“I’d have thought a gate couldn’t have its logs erased, either,” Saash hissed, “but this seems to be our week for surprises.Nowwhat do we do? There is simply no way I can do this”— she pushed her forepaws through the strings again, leaned back, and pulled, and her paws simply came out again, without a pause—“without getting a response. It’s like dropping something and having it not fall down. In fact, gravity would beeasierto repeal than hyperstring function! What in Iau’s name is goingon?”
“Iwish I knew,” Rhiow said, and heartily she did, for life was now much more complicated than she wanted it to be. “We need advice, and a lot of it, and fast.” She looked over at the gate. “If it’s not functional, you’d better shut it down. FU notify Har’lh.”
“Rhi,” Saash said with exaggerated patience, “what I’m trying to tell you is that Icannotshut it down. Though the gate diagnoses correctly, none of the command structures are palpable. It’s going to have to hang here just like this until it starts answering properly, and we’d better pray to the Queen that the thing doesn’t come alive again without warning, with some train full of coffee-swigging commuters halfway through it.”
Rhiow swallowed.“Go check the others,” she said. “I want to make sure they’re not doing the same thing. Then get yourself right out of here.”
Saash loped off into the darkness. Rhiow sat and looked at the recalcitrant gate. Ireally need this right now,she thought.
The gate hung there and did nothing but glow and ripple subtly, splendid to look at, and about as useful for interspatial transit as that silk rug back in herehhif’sden.
Miserablevhai’dthing,Rhiow thought, and looked out into the darkness, trying to calm herself down: there was no tune to indulge her annoyance. No trains were coming as yet, but something needed to be done so that the commuters wouldnotmeet this gate before it was functioning correctly again.
Rhiow trotted hurriedly westward down the track, toward Tower A. Directly opposite the tower was a portion of switched track, used to shunt trains into Tracks 23, 24, and 25, and crossing more shunting track for Tracks 30 through 34. She found the spot where the two“joints” of track interleaved in a shape like anehhifletter X, or like an N or V, depending in which direction the interleave was set.
Rhiow glanced up hurriedly at the windows of the tower. There were a couple of the stationehhifsitting there, watching the board behind them, its colored lights indicating the presence of trains farther up the line. She could read those lights well enough, after some years of practice, to know that no moving train was anywhere near her, and theehhifweren’t likely to turn and see her before she did what needed doing.
She stood on the little black box set down in the gravel beside the switch and looked at it with her eyes half-shut, seeing into it, watching how the current flowed. Not a complicated mechanism, fortunately: it simply moved the track one way or the other, depending on what the tower told it.
Rhiow closed her eyes all the way, put herself down into the flow of electricity in the switch, and told the switch that she was the tower, and it should move the trackthisway.
It did.Clunk, clunk,went the track, and it locked in position: the position that would shunt an incoming train away from Tracks 23, 24, and 25.
Rhiow glanced up at the tower. One of the men inside at the desk was looking over his shoulder at a control board, having heard something: an alarm, or maybe just a confirming click inside the tower that the switch was moving.Right,Rhiow thought, and leapt over to the switched track itself. The switch had been the hard part. This would be easier.
She put her paws on the cool metal of the track and spoke to it in the Speech.Why do you want to lie there with your atoms moving so slowly? Why so sluggish? Let them speed up a bit: here’s some energy to do it with.… Abit more. Go on, keep it up. Don’t stop till I tell you.
Then she got her paws off it in a hurry because the metal was taking her seriously. The segment of track went from cool to a neutral temperature she couldn’t feel, to warm, to hot, toreallyhot, in a matter of seconds. She loped away quickly while it was still shading up from a dull apple-red to cherry-red, to a beautiful glowing canary-yellow. A few seconds more to the buttercup-yellow stage, and the steel of the two pieces of track had fused together.All right, that’s fine, you can stop now, thank you!she yowled silently to the metal, jumped up onto the platform, and skittered back toward the concourse.
A few moments later the Terminal annunciator came alive and started asking the trainmaster to report to Tower A immediately. Rhiow, panting a little but pleased with herself, came out into the concourse and found Saash, Urruah, and Arhu waiting for her: Saash looking flustered and annoyed, Urruah looking very put-upon, and Arhu deep in composure-grooming again, with one ear momentarily inside out from the scrubbing he was giving it.
“I welded the switching track by Tower A,” she said to Saash. “Nothing’s going onto Tracks Twenty-three through Twenty-five that isn’t picked up and carried there, at least not until they replace that track. Might take them a couple of days.”
“Well, don’t expect me to know what’s wrong with that gate by then,” Saash said. “I haven’t got a clue. We need advice.”
“I agree. What about you?” Rhiow said to Arhu. “Are you all right?”
He glanced at her, then went back to washing. Urruah looked over his head and said to Rhiow,“He was a little rocky for a few moments when I brought him out. Then he just blinked and looked dozy.”
“Arhu?”
He looked up this time.“I’m all right,” he said. “I just remembered …youknow.”
Iwish Ididknow,Rhiow thought, for she still had no satisfactory explanation for what this killing had been doing down there the other day, or for exactly what had caused what happened.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s walk. This place is going to be crawling with station people in a few minutes.”
They headed for the Graybar passage again. Rhiow spared herself a few seconds more to revel, just briefly, in the relative quiet of the terminal this time of day, this time of week. The soft rush of sound, echoing from the ceiling 120 feet above, was soothing rather than frantic: an easygoing bustle. People down for a Sunday in the city, heading home again; people who lived here, returning after a day out of town; or subway riders emerging to pick up a sandwich or a late newspaper, or a coffee. That bizarre, dark smell… Rhiow wondered what Arhu thought of it, for it bad taken so long for her to get used to it as anything but a stink. Now she was so accustomed to the scent of coffee in the Terminal that she couldn’t imagine the place without it, any more than without the faint aromas of cinders and steel and ozone. “Arhu,” she said—
But he wasn’t mere. And Rhiow smelled something in the airbesidescoffee, and suddenly everything became plain.
All our worries about his education,she thought.Did any of us think about getting him something toeat??
The smell of roasting meat, and cold meat, and meat as yet uncooked, was extremely noticeable, and it was coming from right in front of them—from the Italian deli that had a branch here, one of a big chain. Also in front of them, and now much closer to the meat, was Arhu. “Oh, wow,” he shouted as he tore toward the open glass-fronted deli counter, mercifully inaudible over yet another noisy announcement-request, for the stationmaster this time, “what is that, I want some!”
They ran after him. Rhiow’s fur stood right up all over her in fear.Oh, Gods, look at him, he’s come visible—
Arhu had already dodged around the side of the deli counter and was now behind it, standing on his hind legs, reaching and pawing for the meat that the white-apronedehhifthere was slicing.Pastrami,Rhiow thought, her mouth starting to water as she ran,oh, -what I wouldn’t give for some pastrami at the moment… !But Arhu couldn’t reach, and succeeded only in snagging theehhif’s apron. Arhu crouched down, ready to jump up onto the deli counter—