Диана Дуэйн - THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON

"Is that the Sun?" one of the saurians said.
Rhiow laughed softly and looked eastward again, where the sky was swiftly brightening. "Turn around," she said, "and just wait…."
They waited. The shifting and rustling of scales died to a profound silence. Only the wind breathed through the nearer trees, rising a little with the oncoming day. Rhiow looked up at the Tree again, wondering: Are there really eyes up there, the eyes of those gone before, who look down and watch what passes in the worlds? I wonder what they make of this, if they are there indeed?
Someday I must sit under those branches, and listen, and find out….
A great breath of sound went up, a hiss, a gasp—and the sunlight broke over the edge of the world and sheened off all the saurians' hides, and caught in all their eyes. Rhiow had to look away, near-blinded by the brilliance.
She leaned over to Urruah. "Let's get out of here and leave them their world," Rhiow said. "They've suffered enough for it. Time for the joy …"
- =O= - *** - =O= -
The team made their way over to the gates, which were all in place, warp and weft sheening with power as usual: the reconfiguration below and the release of the catenary tree had completely restored them to their default settings. Through the central gate, Track 30's platform was now visible: they could see T'hom, looking back at them and seeming extremely relieved. He was sidled, which was just as well, for the place was full of ehhif going about their business, and he was doing the usual shuffle to keep from being knocked off the platform.
Urruah looked at the gate with some concern and turned to Rhiow. "Well?" he said. She looked at him, shook her head, then rubbed cheeks with him. "Consort," he said. "I liked the sound of that."
"You would," Rhiow said. "Sex maniac. Go on… and good luck. Get yourself sidled when you go through. But otherwise, if worst comes to worst, look us up again, next life. It wouldn't be the same without you."
Urruah snorted, meaning to sound sardonic, but his eyes said otherwise. He leaped through the gate—

She put her whiskers forward, well pleased.
Arhu, less worried, came over to the gate next. He looked up at Ith, who walked with him and peered through curiously. "Your world … Is it like this one?"
Arhu cracked up laughing. "Oh, yes, exactly. Not a whisker's difference."
Ith looked at him sidewise.
"Yeah, right. Look, Ith, come on through and have some pastrami," Arhu said.
Ith bent down toward him, gave him the bird-eyeing-the-worm look, but it was absolutely cordial, the salute of one member of the great Kinship to another . .. even though there was still a glint of appetite there.
"I believe you would say, 'You're on,'" Ith said. "I will come shortly. Meanwhile, my brother, my father … go well."
Arhu slipped through … and was small and black and white again.
Rhiow and Saash looked at each other. Then Rhiow slowly leaned forward and rubbed cheeks with her friend: first one side, then the other.
"Stay in touch," she said, "if you can."
"Hey," Saash said softly, "it's not like I'm going to be dead or anything. Just busy …"
Rhiow took a long breath, gazed around her, then stepped through onto the platform on Track 30—

"For what?" Rhiow said softly.
Well… yeah. Oh, Rhi, there's a lot to do, I have to get going!
"Go on, then. Go well, Tenth-lifer—and give the Powers our best when you see Them."
Saash smiled, rubbed past Urruah, trailed her tail briefly over bis back, took a friendly swipe at Arhu with one shining paw as she passed; saluted T'hom and Har'lh with a flirt of her tail; and walked off down the platform, glowing more faintly as she passed on—a wizard still, but one now in possession of much enhanced equipment, now reassigned to some more central and senior catchment area. Only once she paused. Rhiow stared, wondering—
Saash sat down on the platform and had one last good scratch. Then she washed the scratched-up fur down again, flirted her tail one last time, walked off into the darkness, and was gone….
- =O= - *** - =O= -
T'hom came over to them then and hunkered down to greet them: Har'lh was with him. As she trotted over to them, it occurred to Rhiow that there was something odd about the track area: it looked cleaner, brighter, than usual. However, for the moment she put that aside. "Har'lh!" she said, and rubbed against him: possibly unprofessional behavior toward one's Advisory, but she was extremely glad to see him. "Where in Iau's name have you been?"
