The Year's Best Science Fiction 15th Annual Collection (1998) by Gardner Dozois

Author:Gardner Dozois
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction
ISBN: 9780312190330
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Published: 0101-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

At bedtime, Anna listened while Jake read to her the story of the Burmese Temple Cat called Sinh, who was an oracle. He lived with a priest called Munha, and they were both very miserable because Burma was being invaded. When Mun-Ha died, the goddess Tsun-Kyankse transfused Mun-Ha's spirit into Sinh. His eyes turned blue as sapphires, his nose and feet and tail turned dark as the sacred earth, and the rest of him turned gold, except for the tips of his pawswhich were touching Mun-Ha's white hair at the moment the holy priest died. Then Sinh transfused his power into the rest of the priests, and they went and saved Burma.

"Do you know what an oracle is?"

"Yeah," he answered drowsily. "It's a little boat."

Coracle, oracle: a messenger from the gods and a little boat on a great big shoreless sea. Anna watched as the child fell deeper into sleep.

Spence finished his task and repaired to the bar. He ordered two pression and took them to a table by the doors that he already thought of as his and Anna's table, because that was where they sat when they came in for a drink before setting up. The large, dimly lit room was crowded, but not oppressively stuffed. Foosball in the games room, pizzas and frites and sandwiches readily available; absolutely no pretensions. Yes, he thought. It's our kind of joint. The clatter of conversation, mostly French, soon blended into a soothing, encompassing ocean roar: laughter or the clink of glassware springing up like spray.

We could live here, he decided. In this twilight. He imagined the blockade stretching into months and years; imagined that the actual no-kidding disintegration had begun-which of course was nonsense. Anna, armed with their home-medicine manual, could become a quack doctor. Maybe Spence could sell information? He dallied with the idea of describing Anna as a wisewonian, but rejected it. Call a spade a spade. This is not the dawning of some magical, nurturing female future. It's the same road we've been traveling for so long, going down into the dark ... Chuck had followed him from the car and was sitting on the chair next to Spence, taking it all in with his usual assured and gentle gaze. The young woman from the bar came by with a tray of glasses. Spence bad a moment's anxiety. Chuck was respectably vaccinated and tattooed now. They'd managed to get this done in the same town where they'd dispatched (this was the compromise they'd reached) an anonymous tip-off, and prints of Anna's photographs, to the police in the regional capital. But maybe he wasn't welcome in the bar.

But she'd only stopped to admire. "What do you call him?" she asked.

"Chuck Prophet."

The girl laughed, effortlessly balancing her tray on one thin muscular arm, and bending to rub the Berman's delectably soft, ruffled throat. "That's an unusual name for a cat."

"He's an unusual cat," explained Spence proudly.

She moved on. Chuck had accepted her caress the way he took any kind

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