“I don’t mean that It’s encouraging her to get down on that lower roof that worries me.”
“Why? It’s not like she can get to anywhere else from there. She can roam around and get some fresh air… and she’s been doing it for months now without any trouble. She would have gone missing a long time back if she could have.”
“Well, I still worry.”
“Susannnnn … She’s not stupid. It’s not like she’s going to try to go twenty stories straight down.”
Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a slight smile as she finished tidying the box, then got out and shook her feet fastidiously. Bits of litter scattered in various directions, skittering off the terrace.They can make water run uphill and fly off to the Moon when they like,she thought, resigned,but they can’t makehiouh-litterthat won’t stick to your paws. A serious misplacement of priorities…
Rhiow went to the edge of the railed terrace, looked down. Herehhif’sapartment was near the corner of the building. Its wall fell sheer to the next terrace, thirty feet down, but she had no interest in that. Off to the left was an easy jump, about three feet, to the concrete parapet of a lower roof of a building diagonally behind theirs, but Rhiow wasn’t going that way either. Her intended path lay sideways, along the brick wall itself. Some fanciful builder had built into it a pattern of slightly protruding bricks, a stairstep pattern repeating above and below. The part of it Rhiow used led rightward down the wall to the building’s other near corner, about fifty feet away; and six feet below that, in the direction of the street, was the raised parapet of yet another roof, the top of the next building along.
Rhiow slipped through the railings, stepped carefully up onto the first brick, and made her way downward along the wall, foot before foot, no hurry. This segment of her road, the first used each day setting out and the last to manage before getting home, was also the trickiest: no more than two inches’ width of brick to put her feet on as she went, nothing to catch her should she fall. Once she almost had, and afterward had spent nearly half an hour washing and regaining her composure, horrified at what might have happened, or worse, who might have seen her.Wasted time,she thought now, amused at her younger self.But we all learn…
At the corner of the building Rhiow paused, looked around. Soft city-noise drifted up to her the hoot of horns over on Third, someone’s car alarm wailing disconsolately to itself four or five blocks north, the rattle of trays being unloaded at the bakery eastward and around the corner. All around her, the sheer walls of other apartment and office buildings turned blind walls and windows to the sight of a small black cat perched on a two-inch-wide brick, ninety feet above the sidewalk of Seventieth Street. No one saw her. But that was life in iAh’hah, after alclass="underline" no one looked up or paid attention to any but their own affairs.
Except for a small group of public servants, of whom she was one. But Rhiow spent no more time thinking about that than was necessary, especially not here, where she stuck out like an eye on a week-old fish head. Her business was not to be noticed, and by now, she was good at it.
She measured the jump down to the parapet. No matter that she had done it a thousand times before: it was the thousandth jump and one, misjudged, that would cheat you out of a spare life you had been saving for later. Rhiow crouched, tensed, jumped; then came down on the cracked foot-wide concrete top of the parapet, exactly where she liked to. She made the smaller jump down onto the surface of the roof, looked around again, her tail twitching.
No one there. Rhiow stepped across the coarse cracked gravel as quickly as she could: she disliked the stuff, which hurt her feet. She passed wire vent grilles and fan housings making a low moaning roar, blasting hot air up and out of the air-conditioning systems below; summer was coming on, and the unseasonably hot weather this last week had turned the city-roar abruptly louder. The smells had changed, too, as a result. The air up here reeked of the disinfectant that the biggestehhif-housesput in their ventilating systems these days and also stank of lubricating oil, dust settled since last winter, sucked-out food scents, mouth-smoke, garbage stored in the cellars until pickup day…
After that, the fumes and steams coming up from the city street seemed fresh by comparison. Rhiow jumped up on the streetside parapet, looking down. Seventieth reached east to the river, west to where her view was blocked past Third by scaffolding for a new building and digging in the street itself, something to do with the utility tunnels. The street was an asphalt-stitched pattern of paved and repaved blacktop, pierced by the occasional gently steaming tunnel-cover, lined with the inevitable two long lines of parked cars, punctuated by theehhifwalking calmly here and there. Some of them hadhouiff onthe leash: Rhiow’s nose wrinkled, for even up here she could smell what thehouiffleft in the street, no matter how theirehhifcleaned up after them.
No matter,she thought.It’s just the way the city is. And better get on with it, if you want it to stay that way.
Rhiow sat down, curled her tail around her forefeet, and composed herself. Amusing, to be making the world safe forhouiff tofoul the sidewalks in, but that was part of what she did.
Her eyes drooped shut, almost closed, so that she could more clearly see, and be seen by, the less physical side of things. Iwill meet the cruel and the cowardly today,she thought,liars and the envious, the uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not meanIhave to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commission comes from Those WhoAre.My paw raised is Their paw on the neck of the Serpent, now and always…
There was more to the formal version of the meditation, but Rhiow was far enough along in her work now, after these six years, to (as one of herehhifassociates put it) depart from the Catechism a little. The idea was to put yourself in order for the day’s work, reminding yourself of the priorities—not your own species-bound concerns, but the welfare of all life on the planet: not your personal grudges and doubts, but the fears, however idiotic they seemed, of all the others you met. There was always the danger that the words would become routine, just something you rattled off at the start of the workday and then forgot in the field. Rhiow did her best to be conscientious about the meditation and her other setup work, giving it more than just speech-service … but at the same time, the urge to get going and do the work itself drove her hard. She presumed They understood.
Rhiow got up again, stretched, and trotted off down the roofs parapet to its back corner, which looked inward toward the center of the block between Seventieth and Sixty-ninth. She had egress routes all around the top of the building, but this was the least exposed; this time of day, when even anehhifcould see clearly, there was no point in being careless.
At the back corner Rhiow paused, glanced downward into the dusty warm darkness of the alley between the two buildings. Nothing was there but a rat, stirring far down among the garbage bags behind the locked steel door that led to the street. The far windows in the nearest building were all blinded with shades or curtains, noehhif faceshowing.Well enough,she thought, and said under her breath the word that reminds the ephemeral of how it once was solid.
Rhiow stepped out, felt the step under her feet, there as always, and went on down: another step, another, through the apparently empty air, Rhiow trotting down it like a stairway. This imagery struck Rhiow as easier (and more dignified) than the tree-climbing paradigm often used by cats who lived out, and the air seemed amenable enough to the image made reaclass="underline" an empty stairway reaching twenty stories down into the alley’s dimness, the stairsteps outlined and defined only by the faintest radiance of woven string structure. The strings held the wizardry in. Inside it, air was briefly stone again, as solid to walk on as it would have been a billion years back, before ancient eruption and the warming sun on Earth’s crust let the atmosphere’s future components out. Shortly, when Rhiow was down, it would be free as air again. But like all the other elements—in fact, like all matter, when you came down to it, sentient or not—air was nostalgic, and enjoyed being lured into being as it had been once before, long ago, when things were simpler.