“Aah, she hidin’ now,” Abad said sadly, and bent down to scratch Rhiow, whom he at least could still see. “Hey, nice to see you, Miss Black Cat, but my little friend, she gone now, I don’ know where. You come back later and she be back then, she play with you then, eh?”
“Sure,” Rhiow said, and purred at theehhiffor kindness’ sake; “sure, I’ll come back later.” She stood up on her hind legs and rubbed hard against Abad’s leg as he stroked her. Then she went after Saash, who glanced up at her a little guiltily as she stood again.
“You do that to him often?” Rhiow said. “I’d be ashamed.”
“We all sidle when we have to,” Saash said. “And if your fur tasted like mine does right now, so wouldyou.Come on, you may as well… we’re close, and enough people are out now that they’ll slow us down if we’re seen.”
Rhiow sighed.“I suppose. It’s getting late, isn’t it?”
Saash squinted in the general direction of the sun.“I make it ten of six,ehhif-time.”
Rhiow frowned.“That first train from North White Plains is due at twenty-three after, and we can’t let it run through a patent gate. Which Dumpster did he say it was?”
“Fifty-third and Lex,” Saash said. “By that new office building that’s going up. There’s a MhHonalh’s right next to it, and the workmen keep throwing their uneaten food in there.”
At the thought, Rhiow grimaced slightly, and looked over her shoulder to see what Abad was doing. He was still gazing straight toward them, looking for Saash: seeing nothing but Rhiow, he sighed, put the flea powder away, and went back into the garage.
Rhiow stood up and sidled, feeling the familiar slight fizz at ear-tips, whisker-tips, and claws as she stepped sideways into the subset of concrete reality where visible light would no longer bounce off her. Then she and Saash headed south on Lex toward Fifty-third, taking due care and not hurrying. The main problem with being invisible was that other pedestrians,ehhifand houiffparticularly, had a tendency to run into or over you; and since they and other concrete things were still fully in the world of visible light, in daytime they hurt to look at. In the“sidled” state, though, you were already well into the realm of strings and other nonconcrete structures, and so your view was littered with them too. The world became a confusing tableau of glaringly brightehhifand buildings, all tangled about with the more subdued light-strings of matter substrates, weft lines, and the other indicators of forces and structures that held the normally unseen world together. It was not a condition that one stayed in for long if one could help it—certainly not in bright daylight. At night it was easier, but then so was everything else: that was when the People had been made, after all.
Rhiow and Saash trotted hurriedly down Lexington, being narrowly missed byehhifpedestrians, otherehhifmaking early deliveries from trucks and vans,houiffout being walked, and (when crossing streets) by cabs and cars driving at idiotic speed even at this time of morning. There was simply no hour, even on a Sunday, when these streets were completely empty; solitude was something for which you had to go elsewhere. One had to weave and dodge, or hug the walls, trying not to fall through gratings or be walked into byehhifcoming unexpectedly around corners.
They made fairly good time, only once having to pause when an under-sidewalk freight elevator started clanging away while Saash was walking directly over its metal doors. She jumped nearly out of her skin at the sudden sound and the lurch of the opening doors, and skittered curbward— straight into ahouffon the leash. There was no danger: thehouffwas one of those tiny ones, a bundle of silky golden fur and yap and not much else. Saash, however, still panicked by the dreadful clanging of the elevator alarm and the racket of the rising machinery, hauled off and smacked thehouff hardin the face, as much from embarrassment as from fright at jostling into it, and galloped off down the street, bristling all over. Thehouff,having been hit claws-out and hard by something invisible, plunged off down the sidewalk in a panic, half-choking on its collar and shrieking about murder and ghosts, while its bewilderedehhifwas towed along behind.
Rhiow was half-choked herself, holding in her merriment. She went after Saash as fast as she could, and didn’t catch up with her until she ran out of steam just before the corner of Fifty-fourth. There Saash sat down close to the corner of the building and began furiously washing her fluffed-up back fur. Rhiow knew better than to say anything, for this was not Saash’s eternal itch: this washe’ihh,composure-grooming, and except under extraordinary circumstances, one didn’t comment on it. Rhiow sat down back to back, keeping watch in the other direction, and waited.
To Saash’s credit, she cut thehe’ihhshort, then breathed out one annoyed breath and got up.“I really hate them,” she said as they went together to the curb, “those little ones. Their voices—”
“I know,” Rhiow said. They waited for the light to change, then trotted across, weaving to avoid a pair ofehhifmothers with strollers.“They grate on my nerves, too. But would you rather have had one of the big ones?”
“Don’t tease,” Saash muttered as they trotted on toward the next corner. “I feel foolish now for hitting the poor thing like that. It wasn’t its fault. And I was sidled too. Those little ones aren’t always very resilient thinkers; if I’ve unhinged it somehow…”
“I doubt that.” But Rhiow smiled. “All the same, you should have seen the look on its face. It—”
She stopped, ears pricked. From nearby, sounds of barking and snarling and yowling were rising over the muted early-morning traffic noise, becoming louder and louder. The two of them paused and looked at each other, eyes widening—for one of the two lifted voices, they knew.
“Sweet Queen around us,” Saash said, “what’s he doing?!”
They took off at a run, dodging amongehhif goingin and out of the early-opening bakery at the end of the block, and tore around the corner. A dusty car with one tire flat and another booted was parked on their side of Fifty-third: Rhiow jumped up on its trunk and then leaped to its roof to get a better view. Saash came after, skidding a little on the roof and staring down the street. At the second impact, the car’s alarm went off. Rhiow and Saash ignored it, knowing everyone else would, too.
Fifty-third was a mess of construction in this block: several beat-up yellow Dumpsters were lined head to tail on the north side, and scaffolding towered several stories above them, against the front of two brownstones being renovated. Near the middle Dumpster, which sat with its lid open, a group of men in Tshirts and hard hats, and two others in security guards’ uniforms, stood staring in astonishment at something between them and the Dumpster. At the sound of the car alarm, the men gave one glance toward the end of the street, saw nothing, and turned their attention back to what they had been watching.
The barks and growls scaled up into a yipping howl of sheer terror, and the men scattered, some toward the scaffolding, some toward the street From among them burst a huge German shepherd, tawny and black. Its ears were plastered against its skull, its tail was clamped between its hind legs, and it leapt four-footed into the air and came down howling, and spun in circles, and shook itself all over. But it could do nothing to dislodge the gray-striped shape that clung to its neck, yowling at the top of his voice … not in fear or pain, either. Urruah was having a good time.