"About half a million lightyears away," Har'lh said with annoyance, "freezing my butt off on a planet covered a thousand miles deep with liquid methane. Somebody wanted me way out of the way while something happened here, that was plain. Met some nice people, though: they needed help with some local problems… I did a little troubleshooting. No point in wasting the trip." He looked at them all. "Now what's been going on here??"
"That'll take some telling," Rhiow said.
"Let's walk, then," T'hom said.
They headed out of the track areas, up into the main concourse. Arhu and Urruah looked up and around them as they went, and Urruah's tail was lashing in surprise. The Terminal looked satisfyingly solid and hard-edged again, much improved over the last time they had seen it, with multiple time-patches threatening to slide off the fabric of reality like a wet Band-Aid. Ehhif were going about their business as usual.
"Have they cleaned this place again in the last day or so?" Urruah said. "It looks so… bright, it's… no. It's not just the sun. I know this place always looks good in the morning, with the sun coming in the windows like that, but… "
T'hom smiled a little as they walked up past the waiting room and toward the Forty-second Street doors. "It won't often look this good, I think," he said. 'This is how we knew you'd succeeded, down there, in some big way. All the manuals went crazy for a while, and all they would say was reconfiguration, reconfiguration, all over them. But then everything steadied down, and all the time-patching we'd been holding in place by force just hauled off and took, hard. Something of a relief."
They stepped out into the street, and Rhiow saw in more detail what T'hom meant, for the brilliance in the streets was more than sunlight. This was a city in unusual splendor: skyscrapers all around seemed consciously clothed in the fire of day, their glass molten or jeweled in the early sun; and down at the end of the block, the silver spear of the Chrysler Building upheld itself in the dawn like an emblem of victory, blinding. Everything hummed with the usual city sounds—traffic noise, oddly content with its lot for once, very little horn-honking going on. There was a peculiar sense of ehhif all about them being abruptly, and rather bemusedly, at peace with one another … for a little while. "The city's risen," Rhiow said, "as some of us rose. But it won't last."
"No. It's understandable that you would get some resonances from more central realities," Har'lh said, "some spillover… possibly even from Timeheart itself. You can't do that big a reconfiguration without some reflection in neighboring worlds: any of them directly connected by the catenary structure, anyway."
"It'll fade back to normal after a while," Arhu said. "It can't stay like this for long: you can conquer entropy only temporarily, on a local scale, She says … It never lasts. But while it lasts, enjoy it."
They walked down Forty-second Street, heading toward the river and the view of the Delacorte Fountain, a great silver plume of water rising up from the southernmost tip of Riker's Island in the morning sun. Rhiow started her debrief, knowing it was going to take a good while and might as well start now when everything was fresh in her mind. The only thing she knew she would have trouble explaining was how it had felt to have the One inside you. That knowledge, that power, had started to fade almost as soon as the experience proper was over. Just as well, I suppose, she thought. You can't pour the ocean into one water bowl….
The team and the two Advisories finally came up against the railing that looked down at FDR Drive and the East River. There the People sat down, and the Seniors leaned on the railing, and they went on talking for what Rhiow normally thought might have been hours: the sun didn't seem to be moving at its usual rate today … morning just kept lasting, shining down on a river that, more than usually, ran with light. In the middle of a technical discussion about what Saash had done to the catenary, T'hom suddenly looked up and said, "Well, they couldn't keep you down on the farm long, could they?"
"What is a 'farm'?" Ith said innocently, and leaned on the railing beside them, folding his claws and staring out over the shining water.
"Ahem," Rhiow said. "Har'lh, have you met our new wizard? Ith, this is Har'lh, he's the other Advisory for this area."
"I am on errantry, and I greet you," Ith said courteously, and bowed, sweeping his tail. Arhu ducked to let it go over his head.
'This is an errand?" T'hom said, with humor. "This is a junket."
"It is 'Research,'" Ith said cheerfully, glancing at Arhu with the conspiratorial expression of a youngster who's borrowed a friend's excuse. Arhu rolled his eyes, working to look innocent.
Rhiow wanted to snicker. It was a delightful change in Ith from the morose and somber individual they had first met; she suspected Arhu had had a lot to do with it, and would have much more.
