Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
This acclaimed series, winner of numerous World Fantasy Awards, continues its tradition of excellence with scores of short stories from such writers as K. W. Jeter, Karl Edward Wagner, Terry Bisson, S. P. Somtow, Charles de Lint, Kobo Abe, Jane Yolen and many others. Supplementing the stories are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, Edward Bryant's witty roundup of the year's fantasy films, and a long list of Honorable Mentions—all of which adds up to an invaluable reference source, and a font of fabulous reading.
I never thought of calling my father. No, I pulled on my clothes, snatched my jacket from the bedpost, and marched out into the yard. When the thief turned his face toward me, I was speechless with fright.
“I’ve come for my dogs,” said the dogstar man. “They miss me, and I miss them.”
“You’re dead,” I whispered. My teeth were chattering. “You fell through the ice and drowned.”
“That’s true,” said the dogstar man. And he went on unchaining them. They were lining up, letting him slip the harnesses over them, taking their old places. Hermes first, then Finn McCool and Melville in the second spot, then Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, and in the last position, Eleanor Roosevelt and John Kennedy.
“If you’re dead, how are you going to take your dogs?”
“Easy,” said the dogstar man. “They can cross over. Didn’t you know that? Didn’t they teach you anything?”
The dogsled was leaning against the back of the house, and he pulled it down, hitched the dogs to it, and took his place on the back runners. He beckoned me over.
“For you,” he said. “I don’t need this where I’m going.”
And he dropped the whistle my father had made into my hand.
PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
Joanne Greenberg
Joanne Greenberg’s numerous published works include Founders Praise, The King’s Persons, Simple Gifts, In This Sign, Age of Consent, and Of Such Small Differences. She is perhaps best known as the author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (under the name “Hannah Green”). Her most recent collection of short fiction, With the Snow Queen, includes the following dark and complex fantasy tale, “Persistence of Memory.” Within the structure of fantasy, Greenberg explores a very real dilemma; all too many people quietly choose to give up pieces of their memory, and then find that in the bargain they have given away large chunks of heart and soul as well.
—T.W.
Jurgen had come to Leonard on the yard and told him there was a visitor. “I don’t think it s a relative, he said, and he looked at Leonard oddly. Leonard got up and followed, happy for the change in routine. Media had tapered off; if it was a woman, he might be able to touch her for money. He needed money. With the same odd look, Jurgen let him wash up before he went in. The visitors’ room was large and bare, divided by a Plexiglas barricade. There was one person there, his visitor, the oldest, ugliest woman he had ever seen, skeletal, lipless, and wrinkled. Her fingers were working, working over her face and body, touching it, moving, picking, bunching at the ragged dress she wore. He was glad for once he couldn’t see clearly. A former visitor had plastered her side of the Plexiglas partition with kisses and the mess hadn’t been cleaned off yet. He sat down and looked at her from a lowered head. It was what he did with the press.
The woman watched him and then, to his horror, opened her mouth and gave a piercing cry. On both sides of the barrier the guards turned, but things like that happened here and they turned back. Lady, Leonard said, “I don’t know you. There’s been a mistake.” She unnerved him.
She gave a cough, trying with physical wrenchings and swallowings to suppress the weeping. She gulped air, and forced back another cry. He was transfixed like a bystander at a fatal wreck. “I need you"’ she said. “I and the others—all the others—need you"’ and her hands, like spiders, ran up and down up and down her face, hair, body.
Leonard was revolted and fascinated in his revulsion. "What is it? Who are you?”
“Gehenna,” she said.
“Well, Mrs. Gehenna.”
Her laughter was more horrifying than her cry. It was a shriek. For the first time in his experience, Leonard saw the guards shiver. On both sides of the barrier they retreated behind the doors and watched through the glass. The woman took another breath. “There’s no time for screaming,” she said. “It’s too late to laugh or scream. Listen. Gehenna is not who I am, although,” and a laugh like a hiccup escaped, “Gehenna is where I’m from. It’s the other side, and the souls of the punished seethe and fire falls from the sky and nests in our hair. Listen. One day a week, from Sabbath eve to sundown Sabbath day, the law relents, and we are free of it, and Hell rejoices more than Heaven.”
“What is all this—” Leonard said. The woman must be mad.
“Listen. On Sabbath eve the fire stops, the lake of flame dries up, and we are free and we can go into the world. Listen—What do you imagine we do, hung upside down the six-days-forever? How do we endure, sheaved like bats in an attic where rags of flame burn us as they light on our fur?” Leonard was silent. She leaned forward and whispered through the speaking holes in the Plexiglas. “We tell stories. In the first millennium we tell our own lives, all the proofs, justifications, over and over. We cry the unfairness of our damnation, we revisit the woundings that we bore and those we gave others again and again and again.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Listen! Listen! Why do you think God made man? It was the story He loved. In Gehenna, the instruments of music incinerate or freeze and the notes burn in the mouths of the players. Fine art goes to stinking smoke; sculptors’ marble burns to lime. Only the story—Listen! We say ‘Listen,’ and we tell stories.”
“I’m going back on the yard,” Leonard said and got up. “I think you’re crazy.”
“I can get you out of here,” the woman said.
Leonard stopped. At the level at which he stood, the Plexiglas was less stained and scratched. He saw her face. Then, he believed what she said. There were no scars on the flesh, only fresh burns, made from a point so close they looked like powderburns, made and remade endlessly. “How can you get me out?”
Her voice was gritty. “You’re serving fifteen years, parole in seven and a half. Aggravated robbery.”
“It wasn’t the money,” Leonard said. “You wouldnt understand. It was a statement against a repressive society, against a society that values property rights above human rights.”
“Listen. There’s no time for that, for all the reasons and the justifications. I have only this small sabbath, a sabbath you waste, a sabbath of no value to you.
You have 2,737 days to serve, and you’ve served 364, so that including leap years you have 2,375. For every day of those days, I can offer you what you yearn for— unconsciousness, nothingness, or dreams—long, lovely dreams. While you are away, you’ll function here in this world and you won’t incur the risks or dangers of this place. Listen! You can be conscious for just the time it takes to give to us . . . what we need. It will happen at a time before the prison wakes up in the morning. Then you will decide which of your memories you will give us. It will be your part of what we need, use, desire ...”
“Memory? Which of my memories?”
“Our own memories burn and sear. The bad ones are all those years of reasons endlessly repeated. Even the good ones get tainted in Gehenna. It’s to close those away, to drown them out, that we hang in anguish and cry other stories, take other days and dreams, see other roads, live in other houses. Listen, we say, and we wrap our burning flesh in your sensations, your evocations. Keep what you want; save what you want. Give me, us, the humiliating moments, the times of weakness, cowardice, the fights with friends, the abuse by the ones supposed to love you. For these incidents and the sensations connected with them, for every one, you can have a day of consciousness removed from here, from the hatred, the hostility, from the boredom and danger of this place.”
