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Science Fiction

Schrödinger's

Kitten

By George Alec Effinger

contemporary

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

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COVER DESIGN BY CHRIS HARDWICK

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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

George Alec Effinger - Schrodingers Kitten.pdf

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