The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (36 page)

A third clambers over us, pretty tangle that we are, and checks the rooms. There's a pause, then a hoarse shout. Jessop's been found.

"Take the bastard outside."

They've cleared the street. Faces peer from the window. Someone kicks my legs from under me. I land on my knees.

"Mike, remember what Makin said." The man holding my arm is young and nervous.

Mike, who's looking down on me, pauses, but then he decides I'm worth it. He kicks me in the chest. I feel the wind go out of me.

"Bugger Makin. He killed Jessop."

I curl up on the floor, hands over my head. My view's of the boots as they pile in. It doesn't matter. I've had a kicking before.

I
'm in Makin's office. The clock sounds muffled and voices are distant. The hearing in my left ear's gone. The vision in my right eye's reduced to a slit. Breathing hurts.

Makin's furious.

"Get out."

"Sir, the man's a murderer," Mike whines.

"I gave specific orders. Tom wasn't to be harmed under any circumstances. You were to bring him straight to me if anything happened."

"Sir, Jessop . . ."

"Are you still here? Go before I have you posted to Seaforth."

Mike flees at the threat of Merseyside's hinterlands. Makin fetches a pair of glasses and a decanter. He pours out the port. It looks like molten rubies.

"Drink this. It'll steady you. I've called for a doctor."

I drain the glass, not tasting the contents. His sits, untouched.

"You're in serious trouble, Tom. I want to help you." The chair's legs scrape the floor as he pulls it closer and sits down. "Did you kill him?"

I nod. Then I start to cry.

"It happened so fast. He burst in. I was with a girl." I'm babbling. A stream of snot, tears and despair. "I'm not a trade unionist."

"Who was the girl?"

"Not Kate Harper, if that's what you're thinking. Jessop didn't do his job very well. She's dead. He should've checked the register."

"He did. The body didn't match the sample you gave me for her." Makin tips his head. "You have to trust me. Is Kate really dead or were you with her?"

"No. All I know is that she's dead."

"Who did the sample belong to? Was it the woman you were with?"

"Does it matter?"

He looks down at his hands. Ink stains his fingers. "More than you think."

He tops up my glass.

"Let's suppose Lord Peel's keen to find this woman, whoever it is. Let's say Lady Peel needs medical attention that requires a little blood or perhaps a bit of skin. It would be a wealth for this woman and a reward to whoever helps me find her." He lets this sink in. "Suppose Jessop got himself into a spot of bother with some girl. He played rough from what I've heard. There's no proof. The girl's long gone. An unsolved case."

My nose starts to bleed. Makin hands me his handkerchief. Blood stains the fine linen.

"You could do that?"

"I'll do what's necessary." Makin, not afraid to scramble.

"I want somewhere away from Liverpool. Out in the country. A farm with cows and chickens where nobody can bother me," I blurt out. "And I want to take a woman and child with me."

"That's a lot, just for information."

"It's more than that. Peel will be pleased. It'll make up for that day when he made his speech. But promise me first, that we have a deal."

Makin looks at me with narrowed eyes.

"A deal then, as long as you deliver her."

We shake hands.

"The sample's mine."

"That's not funny."

"I'm not joking."

He stares at me.

"Test me again and you'll see." I'm an odd-looking woman, but I make a passable man. I'm too big, too ungainly, too flat chested and broad shouldered. My hips narrow and features coarse. "I'm not trying to make a fool of you. I live this way."

"Why?"

"Sarah, my mother, got me when she was cornered on the factory floor by men who resented a woman who could work a metal press better than them. She swore she'd never go back. She became Saul after I was born."

Rag and bone men. We're free, Tom. Never subject to the tyranny of the clock. The dull terrors of the production lines. No man will use us as he pleases.

"What's your real name?"

"Tom." It's the only name I've ever had. "Do we still have a deal?"

"Yes. The girl you were with when you killed Jessop. Is she the one you want to take with you?"

His face is smooth now, hiding disgust or disappointment.

"Yes."

"I'll need to know who she is and where to find her if I'm going to get her out of Liverpool."

I tell him. When I say Sally's name he takes a deep breath but doesn't ask anything else.

I want to ask,
What do the Peels want from me?
But then I decide it's better not to know.

