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

a war where nobody came. He said people come back to wars again and again and again. He said that was his job, but that he was no longer interested in doing it.

I asked him what he meant by going to war. I asked if he was a soldier and he said he was not, but that he looked at wars, trying to learn from them. He said years from now leaders would want to know what happened from 1914 to 1918. He said there would be wars where more people would die than did in the Great War.

I said my father told me that more people died in the war than I could ever count. I said King George said it would never happen again because everybody will remember the dead because there would be a remembrance in November.

The shining man laughed at that, and kept laughing for a long time.

[Thumbprint here as Master Carter has no signature]

I thought nobody noticed the shining man, but the next day my father asked me about my new friend.

‘Something odd about that one,’ he said. ‘Where is he from?’

‘Not here,’ I said.

My mother did not let me go to work that day. She said people had been attacked by white mobs and she was worried. Both of my parents and the whole of Niggertown was worried. From inside the house we heard the noise of people screaming and gunshots and the crackle of fires. I later found out that the trouble was caused by a large group of black men and white women who went out of Cardiff together and were attacked by a mob of white people when they came back. My mother asked my father if we should run.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

He did tell me to get his gun, but my mother yelled at him because he was blind. I do not think that was very nice of my mother, but it was true that my father couldn’t use a gun if he could not see. I did get the gun, just in case. That was lucky because they did come knocking on our door. They were loud and frightening and they shouted. They shook the handle. Some were at the windows and we could smell smoke from outside. The door shook and I thought it would come off. Four men and two women crowded to get in. My mother took my father into the coal cellar, but I had my father’s gun and when the door fell off I pointed and fired without thinking.

It did not go bang. Instead, it made a whining sound like a cat. Instead of the flash, it glowed, and in its light I saw the mob clearly. After I fired the gun they had the Morbus. All of them. They had bubbles in their mouths and pissed themselves while banging their heads on the wooden floor. This is true. I swear it.

The rest of the mob did not come into the house after those who did got the Morbus. They ran away. Mother cleaned their clothes and cleaned the floor and we both looked after them, but they woke up and ran away. I do not know where the gun is. I dropped it after firing because I was frightened.

These were not the last visitors we had that night.

[Thumbprint here as Master Carter has no signature]

There were two men who came to the house. I had never seen them before. Their shoes were clean and polished, but instead of stockings or socks they had a shiny film on the skin of their legs, soft mirrored fabric that I had seen before. They wore gloves and hoods. Their clothes were not only clean, they were new. Even the white people who come into Niggertown don’t have new clothes. They did not come inside.

I had the same feeling that came when I was in the shining man’s machine and I knew that these were the eyes that watched me. I do not know how long they stood there for, but after a while they walked away. I spent the night in the coal cellar with my family. There were rats.

I saw the shining man the next day on the bridge, but this time he came from the direction of the town, and he said the boarding house on Millicent Street had been burnt down and I could tell that he was sad. His shoes were dirty but he did not let me clean them. He started to speak to me, but I do not remember what he said. His words came fast, as if he thought he had to use them all up. His words made my head hurt. He finished by saying ‘thank you’ and walked to the bank of the Taff. I watched him from the bridge and two hooded figures joined him and put manacles on him. He did not struggle or fight. This time I expected the bright light, and when it came they were all gone.

I do not know where they went or where they came from.

I saw Abdi Langara once, in town, but not at Millicent Street. He stopped me and asked if I was Linus Carter the bootblack and I said yes and he said did I know if Our Friend was coming back and I said I do not know and he smiled as if we both had a secret. Abdi Langara had clean shoes, but whoever had polished them was not very careful because I could see a streak of polish on his brogues.

‘He was a thief, you know. He stole… items of interest and gave them away, gave them to me for our people to use. That house they burnt was… He brought us books and devices, things we are not allowed to buy. We could teach, we could learn, we had a future. Millicent Street wasn’t a boarding house. It was a bank, a post office, a university, a theatre, all in one. Just a