The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

As Yechida sat staring into the sockets of the skull above her, a white-shrouded corpse came and sat beside her. For a while the two corpses gazed at each other, thinking they could see, although all corpses are actually blind. Finally the male corpse spoke:

“Pardon, Miss, could you tell me what time it is?”

Since deep within themselves all corpses long for the termination of their punishment, they are perpetually concerned with time.

“The time?” Yechida answered. “Just a second.” Strapped to her wrist was an instrument to measure time but the divisions were so minute and the symbols so tiny that she could not easily read the dial. The male corpse moved nearer to her.

“May I take a look? I have good eyes.”

“If you wish.”

Corpses never act straightforwardly but are always sly and devious. The male corpse took Yechida’s hand and bent his head toward the instrument. This was not the first time a male corpse had touched Yechida but contact with this one made her limbs tremble. He stared intently but could not decide immediately. Then he said: “I think it’s ten minutes after ten.”

“Is it really so late?”

“Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Yachid.”

“Yachid? Mine is Yechida.”

“What an odd coincidence.”

Both hearing death race in their blood were silent for a long while. Then Yachid said: “How beautiful the night is!”

“Yes, beautiful!”

“There’s something about spring that cannot be expressed in words.”

“Words can express nothing,” answered Yechida.

As she made this remark, both knew they were destined to lie together and to prepare a grave for a new corpse. The fact is, no matter how dead the dead are, there remains some life in them, a trace of contact with that knowledge which fills the universe. Death only masks the truth. The sages speak of it as a soap bubble that bursts at the touch of a straw. The dead, ashamed of death, try to conceal their condition through cunning. The more moribund a corpse, the more voluble it is.

“May I ask where you live?” asked Yachid.

Where have I seen him before? How is it his voice sounds so familiar to me? Yechida wondered. And how does it happen that he’s called Yachid? Such a rare name.

“Not far from here,” she answered.

“Would you object to my walking you home?”

“Thank you. You don’t have to. But if you want . . . It is still too early to go to bed.”

When Yachid rose, Yechida did, too. Is this the one I have been searching for? Yechida asked herself, the one destined for me? But what do I mean by “destiny”? According to my professor, only atoms and motion exist. A carriage approached them and Yechida heard Yachid say:

“Would you like to take a ride?”

“Where to?”

“Oh, just around the park.”

Instead of reproving him as she intended to, Yechida said: “It would be nice. But I don’t think you should spend the money.”

“What’s, money? You only live once.”

The carriage stopped and they both got in. Yechida knew that no self-respecting girl would go riding with a strange young man. What did Yachid think of her? Did he believe she would go riding with anyone who asked her? She wanted to explain that she was shy by nature, but she knew she could not wipe out the impression she had already made. She sat in silence, astonished at her behavior. She felt nearer to this stranger than she ever had to anyone. She could almost read his mind. She wished the night would continue for ever. Was this love? Could one really fall in love so quickly? And am I happy? she asked herself. But no answer came from within her. For the dead are always melancholy, even in the midst of gaiety. After a while Yechida said: “I have a strange feeling I have experienced all this before.”

“Déjà vu —that’s what psychology calls it.”

“But maybe there’s some truth to it. . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we’ve known each other in some other world.”

Yachid burst out laughing. “In what world? There is only one, ours, the earth.”

“But maybe souls do exist.”

“Impossible. What you call the ‘soul’ is nothing but vibrations of matter, the product of the nervous system. I should know, I’m a medical student.” Suddenly he put his arm around her waist. And although Yechida had never permitted any male to take such liberties before, she did not reprove him. She sat there perplexed by her acquiescence, fearful of the regrets that would be hers tomorrow. I’m completely without character, she chided herself. But he is right about one thing. If there is no soul and life is nothing but a short episode in an eternity of death, then why shouldn’t one enjoy oneself without restraint? If there is no soul, there is no God, free will is meaningless. Morality, as my professor says, is nothing but a part of the ideological superstructure.

Yechida closed her eyes and leaned back against the upholstery. The horse trotted slowly. In the dark all the corpses, men and beasts, lamented their death—howling, laughing, buzzing, chirping, sighing. Some of the corpses staggered, having drunk to forget for a while the tortures of hell. Yechida had retreated into herself. She dozed off, then awoke again with a start. When the dead sleep, they once more connect themselves with the source of life. The illusion of time and space, cause and effect, number and relation ceases. In her dream Yechida had ascended again into the world of her origin. There she saw her real mother, her friends, her teachers. Yachid was there, too. The two greeted each other, embraced, laughed and wept with joy. At that moment, they both recognized the truth, that death on Earth is temporary and illusory, a trial and a means of purification. They traveled together past heavenly mansions, gardens, oases for convalescent souls, forests for divine beasts, islands for heavenly birds. No, our meeting was not an accident, Yechida murmured to herself. There is a God. There is a purpose in creation. Copulation, free will, fate—all are part of His plan. Yachid and Yechida passed by a prison and gazed into its window. They saw a soul condemned to sink down to Earth. Yechida knew that this soul would become her daughter. Just before she woke up, Yechida heard a voice:

“The grave and the gravedigger have met. The burial will take place tonight.”

“There have been more changes in the past 65 years than in all other centuries put together. No longer do most people believe in the orderly progression of cause and effect; no longer do they believe in the natural goodness of man and the inevitability of progress. Stability is gone. This is an era of quibble, doubt, and qualm. Science, technology, art, architecture, music, literature have all acquired new values, and revolutionary conflicts rage.”

Call that one #1. (Here’s your chance to see if you can tell the writers from the scientists, or the mainstream from SF.)

#2: “I am going to make one big hypothesis—a religious hypothesis —that the emergence of intelligent life is not a meaningless accident. But I am not going to follow orthodox religions by presuming that I know what the meaning is.. . . Let us see how much of the plan we can discover.”

#3: “The next great breakthrough in science—the breakthrough that will have the kind of impact on us all that the Hiroshima bomb had —will be in the area of psychophysiology: mind and brain. And the man who will bring it about walks the earth today.”

(#4, “Today, science stands fair to join Religion, Motherhood, and the Flag as a domain so sacrosanct and so sanctimonious, that leg-pulling isn’t allowed, levity is forbidden, and smiling is scowled at.”