To Follow a Star

by Terry Carr

  Claus, were absent from this one with remarkable thoroughness.

  The Ossies made up for it by their wild ecstasy. Until Olaf had deposited the last globe, they had kept their silence and their seats. But when he had finished, the air heaved and writhed under the stresses of the discordant screeches that arose. In half a second the hand of each Ossie contained a globe.

  They chattered among themselves furiously, handling the globes carefully and hugging them close to their chests. Then they compared one with another, flocking about to gaze at particularly good ones.

  The frowziest Ossie approached Pelham and plucked at the commander’s sleeve. “Sannycaws good,” he cackled. “Look, he leave eggs!” He stared reverently at his sphere and said: “Pittier’n Ossie eggs. Must be Sannycaws eggs, huh?”

  His skinny finger punched Pelham in the stomach.

  “No!” yowled Pelham vehemently. “Hell, no!”

  But the Ossie wasn’t listening. He plunged the globe deep into the warmth of his feathers and said:

  “Pitty colors. How long take for little Sannycaws come out? And what little Sannycaws eat? He looked up. “We take good care. We teach little Sannycaws, make him smart and full of brain like Ossie.”

  Pierce grabbed Commander Pelham’s arm.

  “Don’t argue with them,” he whispered frantically. “What do you care if they think those are Santa Claus eggs? Come on! If we work like maniacs, we can still make the quota. Let’s get started.”

  “That’s right,” Pelham admitted. He turned to the Ossie. “Tell everyone to get going.” He spoke clearly and loudly. “Work now. Do you understand? Hurry, hurry, hurry! Come on!

  He motioned with his arms. But the frowzy Ossie had come to a sudden halt. He said slowly:

  “We work, but Johnson say Kissmess come evvy year.”

  “Isn’t one Christmas enough for you?” Pelham rasped.

  “No!” squawked the Ossie. “We want Sannycaws next year. Get more eggs. And next year more eggs. And next year. And next year, and next year. More eggs. More little Sannycaws eggs. If Sannycaws not come, we not work.”

  “That’s a long time off,” said Pelham. “We’ll talk about it then. By that time I’ll either have gone completely crazy, or you’ll have forgotten all about it.”

  Pierce opened his mouth, closed it, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, and finally managed to speak. “Commander, they want him to come every year.”

  “I know. They won’t remember by next year, though.”

  “But you don’t get it. A year to them is one Ganymede revolution around Jupiter. In Earth time, that’s seven days and three hours. They want Santa Claus to come every week!”

  “Every week!” Pelham gulped. “Johnson told them—”

  For a moment everything turned sparkling somersaults before his eyes. He choked, and automatically his eye sought Olaf.

  Olaf turned cold to the marrow of his bones and rose to his feet apprehensively, sidling toward the door. There he stopped as a sudden recollection of tradition hit him. Beard a-dangle, he croaked:

  “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

  He made for the sleigh as if all the imps of Hades were after him. The imps weren’t, but Commander Scott Pelham was.

  Happy

  Birthday,

  Dear Jesus

  BY FREDERIK POHL

  People seem more and more concerned with material wealth, which has led to a depressing emphasis on the commercial aspects of Christmas. If this goes on, what might Christmas be like a decade or two from now? Frederik Pohl, the master satirist of science fiction, offers a barbed commentary on Christmas Future, when department stores begin celebrating the Christmas sales rush in September . . . but there are still people who remember the real meaning of Christmas.

  Frederik Pohl is famous in science fiction both as an editor and as a writer. The Space Merchants,which he wrote in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth, is recognized as the classic satire on Madison Avenue. He is currently Science Fiction Editor for Bantam Books. He won the Nebula Award for his novel Man Plus.

  It was the craziest Christmas I ever spent. Partly it was Heinemann’s fault—he came up with a new wrinkle in gift-wrapping that looked good but like every other idea that comes out of the front office meant plenty of headaches for the rest of us. But what really messed up Christmas for me was the girl.

