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

‘He’s been out there for all this time?’

‘They usually count on help from friends.’

‘But, if everyone knows it, why hasn’t the police done something?’

Elizabeth shrugged.

‘The usual reasons,’ she said. ‘Friendship, male bonding, pure and simple machismo. It’s a well-established belief in our culture, and even more so far from the big cities, that males are somehow just misbehaving boys who simply don’t realize how strong they are, that kind of thing.’

‘Boys will be boys, right?’

‘Right you are. I can’t say I’m for the death penalty, but I don’t pity this kind of monster.’

‘I feel you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course,’ Anita said. She wanted to say something else, but refrained.

Maybe sensing this hesitation, Elizabeth said, ‘Of course you do. Um tatu cheira o outro, right?’

‘What?’

‘A popular saying here. They say that armadillos can sniff each other from far away – or even close to each other, even if one of them is disguised.’

Anita nodded. She’d been out of the closet for years now, both for her family and for people at work. She just didn’t flaunt it; Brazilians fancied thinking of themselves as enlightened and free of prejudice, but for years now Brazil had held the record for having the world’s highest LGBT murder rate. Being a cop didn’t let her off the hook.

So far she hadn’t been entirely sure if Elizabeth was a lesbian too (so that was what she meant with that proclivity talk? she thought), but it didn’t matter anyway. She was there to arrest a murderer, and she was going to do that.

*

They spent the whole day talking to the ribeirinhas. Most of them were very young – ages ranging from fourteen to twenty-three – already with children, so many children. Usually three of four per house, but Anita saw six playing in front of one of the shacks, two of them toddlers, and Elizabeth told her they were all of the same mother. All the ribeirinhas lived on scraps since the social welfare salary was suspended by the new right-wing government. Elizabeth acted as a social worker/doctor/therapist, sometimes buying food for their babies on top of that, but Anita saw that she couldn’t do much for them.

Anita helped one of the youngest girls change diapers on her twin babies while Elizabeth talked to the neighbour – they were so alike, Anita thought the woman could be the young girl’s mother, but the ribeirinhas were very shy with her, and resisted her efforts to make conversation. The older woman (who, to Anita, could be anywhere between twenty-eight to forty-eight, but the woman’s face was so weather-beaten she really had no idea) talked to Elizabeth with a lot more confidence, but also a great deal of respect, as if the other was so much better than her.

The great white saviour. Anita was sick and tired of seeing that.

And Elizabeth seemed to revel in that role. She was speaking firmly to the woman, as if she indeed was a lesser being, a servant. She couldn’t listen to all the conversation, but at some point the woman next door nodded humbly, head down, and Elizabeth said, ‘Next time, don’t do anything. Don’t give anything. You hear me?’

The woman mumbled something under her breath.

‘Just let nature follow its course. It’s the best for everyone.’

The woman nodded again.

Anita just sat there, watching.

*

They returned home at dusk. Anita was exhausted; Elizabeth looked as if she could spend the night working without breaking a sweat.

‘Is this the real reason?’ Anita asked.

‘I didn’t know we were having the interview now. Are you recording the talk?’

‘Just curious. It’s a profile. I’m not required to record every single thing.’

‘The reason is a promise,’ Elizabeth said after a while, serious. ‘But I already knew what I wanted to do before making it.’

‘What promise?’

‘There was… someone before. Someone I really liked and, more important, I looked up to. She made me promise I would stay here after she died to take care of things. To set some kind of balance.’

‘As a vigilante?’ Anita ventured.

‘What? No!’ Elizabeth sounded pissed off. ‘I just want to help. If this damned coup hadn’t smashed the hopes of so many people here…’

‘Why do you say coup? The president was impeached,’ Anita retorted, a bit tired of this sort of leftist nonsense, slightly disappointed. So Elizabeth was one of those who thought the government that ousted their former president had staged a coup d’état instead of a legitimate impeachment process. She had more things to do than thinking of politics. Serious things.

‘You don’t think that we live under an illegitimate government? What are they teaching you at the university these days?’

‘Not this,’ Anita mumbled under her breath, but she soon regretted it. Elizabeth didn’t appear to have listened anyway, and kept talking:

‘The social salary was a pittance, but it helped those women a lot. Did you know that only the woman could cash in the benefit? In earlier versions of the programme, only men could go to the bank agency to get the money, but most of them usually kept the money to themselves, spending it on booze rather than sharing it with their wives or helping their kids have an education. Anyone who badmouths the Worker’s Party administration should better come here and see for herself what happened when the new government took the matter in its corrupt hands.’ She huffed. ‘Didn’t you want to profile me? Well, girl, this is me. Part of me, at least.’

‘And the rest?’

Elizabeth stopped suddenly in her tracks and studied her. ‘You don’t want to know.’

Anita wasn’t impressed. ‘What if I do?’

Elizabeth looked deep in her eyes. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

*

Fuck, I messed up everything. This woman is a radical activist.

Anita wasn’t expecting that. As it was, the Federal Police offices in Brasilia weren’t particularly interested in subversive activities for the moment, but that could change soon. Anita was beginning to have second thoughts. Maybe Elizabeth wasn’t innocent after