I
've never been on a boat. I've never seen Liverpool from the sea. My stinking, teeming city's beautiful. I've never loved her more than I do now. I love the monumental Liver birds, even though they're indifferent to the suffering below. The colonnades and warehouses. Cathedrals and crack houses. The pubs and street lamps glowing in the fog. Workers, washerwomen, beggars, priests and princes. Rag and bone men. Liverpool is multitudes.

The boat's pitch and roll makes me sick. A guard follows me to the rail. He's not concerned about my health. He's scared I'll jump. I get a whiff of the Irish Sea proper. Land's a strip in the distance.

We don't moor at Southport but somewhere nearby. I'm marched down the rattling gangplank and onto a narrow jetty. Miles of dunes roll out before us. It's clean and empty. I've never known such quiet. There's only wind and shifting sands. I wonder if it's hell or paradise.

The dunes become long grass and then packed brown earth. I've never seen so many trees. Their fallen leaves are needles underfoot, faded from rich green to brown.

There's a hatch buried in the ground. One of my guards opens it and clambers down, waiting at the bottom.

"You next."

The corridor leads downwards. Our boots shed sand and needles on the tiles. There's the acrid smell of antiseptic.

"In here." One of them touches my arm.

The other's busy talking to someone I can't see because of the angle of an adjoining door. I catch the words, "Makin sent her this way. She'll need time to heal."

"Take your clothes off and put them in the bin. Turn this and water will come out here. Get clean under it." My guard's talking to me like I'm a child. "Soap's here. Towel's there. Put on this gown after."

I'm mortified, thinking they're going to watch, but they're keen to be away. I drop my clothes into the bin. I can still smell Sally on me but she doesn't stand a chance against the stream of hot water and rich suds.

A woman's leaning against the far wall, watching. I pull the towel about me and try to get dry. She looks like a china doll, with high, round cheeks and blue eyes. Her long yellow hair swings as she walks.

"Sit there."

She tuts as she touches my cheek where the skin's split. Then she checks my eyes and teeth. A needle punctures my vein. Blood works its way along a tube into a bottle. She takes scrapings from the inside of my mouth.

"Disrobe."

I stand up and let the towel drop to a puddle at my feet. I stare ahead of me. She walks around me like a carter considering a new horse. Her hand floats across the plane of my back, around the garland of yellow and purple bruises that run from back to front. She touches my breasts, my stomach, my thighs. From the steadfast way she avoids my gaze, I know there's more chance that the Liver birds will fly than of me leaving here.

I try and stay calm. I was dead from the moment Jessop opened the door of the red room. From the moment I put the sampler to my arm. It's either this or a jig at the end of a rope. There's no point in me going cold into the warm ground to rot when I can help Sally and Lolly. I hope they'll remember to take Gabriel with them.

Ink-fingered Makin, the artful scrambler, making his calculations. The possibility I've got him wrong is a cold, greasy knife in my belly. If I have, I've served up Sally, Lolly and Mrs Tsang into the constabulary's hands.

The woman seems satisfied. I want to say,
Look at me. Look me in the eye. I'm a person, not a piece of meat,
but then I realise I just might as well be. A piece of meat. Rag and bone.

THE BOOK SELLER

Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar (
lavietidhar.wordpress.com
) grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Vanuatu and Laos. He is the author of six novels including World Fantasy Award winner
Osama, Martian Sands
, and the Bookman Trilogy. Tidhar has published more than 130 short stories, including linked short story collection
Hebrewpunk
, and edited
The Apex Book of World SF
anthologies. His most recent book is novel
The Violent Century.

A
chimwene loved Central Station. He loved the adaptoplant neighbourhoods sprouting over the old stone and concrete buildings, the budding of new apartments and the gradual fading and shearing of old ones, dried windows and walls flaking and falling down in the wind.

Achimwene loved the calls of the alte-zachen, the rag-and-bone men, in their traditional passage across the narrow streets, collecting junk to carry to their immense junkyard-cum-temple on the hill in Jaffa to the south. He loved the smell of sheesha-pipes on the morning wind, and the smell of bitter coffee, loved the smell of fresh horse manure left behind by the alte-zachenspatient, plodding horses.

