“Then you might as well have just taken it anyway. You could have gotten in and out of that glass thing before he knew what had happened.”
“No,” Rhiow said. “For one thing, you’d never be able to come back here and get more: they’d chase you on sight. But more importantly, it’s rude to them.”
“Who cares? They don’t care about us. Why should we care about them?”
The pastrami was gone.“Come on,” Urruah said, glancing around: “let’s get ourselves sidled before the transit cops show up and get on our case.”
They slipped around a corner from the deli and sidled, then started to walk back out toward the concourse.“They do care, some of them,” Saash said.
Arhu hissed softly in scorn.“Yeah? What about all the others? They’ll kick you or kill you for fun. And you can’t tell which kind they are until it’s too late.”
Rhiow and the others exchanged glances over Arhu’s head as they walked. “It’s not their fault,” Urruah said. “They generally don’t know any better. Mostehhifaren’t very well equipped for moral behavior as we understand it.”
“Then they’re just dumb animals,” Arhu said, “and we should take what they’ve got whenever we like.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Rhiow. “Just because we were made before they were doesn’t mean we get to act superior to them.”
“Even if we are?”
She gave him a sidelong look.“Queen Iau made them,” Rhiow said, “even if we’re not sure for what. Ten lives on, maybe we’ll all be told. Meanwhile, we work with them as we find them…” Arhu opened his mouth, and Rhiow said, “No. Later. We have to get moving if we’re going to catch Ehef during his business hours.”
“Who’s Ehef?” Arhu said.
“Our local Senior wizard,” Urruah said. “He’s five lives on, now. This Me alone, he must be, oh, how old, Rhi?”
“A hundred and sixty-odd moons-round,” Rhiow said, “thirteen or so if you do it by suns-round,ehhifstyle.Oldish for this life.”
“A hundred and sixtymoons?”Arhu goggled.“He’sancient!Can he walk?’
Urruah burst out laughing.“Oh, please, gods,” he said between laughs, “let him ask Ehef that. Oh please.”
“Come on,” Rhiow said.
Chapter Five
The walk down to Fifth and Forty-second is never an easy one, even on weekends: too many windowshoppers in from out of town, too many tourists, and even a sidled cat has to watch where it walks on Fifth Avenue on Sunday. But by nine-thirty on a Sunday night, almost everything is closed, even the electronics shops that litter the middle reaches of Fifth, festooned with signs declaring closing-out sale! everything must go! and attracting the unsuspecting passersby who haven’t yet worked out that, come next week, nothing will be gone but their money. As a result, a pedestrian, whether on two feet or four, can stand for a moment and gaze across at the splendid Beaux-Arts facade of the New York Public Library’s Forty-second Street building—especially in the evening, when it glows golden with its landmark lighting—and enjoy the look of the place without being trampled by man, machine, or beast.
The four of them crossed with care in the lull between red lights, and Arhu stood looking up the big flight of steps, and from one side to the other, at the massive shapes of the two lions carved out of the pale pink Tennessee marble. Feral Arhu might have been, but no cat with brains enough to think could have failed to recognize the two huge, silent figures as images of relatives.
“Who are they?” Arhu said.
“Gods,” Urruah said pointedly. “Some ofours.”
Rhiow smiled.“They’re Sef and Hhu’au,” she said, “the lion-Powers of Yesterday and Today.”
Arhu stared.“Are they real?”
Saash smiled slightly.“If you mean, do they exist? Yes. If you mean, do they walk around looking like that? No,” Saash said. “But they’relikethat. Big, and powerful… and predatory, each in his or her own way. They stand for the barriers between what was, which we can’t affect, and what will be—which we can, but only by what we do in the present moment.”
“Except if you get access to a timeslide,” Urruah said, “when you can go back in time and—”
“Urruah,” Rhiow said, glaring at him, “go eat something, or do somethingusefulwith that mouth, all right?” To Arhu she said, “We donottamper with time without authorization fromThem,from the Powers That Be. And even They don’t do it lightly. You can destroy a whole world if you’re not careful or else you can wipe yourself out of existence, which tends to have the same effect at the personal level even if you’re lucky enough not to have caused everyone else not to have existed as well. So don’t eventhinkabout it. And you’ll find,” she added, as the smug we’ll-see-aboutthat expression settled itself over Arhu’s face, “when you ask the One Who Whispers for details on time travel anyway, that you won’t be given that information, no matter how you wheedle. If you press Her on the subject, your ears will ring for days. But don’t takemyword for it. Go ahead and ask.”
Arhu’s face went a little less smug as he looked from Saash to Urruah and saw their knowing grins: especially Urruah’s, which had a little too much anticipation in it. Rhiow looked sidewise at Saash.This“heavy-pawed dam” role isn’t one I ever imagined myself in,Rhiow said silently.And I’m not sure I like it…
Saash glanced at her, a little amused.You’re betraying a natural talent, though…
Thanks loads.
“Ifthey’re Yesterday and Today,” Arhu said, “then where’s Tomorrow?”
“Invisible,” Urruah said. “Hard to make an image of something that hasn’t happened yet. But he’s there, Reh-t is, whether you see him or not. Like all the best predators, you never see him till it’s much too late. Walk right through him, feel the chilclass="underline" he’s there.”
Arhu stared at the empty space between the two statues, and shivered. It was a little odd. Rhiow looked at him in mild concern for a moment.
They went in, trotting up the stairs and weaving to avoid theehhif.Arhu kept well over to the right side, skirting the pedestal of Sef’s statue.You scared the child,Rhiow said to Urruah.
It’s good for him,Urruah said, untroubled.He can use some scaring, if you ask me.
They came up to the top of the steps, and Rhiow took a moment to coach Arhu in how to handle the revolving door. Inside the polished brass doors, they stood for a moment, looking up at the great entrance hall, all resplendent in its white marble staircases. Then Rhiow said,“Come on, this way…” and led them off to the left, under the staircase and the second-floor gallery, and past the green travertine marble doorway that opened into the writers’ room; then right, around the corner to a door adorned with a sign reading staff only, and an arrow pointing down with the word CAFETERIA.
Arhu sniffed the air appreciatively.“Don’t get any ideas,” Urruah growled, “that’s today’s lunch you’re smelling, and it’s long eaten.”
Rhiow heard his stomach growl, and carefully didn’t chuckle out loud. She reared up and pushed the door open: outside of opening hours, it wasn’t locked. It leaned inward with the usual squeak, and they trotted in and up the stairs to the central level of the stacks.
When they were out of the stairwell, Arhu loped over to the edge of the inner stack corridor and looked down through the railings.“Wow,” he said, “what is all this stuff?”
“Knowledge,” Rhiow said, stepping up beside him and looking up at the skylights and four stories of books, and down at three stories more: four and a half miles of shelving, here and in the tunneled-out space under Bryant Park, pierced here and there by the several staircases that allowed access between levels, and the selective retrieval system that moved between levels, its vertical conveyor arms picking up books that had been called for and dropping off books to be returned. It was the genius of this building, its arrangement in such a way as to hide this great mass of shelf space—sothat even when you knew it was here, it was always a shock to see it, as much cubic space as would be in a good-sized apartment building, and not an inch of it wasted.