To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane Page B

patterned, more muscular, and, as usual, harder to understand. Rhiow had seen these hints before the last months' troubles began, but hadn't been able to make much of them at the time. Now, with the events and the history behind her, the myth was easier to understand. But it still made her blink, sometimes, and wonder what happened to the good old days, when things were simpler: when cats were cats, and snakes were snakes, and never the twain would meet.
    Of course, for most cats and serpents, they never would. But as a wizard, Rhiow came of a bigger worldview, one that held that cats were equal, under the One, to any other sentient species— say, whales, or humans, or some dogs or birds of prey, or various other creatures intelligent enough to have emotional lives and to understand the existence of a world outside their own selves. Most People would have trouble with the idea that ehhif were equal to them. And dogs? Birds? They would hiss with indignation at the very idea. Rhiow knew better, but was glad she did not often have to indulge in explanations to her less tolerant kindred.
    "It's been a very strange time," Rhiow said at last, "and I look forward to telling you about it in detail: for, truly, there are parts of it I don't understand myself. 'Ruah... any news?"
    Urruah had strolled over to where they sat, and now threw a look over his shoulder at the gate. "I really hate to admit it," he said, "but at first glance, I'm stumped. Rhi, Huff, I'll want to examine the logs in detail, of course." He looked over his shoulder at Fhrio for approval: Fhrio waved his tail in a "don't-care" way. "Good. I'll do that later this evening. I need a break."
    Urruah did sound tired, but that was no surprise: even though the gates had their diagnostic procedures built in, there were other, more sophisticated ones that Rhiow's team routinely used to make sure that a given gate's own diagnostics were "honest." It had always seemed a wise precaution to Rhiow, since a deranged gate might conceivably lose the ability to diagnose itself correctly.
    "You'll want to sort your schedule out with Fhrio, perhaps," Huff said.
    "Yes," said Urruah, "I'll do that." He headed back over to the gate, where Fhrio and Siffha'h were withdrawing themselves from the gate matrix and letting the strings snap back into place.
    Huff sighed. "We'll leave it shut down for another day," he said, "and come and tackle it afresh tomorrow. Rhiow, I think we've made a good start."
    "I hope so too," she said. "I have a feeling that this won't be one of those quickly solved problems, but we won't be out of your fur until it's handled."
    "Then we'll see Urruah later this evening," said Auhlae, "and you tomorrow?"
    "Tomorrow let it be," Rhiow said, and bumped noses with their hosts, though she threw a look over her shoulder first. Urruah and Fhrio had their heads together again: but Arhu was looking in one direction, and Siffha'h in another, as if they were on opposite sides of the same planet.
    Rhiow smiled slightly "Dai stihó," she said, the non-species-specific greeting and parting words of one wizard to another: Go well. "Come on, Arhu, 'Ruah," she said, getting up, "let's call it a day."

    "Very nice People," Urruah said as they came out on the Grand Central side of their own gate. "Competent."
    That assessment surprised Rhiow slightly. "You're satisfied with their inspection routines?" she asked.
    "They're much like what I'd be doing if I were stuck with their gate complex," Urruah said. "I mean, Rhi, look at their transit figures. Three or maybe four times the number of wizards and unaffiliated outworlders use their gates every day as use ours, or the ones at Penn. London is a major onplanet transit center for western Europe, and if you tried to read all the gate logs there once a week, the way Saash did for ours, you'd never have time to do anything else, such as fix the gates when they broke. I'm going to take some time to read those logs in more detail, as I said.