The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  As time passed, the visions took on other forms. She was certain now that she was not always watching her future, the future, but rather a future, each as likely to come to pass as the others. Not all the visions could possibly be true. In some of them, she saw herself living into her old age in the city, right here in this filthy quarter of the Budayeen. In others she moved about strange places that didn’t seem Islamic at all, and she spoke languages definitely not Arabic. She did not know if these conflicting visions were trying to tell her or warn her of something. Jehan prayed to know which of these versions she must actually live through. Soon after, as if to reward her for her faith, she began to have less violent visions: She could look into the future a short way and find lost objects or warn against unlucky travel plans or predict the rise and fall of crop prices. The neighbors, at first amused, began to be afraid of her. Jehan’s mother counseled her never to speak of these “dreams” to anyone, or else Jehan might be locked away in some horrible institution. Jehan never told her father about her visions, because Jehan never told her father about anything. In that family, as in the others of the Budayeen—and the rest of the city, for that matter—the father did not concern himself very much with his daughters. His sons were his pride, and he had three strong sons whom he firmly believed would someday vastly increase the Ashûfi prestige and wealth. Jehan knew he was wrong, because she’d already seen what would become of the sons—two would be killed in wars against the Jews; the third would be a coward, a weakling, and a fugitive in the United States. But Jehan said nothing.

  * * *

  A vision: It was just past dawn. The young man—whose name Jehan never learned—was walking down the stone-paved street toward her alley. Jehan knew it without even peering out. She took a deep breath. She walked a few steps toward the street, looked left, and caught his eye. She made a brief gesture, turned her back, and went deeper into the shadowy seclusion of the alley. She was certain that he would follow her. Her stomach ached and rumbled, and she was shaking with nervous exhaustion. When the young man put his hand on her shoulder, murmuring indecent suggestions, her hand crept toward the concealed knife, but she did not grasp it. He threw her down roughly, clawed off her clothing, and raped her. Then he left her there. She was almost paralyzed, crying and cursing on the wet, foul-smelling stones. She was found sometime later by two women who took her to a doctor. Their worst fears were confirmed: Her honor had been ravaged irredeemably. Her life was effectively over, in the sense of becoming a normal adult female in that Islamic community. One of the women returned to Jehan’s house with her, to tell the news to Jehan’s mother, who must still tell Jehan’s father. Jehan hid in the room she shared with her sisters. She heard the violent breaking of furniture and shrill obscenity of her father. There was nothing more to be done. Jehan did not know the name of her assailant. She was ruined, less than worthless. A young woman no longer a virgin could command no bride price. All those years of supporting a worthless daughter in the hopes of recovering the investment in the marriage contract—all vanished now. It was no surprise that Jehan’s father felt betrayed and the father of a witless creature. There was no sympathy for Jehan; the actual story, whatever it might be, could not alter the facts. She had only the weeping of her sisters and her mother. From that morning on, Jehan was permanently repudiated and cast out from her house. Jehan’s father and three brothers would not even look at her or offer her their farewells.

  The years passed ever more quickly. Jehan became a woman of the streets. For a time, because of her youth and beauty, she earned a good living. Then as the decades left their unalterable blemishes upon her, she found it difficult even to earn enough for a meal and a room to sleep in. She grew older, more bitter, and filled with self-loathing. Did she hate her father and the rest of her family? No, her fate had been fixed by the will of Allah, however impossible it was for her to comprehend it, or else by her own timidity in the single moment of choice and destiny in the alley so many years before. She could not say. Whatever the answer, she could not benefit now from either insight or wisdom. Her life was as it was, according to the inscrutable designs of Allah the Merciful. Her understanding was not required.

  Eventually she was found dead, haggard and starved, and her corpse was contorted and huddled for warmth coincidentally in the same alley where the young man had so carelessly despoiled any chance Jehan had for happiness in this world. After she died, there was no one to mourn her. Perhaps Allah the Beneficent took pity on her, showing mercy to her who had received little enough mercy from her neighbors while she lived among them. It had always been a cold place for Jehan.