  Personnel sent her down—after I’d gone up there myself three times and banged my fist on the table. It was the height of the season and when she told me that she had had her application in three weeks before they called her, I excused myself and got Personnel on the store phone from my private office. “Martin here,” I said. “What the devil’s the matter with you people? This girl is the Emporium type if I ever saw one, and you’ve been letting her sit around nearly a month while—”

  Crawford, the Personnel head, interrupted me. “Have you talked to her very much?” he wanted to know.

  “Well, no. But—”

  “Call me back when you do,” he advised, and clicked off.

  I went back to the stockroom where she was standing patiently, and looked her over a little thoughtfully. But she looked all right to me. She was blond-haired and blue-eyed and not very big; she had a sweet, slow smile. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she looked like a girl you’d want to know. She wasn’t bold, and she wasn’t too shy; and that’s a perfect description of what we call “The Emporium Type.”

  So what in the world was the matter with Personnel?

  Her name was Lilymary Hargreave. I put her to work on the gift-wrap spraying machine while I got busy with my paper work. I have a hundred forty-one persons in the department and at the height of the Christmas season I could use twice as many. But we do get the work done. For instance, Saul & Capell, the next-biggest store in town, has a hundred and sixty in their gift and counseling department, and their sales run easily twenty-five per cent less than ours. And in the four years that I’ve headed the department we’ve yet to fail to get an order delivered when it was promised.

  All through that morning I kept getting glimpses of the new girl. She was a quick learner—smart, too smart to be stuck with the sprayer for very long. I needed someone like her around, and right there on the spot I made up my mind that if she was as good as she looked I’d put here in a counseling booth within a week, and the devil with what Personnel thought.

  The store was packed with last-minute shoppers. I suppose I’m sentimental, but I love to watch the thousands of people bustling in and out, with all the displays going at once, and the lights on the trees, and the loudspeakers playing “White Christmas” and “The Eighth Candle” and “Jingle Bells” and all the other traditional old favorites. Christmas is more than a mere selling season of the year to me; it means something.

  The girl called me over near closing time. She looked distressed and with some reason. There was a dolly filled with gift-wrapped packages, and a man from Shipping looking annoyed. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Martin, but I seem to have done something wrong.”

  The Shipping man snorted. “Look for yourself, Mr. Martin,” he said, handing me one of the packages.

  I looked. It was wrong, all right. Heinemann’s new wrinkle that year was a special attached gift card—a simple Yule scene and the printed message:

  The very Merriest of Season’s Greetings

  From . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  To . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  $8.50

  The price varied with the item, of course. Heinemann’s idea was for the customer to fill it out and mail it, ahead of time, to the person it was intended for. That way, the person who got it would know just about how much he ought to spend on a present for the first person. It was smart, I admit, and maybe the smartest thing about it was rounding the price off to the nearest fifty cents instead of giving it exactly. Heinemann said it was bad-mannered to be too precise—and the way the customers were going for the idea, it
had to be right.

  But the trouble was that the gift-wrapping machines were geared to only a plain card; it was necessary for the operator to put the price in by hand.

  I said, “That’s all right, Joe; I’ll take care of it.” As Joe went satisfied back to Shipping, I told the girl: “It’s my fault. I should have explained to you, but I guess I’ve just been a little too rushed.’

  She looked downcast. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.” I showed her the routing slip attached to each one, which the Shipping Department kept for its records once the package was on its way. “All we have to do is go through these; the price is on every one. We’ll just fill out the cards and get them out. I guess—” I looked at my watch. “I guess you’ll be a little late tonight, but I’ll see that you get overtime and dinner money for it. It wasn’t your mistake, after all.”

  She said hesitantly, “Mr. Martin, couldn’t it—well, can I let it go for tonight? It isn’t that I mind working, but I keep house for my father and if I don’t get there on time he just won’t remember to eat dinner. Please?”

