Diane Duane - The Book of Night with Moon

An almighty crash came from just in front of the second Dumpster. The bucket full of wet cement-sand had come down directly in front of the security guard with the gun. He jumped back, yelling with surprise and fear at being splattered, as the other ehhif did; then spun, looking upward for the source of the trouble. There was no one there, of course. Several of the men, including the second security guard, disappeared into the construction site; the man with the gun stood staring upward.

Rhiow, meantime, waited until the houff was within clear hearing range—she didn’t want to have to shout. As it lurched closer to the car where she and Saash sat, Rhiow chose her moment… then said the six syllables of the ahou’ffriw. It was not a word she spoke often, though part of the general knowledge of a feline in her line of work. Sidled as she was, Rhiow could see the word take flight like one of the hunting birds that worked the high city, arrowing at the houff. The word of command struck straight through the creature, as it had been designed to do when the houff themselves were designed; struck all its muscles stiff, froze the thoughts in its brain and the intended movements in its nerves. The houff crashed to the concrete and lay there on its side, its tongue hanging out, its eyes glazed. Urruah went down with it, and after a moment extricated himself and got up, looking confused.

“I don’t know about you,” Rhiow said softly—and Urruah’s head jerked up at the sound—“but we’re on callout this morning. You had some different business, maybe? The Powers That Be suggested you take the morning off to beat up defenseless houff?”

Urruah squinted to see her better. “Oh, ’luck, Rhiow.”

“ ’Luck is what none of us are going to have if you don’t pull yourself together,” Rhiow said. “Come on. We’ve got ten blocks to make before twenty-three after.”

“Long-jump it,” Urruah said, stepping down off the houff.

“No,” Rhiow said. “No point in throwing away power like that, when we may have something major to do in a few minutes. Get sidled and come on.” She jumped down from the car: Saash followed.

They crossed the street and went on down Lexington again: Urruah first, sidled now, and taking it easy for the moment; then Saash. Rhiow paused just for a moment to look over her shoulder at the houff. He was staggering to his feet again, looking groggy but relieved.

Good, Rhiow thought. She went after the others and caught up with Saash first. “That was slick,” she said, “with the bucket.”

“It was in a bad position to start with. Pull a string or so, change the bucket’s moment of inertia—” Saash shrugged one ear back and forward, casual, but she smiled.

Rhiow did, too, then trotted forward to catch up with Urruah. “Now,” she said, more affably, “you tell me what all that was about.”

He strolled along for a moment without answering. Rhiow was tempted to clout him, but it would be a waste of energy, and it really was difficult being annoyed for long at so good-looking a young tom , at least when he was behaving himself. Urruah was only two and a half, having passed his Ordeal and started active practice a year ago. He was good at what he did, and was pleased with himself, on both professional and physical counts: a big, burly, sturdy tabby, silver and black, with silver-gray eyes, a voice all purr, some very ornamental scars, and a set of the biggest, sharpest, whitest teeth that Rhiow could remember seeing on one of the People in several lives. She occasionally wondered, when Urruah pulled dumb stunts like this, whether those teeth went straight up into his skull and filled most of it, leaving less room for sense.

“That houff,” Urruah said, as they crossed Fifty-second, “took my mouse.”

“Wait a minute,” Saash said. “You’re trying to tell us that you actually caught a mouse, when there was all that perfectly good MhHonalh’s food in the Dumpster?”

Urruah gave Saash a scathing look. Saash simply blinked at him, refusing to accept delivery on the scorn, and kept on walking. “It was a terrific mouse,” Urruah said. “It was one of those bold ones: it kept jumping and trying to bite me in the face. I was going to let it go after a while: you have to respect that kind of defiance! And then that miserable ehhif shows up at shift-change and lets his houff off the chain where they keep the thing all night, and it comes running out of there, jumps into the street practically on top of me, and eats my mouse! Must have a lot of wolf in it or something. But what would you have done?”

“Not ride it down the street and nearly get myself shot,” Rhiow said dryly. “Or the poor houff. A good slapping around would have been plenty. And do you really expect a houff to mind People’s manners? It didn’t know any better. But that ehhif’s reckless with the houff. And it must have been awfully hungry. I wonder what can be done about your poor mouse-eater…”

“Not our problem,” Urruah said as they crossed Fifty-first.

“Everything in this city is our problem,” Rhiow said, “as you know very well. I’d say you owe that houff a favor, now; you overreacted. Better arrange a meeting with one of our people on the houff side and see what can be done about him. I’ll expect a report tomorrow.”

Urruah growled under his breath, but Rhiow put her ears back at him. “Business, Urruah,” she said. “There’s work waiting for us. Put yourself aside and get ready to do what you were made to.”

He sighed, and after a half a block his whiskers went forward again. “Tell me it’s the northside gate again.”

Rhiow grimaced. “Of course it is.”

“Somebody did an out-of-hours access,” Saash said, “and left it misaligned.”

“The substrates still hinged?”

“Hard to tell from just the notification, but I hope so. If we go in prepared to do a subjunctive restring—”

And they were off, several sentences deep into gate-management jargon before the three of them crossed Fiftieth. Rhiow sighed. Saash and Urruah might have frictions, but the technical details of their work fascinated them both, and while they had a problem to solve they usually managed to avoid taking their claws to one another. It was before work, and after, that difficulties set in; fortunately, the team’s relationship was strictly a professional one, and no rule said they had to be friends. For her own part, Rhiow mostly concentrated on balancing Saash and Urruah off against one another so that the team got its work done without claws-out transactions or murder.

Just south of the southwest corner of Fiftieth and Lex was then: way down into Grand Central. Outside the delicatessen on the corner, a street grating that covered the west-side ventilation shaft was damaged, leaving room enough to squeeze through without mussing one’s fur. They slipped down through it, Urruah first, then Saash and Rhiow, and followed the downward incline of the concrete shaft for a few yards until they were out of sight of the street. All of them paused to let their eyes settle, now blessedly relieved of the bright sunlight. The dimness around them began to be more clearly stitched and striated with the thin radiance of strings, properly separate now, and their colors distinct rather than blindingly run together.

“Smells awful down here today,” Saash said, wrinkling her nose.

“Just your delicate sensibilities,” Urruah said, grinning. “Or the flea powder.”

Saash lifted a paw to cuff him, but Rhiow shouldered between them. “Not now. Your eyes better? Then, let’s go on.”