but make them feel guilty… thus making them more likeehhifthan anything else that could have been done to them. That outwardly imposed awareness satisfies no one but the“activist” People who impose it. “I suffer, therefore you should too…”
Granted, Rhiow’s own position was a privileged one and made holding such a viewpoint easy. All languages are subsets of the Speech, and a wizard, by definition at least conversant with the Speech if not fluent in it, is able to understand anything that can speak (and many things that can’t). Rhiow’s life with herehhif wascertainly made simpler by the fact that she could clearly understand what they were saying. Unfortunately, most cats couldn’t do the same, which tended to create a fair amount of friction.
Not that matters were perfect for her either. Rhiow found, to her annoyance, that she had slowly started becoming bilingual in Human and Ailurin. She kept finding herself thinking in slang-ehhifterms likera’hioando’hra:poor usage at best. Her dam, who had always been so carefully spoken, would have been shocked.
Rhi?said Saash inside her.
I’m awake,Rhiow said silently.
Took you long enough,Saash said.Believe me, when this is over, I’ve got a lot of sleep to make up.
Oh?Rhiow said.
Our youngster,Saash said dryly,has been awake and lively for a good while now. It’s been exciting trying to keep him in here, and I don’t think I’ll be able to do it much longer. I had to teach him to sidle to distract him even this long—
You mean you had totryto teach him to sidle,Rhiow said.
Imean he’s been sidling for the last two hours,said Saash.
Rhiow bunked at that. Nearly all wizardry cats had an aptitude for sidling, but most took at least a week to learn it; many took months.Sweet Queen about us,Rhiow thought,whathavethe Powers sent us? Besides trouble…
All right,Rhiow said to Saash.I’ll be along in half an hour or so. Where’s Urruah?
He’s having a break,Saash said. Isent him off early… I thought maybe there was going to be a murder.
Oh joy,Rhiow thought. To Saash, she said,Did he go off to the park? He mentioned the other day that some big tom thing would be going on over there.
He mentioned it to me too,Saash said.Not that I understood one word in five of what he was saying: it got technical. He left in a hurry, anyway, and I didn’t want to try to keep him.
I just bet,Rhiow thought. When Urruah was in one of those moods, it was more than your ears were worth to try to slow him down.All right. Hold the den; I’ll be along.
Somewhat regretfully—for quiet times like this seemed to be getting rarer and rarer these days—Rhiow got down out of Hhuha’s lap, sat down on the floor and finished her wash, then went out to the terrace to use thehiouhbox.
Afterward, she made her way down from the terrace to the top of the nearby building and did her meditation—not facing east for once, but westward. The smog had been bad today; Rhiow was glad she had been inside with the air-conditioning. But now that the day was cooling, a slight offshore breeze had sprung up, and the ozone level was dropping, so that you could at least breathe without your chest feeling tight. And—probably the only positive aspect to such a day—the Sun was going down in a blaze of unaccustomed splendor, its disk bloated to half again its proper size and blunted to a beaten-copperradiance by the thick warm air. Down the westward-reaching street, windows flashed the orange-gold light back in fragments; to either side of Rhiow, and behind her, skyscraper-glass glowed and in the heat-haze almost seemed to run, glazed red or gold or molten smoky amber by the westering light.
Rhiow tucked herself down and considered the disk of fire as it sank toward the Palisades, gilding the waters of the Hudson. As a wizard, she knew quite well that what she saw was Earth’s nearest star, a glimpse of the fusion that was stepchild to the power that started this universe running.Rhouawas what People called it. The word was a metonymy: Rhoua was a name of Queen Iau, of the One,inHer aspect as beginner and ender of physical life. Once cats had understood the Sun only in the abstract, as life’s kindler. It had taken a while for them to grasp the concept of the Sun as just one more star among many, but when they did, they still kept the old nickname.
The older name for the Sun had beenRhoua’i’th,Rhoua’s Eye: the only one of Her eyes that the world saw, or would see, at least for a good while yet. That one open Eye saw thoughts, saw hearts, knew the realities beneath external seemings. The other Eye saw those and everything else as well; but no one sawit.It would not open until matter was needed no more, and in its opening, all solid things would fade like sleep from an opening eye. A blink or two, and everything that still existed would be revealed in true form, perhaps final form—though that was uncertain, for the gathered knowledge of matters wizardly, which cat-wizards calledThe Gaze of Rhoua’s Eye,said little about time after the Last Time or about how existence would go after Existence, in terms of matter, past its sell-by date. But there was little need to worry about it just yet while Rhoua still winked. The day the wink turned to a two-eyed gaze …thenwould be the time to be concerned.
…For my own part,Rhiow told the fading day, 7know my job; my commission comes from Those WhoAre.Some I will meet today who think that day is blind and that night lies with its eyes closed; that the Gaze doesn’t see them, or doesn’t care. Their certainty of blindness, though, need not mean anything tome.My paw raised is Their paw on the neck of the Serpent, now and always…
Rhiow finished her meditation and stood, stretching herself thoroughly and giving one last look to that great burning disk as the apartment buildings of the western Hudson shore began to rear black against it. Having, like many other wizards, done her share of offplanet work, Rhiow found it difficult to think of Rhoua’s Eye as anything less than the fiery heart of the solar system. It still amused her, sometimes, that when the People had found out about this, they had had a lot of trouble explaining the concept to theehhif.Some of the earlier paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were potentially rather embarrassing, or at best amusing, in this regard—images of big eyes and sun-disks teetering precariously on top of cat-headed people, all hilariously eloquent ofehhif confusion,even in those days whenehhiflanguage was much closer to Hauhai, and understanding should have been at least possible if not easy.
Rhiow made her way down to the street, sidled before she passed the iron door between her and the sidewalk, and then slipped under, heading west for Central Park. *
She was surprised to meet Urruah halfway, making his way along East Sixty-eighth Street through the softly falling twilight, with a slightly dejected air. He slipped into the doorway of a brownstone and sat down, looking absently across the street at the open kitchen door of a Chinese restaurant. Clouds of fluorescent-lit steam and good smells were coming out of it, along with the sounds of a lot of shouting and the frantic stirring of woks.
“I would have thought you’d still be in the park,” Rhiow said, sitting down beside him.