Year’s Best SF 15 Read Online Free PDF Page B

manipulation,” he says. “The British colonialists looked for our weakness, exploited it, set us against each other. Opening the door to hell is easy enough—but closing it is hard. All those years, before British rule, we lived in relative peace. Why is it that we cannot close that door they opened? After all, what religion tells us to slay our neighbor?”
    â€œDoes it matter?” Abdul Karim says bitterly. “We humans are a depraved species, my friend. My fellow Muslims address every prayer to Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate. You Hindus, with your “Isha Vasyam Idam Sarvam”—the divine pervades all. The Christians talk on about turning the other cheek. And yet each of them has hands that are stained in blood. We pervert everything—we take the words of peace spoken by prophets and holy men and turn them into weapons with which to kill each other!”
    He is shaking so hard that he can barely speak.
    â€œIt is in mathematics…only in mathematics that I see Allah…”
    â€œQuiet now,” Gangadhar says. He calls for the servant to bring some water for the master sahib. Abdul Karim drinks and wipes his mouth. The suitcases are being brought out from inside the house. There is a taxi in front.
    â€œListen, my friend,” Gangadhar says, “you must look to your safety. Go home now and lock your doors, and look after your mother. I am sending my family away and I willjoin them in a day or so. When this madness has passed I will come and look for you!”
    Abdul Karim goes home. So far everything looks normal—the wind is blowing litter along in the streets, the paan shop is open, people throng the bus-stop. Then he notices that there aren’t any children, even though the summer holidays are going on. The vegetable market is very busy. People are buying up everything like crazy. He buys a few potatoes, onions and a large gourd, and goes home. He locks the door. His mother, no longer up to cooking meals, watches as he cooks. After they eat and he has her tucked into bed, he goes to his study and opens a book on mathematics.
    One day passes, perhaps two—he does not keep track. He remembers to take care of his mother but often forgets to eat. His mother lives, more and more, in that other world. His sisters and brother call from other towns, anxious about the reports of escalating violence; he tells them not to worry. When things are back to normal they will come and see him and their mother.
    How marvelous, the Universal Mystery
    That only a true Lover can comprehend!
    â€”Bulleh Shah, eighteenth century Punjabi Sufi poet
    Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition.
    â€”Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician (1865–1963)
    One morning he emerges from the darkness of his study into the sunny courtyard. Around him the old city writhes and burns, but Abdul Karim sees and hears nothing but mathematics. He sits in his old cane chair, picks up a stick lying on the ground and begins to draw mathematical symbols in the dust.
    There is a farishta standing at the edge of his vision.
    He turns slowly. The dark shadow stays there, waits. This time Abdul Karim is quick on his feet, despite a sudden twinge of pain in one knee. He walks toward the door, the beckoning arm, and steps through.
    For a moment he is violently disoriented—it occurs tohim that he has spun through a different dimension into this hidden world. Then the darkness before his eyes dissipates, and he beholds wonders.
    All is hushed. He is looking at a vast sweep of land and sky unlike anything he has ever seen. Dark, pyramidal shapes stud the landscape, great monuments to something beyond his understanding. There is a vast, polyhedral object suspended in a pale orange sky that has no sun. Only a diffuse luminescence pervades this sky. He looks at his feet, still in his familiar, worn sandals, and sees all around, in the sand, little fish-like creatures wriggling and