George Alec Effinger - Schrodingers Kitten

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Science Fiction

By George Alec Effinger

contemporary

Schrödinger's

Kitten

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

Fictionwise Publications

www.fictionwise.com

This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in Omni, 1988

NOTICE: This ebook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or

distribution via email, floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means to a person

other than the original purchaser is a violation of International copyright law and

subjects the violator to fines and/or imprisonment. Fictionwise Publications offers a

$500 reward to anyone who provides information leading to the conviction of a person

infringing on any Fictionwise ebook copyright.

COVER DESIGN BY CHRIS HARDWICK

This ebook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

The clean crescent moon that began the new month hung in the

western sky across from the alley. Jehan was barely twelve years old, too

young to wear the veil, but she did so anyway. She had never before

been out so late alone. She heard the sounds of celebration far away, the

three-day festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Two

voices sang drunkenly as they passed the alley; two others loudly and

angrily disputed the price of some honey cakes. The laughter and the

shouting came to Jehan as if from another world. In the past, she'd

always loved the festival of Îd-el-Fitr; she took no part in the festivities

now, though, and it seemed somehow odd to her that anyone else still

could. Soon she gave it all no more of her attention. This year she must

keep a meeting more important than any holiday. She sighed, shrugging:

The festival would come around again next year. Tonight, with only the

silver moon for company, she shivered in her blue-black robe.

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

Jehan Fatima Ashûfi stepped back a few feet deeper into the alley,

farther out of the light. All along the street, people who would otherwise

never be seen in this quarter were determinedly amusing themselves.

Jehan shivered again and waited. The moment she longed for would come

at dawn. Even now the sky was just dark enough to reveal the moon and

the first impetuous stars. In the Islamic world, night began when one

could no longer distinguish a white thread from a black one; it was not

yet night. Jehan clutched her robe closely to her with her left hand. In her

right hand, hidden by her long sleeve, was the keen-edged, gleaming,

curved blade she had taken from her father's room.

She was hungry and wished she had money to buy something to eat,

but she had none. In the Budayeen there were many girls her age who

already had ways of getting money of their own; Jehan was not one of

them. She glanced about and saw only the filth-strewn, damp, and

muddy paving stones. The reek of the alley disgusted her. She was bored

and lonely and afraid. Then, as if her whole sordid world suddenly

dissolved into something else, something wholly foreign, she saw more.

* * * *

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

Jehan Ashûfi was twenty-six years old. She was dressed in a

conservative dark gray woolen suit, cut longer and more severely than

fashion dictated but appropriate for a bright young physicist. She affected

no jewelry and wore her black hair in a long braid down her back. She

took a little effort each morning to look as plain as possible while she was

accompanying her eminent teacher and adviser. That had been

Heisenberg's idea: In these days who believed a beautiful woman could

also be a highly talented scientist? Jehan soon learned that her wish of

being inconspicuous was in vain. Her dark skin and her accent marked

her as a foreigner. She was clearly not European. Possibly she had

Levantine blood. Most who met her thought she was probably a Jew. This

was Göttingen, Germany, and it was 1925.

The brilliant Max Born, who had first used the expression quantum

mechanics in a paper written two years before, was leading a meeting of

the university's physicists. They were discussing Max Planck's latest

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

proposals concerning his own theories of radiation. Planck had developed

some basic ideas in the emerging field of quantum physics, yet he had

used classical Newtonian mechanics to describe the interactions of light

and matter. It was clear that this approach was inadequate, but as yet

there was no better system. At the Göttingen conference, Pascual Jordan

rose to introduce a compromise solution; but before Born, the department

chairman, could reply, Werner Heisenberg fell into a violent fit of

sneezing.

“Are you all right, Werner?” asked Born.

Heisenberg merely waved a hand. Jordan attempted to continue, but

again Heisenberg began sneezing. His eyes were red, and tears crept

down his face. He was in obvious distress. He turned to his graduate

assistant. “Jehan,” he said, “please make immediate arrangements; I

must get away. It's my damned hay fever. I want to leave at once.”

One of the others at the meeting objected. “But the colloquium—”

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

Heisenberg was already on his feet. “You can tell Planck to go straight

to hell and to take De Broglie and his matter waves with him. The same

goes for Bohr and his goddamn jumping electrons. I can't stand any more

of this.” Heisenberg took a few shaky steps and left the room. Jehan

stayed behind to make a few notations in her journal. Then she followed

Heisenberg back to their apartments.

* * * *

There were no minarets in the Budayeen, but in the city all around the

walled quarter there were many mosques. From the tall, ancient towers,

strong voices called the faithful to morning devotions. “Come to prayer,

come to prayer! Prayer is better than sleep!”

Leaning against a grimy wall, Jehan heard the chanted cries of the

muezzins, but she paid them no mind. She stared at the dead body at her

feet, the body of a boy a few years older than she, someone she had seen

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

about the Budayeen but whom she did not know by name. She still held

the bloody knife that had killed him.

In a short while three men pushed their way through a crowd that had

formed at the mouth of the alley. The three men looked down solemnly at

Jehan. One was a police officer; one was a qadi, who interpreted the

ancient Islamic commandments as they applied to modern life; and the

third was an imam, a prayer leader who had hurried from a small mosque

not far from the east gate of the Budayeen. Within the walls the

pickpockets, whores, thieves, and cutthroats could do as they liked to

each other. A death in the Budayeen didn't attract much attention in the

rest of the city.

The police officer was tall and heavily built, with a thick black mustache

and sleepy eyes. He was curious only because he had watched over the

Budayeen for fifteen years, and he had never investigated a murder by a

girl so young.

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

The qadi was young, clean-shaven, and quite plainly deferring to the

imam. It was not yet clear to those in attendance if this matter should be

the responsibility of the civil or the religious authorities.

The imam was tall, taller even than the police officer, but thin and

narrow shouldered; yet it was not asceticism that made him so slight. He

was well-known for two things: his common sense concerning the

conflicts of everyday affairs and the high degree of earthly pleasures he

permitted himself. He, too, was puzzled and curious. He wore a short,

grizzled gray beard, and his soft brown eyes were all but hidden within

the reticulation of wrinkles that had slowly etched his face. Like the police

officer, the imam had once worn a brave black mustache, but the days of

fierceness had long since passed for him. Now he appeared decent and

kindly. In truth, he was neither; but he found it useful to cultivate that

reputation.

Schrödinger's Kitten

by George Alec Effinger

“O my daughter,” he said in his hoarse voice. He was very upset. He

much preferred explicating obscure passages of the glorious Qur'an to

viewing such tawdry matters as blatant dead bodies in the nearby streets.

Jehan looked up at him, but she said nothing. She looked back down at

the unknown boy she had killed.

“O my daughter,” said the imam, “tell me, was it thou who hath slain

this child?”

Jehan looked back calmly at the old man. She was concealed beneath

her kerchief, veil, and robe; all that was visible of her were her dark eyes

and the long thin fingers that held the knife. “Yes, O Wise One,” she said,

“I killed him.”

The police officer glanced at the qadi.

“Prayest thou to Allah?” asked the imam. If this hadn't been the

Budayeen, he wouldn't have needed to ask.

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ScienceFictionByGeorgeAlecEffingercontemporarySchrödinger'sKittenSchrödinger'sKittenbyGeorgeAlecEffinger2FictionwisePublicationswww.fictionwise.comThisebookisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentseitherareproductsoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualevents...

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