"At any rate," Rhiow said to the two Advisories, "the worldgates are all fully functional again, and I don't think we need to fear any further interference from the Lone Power in that department. The Tree and the gate-tree, the master catenary structures, now have guardians who will never let the Lone One near them again. Some of them may not yet be plain about what It had in mind for them, but Ith will soon set them straight."
Ith turned his attention away from a passing barge and toward Rhiow and the team. "I am hearing more and more in my mind," Ith said, "of what the Powers will ask of us by way of guardianship. The requirements are not extreme. And little explanation will be needed as to why their present life is more desirable for my people than their former one. Hunger is something they are used to: until we distribute ourselves more widely, we will help one another cope with it… by more wholesome means than formerly. Meantime," and he glanced over at Rhiow, "I will need some help tailoring spells that will function on a large scale, with little maintenance, as sunblock." He grinned. "We have been down in the dark a long time."
They all looked out at the glowing water. "The dark…" Arhu said, looking down into water in which, for once, no trash bobbed. "I could never look at this before," he said to Rhiow. "But I can now. I won't mind seeing the river, even when it's back to normal. I could never stand going near it before: I was stuck on the Rock. But I don't think I have to be stuck here anymore."
"Of course not," Har'lh said. "Be plenty of demand for a hot young visionary-wizard all over the place. In other realities"—he glanced at Ith—"and offplanet as well. You're going to be busy for a while."
"I am," Arhu said. "Getting used to being in a team…" He glanced over at Rhiow.
Rhiow looked over at him affectionately and put her whiskers forward, smiling. "You're well met on the errand," she said.
They fell silent for a while, looking out at the light. The sense of power and potential beating around them in the air was as tangible as a pulse; for this little while, in mis New York, anything was possible. Rhiow looked out into the glory of the transfigured morning—not quite that of Tune-heart, but close enough— and said softly, only a little sadly, I had to tell you. The tuna wasn't all that bad….
She did not really expect an answer. But the walls between realities were thin this morning. From elsewhere came just the slightest hint of a purr… and somewhere, Hhuha smiled.
Rhiow blinked, then washed a little, for composure's sake.
She would head home soon. She would have to start drawing close to Iaehh now. He would be needing her, for there was no way Rhiow could tell him about anything she had seen or experienced… except by being who she now was.
Whoever that is… And if in the doing Rhiow brought with her a little of the sense of Hhuha—not as she was, of course, but Hhuha moved on into something more—that would possibly be some help.
It was so nice to know mat ehhif had somewhere to go when they died.
For Rhiow's own part, she had had enough dying for one day.
- =O= - *** - =O= -
The talk went on for a while more. Only slowly did Rhiow notice that the interior light was seeping out of things, leaving New York looking entirely more normal: the horns began to hoot in the distance again, and a few hundred yards down FDR Drive, there was a tinkle of glass as a car changing lanes sideswiped another one and broke off one of its wing mirrors. Tires screeched, voices yelled.
"Normalcy," Har'lh said, looking with amused irony at T'hom. "What we work for, I suppose. Speaking of work… I'm going to have to go make some phone calls. My boss is going to be annoyed that I took this time off without warning."
"Wizard's burden," Urruah said. "I feel sorry for you poor ehhif. Wouldn't it just be easier to tell him you were off adjusting somebody's gas giant?"
Har'lh gave Urruah a look, then grinned. "Might make an interesting change. Come on—"He looked over at T'hom. "Let's go catch a train."
The team walked the Advisories and Ith back to Grand Central, as far as the entrance to the subway station: it was not a place Rhiow chose to plunge into during rush hour while sidled, as you were likely to become subway-station pizza in short order. "Go well," she said to T'hom and Har'lh, as they went through the turnstiles.
We will, Har'lh said silently. You did….
Rhiow strolled back up to the main concourse level and put herself against a wall, where she could look out across the great expanse. Working properly again, she thought. With time, everything would. Someday, if things went right, the New York they had spent this long morning in would be the real one, and this one just a grubby, shabby memory. But meantime you make it work the best you can.
And meantime the scent in the air caught her attention.
