by Hank Davis
CHRISTMAS CARD
by Connie Willis
I HAVE JUST RECEIVED ANOTHER TRACT. It has a box of sixty-four Crayolas on the cover and is entitled (aren’t they all?) “Broken Crayons.” This one is from the ETCLU and begins, “Whether you know it or not, you are committing a crime by denying the Crayoni the right to vote,” which is better than the Interplanetary Religious Council’s, which began, “Exploiters of the alien downtrodden! Repent or else!”
As head exploiter, I am not in a position to do what I would really like to do with these tracts. In the first place, I am in full view of half my downtrodden, who are here clogging up my office to talk to me about my Christmas plans. And in the second place, the organization heads and tract authors down whose throats I would frankly like to stuff them, are not here on rhinoRogetselectricaltransformer-sunshineyellowfig. They are safely back on earth and have never actually met a Crayoni. (The lucky dogs!)
In their absence, I am sorely tempted to rip the tract (the nineteenth I have received this morning), into shreds, but that might be misinterpreted (since the Crayoni misinterpret virtually everything else they hear or see—or read), and, frankly, I can’t afford any more misinterpretations right now.
And I can’t afford to ignore the tract, since my secretary is watching me with an eagle eye. So I flip quickly through the pages, reading the section titles and hoping my face’s turning purple will be misinterpreted as empathy. (Or a fondness for celery.)
The tract’s subheads are printed in rainbow-colored letters and say things like, “Second-Class Citizens!” and “Why the Crayoni Deserve Full Interplanetary Alliance Voting Status” and “How would you feel if you were a Crayoni?”
Frankly, I have no idea. How do the Crayoni feel? Perplexed? Muddled? Contrary? (I could think of better words if I had my Thesaurus.) Willfully slow-witted? Utterly deranged?
I don’t know, but definitely not second-class or disenfranchised or downtrodden. If anything, I am the downtrodden one here. The Crayoni are happy as larks, clams, and the day is long. And the last thing they should be given is the right to vote, though the state of our Interplanetary Congress being what it is, an argument could be made that there is no way they could make things worse.
But these are the Crayoni we’re talking about, and yes, they could. Plus, to achieve this representation, rhinoRogetselectricaltransformer-sunshineyellowfig would have to send delegates to Earth, and frankly, you do not want that.
I know what you’re going to say, that all sentient beings deserve the right to be full citizens, and what terrible previous exploiters both on and off Earth you’re going to compare me to for saying that (Romans, plantation owners, and Arcturian Neo-Legreeists spring to mind), but, trust me, this is entirely different. And frankly, if you had to put up with the Crayoni on a daily basis as I do, you would all be lying down with sick headaches (like my two predecessors) before the week was out.
On my way to work I am besieged by orange and mustard and jade green reporters, all of them demanding to know my intentions regarding the upcoming holiday. The entire royal family, sporting mustaches and varying shades of aqua (as on Earth, the royalty here are blue bloods) are waiting for me in my office when I arrive, as are dozens of raw umber and lilac and crimson vendors and merchants and mongers and whatever you call those people who sell things from a hole in the sidewalk. (As I said before, if I had my Thesaurus, I could give you the exact word for that.) My secretary, who is a blinding neon yellow-green, is sitting at my desk, poised to jump up and ask me if I have made up my mind yet.
“No,” I say before she has the chance. I hand her the tract and tell her to file it with the others.
“Under what?” she asks.
“Trains,” I say, which is a joke (and a pun—get it? train tracts?), but she does not laugh, nor does the rest of the crowd. The Crayoni do not have a sense of humor.
They have everything else that I have happened to leave on my desk, however, and everything else I’ve ever happened to mention or even refer obliquely to. Mind you, I’m not accusing them of theft. They’re perfectly willing to give everything back (which is part of the current problem) and they don’t even always steal the things they like. They simply copy them, as in the case of my mustache.
There is no malice in their actions, and they are more than willing to do whatever we want them to (though they don’t always understand what that is). They love us. They adore our Earth culture, our ships, my neckwear. And what they love, they attach themselves to with ferocity and without regard to who actually owns it. The rest, an inexplicable assortment of things including logic, ice cube trays, potato famines, flip-flops, parentheses, coconut macaroons, Dante, and puns, they simply ignore. There is no rhyme or reason to it.
They like feathers, but not plumes. They have no interest in windchimes or ukuleles, but adore bagpipes, and they ignore lipstick, sideburns, neckties, and eye shadow (which you would think they’d like because it comes in an array of interestingly-named colors—emerald, amethyst, lapis lazuli, lampblack), only to develop a passion for cravats and mustaches (but only the small, dashing, Civil War-era type I wear, not bushy soupstrainers, sinister Fu Manchus, Hitlerian toothbrushes, or handlebars, though they like other handlebars. But not bicycles).
Frankly, it is enough to . . . (if I seem to overuse the word “frankly,” it is because the word is one of the few things about me they do not care for and have left alone. And since they have appropriated my cravat (which I thought made me look like Rhett Butler), my mustache, and my Thesaurus, I cling to it (the word, not the Thesaurus, which as I say has vanished) and to the few other things they don’t want. Rather neurotically, I’m afraid. My writing has become unreadably cluttered with parenthetical remarks, and I have acquired an unhealthy delight in puns. Frankly, I am deteriorating.
Take my mustache. They took one look at it and immediately all began sporting one just like it. Or rather, all the females did. And the babies.
