Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (56 page)

“None of the cats—these or the ones that came before—ever caused any problems?”

“Certainly they did,” she said. “But when you love something, you put up with the problems.”

“Yeah, I suppose you do.”

“How do you know?” she asked. “I thought you said you’d never loved anything.”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I love someone who vanishes every night when I turn my back.” She stared at me, and suddenly I felt very awkward. I shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe.”

“I’m touched, Ethan,” she said. “But I’m not of this world, not the way you are.”

“I haven’t complained,” I said. “I’ll settle for the moments I can get.” I tried to smile; it was a disaster. “Besides, I don’t even know if you’re real.”

“I keep telling you I am.”

“I know.”

“What would you do if you
knew
I was?” she asked.

“Really?”

“Really.”

I stared at her. “Try not to get mad,” I began.

“I won’t get mad.”

“I’ve wanted to hold you and kiss you since the first instant I saw you on my veranda,” I said.

“Then why haven’t you?”

“I have this . . . this
dread
that if I try to touch you and you’re not here, if I prove conclusively to myself that you don’t exist, then I’ll never see you again.”

“Remember what I told you about love and risk?”

“I remember.”

“And?”

“Maybe I’ll try tomorrow,” I said. “I just don’t want to lose you yet. I’m not feeling that brave tonight.”

She smiled, a rather sad smile I thought. “Maybe you’ll get tired of reading me.”

“Never!”

“But it’s the same book all the time. How often can you read it?”

I looked at her, young, vibrant, maybe two years from death, certainly less than three. I knew what lay ahead for her; all she could see was a lifetime of wonderful experiences stretching out into the distance.

“Then I’ll read one of your other books.”

“I wrote others?” she asked.

“Dozens of them,” I lied.

She couldn’t stop smiling. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Thank you, Ethan,” she said. “You’ve made me very happy.”

“Then we’re even.”

There was a noisy squabble down by the lake. She quickly looked around for her cats, but they were on the porch, their attention also attracted by the noise.

“Raccoons,” I said.

“Why are they fighting?”

“Probably a dead fish washed up on the shore,” I answered. “They’re not much for sharing.”

She laughed. “They remind me of some people I know.” She paused. “Some people I
knew,
” she amended.

“Do you miss them—your friends, I mean?”

“No. I had hundreds of acquaintances, but very few close friends. I was never in one place long enough to make them. It’s only when I’m with you that I realize they’re gone.” She paused. “I don’t quite understand it. I know that I’m here with you, in the new millennium—but I feel like I just celebrated my thirty-second birthday. Tomorrow I’ll put flowers on my father’s grave, and next week I set sail for Madrid.”

“Madrid?” I repeated. “Will you watch them fight the brave bulls in the arena?”

An odd expression crossed her face. “Isn’t that curious?” she said. “Isn’t what curious?”

“I have no idea what I’ll do in Spain . . . but you’ve read all my books, so
you
know.”

“You don’t want me to tell you,” I said.

“No, that would spoil it.”

“I’ll miss you when you leave.”

“You’ll pick up one of my books and I’ll be right back here,” she said. “Besides, I went more than seventy-five years ago.”

“It gets confusing,” I said.

“Don’t look so depressed. We’ll be together again.”

“It’s only been a week, but I can’t remember what I did with my evenings before I started talking to you.”

The squabbling at the lake got louder, and Giggle and Goggle began huddling together.

“They’re frightening my cats,” said Priscilla.

“I’ll go break it up,” I said, climbing down from the veranda and heading off to where the raccoons were battling. “And when I get back,” I added, feeling bolder the farther I got from her, “maybe I’ll find out just how real you are after all.”

By the time I reached the lake, the fight was all but over. One large raccoon, half a fish in its mouth, glared at me, totally unafraid. Two others, not quite as large, stood about ten feet away. All three were bleeding from numerous gashes, but it didn’t look as if any of them had suffered a disabling injury.

“Serves you right,” I muttered.

I turned and started trudging back up to the house from the lake. The cats were still on the veranda, but Priscilla wasn’t. I figured she’d stepped inside to get another iced tea, or perhaps use the bathroom—one more factor in favor of her not being a ghost—but when she didn’t come out in a couple of minutes I searched the house for her.

She wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere in the yard, or in the old empty barn. Finally I went back and sat down on the porch swing to wait.

A couple of minutes later Goggle jumped up on my lap. I’d been idly petting him for a couple of minutes before I realized that he was real.