  * * *

  For a while estranged from Heisenberg, Jehan worked with Erwin Schrödinger in Zurich. At first Schrödinger’s ideas confused her because they went against many of Heisenberg’s basic assumptions. For the time being, Heisenberg rejected any simple picture of what the atom was like, any model at all. Schrödinger, older and more conservative than the Göttingen group, wanted to explain quantum phenomena without new mathematics and elusive imagery. He treated the electron as a wave function but a different sort of wave than De Broglie’s. The properties of waves in the physical world were well-known and without ambiguity. Yet when Schrodinger calculated how a change in energy level affected his electron wave, his solutions didn’t agree with observed data.

  “What am I overlooking?” he asked.

  Jehan shook her head. “Where I was born they say, ‘Don’t pour away the water in your canteen because of a mirage.’”

  Schrödinger rubbed his weary eyes. He glanced down at the sheaf of papers he held. “How can I tell if this water is worth keeping or something that belongs in a sewer?” Jehan had no reply to that, and Schrödinger set his work aside, unsatisfied. A few months later several papers showed that after taking into account the relativistic effects, Schrödinger’s calculations agreed remarkably well with experimental results after all.

  Schrödinger was pleased. “I knew in my heart that quantum physics would prove to be a sane world, not a realm populated by phantoms and governed by ghost forces.”

  “It seems unreal to me now,” said Jehan. “If you say the electron is a wave, you are saying it is a phantom. In the ocean, it is the water that is the wave. As for sound, it is the air that carries the wave. What exists to be a wave in your equations?”

  “It is a wave of probability,” Bohr says. “I do not wholly understand that yet myself,” he said, “but my equations explain too many things to be illusions.”

  “Sir,” said Jehan, frowning, “it may be that in this case the mirage is in your canteen and not before you in the desert.”

  Schrödinger laughed. “That might be true. I may yet have to abandon my mental pictures, but I will not abandon my mathematics.”

  * * *

  It was a breathless afternoon in the city. The local Arabs didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat, but the small party of Europeans was beginning to suffer. Their cruise ship had put ashore at the small port, and a tour had been arranged to the city some fifty miles to the south. Two hours later the travelers concluded that the expedition had been a mistake.

  Among them was David Hilbert, the German mathematician, a lecturer at Göttingen since 1895. He was accompanied by his wife, Käthe, and their maid, Clärchen. At first they were quite taken by the strangeness of the city, by the foreign sights and sounds and smells; but after a short time, their senses were glutted with newness, and what had at first been exotic was now only deplorable. As they moved slowly through the bazaars, shaded ineffectually by awnings or meager arcades of sticks, they longed for the whisper of a single cool breeze. Arab men dressed in long white gallebeyas cried out shrilly, all the while glaring at the Europeans. It was impossible to tell what the Arabs were saying. Some dragged little carts loaded with filthy cups and pots—water? Tea? Lemonade? It made no difference. Cholera lingered at every stall; every beggar offered typhus as he clutched at sleeves.

  Hilbert’s wife fanned hers
elf weakly. She was almost overcome and near collapse. Hilbert looked about desperately. “David,” murmured the maid Clärchen, the only one of Hilbert’s amours Frau Hilbert could tolerate, “we have come far enough.”

  “I know,” he said, “but I see nothing—nowhere—”

  “There are some ladies and gentlemen in that place. I think it’s an eating place. Leave Käthe with me there and find a taxi. Then we shall go back to the boat.”

  Hilbert hesitated. He couldn’t bear to leave the two unprotected women in the midst of this frantic heathen marketplace. Then he saw how pale his wife had become, how her eyelids drooped, how she swayed against Clärchen’s shoulder. He nodded. “Let me help,” he said. Together they got Frau Hilbert to the restaurant, where it was no cooler but at least the ceiling fans created a fiction of fresh air. Hilbert introduced himself to a well-dressed man who was seated at a table with his family, a wife and four children. The mathematician tried three languages before he was understood. He explained the situation, and the gentleman and his wife both assured Hilbert that he need not worry. Hilbert ran out to find a taxi.

