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

rose unbidden and I wiped at my face, angry at my own weakness. I’d sworn long ago that I would never cry in front of him. The dead man stood and walked to the window, his back to me. He stared out for a long moment before speaking.

I didn’t know what to say to you. His voice was so soft I could barely hear it over the noise outside. As if he was talking to himself. When I looked at you all I could see was my own failure: I was your father and I couldn’t protect you. I hated myself for it and I took that out on you – and for that, I’ll never forgive myself.

‘Good. Because I won’t ever forgive you either.’

He turned back to me and I watched the slow realization work itself across his face.

You are still angry at me, he said, finally. Sadly.

‘You let me down so many times.’ Tears sprang to my eyes again, lending a quaver to my voice. ‘I don’t know how to stop being angry at you.’

I wish I could make it up to you.

‘Well, it’s too late for that.’ For the first time in thirty years, I looked my father in the eyes as I spoke. ‘Did you honestly think that by coming here and chanting your empty platitudes, you could undo all those years of pain? You said you came back to warn me, but this isn’t about me. This is about you getting your last moment of absolution.’

I am so sorry. For everything.

‘It doesn’t matter anymore.’ I was suddenly tired. ‘Go. Find your salvation somewhere else.’

Thunder boomed from somewhere in the distance, sending a ripple of unease through the crowd outside. The wind picked up, skittering debris across the yard. As the fat, heavy rainclouds rolled in, the party outside began to pack up. Families in the building fled to their flats while those who had too far to go clustered under the canvas canopies to wait out the storm.

I picked up my backpack and looked around, but the dead man was gone.

A flood of mourners streamed out from the compound, breaking up into little rivulets of people eager to get home before the rain started. I joined them and headed for the bus shelter. Just as I reached it, the sky opened up and wept.

Inside the shelter, I wedged myself into a small space in the back and tugged the hood of my hi-dri up to hide my face. I didn’t want to explain my sudden departure to any mourners who might recognize me. I was staring into the haze of the rain, my mind blank with grief, when I felt a familiar hand on my shoulder.

‘So you would have just left us like that, eh?’ Auntie Chio’s voice was sad. I tensed involuntarily as I turned to her, but her expression bore an unexpected understanding.

Before I could speak, she wrapped me in a warm embrace. For a moment, I wanted to fight off her kindness. My rage was an invisible load I’d been carrying for so long that I didn’t know how to put it down. Instead, I returned her hug with a fierceness I didn’t realize I had, and finally, I let my tears flow. This time I didn’t bother to wipe them away. There was no one left to see me cry.

The storm passed quickly, and I decided to forego the bus and walk back to the Harbourfront. On foot, I was able to look more closely at the city around me. Though the main roadways were well-maintained, I noted buckled panels and weedy gardens in the side streets. I passed rows of empty homes kept ready for returnees, but underneath their neat government-issued paint jobs, the brickwork was crumbling. Eventually, they too would have to be razed and converted into parkland.

I arrived at the Harbourfront just as the sun was setting behind the Niger Bridge, highlighting its rusted pylons. My city, like the rest of the world, was disintegrating. The realization relieved me, in an odd way. I wondered if too many of us were trying to return to who we imagined we were before the Catastrophe broke us. Maybe what we needed was to learn to live with the world, and ourselves, as it was now. Perhaps our salvation lay in the broken spaces inside us all.

Delhi

Vandana Singh

India

Having ‘Delhi’ in this volume is another dream come true for me. I’ve been familiar with Vandana’s work for years, and was desperate to include her in my Apex Book of World SF anthologies – only none of the stories were then available! We finally did include one (the wonderful ‘Ambiguity Machines: An Examination’), but long ago I vowed to have ‘Delhi’ one day, and here, finally, was my chance. Vandana is a scientist and author who writes exceptional short fiction and this is, well, no exception!

Tonight he is intensely aware of the city: its ancient stones, the flat-roofed brick houses, threads of clotheslines, wet, bright colors waving like pennants, neem-tree lined roads choked with traffic. There’s a bus going over the bridge under which he has chosen to sleep. The night smells of jasmine, and stale urine, and the dust of the cricket field on the other side of the road. A man is lighting a bidi near him: face lean, half in shadow, and he thinks he sees himself. He goes over to the man, who looks like another layabout. ‘My name is Aseem,’ he says. The man, reeking of tobacco, glares at him, coughs and spits, ‘kya chahiye?’ Aseem steps back in a hurry. No, that man is not Aseem’s older self. Anyway, Aseem can’t imagine he would take up smoking bidis at any point in his life. He leaves the dubious shelter of the bridge, the quiet lane that runs under it, and makes his way through the litter and anemic streetlamps to the neon-bright highway. The new city is less confusing, he thinks; the colors are more