by Terry Carr
“We thought you was the Terrible Sweeper!” Tony exclaimed.
The terrible sweeper swept right through the factory every morning. Every morning, the tramps had to barricade themselves in their room, or the sweeper would have bundled them and all their tawdry belongings into the disposal chutes.
“You’d better come in,” Jerry said. “Excuse the muddle.”
Roberta entered and sat down on a crate, tired after her journey. The tramps’ room made her uneasy, for she suspected them of bringing Women in here occasionally; also, there were pants hanging in one corner.
“I had something to tell you all,” she said. They waited politely, expectantly. Jerry cleaned out his nails with a tack.
“I’ve forgotten just now what it is,” she confessed.
The tramps sighed noisily with relief. They feared anything which threatened to disturb their tranquility. Tony became communicative.
“It’s Christmas Day,” he said, looking around furtively.
“Is it really!” Roberta exclaimed. “So soon after Lent?”
“Allow us,” Jerry said, “to wish you a safe Christmas and a persecution-free New Year.”
This courtesy brought Roberta’s latent fears to the surface at once.
“You—you don’t believe in the New Father Christmas, do you?” she asked them. They made no answer, but Dusty’s face went the color of lemon peel and she knew they did believe. So did she.
“You’d better all come up to the flat and celebrate this happy day,” Roberta said. “After all, there’s safety in numbers.”
“I can’t go through the factory: the machines bring on my sweat rash,” Dusty said. “It’s a sort of allergy.”
“Nevertheless, we will go,” Jerry said. “Never pass a kind offer by.”
Like heavy mice, the four of them crept up the stairs and through the engrossed factory. The machines pretended to ignore them.
In the flat, they found pandemonium loose. The kettle was boiling over and Robin was squeaking for help. Officially bedridden, Robin could get up in times of crisis; he stood now just inside the bedroom door, and Roberta had to remove the kettle before going to placate him.
“And why have you brought those creatures up here?” he demanded in a loud whisper.
“Because they are our friends, Robin,” Roberta said, struggling to get him back to bed.
“They are no friends of mine!” he said. He thought of something really terrible to say to her; he trembled and wrestled with it and did not say it. The effort left him weak and irritable. How he loathed being in her power! As caretaker of the vast factory, it was his duty to see that no undesirables entered, but as matters were at present, he could not evict the tramps while his wife took their part. Life really was exasperating.
“We came to wish you a safe Christmas, Mr. Proctor,” Jerry said, sliding into the bedroom with his two companions.
“Christmas, and I got sweat rash!” Dusty said.
“It isn’t Christmas,” Robin whined as Roberta pushed his feet under the sheets. “You’re just saying it to annoy me.” If they could only know or guess the anger that stormed like illness through his veins.
At that moment, the delivery chute pinged and an envelope catapulted into the room. Robin took it from Roberta, opening it with trembling hands. Inside was a Christmas card from the Minister of Automatic Factories.
“This proves there are other people still alive in the world,” Robin said. These other fools were not important enough to receive Christmas cards.
His wife peered short-sightedly at the Minister’s signature.
“This is done by a rubber stamp, Robin,” she said. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
Now he was really enraged. To be contradicted in front of these scum! And Roberta’s cheeks had grown more wrinkled since last Christmas, which also annoyed him. As he was about to flay her, however, his glance fell on the address on the envelope; it read, “Robin Proctor, A.F.X10”
“But this factory isn’t X10!” he protested aloud. “It’s SC541.”
“Perhaps we’ve been in the wrong factory for thirty-five years,” Roberta said. “Does it matter at all?”
The question was so senseless that the old man pulled the bedclothes out of the bottom of the bed.
“Well, go and find out, you silly old woman!” he shrieked. “The factory number is engraved over the output exit. Go and see what it says. If it does not say SC541, we must leave here at once. Quickly!”
“I’ll come with you,” Jerry told the old lady.
“You’ll all go with her,” Robin said. “I’m not having you stay here with me. You’d murder me in my bed!”
Without any particular surprise—although Tony glanced regretfully at the empty teapot as he passed it—they found themselves again in the pregnant layers of factory, making their way down to the output exit. Here, conveyor belts transported the factory’s finished product outside to waiting vehicles.
“I don’t like it much here,” Roberta said uneasily. “Even a glimpse of outside aggravates my agoraphobia.”
Nevertheless, she looked where Robin had instructed her. Above the exit, a sign said “X10.”
“Robin will never believe me when I tell him,” she wailed. “My guess is that the factory changed its own name,” Jerry said calmly. “Probably it has changed its product as well. After all, there’s nobody in control; it can do what it likes. Has it always been making these eggs?”
They stared silently at the endless, moving line of steel eggs. The eggs were smooth and as big as ostrich eggs; they sailed into the open, where robots piled them into vans and drove away with them.
“Never heard of a factory laying eggs before,” Dusty laughed, scratching his shoulder. “Now we’d better get back before the Terrible Sweeper catches up with us.”
Slowly they made their way back up the many, many steps.
“I think it used to be television sets the factory made,” Roberta said once.
