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

furniture, her savings, they go to her niece,’ the lawyer told her.

She had expected nothing else. The niece had only been mentioned in passing a couple of times, but there had been a certain importance attached to her name.

‘Aside from the poster, she did leave an amount of money for you.’

‘What?’ Amelia asked.

‘She also left money for her staff. She was a generous lady. It’s not much different from that, the amount. There’s some paperwork that needs to be filled out.’

When she arrived home, Amelia peeled open the tube and unrolled the poster on the floor. It was the Mars poster: Lucía with the cartridge belts, looking over her shoulder.

In a corner, a few shaky words had been scrawled with a black felt pen: Do what you want, Amelia.

Hellas, she thought. Mars is home to a plain that covers nearly twenty-three hundred kilometers. Hellas appears featureless…

And then Amelia could think of no more facts, no more names and numbers to go together. She wept.

*

It rained again and again. Three days of rain and on the third she asked for a car to drive her over to New Polanco. In the derelict buildings nearby, people were collecting water in pots and cans and buckets. She watched them from the window of the car. Then the surroundings changed, Elías’s tall apartment building came into focus, and it was impossible that both views could be had in the same city.

As soon as she walked into his apartment, she looked for the sign advertising Mars, but it wasn’t on. The power might be down on that street. Elías’s building probably had a generator.

She stood before the window, watching the rain instead.

He wasn’t home. She had not bothered to text him, but she did not mind the wait. The silence. Then the door opened and he finally walked in, shaking an umbrella.

‘Hey,’ he said, frowning. ‘Didn’t know you’d stop by.’

Amelia held up the key he’d given her and placed it on the table, carefully, like a player revealing an ace. ‘I came to bring it back and say goodbye. I’m headed to New Panyu.’

Elías took off his jacket and tossed it on the couch, smiling, incredulous. ‘You don’t have the money for that.’

‘I’ve got the money,’ she affirmed.

‘How?’

‘Doesn’t matter how.’

‘You’re serious. This isn’t some joke.’

‘I wouldn’t joke about it.’

‘Fuck me,’ he said, sitting down on the couch, resting his elbows against his knees and shaking his head. He still seemed incredulous, but now he was also starting to look pissed off. ‘Just like that.’

‘I told you I’d go one day.’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t think… Shit, Amelia, Mars is a dump. It’s a fucking dump. Piss recycled into drinkable water and sandstorms blotting your windows. You think you’re going to be better off there? You seriously think that?’

He sounded like her sister. Marta had said the exact same thing, with more bad words and yelling, although toward the end of the conversation, she concluded it was for the best and she might be able to rent the room where Amelia now slept. Pili had joked about Martians dancing the cha-cha-cha and bought Amelia a beer. Her eyes held not even the slightest trace of tears, but Amelia could tell she was sad.

‘You’re going to be back in less than six months,’ he warned her. ‘You’re just going to burn through your money.’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

‘You’re selfish. You’re just damned selfish. And you… you’ll miss Earth, the comfort of having an atmosphere.’

Perhaps he was right that she would miss it all, later. The city, her apartment, her sister, Pili, the café where she spent most of her waking hours, and him too. Twenty seconds after boarding the shuttle to Mars, she might indeed miss it, but she was not going to stay around because maybe she might get homesick.

‘It doesn’t matter to you?’ he asked. ‘That you are going to eat bars made of algae seven days a week? That… that I won’t be around?’

She laughed brokenly and he stood up, stood in front of her, all fervent eyes. She liked it when he looked at her like that, covetous, like he wanted her all, like he might devour her whole and she’d cease to exist, be edited out of existence like they edited scenes in the movies.

‘Cut the shit. Come with me to Monterrey. I’ll rent a place for you there. I’ll pay your expenses,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Mars or bust, then.’

‘Yes.’

She scratched her arm, scratched the spot where they drew blood and an indentation was starting to form, and looked at that spot instead of him. She couldn’t see it with her jacket on, but she could feel the scar tissue there, beneath her fingertips.

‘I told you. I always told you. New Panyu—’

‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘When we were nineteen. Fuck, you don’t keep the promises you make when you’re a kid.’

‘No, you don’t.’

Her throat, she felt it clogged with bitterness. The words were hoarse and she put both her hands down at her sides, giving him a furious glance.

‘Fine, fine, fine,’ he said, his hand slamming against the living-room table, equally furious. ‘Fine! Leave me!’

Amelia crossed her arms and began walking to the door, but he moved to her side, reached for her, a hand brushing her hair.

‘No, it’s not fine, Amelia,’ he whispered.

She opened her mouth, ready to halt him before he committed himself to something, but he spoke too fast.

‘I did… I do love you.’ Gentle words. Sincere. All the worse for that.

The hand was still in her hair and she was looking down at her shoes, frowning, arms tight against her chest. She had not come to converse or negotiate. She had come to say goodbye, even if he had not given her that courtesy once upon a time. Now, for the first time, she understood why he had taken off so suddenly, wordless. She knew why he’d made their first film a silent movie, a goodbye with no dialogue. It was a wretched mess to part from