To Follow a Star

by Terry Carr

  “Is there a sickness among the shocking people that drives them out of their senses, to make you come here?”

  “I have come for beautiful Christmas,” said Harvey, “to make you into a present.”

  It was an hour past dawn the following morning that Chester Dumay, Allan’s father, came down the river. The Colony’s soil expert was traveling with him and their two boats were tied together, proceeding on a single motor. As they came around the bend between the two islands, they had been talking about an acid condition in the soil of Chester’s fields, where they bordered the river. But the soil expert—his name was Pere Hama, a lean little dark man—checked himself suddenly in mid-sentence.

  “Just a minute—” he said, gazing off and away past Chester Dumay’s shoulder. “Look at that.”

  Chester looked, and saw something large and dark floating half-away, caught against the snag of a half-drowned tree that rose up from the muddy bottom of the river some thirty feet out from the far shore. He turned the boat-wheel and drove across toward it.

  “What the devil—”

  They came up close and Chester cut the motor to let the boats drift in upon the object. The current took them down and the nearer hull bumped against a great black expanse of swollen hide, laced with fragile silver threads and gray-scarred all over by what would appear to have been a fiery whip. It rolled idly in the water.

  “A water-bull!” said Hama.

  “Is that what it is?” queried Chester, fascinated. “I never saw one.”

  “I did—at Third Landing. This one’s a monster. And dead!” There was a note of puzzlement in the soil expert’s voice.

  Chester poked gingerly at the great carcass and it turned a little. Something like a gray bubble rose to show itself for a second dimly through several feet of murky water, then rolled under out of sight again.

  “A Cidorian,” said Chester. He whistled. “All crushed. But who’d have thought one of them could take on one of these!” He stared at the water-bull body.

  Hama shuddered a little, in spite of the fact that the sun was bright.

  “And win—that’s the thing,” the soil expert said. “Nobody ever suspected—” He broke off suddenly. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Oh, we’ve got one in our inlet that my son plays with a lot—call him Harvey,” said Chester. “I was just wondering . . .”

  “I wouldn’t let my kid near something that could kill a water-bull,” said Hama.

  “Oh, Harvey’s all right,” said Chester. “Still . . .” Frowning, he picked up the boathook and shoved off from the carcass, turning about to start up the motor again. The hum of its vibration picked up in their ears as they headed downriver once more. “All the same, I think there’s no point in mentioning this to the wife and boy—no point in spoiling their Christmas. And later on, when I get a chance to get rid of Harvey quietly . . .”

  “Sure,” said Hama. “I won’t say a word. No point in it.”

  They purred away down the river.

  Behind them, the water-bull carcass, disturbed, slid free of the waterlogged tree and began to drift downriver. The current swung it and rolled, slowly, over and over until the crushed central body of the dead Cidorian rose into the clean air. And the yellow rays of the clear sunlight gleamed from the glazed pottery countenance of a small toy astrogator, all wrapped about with silver threads, and gilded it.

  Christmas

  Treason

  BY JAMES WHITE

  Young children are taught a very simplified view of Christmas—but there may be children who have special talents, like teleportation and psychokinesis, who will gather information their parents don’t suspect them of knowing. In which case they might come to odd conclusions about Santa Claus. And if they should decide to take matters into their own hands . . .

  James White lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and has written science fiction for many years. His stories are marked by ingenuity of detail, and frequent flashes of wit; “Christmas Treason” is a good example.

  Richard sat on the woolly rug beside his brother’s cot and watched the gang arrive one by one.

  Liam came first, wearing a thick sweater over pajamas too tight for him—his parents didn’t have central heating. Then Mub, whose folks did not need it, in a nightie. When Greg arrived he fell over a truck belonging to Buster, because he was coming from the daytime and the moonlight coming into the room was too dim for him to see properly. The noise he made did not disturb the sleeping grown-ups, but Buster got excited and started rattling the bars of his cot and had to be shushed. Loo arrived last, with one of her long, funny dresses on, and stood blinking for a while, then sat on the side of Richards bed with the others.

  Now the meeting could begin.

  For some reason Richard felt worried even though the Investigation was going fine, and he hoped this was just a sign that he was growing up. His daddy and the other big people worried nearly all the time. Richard was six.

  “Before hearing your reports,” he began formally, “we will have the Minutes of the last—”

  “Do we hafta . . .?” whispered Liam angrily. Beside him Greg said a lot of nonsense words, louder than a whisper, which meant the same thing. Mub, Loo, and his three-year-old brother merely radiated impatience.

  “Quiet!” Richard whispered, then went on silently, “There has got to be Minutes, that book of my daddy says so. And talk without making a noise, I can hear you just as well . . .” That was his only talent, Richard thought enviously. Compared with the things the others could do it wasn’t much. He wasn’t able to go to Loo’s place, with its funny shed that had no sides and just a turned-up roof, or play pirates on the boat Liam’s daddy had given him. There was a big hole in the boat and the engine had been taken out, but there was rope and nets and bits of iron in it, and sometimes the waves came so close it seemed to be floating. Some of the gang were frightened when the big waves turned white and rushed at them along the sand, but he wouldn’t have been scared if he had been able to go there. Nor had he been to Mub’s place, which was noisy and crowded and not very nice, or climbed the trees beside Greg’s farm.

