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

metropolis whose streets were paved with gold, when the truth was far more splendid, and more perplexing, to behold.

What he saw, suspended in the vacuum, was a city aflame. Its handsome municipal buildings, its godowns and steeples and shophouses, were all accretions upon a turf that glowed brighter than candlewax or whale oil. Indeed, as the shoreline drew closer, he could see the entire terrain was blinding star-stuff: countless bodies of hydrogen and helium, bonded together into a hill of pulsing light.

This was Xingzhou. The Continent of Stars.

The very ground burned him as he set foot in the harbour. He thought of his family, his starving brothers and sisters, and gritted his teeth.

He learned his trade fast. He leased his rickshaw from a fellow migrant of Fujian, who had arrived years ago and grown rich. Through practice, he learned how to trundle its weight through the white-hot boulevards, how to heave his frame into the shaft to steer sharp corners, how to stiffen his calves as he went uphill and downhill, criss-crossing the bridges that linked the clustered suns. He became familiar with the local geography, or rather astrography: the speediest routes between Copernicus Circus and Bukit Bintang, between Sri Thimithi and the Phlogistonic Gardens. He also learned the local lingo: how to quicken his pace when he heard them cry, ‘Cepat, cepat,’ how to dodge parasols and truncheons at the words, ‘Jangan tunggu, bodoh!’

His passengers were a motley crew: rich and poor, immigrant and native, of every creed and race. Some were carbon-based bipeds like himself, but others resembled glass-encased jellies, or spidery exoskeletons, or else more shadow and electromagnetic echo than physical form. The latter, he learned, were often tourists from dark matter galaxies. He liked them, as they tipped generously.

However, with his profession also came great pain. Within his first hours on the job, his soles had been scorched red, then blistering white, then a sickening shade of black. On the advice of his elders, he massaged them with medicated oil, and they soon grew bronze and tough and callused. Still, with each stride, he kicked up stinging cinders, and he often found his mouth choked with stardust. And always, there was the heat. His wide-brimmed straw hat and sweat-soaked cotton shirt offered him scant protection.

He was not, however, the worst off among his peers. He was reminded of this at the end of each working day, as he returned to his lodgings to cook rice porridge and rest his aching muscles. Twenty men slept in each room, so he could not escape the wakeful cries of those fallen prey to illness: consumption, tetanus, venereal disease. Some frittered away their earnings on opium, others on prostitutes, others on cards. ‘We are not meant to live long,’ said one of them philosophically, as he sacrificed the last of his silver for an all-or-nothing gamble. ‘All day, we work like animals. By night, may we live like kings?’

It was a figure of speech, my grandfather tells me. There were no nights: only endless day, flecked with sunspots.

He was lucky. Others might claim he survived due to diligence or morals, but the truth was, he had simply been overlooked by the demons of calamity. He met no parang-wielding bandits. He had no disastrous collisions with thopters, podracers or police. Thus, he thrived. He grew fluent enough to bargain for higher fees during peak traffic. He began to relish the exotic tastes of his new home: durian and soylent green, chilli padi and bantha milk. He buried his brothers when they perished at the paupers’ hospital, and even gave up a portion of his earnings for their cremations. Yet he saved enough each month to visit the ansible station and wire money back to China.

He still dreamt, one day, that he would return to his village in glory. A feast might be held in his honour, and the landlord might beg him to marry his daughter. But those dreams grew paler each day in the light of his newfound home.

*

My grandmother was a demon. She was born in the Indian subcontinent in the third millennium BCE, on the island kingdom of Lanka. It was a time of misfortune. The emperor had stolen a bride. Her husband was a warrior prince, hellbent on vengeance, and had held the city under siege. Their menfolk lay scattered on the battlefields, crushed by astras, butchered by the wrath of his monkey army. There was no hope, no safety, no better escape from dishonour than to flee and seek refuge in a new land.

She left for Xingzhou when she was a hundred and ninety-two. ‘Head to the ivory gate of the easternmost antapura,’ whispered a naga maiden she met in the perfumed garden at midnight. ‘My cousin awaits. He will grant you safe passage in exchange for your jeweled anklets and pearl-encrusted brooch. Do not fear pursuit: I shall swear you were taken by enemy soldiers. None will dare follow you. None will dare utter your name.’

Her fellow refugees huddled in the moonlight. There were gandharvas, kinnaris, yakshis, and of course, rakshasis like herself. Their smuggler’s reptilian eyes darted to and fro, watchful, as he led them to the chalk-white sands of the beach, then into the chill waters themselves. Then, as he uttered a mantra, a mighty chariot arose from the surf, its wheels and embossed chassis silvered in the light of the moon. A pushpaka vimana, as swift and cunning as the vehicle owned by the emperor himself.

They wept as the vessel lifted soundlessly from the oceans, soaring in seconds beyond the clouded firmament. Below, they had feared for their lives. But as they hurtled through the dark heavens, passing the nine planets, hurtling through the twenty-seven lunar mansions, they became convinced they had sacrificed something far greater. They had fallen out of history. Become untouchable. Unthinkable. Taboo.

The prospect of Xingzhou was a dreary sight to their eyes. True, it possessed some novelty, being a city built on the stars. Yet it could