Pizza…
The others came up out of the entrance to the subway, glanced across the concourse, and down at Rhiow. Ith in particular looked across at the Italian deli.
'Wow, about that pastrami…" he said to Arhu.
Arhu grinned. "Let me show you a trick somebody taught me," he said, glancing over at Rhiow. "I had a feeling you'd be sorry you showed him that one," Urruah said. "Ith, don't let him talk you into trying it. You'll make the papers."
"Tapers'?"
Rhiow gave Urruah a look. "Come on, 'Ruah, let's leave them to it, and go do the rounds."
Rhiow and Urruah strolled off across their territory, weaving casually among the ehhif, up the cream marble of the Vanderbilt Avenue stairs, and out of the sight of wizards, and People, and anyone else who could see. No one noticed them, which was just as it should have been; and life in the city went on….
Afterword
on hauissh
This occupation of the People, described only briefly in the literature by ehhif writers (the most reliable and perceptive is Pratchett*) has occasionally been called a pastime— but such a characterization is similar to calling soccer, baseball, and American-style football "pastimes"—for which human beings have sometimes wagered and won or lost fortunes, ignored almost all the other important aspects of their lives, and occasionally died under circumstances both comic and tragic.
An exhaustive analysis of hauissh would be far beyond the scope of this work, but it seems useful to include at least a summary explanation.
its origins
Hauissh is of such antiquity that it almost certainly predates the time at which felinity became self-aware. Its most basic structure implies a conflict over hunting territory between two prides, and most authorities agree that it evolved from this strictly survival-oriented behavior to a more structured but still violent dominance game between individual members of a single pride or (later) extended pride-community, with the loser usually being run off the pride's territory, or killed. (Even now the biggest predators tend to play hauissh in this mode, considering the refinements of later millennia to be oversophisticated or effete).
*in The Unadulterated Cat (Gollancz, 1989)
It would be as difficult to determine exactly when feline self-awareness arose as it would to fix a time at which hauissh began to develop beyond concerns of food, territory, and power into the more intellectual and entertainment-oriented version now played by cats the world over. All the families of the People seem to have at least some knowledge of the basic concepts of the game on an instinctive level. But the demands and challenges of the modern form of hauissh require a great deal more of the player than instinct alone will provide.
the rules
There is no mandated maximum number of players of hauissh, though games involving more than thirty or so players in one session are likely to be considered "inelegant." Most play involves no more than ten or twelve players, though, since some level of personal relationship is considered desirable among a majority of those playing.
Hauissh started out as a rough-and-ready, territorial-control game among the big cats, with the loser usually being run off the territory or killed.
Hauissh involves controlling a space—yard, sidewalk, field—with one's presence. This presence, called aahfaui, is not a constant, but is in turn affected by the space one is trying to control.
"Control" is defined by eius'hss, "being alone." The minute a player can see another cat, the control is diminished slightly, but not in such a way as to lower one's score. Control is diminished more if the other cat can in turn see the first player, and the first player's score suffers.
A successful position is one in which a cat can see several others, without himself being seen. The beginner would immediately think that this could be easily achieved by being down a hole but able to see several other cats, but such concealment is not considered gameplay in the rules, and a cat retreating to such a position, having previously been in play, is then considered out of it until once again exposed.
There are many other variables that affect play. Most important of these is eiu'heff a variable expressing a combination of the nature and size of the space being controlled. Nearly as important is hruiss'aessa, the location of the "center" of the game, the (usually invisible) spot around which the game revolves, representing (in more abstruse thought about hauissh) the Tree under which the Great Cat took his stance against the Serpent on the night of the Battle for the World, the battle by the River of Fire. The ultimate point of the game is not necessarily to reach or occupy this spot, but to dominate or master it, while also dominating as many of the other players as possible. Feline nature being what it is, individual People tend to resist domination, even for the best of reasons; so it can easily be seen that any given bout of the Game will be prolonged and fairly stressful. Most play in hauissh is individual, "team" play being considered too difficult to maintain for long periods, and likely to cause what People call, in Ailurin, laeu'rh-sseihhah, an unhealthy shift in one's nature toward a "foreign" style of being (cf. the German word uberfremdung, "overalienation")—"teamwork" being conceived as a distasteful land of "pack" behavior better left to other less advanced species, such as houiff.
