by Jonathan Day
Cosmic Cats
As he fell asleep, Genji talked to the huge tabby cat that sat beside his bed. It reminded him of Digal.
And, like the warm, comforting Digal, it talked to him.
Every night that bright globe in his dream sky smiled down.
‘What would it be like to live on that silver moon?’
‘You could float over its pale, cream craters and talk to the hare that lives there,’ the tabby mewed.
‘Why does the hare live in the moon?’
‘She watches over the creatures on her sister world.’
‘While they sleep?’
‘So do the cats there. They curl up on sleepers’ beds and talk to the hare as they dream.’
‘I’m dreaming. Can I talk to the hare in the moon?’
‘Just call to her with your thoughts. The cats will show you how.’
Genji pushed his dream into the indigo lagoon of the night.
The cats sang to him with gentle mewing as their velvet paws patted him into the sparkling night sky. From there he gazed down on the lantern of the moon and the silver hare, this beautiful blue world’s watchful guardian. Forever together, sharing their substance and very existence, the planet and moon were sisters, born of the same ancient cataclysm.
Genji liked it here, suspended between two worlds, yet belonging to neither. He was drifting free with satellites, their golden solar panels gleaming in the sun’s rays, peering into a space station busy with astronauts, and touching tiny meteors which sparked at his touch. Further and further out until he could see the moon and blue world in their cosmic dance, the planet’s bright corona gleaming like an illuminated balloon.
The hare in the moon was suddenly alert.
‘What's wrong?’ asked Genji. ‘The cats have stopped mewing.’
The hare’s reply filled his thoughts. ‘My sister is in pain. All life there is dying.’
Genji was horrified. ‘No, no, no...’ he cried. ‘How can it be dying?’
‘You must go little one. You do not belong here.’
‘This beautiful planet is my friend. I cannot leave. Why is everything on my friend dying?’
‘The corona of an exploding star is engulfing her. Nothing there can survive.’
The dreamer woke with a scream which alerted his guardian.
Genji leapt up to open the shutters and see the benign magenta sky he was so familiar with. Everything was quiet apart from the padding paws of Digal, his kindly guardian.
‘Pretty paws, what an awful sound! Did you have another dream?’
‘Everything on my beautiful dream world is dead, Digal! The hare in the moon and me watched every living thing die.’
‘Oh dear no! Not that beautiful blue planet? We knew that the cosmic wake of an exploding star was rushing towards it, but there was nothing to be done, no way its inhabitants could be saved. The Aaron atmosphere would have killed them.’
Genji was not consoled. ‘But it is not fair!’
‘Of course it isn’t, pretty paws. This is your first lesson in the way nothing remains the same.’
The Cult of the Bast Cat
There was no help the young constable could offer to the emaciated drug addict dying on a bed of filthy blankets.
He heard a faint whimper.
PC Shah lifted the bedclothes and found a tiny baby. He wrapped the infant in the cleanest towel he could find and placed it in its mother's scrawny arms.
The constable had been sent to arrest Sharon for the possession of drugs, not attempt to make her last moments as comfortable as possible. Perhaps the paramedics would be able to save the child when they arrived.
PC Shah had braced himself to face a knife or screaming abuse, not this. His mother, a psychologist, had explained to him about some glitch in the brain responsible for addiction, a sort of neural misfiring which caused obsessive behaviour. At that moment the finely thought out theory seemed irrelevant.
The ambulance was taking a long while, so PC Shah sat clasping Sharon's hand and uttering empty reassurances that everything would be all right. She pressed a locket into his palm, and then died minutes before help arrived.
Before opening it, the young constable sat drinking weak tea in the canteen to get over the disturbing experience. Perhaps there was a clue as to the baby's next of kin inside the grubby locket. He was right: it contained the photo of a young man PC Shah recognised. It looked as though the baby would be better off in care after all. The father was Taylor Balfour, another addict. Despite coming from a well-to-do family, he could usually be found taking drugs under the railway arches. There was at least an outside chance the Balfours would take on their son’s child if the DNA test confirmed its parentage. PC Shah hated having to deal with people from privileged backgrounds without a superior present so he checked in with his sergeant who, predictably, told him there was no one available to waste time on drug addicts.
