Диана Дуэйн - THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON

She went to him, wove around his legs briefly. He didn't move.
Rhiow reared up, patted his leg with a paw.
Very slowly, Iaehh looked at her….
There was something about the set of his face that frightened Rhiow: it had stopped moving, seeming almost frozen into a mask. For someone whose face was normally so mobile, the effect was bizarre. Rhiow crouched back a little, then jumped up into Iaehh's lap, the better to be in contact with him.
It was not something she would normally do, but her fear spurred Rhiow on, and very carefully, she slipped her consciousness into the upper levels of Iaehh's mind. It wasn't hard; it never was with ehhif— their thoughts tended to be all on the surface, though the imagery was sometimes strange, and the colors could hurt your eyes.

"No," he moaned, "no, no, no, no…"
Rhiow sat there in the dimness, looking at him, starting to go numb. Hhuha. Dead…
It didn't matter how. Gone. Arhu's artless question started ringing in her head: You mean die dead? Like a bug, or an ehhif?
Of course you never think of it happening to one of yaw ehhif, something in the back of her mind said heartlessly. They're young yet, they're in their prime; they've got years ahead of them. Until something unexpected comes along—a heart attack, or a stroke, or just a taxi that turns a corner too fast because someone in the backseat is trying to stick up the driver—
But, you think, there'll be plenty of time with them, plenty of time to sort out the possible answers to the question: where do ehhif go when they die? For there has to be somewhere, even though they've got only one life.
Doesn't there?…
Iaehh was crying bitterly now, one long tearing sob after another. Rhiow looked up at him, simply shocked numb, unable to accept the reality of what had happened … but the image was real, it had happened. Iaehh had now known the truth for too long to avoid accepting what had happened. It was too soon yet for Rhiow to feel that way … but that would soon change.
Very slowly she crept toward him again; silently, carefully, jumped up beside him on the chair; inched her way into his lap. "Ohh…" he moaned, and put his arms around Rhiow and hugged her close, and began crying into her fur. The image in his mind was pitifully plain, and the thought perfectly audible. All I have left of her. All I have left… Oh, Susan! Oh, Sue…!
Rhiow huddled down in his arms and didn't move, though her fur was getting wetter by the second, and the pressure of his grip hurt her. Inside, she moaned, too.
Oh, if only I could tell you how sorry I am! If only I were allowed to speak to you, just this once! But not even now. Not even now…
Sinking into an abyss of dumb grief, Rhiow crouched in Iaehh's arms, and wished to the Powers That Be that she too could cry….
Chapter Ten
Much later, very early in the morning, some of Iaehh's friends showed up at the apartment, as red-eyed and upset as he was, and took him away to "see to the arrangements." They made sure that Rhiow had plenty of food and water, and petted her, and spoke banalities about "look at her, she knows there's something wrong . . ." She was as polite to them as she could bring herself to be; she said goodbye to Iaehh as best she could, though even looking at him was painful at the moment, and she felt guilty because of that. The inevitable thought had already come up several times: why her and not you?! — and when it did, Rhiow fairly turned around in her own skin with self-loathing.
When he was gone, the pain got worse, not better. The silence, the empty apartment . . . which would never again have Hhuha in it … it all lay on her like lead. The empty place inside Rhiow that would never again resonate to that other, internal purr … it echoed now.
She sat hunched up in the early-morning light and stared at the floor, as Iaehh had.
This is not an accident, she thought finally.
Impossible for it to be a coincidence. The Lone Power knew all too well when a blow was about to be struck against It. This time, It had struck the first blow: a preemptive strike, meant to make Rhiow useless for what now had to be done. And who would say a word? she thought. The great love of my life is gone, my ehhifs dead. Of course they can't expect me to perform under these circumstances. Saash is the real expert anyway. They'll do fine without me. The Perm team will take up the slack.
The predictable excuses paraded themselves through her mind. She examined them, dispassionately, to see which one would be best suited to the job.
Ridiculous.
It was almost old Ffairh's tone of voice, except that now it was hers. You trained me too well, you mangy
old creature, Rhiow thought bitterly. I don't even run my own mind anymore: I keep hearing you, chiding, growling, telling me what I ought to do.
The problem was … dead or alive, his advice, Rhiow's thought, was right. She could not back away from her work, no matter how much she wanted to. And, thinking about it more, she didn't want to. If she sat here and did nothing, all she would see in her mind would be the cold tile, the cold metal table, and Hhuha….
She flinched, moaned a little. Oh, Powers That Be, haven't I served you well? Couldn't you do me this one favor? Just make it that this didn't happen, and I'll do anything you like, forever… !
Rhiow—!
Saash, she said after a moment.
Rhi, where are you? Are you still at home? We need you down here— Saash fell silent, catching something of the tone of Rhiow's mind. Rhi—what in the Powers' names has happened to you? My ehhif is dead, she said.
Saash was too stunned to reply for a few moments. Finally she said, Oh, Rhiow—how did this happen? Yesterday evening, early. A traffic accident. A cab hit her when she was crossing a street. Saash was silent again. Rhiow, I'm so sorry, she said. Yes. I know.
A long silence. Very sorry. But, Rhi, we do need you. T'hom has been asking for you.
I'll come, Rhiow said after a moment. . . though it seemed to take about an hour to force the words out.
Give me a little time.
All right.