Play begins when a quorum of players are determined to have arrived and to be ready to start. It ends when one player is deemed to have successfully "dominated" the hruiss'aessa and a majority of other players. A single such sequence is a "passage," roughly equal to an inning in baseball. Passages are grouped together in larger groups called "sequences," but there are no fixed numbers of passages-per-sequence, or sequences-per-game. Consensus usually determines when another passage is required to fill out a sequence (and it almost always is).
A detailed or exact description of how scoring is done is beyond the scope of this work. Scoring hauissh fairly and to all players' satisfaction is difficult work, filled with imponderables, and much more an art than a science. It is nowhere near as clearcut as scoring in any sport with which humans are familiar (and frankly, if it were, cats would probably lose interest in the game almost immediately). There are so many rules and variables influencing score—for example, weather, local conditions such as traffic or the passage of ehhif or other species through play, physical condition of the players, and total time of play compared against time actually spent making moves, to name just a very few—and so many of the variables and requirements are mutually contradictory that scoring a bout at the end of a round or "passage" closely resembles a discussion among Talmudic scholars than an umpire yelling "Yer out!"
To speak of how one "wins" at hauissh is probably a misnomer born of looking at the pastime through the human mindset: it is nearly as erroneous as speaking of "winning" at cricket—the human game that comes closest to hauissh in its (unspoken) expression of the idea that gameplay for its own sake is much more important than a result, of whatever kind. Like cricket, a bout of hauissh can go on for days or weeks, can be called on account of bad light (i.e., atmospheric conditions so bad that not even cats can see each other: rare), will often stop (repeatedly) for meals, and can run up extravagant scores that sound really impressive when you talk about them afterward, but which are actually indicative of neither group really
being able to get the better of the other, no matter how long the process continues. The record duration for a single bout of hauissh was set in 1716 (the actual date being either in January or February, but uncertainty involved with the Gregorian calendar shift and its coordination with the People's timekeeping makes a definite date unavailable). Six cats located in the town of Albstadt-Ebingen, then in the ducky of Wurttemberg and now in southern Germany, began a bout that lasted until 1738, and was completed by five of their great-grandchildren. The bout was forced to end in a draw because of a local outbreak of the plague, which killed what was judged a "threshold" number of the competitors.
The game (to People interested in it) naturally has profound philosophical and even mystical meaning. One saying is that "Rhoua plays best," the indication being that the Queen, in Her aspect of "Winking" Rhoua, can by definition see all People without being seen Herself, and that the Game is therefore a metaphor for life … which is (come to think of it) exactly what ehhif say about baseball, and soccer, and nearly every other sport down to tiddledywinks.
on other matters
The nonwizardly aspects of the New York Public Library's CATNYP online cataloguing system can be found on the World Wide Web at http://catnyp.nypl.org/
Please do not query the librarians about the Online "MoonBook" Project, as all but a few of the staff have no knowledge that it exists, and those staff who do know are required to deny its existence.
