The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

Novik was nowhere to be seen. He was sleeping or interfaced with the ship. Saga walked downstairs, and the front door slid open for her. Outside, a crowd had gathered. An official-looking man walked up to Saga as she came outside.

‘What’s this ship?’ he said. ‘It’s not on our schedule. Are you the captain?’

‘This is Skidbladnir,’ Saga said. ‘She’s not on anyone’s schedule. We don’t have a captain.’

‘Well,’ the official said. ‘What’s your business?’

‘Just travel,’ Saga said.

She looked back at Skidbladnir. This was her chance to get off, to go home. Novik would barely notice. She could return to her life. And do what, exactly? The gathered crowd was all comprised of humans, their faces dull, their eyes shallow.

‘Do you have a permit?’ the official asked.

‘Probably not,’ Saga said.

‘I’ll have to seize this ship,’ the official said. ‘Bring out whoever is in charge.’

Saga gestured at Skidbladnir’s walls. ‘She is.’

‘This is unheard of,’ the official said. He turned away and spoke into a comm radio.

Saga looked at the little town, the empty-faced crowd, the gray official.

‘Okay. I am the captain,’ she said. ‘And we’re leaving.’

She turned and walked back to Skidbladnir. The door slid open to admit her. The hallway inside thrummed with life. She put a hand on the wall.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Wherever you want.’

*

Pilot episode: One Small Step

The new captain of Andromeda Station arrives. Everything is new and strange; the captain only has experience of Earth politics and is baffled by the various customs and rituals practiced by the other aliens on the station. A friendly janitor who happens to be cleaning the captain’s cabin offers to give her a tour of all the levels. The janitor, it turns out, has been on the station for most of his life and knows all of the station’s quirks. She’s confusing as hell at first, he says. But once you know how to speak to her, she will take good care of you.

*

Saga took the tapes down and rolled them up. It was time to be the captain of her own ship now. A ship that went where it wanted to, but a ship nonetheless. She could set up proper trade. She could learn new languages. She could fix things. She was good at fixing things.

One day Skidbladnir would fail. But until then, Saga would swim through the void with her.

Prime Meridian

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexico

I got to write the introduction to the first publication of ‘Prime Meridian’, and I only wish Silvia wrote more science fiction. It is possibly my favourite thing of hers, a quiet, devastating tale of near-future Earth and a dream of the stars. I’ve co-edited the Jewish Mexican Literary Review with Silvia, and got to write a book column with her for the Washington Post. I’ve watched her career progress until she hit it big with Mexican Gothic, and once I spent a day with her on a trip into Lovecraft country in New England, though the horrors we saw on the Plum Island lighthouse that day are a story for another time… Of course I had to have ‘Prime Meridian’ in this volume, and I hope you love it as much as I do.

Why did I have to poison myself with love?

—Aelita, or The Decline of Mars, Aleksey Tolstoy

Una ciudad deshecha, gris, monstruosa

—‘Alta traición’, José Emilio Pacheco

1

The subway station was a dud. Both of its entrances had once again been commandeered by a street gang that morning, which meant you’d have to pay a small ‘fee’ in order to catch your train. Amelia was tempted to fork over the cash, but you never knew if these assholes were also going to help themselves to your purse, your cell phone, and whatever the hell else they wanted.

That meant she had to choose between a shared ride and the bus. Amelia didn’t like either option. The bus was cheap. It would also take forever for it to reach Coyoacán. The car could also take a while, depending on how many people hailed it, but it would no doubt move faster.

Amelia was supposed to meet Fernanda for lunch the next day and she needed to ensure she had enough money to pay for her meal. Fernanda was loaded, and odds were she’d cover it all, but Amelia didn’t want to risk it in case Fernanda wasn’t feeling generous.

The most sensible thing to do, considering this, was to take the bus. Problem was, she had the booking and if she didn’t check in by five o’clock, she’d be penalized, a percentage of her earnings deducted. The damned app had a geolocator function. Amelia couldn’t lie and claim she’d reached the house on time.

Amelia gave the gang members standing by the subway station’s entrance a long glare and took out her cell phone.

Five minutes later, her ride arrived. She was glad to discover there was only one other person in the car. Last time she’d taken a shared ride, she sat together with four people, including a woman with a baby, the cries of the child deafening Amelia.

Amelia boarded the car and gave the other passenger a polite nod. The man hardly returned it. He was wearing a gray suit and carried a briefcase, which he clutched with one hand while he held up his cell phone in the other. You heard all these stories about how the ride shares were dangerous – you could get into a car and be mugged, express kidnapped or raped – but Amelia wasn’t going to pay for a damned secure taxi and this guy, at least, didn’t look like he was going to pull a gun on her. He was too busy yakking on the phone.

They made good progress despite the usual insanity of Mexico City’s traffic. In Europe, there were automated cars roaming the cities, but here drivers still had a job. They couldn’t automate that, not with the chaotic fuckery of the roads.

Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system. Olympus Mons, 21