  He was soon lost. There were no streets here, not in the European sense of the word. Narrow spaces between buildings became alleys, opened into small squares, closed again; other narrow passages led off in twisting, bewildering directions. Hilbert found himself back at a souk; he thought at first it was where he’d begun and looked for the restaurant, but he was wrong. This was another souk entirely; there were probably hundreds in the city. He was beginning to panic. Even if he managed to find a taxi, how could he direct it back to where his wife and Clärchen waited?

  A man’s hand plucked at him. Hilbert tried to shrug the long fingers away. He looked into the face of a lean, hollowcheeked man in a striped robe and a blue knitted cap. The Arab kept repeating a few words, but Hilbert could make no sense of them. The Arab took him by the arm and half-led, half-shoved Hilbert through the crowd. Hilbert let himself be guided. They crossed through two bazaars, one of tinsmiths and one of poultry dressers. They entered a stone-paved street and emerged into an immense square. On the far side of the square was a huge, many-towered mosque, built of pink stone. Hilbert’s first impression was awe; it was as lovely an edifice as the Taj. Then his guide was pushing him again through the throng or hurrying in front to hew a path for Hilbert. The square was jammed and choked with people. Soon Hilbert could see why—a platform had been erected in the center, and on it stood a man with what could only be an executioner’s ax. Hilbert felt his stomach sicken. His Arab guide had thrust aside everyone in their way until Hilbert stood at the foot of the platform. He saw uniformed police and a bearded old man leading out a young girl. The crowd parted to allow them by. The girl was stunningly lovely. Hilbert looked into her huge, dark eyes—“like the eyes of a gazelle,” he remembered from reading Omar Khayyám—and glimpsed her slender form undisguised by her modest garments. As she mounted the steps, she looked down directly at him again. Hilbert felt his heart lurch; he felt a tremendous shudder. Then she looked away.

  The Arab guide screamed in Hilbert’s ear. It meant nothing to the mathematician. He watched in horror as Jehan knelt, as the headsman raised his weapon of office. When the fierce, bellowing cry went up from the crowd, Hilbert noticed that his suit was now spattered with small flecks of red. The Arab screamed at him again and tightened his grip on Hilbert’s arm until Hilbert complained. The Arab did not release him. With his other hand, Hilbert took out his wallet. The Arab smiled. Above him, Hilbert watched several men carry away the body of the decapitated girl.

  The Arab guide did not let him go until he’d paid an enormous sum.

  * * *

  Perhaps another hour had passed in the alley. Jehan had withdrawn to the darkest part and sat in a damp corner with her legs drawn up, her head against the rough brick wall. If she could sleep, she told herself, the night would pass more quickly; but she would not sleep, she would fight it if drowsiness threatened. What if she should slip into slumber and waken in the late morning, her peril and her opportunity both long since lost? Her only companion, the crescent moon, had abandoned her; she looked up at fragments of constellations, stars familiar enough in their groups but indistinguishable now as individuals. How different from people, where the opposite was true. She sighed; she was not a profound person, and it did not suit her to have profound thoughts. These must not truly be profound thoughts, she decided; she was merely deluded by weariness. Slowly she let her head fall forward. She crossed her arms on her knees and cradled her head. The greater part of the night had already passed, and only silence came from the street. There were perhaps only three more hours until dawn.…

  * * *

  Soon Schrödinger’s wave mechanics was proved to be equivalent to Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics. It was a validation of both men’s work and of the whole field of quantum physics as well. Eventually Schrödinger’s simplistic wave picture of the electron was abandoned, but his mathematical laws remained undisputed. Jehan remembered Schrödinger predicting that he might need to take just that step.