  Richard couldn’t go anywhere unless a grown-up took him in a train or a car or something. While if the others wanted to go somewhere they just went—even Buster could do it now. All he could do was listen and watch through their minds when they were playing and, if one of them wanted to say something complicated to the others, he would take what they were thinking and repeat it so everybody could hear it. And it was only his friends’ minds he could get into—if only he could see what Daddy was thinking!

  He was the oldest and the leader of the gang, but by itself that wasn’t much fun. . .

  “I want my train set!” Greg broke in impatiently. A bright but indistinct picture of the promised model railway filled Richard’s mind, to be overlaid rapidly by pictures of Mub’s dolly, Loo’s blackboard, Liam’s cowboy suit and Buster’s machine gun. His head felt like bursting.

  “Stop thinking so loud!” Richard ordered sharply. “You’ll get them, you’ll all get them. We were promised.”

  “I know, but . . .” began Greg.

  “. . . How?” ended the others, in unison.

  “That’s what the Investigation is for, to find out,” Richard replied crossly. “And we’ll never find out if you keep rushing things. Quiet, gang, and listen!”

  The room was already silent and then even the thinking noises died down. Richard began to speak in a whisper—he had found that talking while he was thinking kept his mind from wandering on to something else. And besides, he had learned some new grown-up words and wanted to impress the gang with them.

  He said, “Two weeks ago Daddy asked Buster and me what we wanted for Christmas and told us about Santa. Santa Claus will bring you anything you want. Or any two things, or even three things, within reason, my daddy says. Buster doesn’t remember last Christmas, but the rest of us do and that’s the way it happens. You hang up your stocking and in the
morning there’s sweets and apples and things in it, and the big stuff you asked for is on the bed. But the grown-ups don’t seem to know for sure how they got there . . .

  “S-sleigh and reindeer,” Greg whispered excitedly.

  Richard shook his head. “None of the grown-ups can say how exactly it happens, they just tell us that Santa Claus will come, all right, that we’ll get our toys in time and not to worry about it. But we can’t help worrying about it. That’s why we’re having an Investigation to find out what really happens.

  “We can’t see how one man, even when he has a sleigh and magic reindeer that fly through the air, can bring everybody their toys all in one night . . .” Richard took a deep breath and got ready to use his new, grown-up words. “Delivering all that stuff during the course of a single night is a logistical impossibility.”

  Buster, Mub and Greg looked impressed. Loo thought primly, “Richard is showing off,” and Liam said, “I think he’s got a jet.”

  Feeling annoyed at the mixed reception to his big words, Richard was getting ready to whisper “Yah, Slanty-Eyes!” at Loo, when he thought better of it and said instead, “Jets make a noise and we’d remember if we heard one last Christmas. But what we’re supposed to do in an Investigation is get the facts and then find the answer”—he glared at Loo—“by a process of deductive reasoning.”

  Loo didn’t say or think a word.

  “All right, then,” Richard went on briskly, “this is what we know . . .”

  His name was Santa Claus. Description: a man, big even for a grown-up, fresh complexion, blue eyes, white hair and beard. He dressed in a red cap, coat and trousers, all trimmed with white fur, also black shiny belt and knee-boots. Careful questioning of grown-ups showed that they were all in agreement about his appearance, although none of them had admitted to seeing him actually. Liam’s daddy had been questioned closely on this point and had said that he knew because Liam’s granddad had told him. It was also generally agreed that he lived somewhere at the North Pole in a secret cavern under the ice. The cavern was said to contain his toy workshops and storage warehouses.

  They knew quite a lot about Santa. The major gap in their knowledge was his methods of distribution. On Christmas

  Eve, did he have to shoot back and forward to the North Pole when he needed his sleigh refilled? If so, it was a very chancy way of doing things and the gang had good cause to be worried. They didn’t want any hitches on Christmas Eve, like toys coming late or getting mixed up. If anything, they wanted them to come early.

  Two weeks ago Richard had seen his mother packing some of his old toys in a box. She had told him that they were going to the orphans because Santa never came to orphans.

  The gang had to be sure everything would be all right. Imagine awakening on Christmas morning to find you were an orphan!

  “. . . We can’t get any more information at this end,” Richard continued, “so we have to find the secret cavern and then see how he sends the stuff out. That was your last assignment, gang, and I’ll take your reports now.

  “You first, Mub.”

  Mub shook her head, she had nothing to report. But there was a background picture of her daddy’s face looking angry and shiny and sort of loose, and a smack from her Daddy’s large, pink-palmed hand which had hurt her dignity much more than her bottom. Sometimes her daddy would play with her for hours and she could ask him questions all the time, but other times he would come into the house talking funny and bumping into things the way Buster had done when he was just learning to walk, and then he would smack her if she asked questions all the time. Mub didn’t know what to make of her daddy sometimes.