  I suppose I frowned a little, because her expression was a little worried. But, after all, it was her first day. I said, “Miss Hargreave, don’t give it a thought. I’ll take care of it.”

  The way I took care of it, it turned out, was to do it myself; it was late when I got through, and I ate quickly and went home to bed. But I didn’t mind, for oh! the sweetness of the smile she gave me as she left.

  I looked forward to the next morning, because I was looking forward to seeing Lilymary Hargreave again. But my luck was out—for she was.

  My number-two man, Johnny Furness, reported that she hadn’t phoned either. I called Personnel to get her phone number, but they didn’t have it; I got the address, but the phone company had no phone listed under her name. So I stewed around until the coffee break, and then I put my hat on and headed out of the store. It wasn’t merely that I was interested in seeing her, I told myself; she was just too good a worker to get off on the wrong foot this way, and it was only simple justice for me to go to her home and set her straight.

  Her house was in a nondescript neighborhood—not too good, not too bad. A gang of kids were playing under a fire hydrant at the corner—but, on the other hand, the houses were neat and nearly new. Middle-class, you’d have to say.

  I found the address, and knocked on the door of a second-floor apartment.

  It was opened by a tall, leathery man of fifty or so—Lilymary’s father, I judged. “Good morning,” I said. “Is Miss Hargreave at home?”

  He smiled; his teeth were bright in a very sun-bronzed face. “Which one?”

  “Blonde girl, medium height, blue eyes. Is there more than one?”

  “There are four. But you mean Lilymary; won’t you come in?”

  I followed him, and a six-year-old edition of Lilymary took my hat and gravely hung it on a rack made of bamboo pegs. The leathery man said, “I’m Morton Hargreave, Lily’s father. She’s in the kitchen.”

  “George Martin,” I said. He nodded and left me, for the kitchen, I presumed. I sat down on an old-fashioned studio couch in the living room, and the six-year-old sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair across from me, making sure I didn’t pocket any of the souvenirs on the mantel. The room was full of curiosities—what looked like a cloth of beaten bark hanging on the wall, with a throwing-spear slung over the cloth. Everything looked vaguely South-Seas, though I am no expert.

  The six-year-old said seriously, “This is the man, Lilymary,” and I got up.

  “Good morning,” said Lilymary Hargreave, with a smudge of flour and an expression of concern on her face.

  I said, floundering, “I, uh, noticed you hadn’t come in and, well, since you were new to the Emporium, I thought—”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Martin,” she said. “Didn’t Personnel tell you about Sundays?”

  “What about Sundays?”

  “I must have my Sundays off,” she explained. “Mr. Crawford said it was very unusual, but I really can’t accept the job any other way.”

  “Sundays off?” I repeated. “But—but, Miss Hargreave, don’t you see what that does to my schedule? Sunday’s our busiest day! The Emporium isn’t a rich man’s shop; our customers work during the week. If we aren’t staffed to serve them when they can come in, we just aren’t doing the job they expect of us!”

  She said sincerely, “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Martin.”

  The six-year-old was already reaching for my hat. From the doorway her father said heartily, “Come back again, Mr. Martin. We’ll be glad to see you.”

  He escorted me to the door, as Lilymary smiled and nodded and headed back to the kitchen. I said, “Mr. Hargreave, won’t you ask Lilymary to come in for the afternoon, at least? I hate to sound like a boss, but I’m really short-handed on weekends, right now at the peak of the season.”

  “Season?”

  “The Christmas season,” I explained. “Nearly ninety per cent of our annual business is done in the Christmas season, and a good half of it on weekends. So won’t you ask her?”

  He shook his head. “Six days the Lord labored, Mr. Martin,” he boomed, “and the seventh was the day of rest. I’m sorry.” And there I was, outside the apartment and the door closing politely but implacably behind me.

  Crazy people. I rode the subway back to the store in an irritable mood; I bought a paper, but I didn’t read it, because every time I looked at it all I saw was the date that showed me how far the Christmas season already had advanced, how little time we had left to make our quotas and beat last years record: the eighth of September.