Taylor wasn't under the arches, so PC Shah reluctantly went to the family home in the suburbs.
The Balfours regarded being questioned by a lowly constable as an affront to their sense of self-importance.
Did they know where their son was?
No, they hadn't seen him for weeks.
Were they aware he might have fathered a child with another addict?
Immediate indignation! Who was this adolescent in uniform to make allegations against a member of their respected family? Probably some comprehensive pupil who managed to scrape through a couple of GCSE's.
PC Shah took some comfort in being able to explain that he had firsts in sociology, science and history, more qualifications than this prosperous family held between them. The constable could have been lying to them of course, but the owner of those dark brown eyes was too honest to score points that way.
And PC Shah’s father was the dean of an Oxford University and mother a psychologist.
There was a disbelieving pause before the inevitable question.
Then why was he only a minor officer of the law?
At this point the library door opened and in walked the last person the PC expected to see.
‘No, he isn't lying. PC Shah is a remarkable young man.’
The constable's jaw dropped. ‘Chief Superintendent!’
‘I personally wish he would apply for promotion.’ D/C.Supt Andersen could have added that she understood why he didn’t after the difficulties she had encountered on her way up that greasy pole, having to prove more than capable in the eyes of so many who weren't. Her subordinate looked as though he was confronting a huge, hungry vixen – the fortunate effect she had when really needed – and he obviously wasn’t going to ask what she was doing there. ‘I am also interested in the whereabouts of young Taylor, though probably not for the same reason. The Balfours were good enough to let me see his old diaries in the hope there would be a clue as to his favourite haunts.’
‘I see, ma'am.’
‘So, as I think we should now both leave his family in peace, you had better return with me.’ PC Shah was about to protest. ‘I know you were given a lift here and have no transport back.’ As a junior officer, that had happened to her enough times.
‘Yes, ma'am.’
Instead of driving to the station, D/C.Supt Andersen pulled into the forecourt of a country pub. She ordered two coffees, which were brought to them in its secluded garden.
‘You first,’ she told PC Shah.
He took a deep breath, not knowing how well acquainted his superior was with the touchy Balfours. ‘I believe Taylor to have fathered the child of Sharon, a drug addict who died this morning.’ There wasn't much else he could add, so ventured warily, ‘Ma'am?’
‘Taylor was the last person to see my old DI. It's the anniversary of Daniel Proctor’s disappearance five years ago when I was a DCI. He was following up a few tenuous leads about some antiquities smugglers. He disappeared without trace after radioing in that he was taking Taylor Balfour back to his parents after hauling him from some drug den. The car was found ov
er 20 miles away in a condition that suggested it had been stolen by joyriders.’
‘And you think Taylor knows more?’
‘He must do, but refused to admit anything back then. If it weren’t for the Balfour’s lawyer, I’m sure I could have intimidated it out of him. Now he’s older, I thought I could try emotional blackmail. And if he really does have a child, he might have some sympathy for what Daniel’s family is going through.’
‘Given time, I'm certain I can track him down, but the sarge will only give me so long.’
D/C.Supt Andersen opened her phone and strolled over to the children’s play area, out of earshot. After a brief conversation she came back and announced, ‘You are now answerable to me.’
‘Ma'am?’
‘Let me know when you've found Taylor and we'll take it from there.’
PC Shah's - often inconvenient - empathic intuition told him that the only chance of finding the young man would be at the dead of night. He silently left the Shah’s family residence at three in the morning after bribing the macaws with biscuits to stop them waking everyone else. Flying at liberty about the hall meant the birds were a better burglar alarm than a flock of geese, but they always had their price.
PC Shah didn't expect to find Taylor sheltering under the railway arches, even though it was pouring with rain, so he drove on to the squat where Sharon had died. The place had been boarded up and police tape tied across the porch. Behind it, slumped in a corner, was Taylor. The young man looked haggard and middle-aged, his emaciated frame wracked with the tremors of withdrawal.
Taking him to the station and requesting an
