The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection
- Автор: Датлоу Эллен, Виндлинг Терри
- Год: 1992
- Язык: английский
- Год: St.Martin’s Press
- Жанр: Ужасы
Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
I couldn’t place his accent or, for that matter, determine if he actually had an accent—I was getting tone-deaf in that respect. He didn’t look American, but that meant nothing. All the Americans were getting a European cast as they adopted the local face.
“The universe?” I said. “You must be exceptionally well traveled.”
He laughed heartily, annoying ersatz-Christ and what sympathizers he had left. We moved out of the group, toward the unoccupied front desk. “The universe we know of, then. Which, for all intents and purposes, might as well be all the universe there is.”
I shrugged. “There’s something wrong with that statement, but I’m no longer compulsive enough to pick out what it is. But it might be comforting to know that if there is a more intelligent species somewhere, its foibles are greater than ours, too.”
“Comforting?” He laughed again. “It would seem that in the absence of pain, no comfort is necessary.” He paused, as if waiting for me to challenge him on that, and then stuck out his hand. “I’m Sandor.”
“Jess.” The warmth of his unmarked, uncut hand was a mild shock. Fluctuations in body temperatures were as nonexistent as blood in these nontimes. Which would only stand to reason, since blood flow governed skin temperature. Everyone was the same temperature now, but whether that was something feverish or as cold as a tomb was impossible to tell with no variation. Perhaps I just hadn’t been touching the right people.
“Odd, isn’t it,” he said, politely disengaging his hand from mine. I felt a rush of embarrassment. “They wanted to investigate it at the hospital, but I wouldn’t let them. Do you know, at the hospital, people are offering themselves for exploratory surgery and vivisection? And the doctors who have a stomach for such things take them willingly. Yes. They cut them open, these people, and explore their insides. Sometimes they remove internal organs and sew the people up again to see how they manage without them. They manage fine. And there is no blood, no blood anywhere, just a peculiar watery substance that pools in the body cavity.
“And hidden away in the hospital, there is a doctor who has removed a woman’s head. Her body is inactive, of course, but it does not rot. The head functions, though without air to blow through the vocal cords, it’s silent. It watches him, they say, and he talks to it. They say he is trying to get the head to communicate with him in tongue-clicks, but it won’t cooperate. She won’t cooperate, if you prefer. And then there’s the children’s ward and the nursery where they keep the babies. These babies—”
“Stop it,” I said.
He looked dazed, as if I’d slapped him.
“Are you insane?”
Now he gave me a wary smile. “Does sanity even come into it?”
“I mean . . . well, we just met.”
“Ah, how thoughtless of me. ”
I started to turn away.
That strangely warm hand was on my arm. “I do mean it. It was thoughtless, pouring all that out on someone I don’t know. And a stranger here as well. It must be hard for you, all this and so far from home.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I glanced at the crucified man. “It’s all so weird, I think maybe I’d just as soon not see it happen anyplace familiar. I don’t really like to think about what it must be like back home. ” I jerked my thumb at the man nailed to the wall. “Like, I’d rather that be some total stranger than one of my neighbors.” “Yes, I can see that. Though it must be a little easier to be with someone you’re close to, as well.” He looked down for a moment. “I saw you come in with your companion.”
I gave him points for perception—most people assumed Jim was my husband. “Are you from here?” I asked.
“No. As I’m sure you could tell.”
“Not really. Is Sandor a Polish name?”
He shrugged. “Could be. But I’m not from there, either.”
There was a minor commotion as the police came in, or rather, some people dressed in police uniforms. Scheveningen was maintaining a loose local government—God knew why, force of habit, perhaps—with a volunteer uniformed cadre that seemed to work primarily as moderators or referees, mostly for the foreigners. They pushed easily through the thinning crowd and started to remove the crucified man from the wall, ignoring his protests that he wasn’t finished, or it wasn’t finished, or something.
“Ite missa est,” I said, watching. “Go, the Mass is over. Or something like that. ”
“You remember the Latin rite. I’m impressed.”
“Some things hang on.” I winced at the sound of ersatz-Christ’s forearm breaking. “That sounded awful, even if it didn’t hurt.”
“It won’t heal, either. Just goes on looking terrible. Inconvenient, too. At the hospital, they have—” He stopped. “Sorry. As you said, some things hang on.” “What do you suppose they’ll do with him?” I asked as they took him out. “It’s not like it’s worth putting him in jail or anything.”
“The hospital. It’s where they take all the mutilation cases bad enough that they can’t move around on their own. If they want mutilation, they can have plenty there, under better conditions, for better reasons, where no one has to see them.” Finally, I understood. “Did you work there long?”
“Volunteered,” he said, after a moment of hesitation. “There are no employees anymore, just volunteers. A way to keep busy. I left—” He shrugged. “Sitting ducks.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s the expression in English, isn’t it? For people who leave themselves open to harm? In this case, literally open.”
“If it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t kill them, and this is the end of it all as we know it,” I said slowly, “how can they be leaving themselves open to harm?”
“A matter of differing cultural perspectives.” He smiled.
I smiled back. “You never told me what culture you were from.”
“I think you could say that we’re all from here now. Or might as well be. There’s an old saying that you are from the place where you die, not where you were born.”
“I’ve never heard that one. And nobody’s dying at the moment.”
“But nothing happens. No matter what happens, nothing happens. Isn’t that a description of a dying world? But perhaps you don’t see it that way. And if you don’t, then perhaps you aren’t dying yet. Do you think if you cut yourself, you might bleed? Is it that belief that keeps you from mutilating yourself, or someone else? Do you even wonder about that?”
I looked from side to side. “I feel like I’m under siege here.”
He laughed. “But don’t you wonder? Why there aren’t people running through the streets in an orgy of destruction, smashing windows and cars and each other? And themselves.”
“Offhand, I’d say there just doesn’t seem to be much point to it.” I took a step back from him.
“Exactly. No point. No reward, no punishment, no pleasure, no pain. The family of humanity has stopped bickering, world peace at last. Do you think if humans had known what it would take to bring about world peace, that they’d have worked a lot harder for it?”
“Do you really think it’s like this everywhere in the world?” I said, casually moving back another step.