  Jehan had at last returned to Göttingen and Heisenberg. He had “forgiven her petulance.” He welcomed her gladly, because of his genuine feelings for her and because he had much work to do. He had just formally developed what came to be known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This was the first indication that the impartial observer could not help but play an essential, active role in the universe of subatomic particles. Jehan grasped Heisenberg’s concept readily. Other scientists thought Heisenberg was merely making a trivial criticism of the limitations of their experiments or the quality of their observations. It was more profound than that. Heisenberg was saying that one can never hope to know both the position and momentum of an electron at the same time under any circumstances. He had destroyed forever the assumption of the impartial observer.

  “To observe is to disturb,” said Heisenberg. “Newton wouldn’t have liked any of this at all.”

  “Einstein still doesn’t like it right this very minute,” said Jehan.

  “I wish I had a mark for every time he’s made that sour ‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe’ comment.”

  “That’s just the way he sees a ‘wave of probability.’ The path of the electron can’t be known unless you look; but once you look, you change the information.”

  “So maybe God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” said Heisenberg. “He plays vingt-et-un, and if He does not have an extra ace up His sleeve, He creates one—first the sleeve, then the ace. And He turns over more natural twenty-ones than is statistically likely. Hold on, Jehan! I’m not being sacrilegious. I’m not saying that God cheats. Rather, He invented the rules of the game, and He continues to invent them; and this gives Him a rather large advantage over poor physicists and their lagging understanding. We are like peasants watching the card tricks of someone who may be either genius or charlatan.”

  Jehan pondered this metaphor. “At the Solvay conference, Bohr introduced his complementarity idea, that an electron was a wave function until it was detected, and then the wave function collapsed to a point, and you knew where the electron was. Then it was a particle. Einstein didn’t like that, either.”

  “That’s God’s card trick,” said Heisenberg, shrugging.

  “Well, the noble Qur’an says, ‘They question thee about strong drink and games of chance. Say: In both is great sin, and some usefulness for men; but the sin of them is greater than their usefulness.’”

  “Forget dice and cards, then,” said Heisenberg with a little smile. “What kind of game would it be appropriate for Allah to play against us?”

  “Physics,” said Jehan, and Heisenberg laughed.

  * * *

  “And knowest thou there is a prohibition against taking of human life that Allah hath made sacred?”

  “Yes, O Wise One.”

  “And knowest thou further that Allah hath set a penalty upon those who breaketh this law?”

 
“Yes, I know.”

  “Then, O my daughter, tell us why thou hath brought low this poor boy.”

  Jehan tossed the bloody knife to the stone-paved alley. It rang noisily and then came to rest against one leg of the corpse. “I was celebrating the Îd-el-Fitr,” she said. “This boy followed me, and I became afraid. He made filthy gestures and called out terrible things. I hurried away, but he ran after me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pressed me against a wall. I tried to escape, but I could not. He laughed at my fear, then he struck me many times. He dragged me along through the narrowest of streets, where there were not many to witness; and then he pulled me into this vile place. He told me that he intended to defile me, and he described what he would do in foul detail. It was then that I drew my father’s dagger and stabbed him. I have spent the night in horror of his intentions and of my deed, and I have prayed to Allah for forgiveness.”

  The imam put a trembling hand on Jehan’s cheek. “Allah is All-Wise and All-Forgiving, O my daughter. Alloweth me to return with thee to thy house, where I may put the hearts of thy parents at ease.”

  Jehan knelt at the imam’s feet. “All thanks be to Allah,” she murmured.

  “Allah be praised,” said the imam, the police officer, and the qadi together.

  More than a decade later, when Jehan had daughters of her own, she told them this story. But in those latter days children did not heed the warnings of their parents, and the sons and daughters of Jehan and her husband did many foolish things.

  * * *

  Dawn slipped even into the narrow alleyway where Jehan waited. She was very sleepy and hungry, but she stood up and took a few wobbling steps. Her muscles had become cramped, and she could hear her heart beating in her ears. Jehan steadied herself with one hand on the brick wall. She went slowly to the mouth of the alley and peered out. There was no one in sight. The boy was coming neither from the left nor the right. Jehan waited until several other people appeared, going about the business of the new day. Then she hid the dagger in her sleeve once more and departed from the alley. She hurried back to her father’s house. Her mother would need her to help make breakfast.