Saash's presence withdrew from her mind, carefully, almost on tiptoe. Rhiow wanted to spit. This is what you have ahead of you, she thought to herself. Days and months when your friends will treat you like an open wound… assuming you don't all die first.
Maybe dying would be better.
She winced at that thought too.
Rhiow got up, made herself stretch, made herself wash, even very briefly, then went over to the food bowl. Iaehh had left her the tuna cat food that Hhuha had thought so highly of. Rhiow turned and ran out her door. - =O= - *** - =O= -
They all met in Grand Central, upstairs at the coffee bar where Rhiow had watched Har'lh drink his cappuccino, about a hundred years ago, it seemed. Tom was there, with several of his more Senior wizards, two young queens and a tom a little older than they; all of them had coffee so that the staff wouldn't bother them. All of them looked as if they had had far too much coffee over the past several hours. Rhiow and her team, sidled, sat up on the railing near them.
"The patches aren't taking," Tom was saying. "We've been able to hold them in place only by main force, by sheer weight of will, all night and all morning … and we cannot keep doing this. It's as if the nature of wizardry is being changed, from underneath."
"We had our first hint of this earlier in the week, didn't we?" Urruah said. "That timeslide that didn't take, out in the Pacific. That seemed weird enough. But now we're seeing the failure of something as simple and straightforward as a patch with congruent time. If it does fail… then we're going to have real trouble. This is going to become a New York where two or three thousand people were hurt or killed in the Sheep Meadow and Grand Central, and where Luciano Pavarotti has been eaten by a dinosaur!"
"We can't have that," Saash said, under her breath.
"Except it wasn't a dinosaur," said Arhu.
Everyone looked at him. "Oh, sure," Urruah said, hearing the uncertain tone in Arhu's voice. But Rhiow turned, the dullness broken for just that moment, and said, "No—let him explain. You were saying something about this yesterday. Something about all these big ones, these tyrannosaurs, being all the same one—"
"They are," Arhu insisted. "Their heads feel exactly the same inside. These big ones aren't the same as the saurians, who're all different. These big ones are all someone else … who doesn't mind getting killed. Getting killed doesn't take for him."
They all sat silent, dunking about that
"Immune to death," Saash muttered. "A nice trick."
"It's going to be interesting to look into," Tom said, "but it's a symptom, not the main problem. Wizardry in this world is being changed. The change has to be at least arrested … preferably reversed. For anything that can change the nature of wizardry can also change various other basic natures… like science. That is not something the modern world would survive; and from our own planet, the change could spread… to other parts of the galaxy, to other galaxies, possibly even into other universes."
That was obviously not something that could be permitted… though to Rhiow, it all seemed faraway and somewhat unimportant, next to the pain inside her. "We will, then, be doing another reconnaissance," Rhiow said. "Much deeper, I would think. All the way down …"
Tom nodded. "We'll be assembling a force to come down after you. But we must know exactly what the danger is and equip ourselves properly … because the odds of being able to send a second expeditionary force down, should the first one fail, seem nonexistent. Once you get word back to us how to intervene successfully, we'll follow immediately."
"Very well," Rhiow said. "We'll advise you when we're ready."
She and her team left, Arhu bringing up the rear. Rhiow walked on up to the waiting room, which was quiet now: no ehhif walked among the bones, which stood as they had stood the day before, dry and seemingly dead.
Off in one corner, Rhiow sat down and looked at the skeletons. The others sat down with her, Arhu again a little off to one side, watching the older wizards.
"Now what?" Saash said.
"We wait till the gate's ready. Then we go down again. How are you about that?" Rhiow said.
A long silence. "Scared," Saash said simply. "You know why. But I don't see what else we can do. I'm with you."
Rhiow switched her tail "yes……… Ruah?"
"You know I'm ready to go where you lead."
She gave him the slightest smile. He might be unduly hormonal and odd in the head about ehhif singing, but Urruah could always be relied upon.
"Arhu—"
He looked up at her. "I don't know about this—" he said.
"You're too damn uncertain about most things," Urruah said. "Your particular talent, especially. I for one want you to start doing your share of the hunting in this pride—pushing this gift of yours a little more aggressively. If you'd been actively using it for what it's for—looking ahead to see what's going to affect us in our work—you might have seen what happened to Rhiow's ehhif, and she might have been able to stop it—"
"Oh, yeah?" Arhu was bristling. "You're not running this team. And what're you going to do if I don't roll right over and do what you say?"
Urruah leaned at him, reared up, shoulders high, beginning to fluff. "Some of mis, maybe," he said, lifting a paw slowly, putting his ears down. "Come to think of it, maybe I should have done this a while ago—"
Arhu's growl answered his: they began to scale up together.
"Stop it!" Rhiow said. "Urruah, cut it out. You can't force vision." But her anger wasn't directed so much at him as at herself. It was embarrassing enough for Rhiow to hear Urruah say, out loud, something she had been thinking … another of those loathsome selfish thoughts that made her so furious with herself. The thought of begging Tom for a scrap of congruent time, just a little of what had been used to patch Grand Central and the Sheep Meadow, to keep a cab from turning a particular corner at a particular moment … The Powers will never notice…. She had actually caught herself thinking that. Leaving aside the thought that all patches were an iffy proposition at the moment—and what point was there in patching that bit of time, then having it come undone, so that Hhuha would have to die twice—thoughts like that were a poor kind of memorial for her ehhif, who had always had a short temper for other people's selfishness.