Readers interested in more information about wizardry might like to look at the following books by the same author:
So You Want to Be a Wizard Deep Wizardry High Wizardry A Wizard Abroad
And for more information about new developments in the "Wizards'" universe, as well as for pictures of cats who looks suspiciously like some of the principals in this book, curious readers with Web access may wish to visit the following site: http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~owls/homeward.html
A Very Partial Ailurin Glossary
A
aahfaui (n) the "presence" quality in hauissh
Aaurh (pr n) another of the feline pantheon: the "Michael" power, the Warrior; female aavhy (adj) used; also a proper name when upper case
ahou'ffrvw (n) the Canine Word; key, or "activating," word for spells intended for use on dogs and other canids
Auhw-t (n) "the Hearth": the Ailurin/wizardly term for what humans refer to as "Timeheart"—the most senior/central reality, of which all others are mirrors or variations
Auo (pr n) I
auuh (n) stray (perjorative)
auw (n) energy (as a generic term); appears in many compounds having to do with wizardry and cats' affinity for fire, warmth, and energy flows
auwsshui'f (n) the "lower electromagnetic" spectrum, involving quantum particles, faster-than-light particles and wavicles, subatomics, fission, fusion, and "submatter" relationships such as string and hyperstring function D
D does not appear by itself as a consonant in Ailurin, only as a diphthong, dh. E
efviauw (n) the electromagnetic spectrum as perceived by cats ehhif (n) human being, (adj) human
eiuev (n) veldt: a large open space. As a proper noun, Eiuev, "the Veldt" means the Sheep Meadow in Central Park
eius'hss (n) the "control" quality in hauissh F
ffrihh (n) refrigerator (cat slang: approximation)
fouarhweh (n) a position in hauissh, described as "classic" by commentators fvais a medium-high voice among cats; equates with "tenor" fwau (ex) heck, hell, crap H
Hauhai (n) the Speech
hauissh (n) the Game
he'ihh (n) composure-grooming
hhau'fih (n) group relationships in general
hhouehhu (v) desire/want
Hhu'au (pr n) The Lion-"God" of Today; nickname for ehhif "Patience," one of the carved stone lions
outside the New York Public Library main branch hihhhh (excl) damn, bloody (stronger than vhai) hiouh (n) excreta (including both urine and feces) hlah'feihre (adj) tortoiseshell (fur) houff (s n) dog houiff (pl n) dogs
Hrau'f (pr n) daughter of Iau, the member of the feline pantheon most concerned with creation and ordering it; known as "the Silent"
hruiss (n) fight, in compounds with words for "tom-fight," etc. hu (n) day
hu-rhiw (id) "day-and-night"; idiom for a black-and-white cat hwaa (n) drink
hwiojviauw (adj) the "upper electromagnetic," meaning plasma functions, gravitic force, etc.; "upward" I
iAh'hah (n) New York: possibly an approximation of the English name Iau (pr n) the One; the most senior member of the feline pantheon; female Irh (pr n) one of the feline pantheon; male (Urruah refers to his balls) O
o'hra (n) opera (approximation) R
ra'hio "radio"; A feline neologism
Reh-t (n, abstract) the future; also, the name for the Lion-Power guarding it, the Invisible One of the Three guarding the steps to the New York Public Library main branch
rhiw (n) night. Many compounds are derived from this favorite word, including the name Rhiow (the actual orthography would be rhiw'aow, "nightdark," but the spelling has been simplified for the purposes of this narrative).
rich (n) horse (but in the countryside, also ox, or any other animal that works for humans by carrying or pulling things; "beast of burden"). A cat with a sense of humor might use this word as readily for a taxicab, shopping cart, or wheelbarrow. rrai'fih (n) pride relationship implying possible blood ties ruah (adj) flat
S
sa'Rrahh (pr n) the ambivalent feline Power, analogous (roughly) to the Lone Power
Sef (pr n) the Lion-"God" of Yesterday; nickname for "Fortitude," one of the lions outside the New York Public Library main branch
sh'heih (n) "queen," unspayed female
siss (n) urine; a "baby word" similar to ehhif English "pee pee," and other similar formations sshai-sau (adj) crazy
sswiass a pejorative: "sonofabitch," bastard, brat, etc. sth'heih (n) "tom," unneutered male U
uae (n) milk ur (n) nose
Urrua (pr n) the Great Tom, son and lover of Iau the Queen (from the older word urra, "scarred") urruah (id) "flat nose" (compound: from ur'ruah) V
vefessh (n) water, also (adj) the term cats use to indicate the fur color humans call "blue" vhai (adj) damn, bloody
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DlANE DUANE was born in Manhattan in 1952, a Year of the Dragon, and she was raised on Long Island, NY. She has been writing for her own entertainment ever since she could read and her first novel, The Door Into Fire, was published by Dell Books in 1979. Since then she has published twenty-seven novels, numerous short stories, and various comics and computer games here and there, garnering the occasional award.
Diane lives with her husband, (and frequent collaborator) Peter Morwood, near the Irish town of Baltinglass, along with four cats and several seriously overworked computers, in a hundred-year-old renovated cottage—an odd but congenial environment for the staging of space battles and the leisurely pursuit of total galactic domination.
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