Nothing pleased Achimwene Haile Selassi Jones as much as the sight of the sun rising behind Central Station, the light slowly diffusing beyond and over the immense, hour-glass shape of the space port. Or almost nothing. For he had one overriding passion, at the time that we pick this thread, a passion which to him was both a job and a mission.

Early morning light suffused Central Station and the old cobbled streets. It highlighted exhausted prostitutes and street-sweeping machines, the bobbing floating lanterns that, with dawn coming, were slowly drifting away, to be stored until nightfall. On the rooftops solar panels unfurled themselves, welcoming the sun. The air was still cool at this time. Soon it will be hot, the sun beating down, the aircon units turning on with a roar of cold air in shops and restaurants and crowded apartments all over the old neighbourhood.

"Ibrahim," Achimwene said, acknowledging the alte-zachen man as he approached. Ibrahim was perched on top of his cart, the boy Ismail by his side. The cart was pushed by a solitary horse, an old grey being who blinked at Achimwene patiently. The cart was already filled, with adaptoplant furniture, scrap plastic and metal, boxes of discarded house wares and, lying carelessly on its side, a discarded stone bust of Albert Einstein.

"Achimwene," Ibrahim said, smiling. "How is the weather?"

"Fair to middling," Achimwene said, and they both laughed, comfortable in the near-daily ritual.

This is Achimwene: he was not the most imposing of people, did not draw the eye in a crowd. He was slight of frame, and somewhat stooped, and wore old-fashioned glasses to correct a minor fault of vision. His hair was once thickly curled but not much of it was left now, and he was mostly, sad to say, bald. He had a soft mouth and patient, trusting eyes, with fine lines of disappointment at their corners. His name meant "brother" in Chichewa, a language dominant in Malawi, though he was of the Joneses of Central Station, and the brother of Miriam Jones, of Mama Jones' Shebeen on Neve Sha'anan Street. Every morning he rose early, bathed hurriedly, and went out into the streets in time to catch the rising sun and the alte-zachen man. Now he rubbed his hands together, as if cold, and said, in his soft, quiet voice, "Do you have anything for me today, Ibrahim?"

Ibrahim ran his hand over his own bald pate and smiled. Sometimes the answer was a simple "No." Sometimes it came with a hesitant "Perhaps..."

Today it was a "Yes," Ibrahim said, and Achimwene raised his eyes, to him or to the heavens, and said, "Show me?"

"Ismail," Ibrahim said, and the boy, who sat beside him wordless until then, climbed down from the cart with a quick, confident grin and went to the back of the cart. "It's heavy!" he complained. Achimwene hurried to his side and helped him bring down a heavy box.

He looked at it.

"Open it," Ibrahim said. "Are these any good to you?"

Achimwene knelt by the side of the box. His fingers reached for it, traced an opening. Slowly, he pulled the flaps of the box apart. Savouring the moment that light would fall down on the box's contents, and the smell of those precious, fragile things inside would rise, released, into the air, and tickle his nose. There was no other smell like it in the world, the smell of old and weathered paper.

The box opened. He looked inside.

Books. Not the endless scrolls of text and images, moving and static, nor full-immersion narratives he understood other people to experience, in what he called, in his obsolete tongue, the networks, and others called, simply, the Conversation. Not those, to which he, anyway, had no access. Nor were they books as decorations, physical objects hand-crafted by artisans, vellum-bound, gold-tooled, typeset by hand and sold at a premium.

No.

He looked at the things in the box, these fragile, worn, faded, thin, cheap paper-bound books. They smelled of dust, and mould, and age. They smelled, faintly, of pee, and tobacco, and spilled coffee. They smelled like things which had
lived.

They smelled like history.

With careful fingers he took a book out and held it, gently turning the pages. It was all but priceless. His breath, as they often said in those very same books, caught in his throat.

It was a
Ringo.

A genuine Ringo.

The cover of this fragile paperback showed a leather-faced gunman against a desert-red background. RINGO, it said, it giant letters, and below, the fictitious author's name, Jeff McNamara. Finally, the individual title of the book, one of many in that long running Western series. This one was
On The Road To Kansas City.