Diane Duane - The Book of Night with Moon

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 biggest ehhif-houses put 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 the ehhif walking calmly here and there. Some of them had houiff on the leash: Rhiow’s nose wrinkled, for even up here she could smell what the houiff left in the street, no matter how their ehhif cleaned 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 for houiff to foul 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. I will 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 mean I have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commission comes from Those Who Are. 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 her ehhif associates 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 an ehhif could 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, no ehhif face showing. 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 real: 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.

Eight feet above the ground, where the surrounding walls were all bund, Rhiow paused. I could jump on that rat, she thought. Once again she saw the rustle and flicker of motion, heard the nasty yummy squeak-squeal from inside one of the black plastic garbage bags. Involuntarily, Rhiow’s jaw spasmed, chattering slightly—the spasm that would break the neck of the prey clenched in it. Her mouth watered. Not that she would eat a rat, indeed not: filthy flea ridden things, Rhiow thought, and besides, who knows what they’ve been eating. Poison, half the time. But cornering one, hitting it, feeling the body bruise under your paw and hearing the squeal of pain: that was sweet. Daring the rat’s jump at your face, and the yellowed teeth snapping at you— and then, when it was over, playing with the corpse, tossing it in the air, celebrating again in your own person the old victory against the thing that gnaws at the root of the Tree—

No time this morning, she thought, and you’re wasting energy standing here. Let the air get on with doing what it has to. Carrying smog around, mostly…

She went down the last few almost-invisible steps, jumping over the final ones to the dusty brick-paved surface of the alley. The noise inside the garbage bag abruptly stopped.

Rhiow smiled. She said the word that released the air from solidity: upward and behind her, the strings faded back into the general fabric of things from which they had briefly been plucked, and the air dispersed with a sigh. Rhiow walked by the garbage bag toward the streetward wall and the gate in it, still smiling. She knew where this one was. Later, she thought. Rats were smart, but not smart enough to leave garbage alone. It was two days yet until collection. The rat would be back, and so would she.

But right now, she had business. Rhiow put her head out under the bottom of the iron door, looked around. The sidewalk was empty of pedestrians for half a block; most important, there were no houiff in sight. Not that Rhiow was in the slightest afraid of houiff, but they could be a nuisance if you ran into them without warning—the ridiculous barking and the notice they drew to you were both undesirable.