“If there are no more men—there’d be no more need for television sets,” Jerry said grimly.
“I can’t remember for sure . . .”
Robin, when they told him, was ill with irritation, rolling out of bed in his wrath. He threatened to go down and look at the name of the factory himself, only refraining because he had a private theory that the factory itself was merely one of Roberta’s hallucinations.
“And as for eggs . . .” he stuttered.
Jerry dipped into a torn pocket, produced one of the eggs, and laid it on the floor. In the silence that followed, they could all hear the egg ticking.
“You didn’t oughta done that, Jerry,” Dusty said hoarsely. “That’s . . . interfering.” They all stared at Jerry, the more frightened because they did not entirely know what they were frightened about.
“I brought it because I thought the factory ought to give us a Christmas present,” Jerry told them dreamily, squatting down to look at the egg. “You see, a long time ago, before the machines declared all writers like me redundant, I met an old robot writer. And this old robot writer had been put out to scrap, but he told me a thing or two. And he told me that as machines took over man’s duties, so they took over his myths too. Of course, they adapt the myths to their own beliefs, but I think they’d like the idea of handing out Christmas presents.”
Dusty gave Jerry a kick that sent him sprawling.
“That’s for your idea!” he said. “You’re mad, Jerry boy! The machine’ll come up here to get that egg back. I don’t know what we ought to do.”
“I’ll put the tea on for some kettle,” Roberta said brightly. The stupid remark made Robin explode.
“Take the egg back, all of you!” he shrieked. “It’s stealing, that’s what it is, and I won’t be responsible. And then you tramps must leave the factory!”
Dusty and Tony looked at him helplessly, and Tony said, “But we got nowhere to go.”
Jerry, who had made himself comfortable on the floor, said without looking
up, “I don’t want to frighten you, but the New Father Christmas will come for you, Mr. Proctor, if you aren’t careful. That old Christmas myth was one of the ones the machines took over and changed; the New Father Christmas is all metal and glass, and instead of leaving new toys he takes away old people and machines.”
Roberta, listening at the door, went as white as a sheet. “Perhaps that’s how the world has grown so depopulated recently,” she said. “I’d better get us some tea.”
Robin had managed to shuffle out of bed, a ghastly irritation goading him on. As he staggered toward Jerry, the egg hatched.
It broke cleanly into two halves, revealing a pack of neat machinery. Four tiny, busy mannikins jumped out and leaped into action. In no time, using minute welders, they had forged the shell into a double dome; sounds of hammering came from underneath.
“They’re going to build another factory right in here, the saucy things!” Roberta exclaimed. She brought the kettle crashing down on the dome and failed even to dent it. At once a thin chirp filled the room.
“My heavens, they are wirelessing for help!” Jerry exclaimed. “We’ve got to get out of here at once!”
They got out, Robin twittering with rage, and the New Father Christmas caught them all on the stairs.
La
Befana
BY GENE WOLFE
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, who brought salvation for all humanity. Do we dare to assume that salvation is only for the human race? Perhaps the real meaning of Christmas will someday come to another planet . . .
Gene Wolfe, who won a Nebula Award for his novella “The Death of Dr. Island” is one of the most admired writers in science fiction today. He can say much in few words, as this story shows.
When Zozz, home from the pit, had licked his fur clean, he howled before John Bananas’ door. John’s wife, Teresa, opened it and let him in. She was a thin, stooped woman of thirty or thirty-five, her black hair shot with gray. She did not smile, but he felt somehow that she was glad to see him.
She said, “He’s not home yet. If you want to come in, we’ve got a fire.”
Zozz said, “I’ll wait for him—” and six-legging politely across the threshold sat down over the stone Bananas had rolled in for him when they had been new friends. Maria and Mark, playing some sort of game with bottle caps on squares scratched on the floor dirt, said, “Hi, Mr. Zozz—” and Zozz said, “Hi—” in return. Bananas’ old mother, whom Zozz had brought here from the pads in his rusty powerwagon the day before, looked at him from piercing eyes, then fled into the other room. He could hear Teresa relax, hear her wheezing outpuffed breath.
He said, “I think she thinks I bumped her on purpose yesterday.”
“She’s not used to you yet.”
“I know,” Zozz said.
“I told her, ‘Mother Bananas, it’s their world and they’re not used to you.’”
“Sure,” Zozz said. A gust of wind outside brought the cold in to replace the odor of the gog-hutch on the other side of the left wall.
“I tell you it’s hard to have your husband’s mother with you in a place as small as this.”
“Sure,” Zozz said again.
Maria announced, “Daddy’s home!”
The door rattled open and Bananas came in, looking tired and cheerful. Bananas worked in the slaughtering market and though his cheeks were blue with cold, his two trousers cuffs were red with blood. He kissed Teresa and tousled the hair of both children and said, “Hi, Zozzy.”
Zozz said, “Hi. How does it roll?” And moved over so Bananas could warm his back.
Someone groaned and Bananas asked a little anxiously, “What’s that?”
Teresa said, “Next door.”
“Huh?”
“Next door. Some woman.”
“Oh. I thought it might be Mom.”
“She’s fine.”
“Where is she?”