  I would have something to say to Miss Lilymary Hargreave when she had the kindness to show up at her job, I promised myself. But, as it turned out, I didn’t. Because that night, checking through the day’s manifolds when everyone else had gone home, I fell in love with Lilymary Hargreave.

  Possibly that sounds silly to you. She wasn’t even there, and I’d only known her for a few hours, and when a man begins to push thirty without ever being married, you begin to think he’s a hard case and not likely to fall slam-bang, impetuously in love like a teenager after his first divorce. But it’s true, all the same.

  I almost called her up. I trembled on the brink of it, with my hand on the phone. But it was close to midnight, and if she wasn’t home in bed, I didn’t want to know it, so I went home to my own bed. I reached under the pillow and turned off my dreamster before I went to sleep; I had a full library for it, a de luxe model with five hundred dreams that had been a present from the firm the Christmas before. I had Haroun al Rashid’s harem and three of Charles the Second’s favorites on tape, and I had rocketing around the moon and diving to Atlantis and winning a sweepstakes and getting elected king of the world; but what I wanted to dream about was not on anybody’s tape, and its name was Lilymary Hargreave.

  Monday lasted forever. But at the end of forever, when the tip of the nightingale’s wing had brushed away the mountain of steel and the Shipping personnel were putting on their hats and coats and powdering their noses or combing their hair, I stepped right up to Lilymary Hargreave and asked her to go to dinner with me.

  She looked astonished, but only for a moment. Then she smiled . . . I have mentioned the sweetness of her smile. “It’s wonderful of you to ask me, Mr. Martin,” she said earnestly, “and I do appreciate it. But I can’t.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “I am sorry.”

  I might have said please again, and I might have fallen to my knees at her feet, it was that important to me. But the staff was still in the shop, and how would it look for the head of the department to fall at the feet of his newest employee? I said woodenly, “That’s too bad.” And I nodded and turned away, leaving her frowning after me. I cleared my desk sloppily, chucking the invoices in a drawer, and I was halfway out the door when I heard her calling after me:

  “Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin!”


  She was hurrying toward me, breathless. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to scream at you. But I just phoned my father, and—”

  “I thought you didn’t have a phone,” I said accusingly.

  She blinked at me. “At the rectory,” she explained. “Anyway, I just phoned him, and—well, we’d both be delighted if you would come and have dinner with us at home.”

  Wonderful words! The whole complexion of the shipping room changed in a moment. I beamed foolishly at her, with a soft surge at my heart; I felt happy enough to endow a home, strong enough to kill a cave bear or give up smoking or any crazy, mixed-up thing. I wanted to shout and sing; but all I said was: “That sounds great.” We headed for the subway, and although I must have talked to her on the ride I cannot remember a word we said, only that she looked like the angel at the top of our tallest Christmas tree.

  Dinner was good, and there was plenty of it, cooked by Lilymary herself, and I think I must have seemed a perfect idiot. I sat there, with the six-year-old on one side of me and

  Lilymary on the other, across from the ten-year-old and the twelve-year-old. The father of them all was at the head of the table, but he was the only other male. I understood there were a couple of brothers, but they didn’t live with the others. I suppose there had been a mother at some time, unless Morton Hargreave stamped the girls out with a kind of cookie cutter; but whatever she had been, she appeared to be deceased. I felt overwhelmed. I wasn’t used to being surrounded by young females, particularly as young as the median in that gathering.

  Lilymary made an attempt to talk to me, but it wasn’t altogether successful. The younger girls were given to fits of giggling, which she had to put a stop to, and to making what were evidently personal remarks in some kind of a peculiar foreign tongue—it sounded like a weird aboriginal dialect, and I later found out that it was. But it was disconcerting, especially from the lips of a six-year-old with the giggles. So I didn’t make any very intelligent responses to Lilymary’s overtures.