I bought some cat food in the morning. I didn’t want to set it out on the veranda, because I was sure the raccoons would get wind of it and drive Giggle and Goggle off, so I put it in a soup bowl and placed it on the counter next to the kitchen sink. I didn’t have a litter box, so I left the kitchen window open enough for them to come and go as they pleased.

I resisted the urge to find out any more about Priscilla with the computer. All that was really left to learn was how she’d died, and I didn’t want to know. How
does
a beautiful, healthy, world-traveling woman die at thirty-four? Torn apart by lions? Sacrificed by savages? Victim of a disfiguring tropical disease? Mugged, raped, and killed in New York? Whatever it was, it had robbed her of half a century. I didn’t want to think of the books she could have written in that time, but rather of the joy she could have felt as she traveled from one new destination to another. No, I very definitely didn’t want to know how she died.

I worked distractedly for a few hours, then knocked off in mid-afternoon and hurried home. To her.

I knew something was wrong the moment I got out of my car. The porch swing was empty. Giggle and Goggle jumped off the veranda, raced up to me, and began rubbing against my legs as if for comfort.

I yelled her name, but there was no response. Then I heard a rustling inside the house. I raced to the door, and saw a raccoon climbing out through the kitchen window just as I entered.

The place was a mess. Evidently he had been hunting for food, and since all I had were cans and frozen meals, he just started ripping the house apart, looking for anything he could eat.

And then I saw it:
Travels with My Cats
lay in tatters, as if the raccoon had had a temper tantrum at the lack of food and had taken it out on the book, which I’d left on the kitchen table. Pages were ripped to shreds, the cover was in pieces, and he had even urinated on what was left.

I worked feverishly on it for hours, tears streaming down my face for the first time since I was a kid, but there was no salvaging it—and that meant there would be no Priscilla tonight, or any night until I found another copy of the book.

In a blind fury I grabbed my rifle and a powerful flashlight and killed the first six raccoons I could find. It didn’t make me feel any better—especially when I calmed down enough to consider what she would have thought of my bloodlust.

I felt as if morning would never come. When it did, I raced to the office, activated my computer, and tried to find a copy of Priscilla’s book at
www.abebooks.com
and
www.bookfinder.com
, the two biggest computerized clusters of used book dealers. There wasn’t a single copy for sale.

I contacted some of the other book dealers I’d used in the past. None of them had ever heard of it.

I called the copyright division at the Library of Congress, figuring they might be able to help me. No luck:
Travels with My Cats
was never officially copyrighted; there was no copy on file. I began to wonder if I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing, the book as well as the woman.

Finally I called Charlie Grimmis, who advertises himself as The Book Detective. He does most of his work for anthologists seeking rights and permissions to obscure, long-out-of-print books and stories, but he didn’t care who he worked for, as long as he got his money.

It took him nine days and cost me six hundred dollars, but finally I got a definitive answer:

When it’s finally time to start taking risks, you don’t think about it—you just do it. I quit my job that afternoon, and for the past year I’ve been criss-crossing the country, hunting for a copy of
Travels with My Cats
. I haven’t found one yet, but I’ll keep looking, no matter how long it takes. I get lonely, but I don’t get discouraged.

Was it a dream? Was she a hallucination? A couple of acquaintances I confided in think so. Hell, I’d think so too—except that I’m not traveling alone. I’ve got two feline companions, and they’re as real and substantial as cats get to be.

So the man with no goal except to get through another day finally has a mission in life, an important one. The woman I love died half a century too soon. I’m the only one who can give her back those years, if not all at once then an evening and a weekend at a time—but one way or another she’s going to get them. I’ve spent all my yesterdays and haven’t got a thing to show for them; now I’m going to start stockpiling her tomorrows.

Anyway, that’s the story. My job is gone, and so is most of my money. I haven’t slept in the same bed twice in close to four hundred days. I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I’ve been living in these clothes for longer than I care to think. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I find a copy of that book, and someday I know I will.

Do I have any regrets?

Just one.

I never touched her. Not even once.

T
he Rhysling Awards are named after the Blind Singer of the Spaceways featured in Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth.” They are given each year by members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association in two categories, Best Short Poem and Best Long Poem.

This year, the 2005 Rhysling Award for Short Poem went to Roger Dutcher for “Just Distance,” published in
Tales of the Unanticipated
23. Roger Dutcher lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, where in addition to writing, he reads, gardens, and has been known to drink wine. He is the editor of
The Magazine of Speculative Poetry,
and a coeditor for poetry at the Hugo-nominated Web site
Strange Horizons
.