“In back.”
Bananas frowned. “There’s no fire in there. She’ll freeze to death.”
“I didn’t tell her to go back there. She can wrap a blanket around herself.”
Zozz said, ‘It’s me—I bother her.” He got up.
Bananas said, “Sit down.”
“I can go. I just came to say hi.”
“Sit down.” Bananas turned to his wife. “Honey, you shouldn’t leave her in there alone. See if you cant get her to come out here, okay?”
“Johnny—”
“Teresa, you hear me!”
“Okay, Johnny.”
Bananas took off his coat and sat down in front of the fire. Maria and Mark had gone back to their game.
In a voice too low to attract their attention, Bananas said, “Nice thing, huh?”
Zozz said, “I think your mother makes her nervous.” Bananas said, “Sure.”
Zozz said, “This isn’t an easy world.”
“For us two-leggers? No, it ain’t, but you don’t see me moving.”
Zozz said, “That’s good. I mean, here you’ve got a job anyway. There’s work.”
“That’s right.”
Unexpectedly Maria said, “We get enough to eat here, and me and Mark can find wood for the fire. Where we used to be there wasn’t anything to eat.”
Bananas asked, “You remember, honey?”
“A little.”
Zozz said, “People are poor here.”
Bananas was taking off his shoes, scraping the street mud from them and tossing it into the fire. He said, “If you mean us, us people are poor everyplace.” He jerked his head in the direction of the back room. “You ought to hear her tell about our world.”
“Your mother?”
Bananas nodded. “You should hear what she has to say.”
Maria said, “Daddy, how did grandmother get here?”
“Same way we did.”
Mark said, “You mean she signed a thing?”
“A labor contract? No, she’s too old. She bought a ticket—you know, like you would buy something in a store.”
Maria said, “Why did she come, Daddy?”
“Shut up and play. Don’t bother us.”
Zozz said, “How did things go at work?”
“So-so.” Bananas looked toward the back room again. “She came into some money, but that’s her business. I never ask her anything about it.”
“Sure.”
“She says she spent every dollar to get here—you know, they haven’t used dollars even on Earth for fifty, sixty years, but she still says it. How do you like that?” He laughed and Zozz laughed too. “I asked how she was going to get back and she said she’s not going back. She’s going to die right here with us. What could I possibly answer?”
“I don’t know.” Zozz waited for Bananas to say something and when he did not, added: “I mean, she is your mother, after all.”
“Yeah.”
Through the thin wall they heard the sick woman groan again and someone moving about. Zozz said, “I guess it’s been a long time since you saw her last.”
“Yeah—twenty-two years Newtonian. Listen, Zozzy—”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know something? I wish I had never set eyes on her again,” Bananas said.
Zozz said nothing, rubbing his hands, hands, hands.
“That sounds lousy, I guess.”
“I know what you mean.”
“She could have lived good for the rest of her life on what that ticket cost her.” Bananas was silent for a moment. “She used to be a big, fat woman when I was a kid, you know? A great big woman with a loud voice. Look at her now—dried up and bent over. It’s like she wasn’t my mother at all. You know the only thing that’s the same about her? That black dress. That’s the only thing I recognize, the only thing that hasn’t changed. She could be a stranger—she tells stories about me I don’t remember at all.”
Maria said, “She told us a story today.”
Mark added: “Before you came home. About this witch—” Maria said, �
��. . . that brings the presents to children. Her name is La Befana, the Christmas Witch.”
Zozz drew his lips back from his double canines and jiggled his head. “I like stories.”
“She says it’s almost Christmas and on Christmas three wise men went looking for the Baby and they stopped at the old witch’s door and they asked which way it was and she told them and they said, ‘Come with us.’ ”
The door to the other room opened, and Teresa and Bananas’ mother came out. Bananas’ mother was holding a teakettle. She edged around Zozz to put it on the hook and swing it out over the fire.
“And she was sweeping and she wouldn’t come,” Maria resumed.
Mark added, “Said she’d come when she had finished. She was a real old, real ugly woman. Watch, I’ll show you how she walked.” He jumped up and began to hobble around the room.
Bananas looked at his wife and indicated the wall. “What’s this?”
“Some woman. I told you.”
“In there?”
“The charity place—they said she could stay here. She couldn’t stay in the house because all the rooms are full of men.”
Maria was saying, “So when she was all done, she went looking for Him, only she couldn’t find Him and she never did.”
“She’s sick?”
“She’s knocked up, Johnny, that’s all. Don’t worry about her. She’s got some guy in there with her.”
Mark asked, “Do you know about the Baby Jesus—do you, Mr. Zozz?”
Zozz groped for words.
“Johnny, my son—”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Your friend—Do they have the faith here, Johnny?” Apropos of nothing, Teresa said, “They’re Jews, next door.” Zozz told Mark, “You see, the Baby Jesus has never come to my world.”
Maria said, “And so she goes all over every place looking for Him with her presents and she leaves some with every kid she finds, but she says it’s not because she thinks they might be Him, like some people think, but just a substitute. She can’t never die. She has to do it forever, doesn’t she, Grandma?”
