The Big Meow

But the Whisperer had been silent… and there came a point where you had to set paranoia aside and act. Rhiow jumped down from the windowsill, pulled the door open with one paw, and strolled down the hall.

The living room was a hive of wizardly activity, with spell circles laid out on the floor and Siffha’h, Urruah, Hwaith, and Aufwi working on various tasks: while Helen Walks Softly still sat on the floor looking the work over, and the Silent Man sat at his desk making hurried notes on something. At the edge of the circle Rhiow stood for a moment, looking at it unfocused to get a general idea of what was going on: then sat down and washed her face, acutely aware of the others watching her.

She let them wait, hunting for the right words. Then she lifted her head.

“All right,” Rhiow said at last. “Where’s a good place to make a last-ditch attempt to save the known and unknown universes?”

Her team looked at one another with satisfaction: and Hwaith caught her eye.

“Griffith Park?” he said. “There’s a great view from Mount Hollywood…”

“Fine,” Rhiow said. “We have a lot to do in a hurry besides our own setup. There are all the planet’s Regional-level and higher wizards to speak to; they’ll already know from the Powers and their manuals, in a general way, what the threat is and what’s being done about it. But we’ll need to let them know the specifics, now, and help them start preparing to preserve and protect their own pieces of the world.” She looked over at Hwaith. “And I need to talk to the Planetary,” she said. “If things on Earth get too damaged, the kindest thing may be for him or her to pull the plug.”

“I’ll get started on that,” Aufwi said, and vanished.

“You, naturally,” Rhiow said to Urruah, “won’t have been wasting time while I was off side…”

Urruah waved his tail at the spell structure he’d been working on since Rhiow had gone to sleep.

“You’ve been busy…” she said. The circle contained all the worldgate variables sourced from the attempted manifestation in the cavern, which the Whisperer’s more automated functions had thoughtfully stored for them.

He shrugged his tail in agreement. “I’ve got four redundant power containment structures built in here,” he said. “If one blows out, we’ve got room to fail.”

“Don’t say that word tonight,” Rhiow said, looking over the diagram. “Robust,” she agreed. “It’ll need to be. But why four? Three’s the normal arrangement.”

“’Three’s the charm,’” Helen said from one side, “that’s what they say in the West. But it’s my land, my cultural substrate, we’re anchoring this to. And in my people’s linguistic and cosmogonic traditions, the ‘fulfillment number’ is four. Four directions. Four winds.” She grinned. “Four feet.”

Rhiow flicked an ear in amusement, turned her attention back to the diagram. “There’s Sif’s spot,” Urruah said, indicating one sub-circle. “She’s already laid a lot of power into the basic structures, just in case something knocks her back and leaves her needing time to take a breath. Other than that – “ He waved a paw at the tightly inwritten analysis circles, completely full of a compact spiral of tiny Speech-characters. “Those have all the data about the structure of the black gating last night, both what the Whisperer got and what Aufwi and Hwaith derived from direct contact. We can match it up and scale it up to a thousand times more than last night’s power.” He turned a concerned look on her. “Which is the only thing that bothers me. Even Sif can only do so much. Power…”

“You leave that with me,” Rhiow said. “I have an alternate source. …And this – ” She indicated one circle that was dark and empty while everything else was glowing in test mode.

“That’s where the claudication will go,” he said. “Sif’s packing it now. ”

“With what?”

“A direct tap into the heart of a quasar,” said Siffha’h, who was off to one side, sitting in a small, densely interwritten circle of her own and gazing down at it thoughtfully as a power gauge display slowly crept toward half full. “The Whisperer said she had a spare one that she wasn’t using for anything.”

Rhiow gave Urruah a sideways look. “She’s being cooperative…”

“The safeties are off, Rhi,” Urruah said. “We’re being given whatever we ask for. It feels a little weird…”

“If not now,” Rhiow said, “then when? Since if the Powers aren’t nice to us right now, there might not be a universe tomorrow… Good work, anyway. With that much power and that much mass packed into the portable claudication, when we shove it into the gate to start the eversion, it should be like nothing even Iau’s ever imagined.”

“Let’s hope so…” Urruah said.