  Still without a word, she floated up from the bed and drifted to the window. She began staring out at the cold, moonlit desert and the distant buildings where Richard’s daddy worked.

  “Loo?” said Richard.

  She had nothing to report either.

  “Liam.”

  “I’ll wait to last,” said Liam smugly. It was plain that he knew something important, but he was thinking about seagulls to stop Richard from seeing what it was.

  “All right; Greg, then.”

  “I found where some of the toys are stored,” Greg began. He went on to describe a trip with his mother and father into town to places called shops, and two of them had been full of toys. Then when he was home again his father gave him a beating and sent him to bed without his supper . . .

  “O-o-oh,” said Loo and Mub sympathetically.

  This was because, Greg explained, he had seen a dinky little tractor with rubber treads on it that could climb over piles of books and things. When he got home he thought about it a lot, and then thought that he would try reaching for it the way they all did when they were somewhere and had left things they wanted to play with somewhere else. His daddy had found him playing with it and smacked him, four times with his pants down, and told him it was wrong to take things that didn’t belong to him and that the tractor was going right back to the shop.

  But the beating had only hurt him for a short time and he was nearly asleep when his mother came and gave him a hug and three big chocolates with cream in the middle. He had just finished eating them when his father brought in some more. . .

  “Oh-h-h,” said Loo and Mub, enviously.

  “Feeties for me?” asked Buster, aloud. When excited he was apt to slip back into baby talk. Greg whispered “Night”—a nonsense word he used when he was thinking “No”—and added silently, “I ate them all.”

  “Getting back to the Investigation,” Richard said firmly. “Dad took Buster and me to a shop the day before yesterday. I’ve been to town before but this time I was able to ask questions, and this is the way they work. Everybody doesn’t always know exactly what they want for Christmas, so the stores are meant to show what toys Santa has in stock so they’ll know what to ask for. But the toys in the shops can’t be touched until Christmas, just like the ones at the North Pole. Daddy said so, and when we were talking to Santa he said the same thing . . .”

  “Santa!!!”

  A little awkwardly Richard went on, “Yes, Buster and I spoke to Santa. We . . . I asked him about his sleigh and reindeer, and then about what seemed to us to be a logistically insoluble problem of supply and distribution. When we were asking him he kept looking at Daddy and Daddy kept looking up in the air, and that was when we saw his beard was held on with elastic.

  “When we told him about this,” Richard continued, “he said we were very bright youngsters and he had to admit that he was only one of Santa’s deputies in disguise, sent to say Merry Christmas to all the boys and girls because Santa himself was so rushed with toy-making. He said that Santa didn’t even tell him how he worked the trick, it was a Top Secret, but he did know that Santa had lots of computers and things and that the old boy believed in keeping right up to date science-wise. So we didn’t have to worry about our toys coming, all that would be taken care of, he said.

  “He was a very nice man,” Richard concluded, “and didn’t mind when we spotted his disguise and asked all the questions. He even gave us a couple of small presents on account.” As he finished Richard couldn’t help wondering if that deputy had told everything he knew—he had looked very uncomfortable during some of the questions. Richard thought that it was a great pity that he couldn’t listen to what everybody was thinking instead of just the kids in his gang. If only they knew where that secret cavern was.

  “I know,” said Liam suddenly. “I found it.”

  Everybody was asking questions at once then, and they were talking instead of just thinking. Where was it and had he seen Santa and was my train-set there and what were the toys like . . .? In his mind Richard thundered, “Quiet! You’ll wake my daddy! And I’ll ask the questions.” To Liam he said, “That’s great! How did you find it?”

  One of Liam’s abilities—one shared by Greg and Buster, and to a lesser degree by the girls—was of thinking about a place he would like to be and then going there. Or to
be more precise, going to one of the places that were most like the place he wanted to go. He did not think of where so much as what he wanted—a matter of environment rather than geography. He would decide whether the place should have night, day, rain, sunshine, snow, trees, grass or sand and then think about the fine details. When his mental picture was complete he would go there, or they all—with the exception of Richard—would go there. Liam and Greg found lots of lovely places in this way, which the gang used when they grew tired of playing in each other’s backyards, because once they went to a place they always knew how to go back to it.

  This time Liam had been trying for ice caverns with toys and reindeer stalls in them and had got nowhere at all. Apparently no such place existed. Then he started asking himself what would a place look like if it had to make and store things, and maybe had to send them out to people fast. The answer was machinery. It mightn’t be as noisy or dirty as the factory his daddy had taken him to in Derry last summer, but there would have to be machinery.

  But there might not be toys—they might not have been made or arrived yet. And if, as Richard had suggested, reindeer and sleighs were no longer in use, then they were out of the picture as well. And the ice cavern, now, that would be a cold place for Santa to work and if he turned on a heater the walls would melt, so the cavern might not be made of ice. What he was left with was a large underground factory or storehouse either at or somewhere near the North Pole.

  It wasn’t a very good description of the place he was looking for, but he found it.