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

They ate dinner in silence.

*

In the middle of the night, the same whistle. This time, Anita kept her eyes wide open, staring at the dark. She was used to darkness, but the sound now carried a strange, threatening tone. Get a hold of yourself, dumbass, she thought.

She considered dropping the tough attitude and knocking on Elizabeth’s door, but she was too proud for that.

Then, as soon as it started, the sound was gone.

Anita stayed there, on the bed, eyes open, heart beating fast, listening, but the whistle never came back.

*

She got out of the bed at dawn, dressed, and plodded to the porch. Elizabeth was already up, feeding the chickens. Anita looked around, watching the colours of the sky changing from deep blue to mauve in the west, a cross-section of rainbow from the east – red, orange and yellow. Wisps of clouds above her head. The air was crispy, but soon it would get warm. She was starting to like this place. If she’d been on a real holiday, she could’ve stayed here for a while, resting her senses from the city. But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t.

‘Coffee is ready,’ Elizabeth’s voice came from behind her. ‘Then let’s finish this interview, shall we? I have much to do, and you’ll want to get back to the city.’

‘Are you going to talk to the ribeirinhas today? I’d like to come with you.’

‘No. They have much to do today. We’d only get in their way.’

Anita didn’t reply to that, even if she felt she should have. She needed more time.

‘When I left the university,’ Elizabeth said, ‘I wasn’t feeling very comfortable with how things stand at academia. The hierarchy is too strict, and you don’t always get to do what you want in terms of research. I don’t think I was ever fit to be a professor. However,’ she stared at Anita, ‘I do think that hierarchy is a good thing, provided both parts have a healthy, transparent relationship. I don’t believe in hiding things for personal gain.’

‘What if it’s for the gain of the community?’

Elizabeth considered that for a few seconds.

‘Then it might be acceptable, but not for long. A good community is one where its members stand for each other, and the only way for it to thrive is when every member is open with each other.’

‘It sounds like a utopia.’

‘No. Utopia means social equanimity. Transparency is about justice. One may lead to the other, but they’re not the same.’

‘What do you think about the murder of the…’

‘What?’

Anita looked up. Elizabeth was staring at her, seemingly taken aback.

‘What are you talking about?’

Fuck.

She didn’t drop the ball. ‘The men who have been killed in the area for the past few months. I read the news, you know.’

‘What about them?’

‘Seven men in seven months. What do you think happened to them?’

Elizabeth shrugged. ‘How would I know?’

‘You live in the community.’

‘I live near the community. I don’t belong.’

‘You have been here for so long. A decade?’

‘Twelve years. But I’ve learned to keep to myself and do the best I can to help, whenever I can. It’s not much, but I like to think I’m doing my best.’

Anita barely suppressed the urge to ask, ‘By killing the men?’ Instead, she said, ‘Do you think the men were killed by the same person?’

Elizabeth stared at her.

‘I don’t think they were killed by a person,’ she finally answered. ‘Even for people who are natural-born swimmers, death by drowning isn’t unusual here. As far as I know, that was what happened to most of them. All drunks, if you ask me. They were so infamous around here that the police have ruled out foul play.’

‘No, they haven’t.’

Elizabeth frowned.

‘They just reopened the investigation.’

‘They?’

Anita didn’t reply.

Elizabeth hummed to herself.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know anything about that. Where did you read it again?’

‘Google.’

‘Hm.’ Then: ‘Come on, let’s have a smoke outside.’

They sat on the porch. Elizabeth rolled a cigarette without hurry and started smoking while gazing at the sky.

‘You know, I’ve loved these skies as long as I can remember,’ she said. ‘I think that one of the things that made me decide to move here after all was exactly this: the colours of the sky. Just like a John Ford western. My favourite is The Searchers.’

‘Mine too,’ Anita said without thinking. This made Elizabeth open a beautiful smile.

‘Wow, an unseen depth of character if I ever saw one. You are more interesting than I thought at first. Maybe there’s hope for you.’

Anita glanced at her and said nothing.

‘The thing about westerns,’ Elizabeth continued, ‘is that westerns are a baring of the soul. The landscape is much more important than the people in it. In such landscapes, you can be yourself, no holds barred.’ She breathed deeply. ‘“To be a writer is to have the loneliest job.” Who said that?’

‘Hemingway?’

The older woman shook her head.

‘García Márquez. The man knew his way with words. What an irony, that he died with senile dementia, unable to write or even to remember.’

‘I don’t see it as an irony,’ Anita said. ‘It’s pure cruelty.’

‘Ah,’ the woman said, ‘but is it cruelty if no one pulls the trigger? If no one gives the punishment? If things just happen by some kind of heavenly justice?’

‘Then God is a twisted fucker,’ Anita said despite herself.

‘That he is, Anita. That he is.’

They remained there in silence, Elizabeth smoking and Anita inhaling deeply the smoke and the scents of the forest, savouring the moment.

Then Carrie turned up.

All the talk about movies triggered a freezing response in Anita which was a kind of rationalization in the face of the strange: the girl drenched in blood who came from the woods right in front of them immediately reminded her of the movie she had seen so many years ago on TV with her dad.

‘The man, the head,’ the girl said, voice quavering. And she fainted.

Anita froze; Elizabeth stood up and ran straight to the girl, right in time to catch her before she fell to the ground.