Nebula Awards Showcase 2006

by Gardner Dozois

  “About what?”

  “Maybe what brought me here wasn’t the fact that I needed to be read. Maybe it’s because you so desperately need someone.”

  “I—” I began heatedly, and then stopped. For a moment it seemed like the whole world had stopped with me. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and an owl hooted off to the left.

  “What is it?”

  “I was about to tell you that I’m not that lonely,” I said. “But it would have been a lie.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ethan.”

  “It’s nothing to brag about, either.” There was something about her that made me say things I’d never said to anyone else, including myself. “I had such high hopes when I was a boy. I was going to love my work, and I was going to be good at it. I was going to find a woman to love and spend the rest of my life with. I was going to see all the places you described. Over the years I saw each of those hopes die. Now I settle for paying my bills and getting regular check-ups at the doctor’s.” I sighed deeply. “I think my life can be described as a fully-realized diminished expectation.”

  “You have to take risks, Ethan,” she said gently.

  “I’m not like you,” I said. “I wish I was, but I’m not. Besides, there aren’t any wild places left.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. Love involves risk. You have to risk getting hurt.”

  “I’ve been hurt,” I said. “It’s nothing to write home about.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m here. You can’t be hurt by a ghost.”

  The hell I can’t, I thought. Aloud I said: “Are you a ghost?”

  “I don’t feel like one.”

  “You don’t look like one.”

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “As lovely as I always knew you were.”

  “Fashions change.”

  “But beauty doesn’t,” I said.

  “That’s very kind of you to say, but I must look very old-fashioned. In fact, the world I knew must seem primitive to you.” Her face brightened. “It’s a new millennium. Tell me what’s happened.”

  “We’ve walked on the moon—and we’ve landed ships on Mars and Venus.”

  She looked up into the night sky. “The moon!” she exclaimed. Then: “Why are you here when you could be there?”

  “I’m not a risk-taker, remember?”

  “What an exciting time to be alive!” she said enthusiastically. “I always wanted to see what lay beyond the next hill. But you—you get to see what’s beyond the next star!”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said.

  “But it will be,” she persisted.

  “Someday,” I agreed. “Not during my lifetime, but someday.”

  “Then you should die with the greatest reluctance,” she said. “I’m sure I did.” She looked up at the stars, as if envisioning herself flying to each of them. “Tell me more about the future.”

  “I don’t know anything about the future,” I said.

  “My future. Your present.”

  I told her what I could. She seemed amazed that hundreds of millions of people now traveled by air, that I didn’t know anyone who didn’t own a car, and that train travel had almost disappeared in America. The thought of television fascinated her; I decided not to tell her what a vast wasteland it had been since its inception. Color movies, sound movies, computers—she wanted to know all about them. She was eager to learn if zoos had become more humane, if people had become more humane. She couldn’t believe that heart transplants were actually routine.

  I spoke for hours. Finally I just got so dry I told her I was going to have to take a break for a couple of minutes while I went into the kitchen and got us some drinks. She’d never heard of Fanta or Dr Pepper, which is what I had, and she didn’t like beer, so I made her an iced tea and popped open a Bud for me. When I brought them out to the porch she and Goggle were gone.

  I didn’t even bother looking for her. I knew she had returned to the somewhere from which she had come.

  She was back again the next three nights, sometimes with one cat, sometimes with both. She told me about her travels, about her overwhelming urge to see what there was to see in the little window of time allotted us humans, and I told her about the various wonders she would never see.

  It was strange, conversing with a phantom every night. She kept assuring me she was real, and I believed it when she said it, but I was still afraid to touch her and discover that she was just a dream after all. Somehow, as if they knew my fears, the cats kept their distance too; not once in all those evenings did either of them ever so much as brush against me.

  “I wish I’d seen all the sights they’ve seen,” I said on the third night, nodding toward the cats.

  “Some people thought it was cruel to take them all over the world with me,” replied Priscilla, absently running her hand over Goggle’s back as he purred contentedly. “I think it would have been more cruel to leave them behind.”

  “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 me
an?”

  “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:Dear Ethan:You led me a merry chase. I’d have bet halfway through it that the book didn’t exist, but you were right: evidently you did own a copy of a limited, numbered edition.

  Travels with My Cats was self-published by one Priscilla Wallace (d. 1926), in a limited, numbered edition of 200. The printer was the long-defunct Adelman Press of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The book was never copyrighted or registered with the Library of Congress.

  Now we get into the conjecture part. As near as I can tell, this Wallace woman gave about one hundred and fifty copies away to friends and relatives, and the final fifty were probably trashed after her death. I’ve checked back, and there hasn’t been a copy for sale anywhere in the past dozen years. It’s hard to get trustworthy records farther back than that. Given that she was an unknown, that the book was a vanity press job, and that it went only to people who knew her, the likelihood is that no more than fifteen or twenty copies still exist, if that many.

  Best, Charlie

  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 be
d 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.

  RHYSLING AWARD WINNERS

  The 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.

  The 2005 Rhysling Award for Long Poem went to Theodora Goss for “Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks,” published in Mythic Delirium 8. Theodora Goss lives in Boston, where she is completing a Ph.D. in English literature. Her short stories and poems have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Alchemy, Polyphony, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, The Lyric, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. They have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens. Her chapbook of short stories and poems, The Rose in Twelve Petals & Other Stories, is available from Small Beer Press, and a short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, is forthcoming from Prime Books.

  Since 1978, the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) has served as a gathering place for writers with an interest in poetry that contains elements of science, science fiction, fantasy and horror, or any combination thereof. The SFPA publishes an annual Rhysling Anthology containing each year’s nominees for the association’s Rhysling Awards, given to honor excellence in speculative poetry. Recently, the SFPA published The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, which for the first time collects Rhysling Award-winning poems from 1978 to 2004 in one volume. As of this writing, annual membership dues for SFPA in the U.S. are eighteen dollars. For more information on how to become a member and/or to order SFPA’s books, visit http://www.sfpoetry.com.