Or take my Thesaurus. (We did, thank you.) It illustrates my point even better. As you of course know, the inhabitants of rhinoRogetselectrical . . . etc. are brightly colored. Each family line is a different hue, with varying shades depending on age, height, and agility at doing the native foot-stomping ritual, and the effect of them in crowds is very nice. But before we came, their words for colors were limited. Red, blue, green, yellow, purple was about it. And since they all named themselves color names, it was all a bit repetitious and confusing. It’s completely understandable that when they found out there were other possibilities, they latched onto them.
How they found out about these other color names, I don’t know. (I didn’t do it.) Perhaps one of the first expedition got to flirting with a pretty young blue thing and complimented her on her azure tresses. Or, more likely, one of the ship’s crew swore at one of them for absconding with a lab specimen or the macrodrive. (Astronauts have long been known for their colorful language.) Or perhaps they picked up on the fact that we were calling them the Crayoni (only because rhino . . . etc. was too long and unwieldy) and figured it out for themselves. I mean, frankly, they’re not stupid, just . . . alien.
Only that doesn’t even begin to cover it. The Voracians are perfectly rational, if a bit irritable. The Frostal Lichens and the Rigello both have recognizable thought patterns. But the Crayoni are downright odd.
At any rate, the next thing you know, my Roget’s Thesaurus is missing, and every Crayoni (or rhino . . . etc.) has renamed him or herself Ultramarine, Amber, Lettuce Green, and Vermilion. Very understandable. Even logical. So far.
But at some point their minds begin to drift away from the original idea like a bunch of hot-air balloons (which the Crayoni also love) coming loose from their moorings and drifting off into the wild blue (or royal or slate or baby blue) and they . . . blow it. (Oh, if I only had my Thesaurus, I could explain this much better!)
The point is, the names they chose have nothing to do with their actual color. The khaki-colored courier who d
elivers all my tracts named himself Tangerine. The royal family (blue, remember?) christened themselves Fuschia, Puce, Mauve, Ashes of Roses, and Banana. And my secretary, for whom “chartreuse” is an understatement, is currently strutting around my office sporting my mustache, my cravat, and a name for bright-red previously reserved for Southern belles and sentimental songs about ribbons.
“Why that particular shade?” I asked her. “There are other bright reds. Carmine, for instance. Or Flame. Or Inferno. Or why not a name that matches your actual color, say Neon Green or Absinthe or something?”
She frowned through her mustache. “Green?” she said blankly.
You see what I mean? And it’s not just names or colors. They do the same thing with everything they come in contact with. In fact, my job here consists entirely of attempting to prevent them from coming in contact with anything else Earth-related.
But they had already heard about Christmas (the ship’s crew had put up a Christmas tree) and the Crayoni had focused mostly on Yule logs and the multicolored tree lights, which they appropriated for their native foot-stomping ritual, resulting in assorted injuries and several new color names (Blood Red, Ashes of Anemia, and Gang Green (Sorry)
They had paid no attention at all to the concept of Christmas gifts, and I assumed it was one of those things they’d decided to ignore. Plus, I was just being funny. And I thought we were alone in the room. I was talking to one of the ship’s crew about what to get the captain, and I said, “It’s not what you give that’s important,” pause and punch line, “Its what you get.”
Unfortunately, although it was a joke (and a not very good one), it was not a pun. And my red-nomered enterprising Girl Friday was apparently listening at the door because she promptly, in true Crayoni fashion, dropped the last part, turned the first around, did a little of the twisted something that passes for thinking around here, and came up with a thrilling new custom: Not-gifts for Christmas. Then she told everyone she knew, and five minutes later all of the Crayoni were walking around eating Yule logs and announcing, “I don’t give a saberin fur to you.”
This is not as simple or inexpensive as it may sound. You are simply not familiar with the intricate customs they are capable of weaving, given ten minutes’ time. For example, a lover not-gives the above saberin. But another lover gives the saberin and not gives a Pez dispenser (higher on the scale and, according to my secretary, hopelessly romantic), so he wins and our saberin friend gets called an uncomplimentary color.
However, the winner can still be beaten out if somebody chooses a not-gift above his, like rice spools, and gives the whole gamut of gifts under it on the list. Follow? There are entire elaborate hierarchies.
Six days ago (and a mere twenty minutes after I told the joke) a list was subtly placed on my desk, entitled (not so subtly) “A List of Possible Not-Gifts for the Head of Crayoni Affairs.” Bridges, underpasses, dams, wraparound sunglasses, anaerobic bacteria, courthouses, stars, galaxies, pinking shears, all neatly numbered and with humble hints in the margin as to how non-receipt would likely be taken by the populace. The bottom two were labeled “instant death” and the top five “probable godhood.”
So I have spent the last week grappling with the thorny problem of what not to give them, making pathetic puns about being “marooned” here, and attempting to keep a grip on my ever-loosening sanity. Would you believe that on the way to work just now (post-reporters and pre-tract), I heard an old lavender gentleman reminiscing on the wonderful not-gifts of his youth?
And my hirsute secretary? “I don’t always give my mother a yellow hip pin,” she said to me last night, “and I guess I’ll don’t give bias eggs to the staff. Last year I don’t gave Taupe four cravats and a catalpa leaf, but . . . by the way, have you decided?”
And yes, amid all the din and chaos, I have. Frankly, I kept hoping I would think of some miraculous way out of the mess—some not-gift that would enchant the entire planet and not cost the government a cent. Or make the Crayoni magically disappear in a burst of nonsense. But in the end, I had to abandon all hope and enter into a perfectly ordinary political decision, nondescript even, and in the exact middle of my list. Nevertheless, it gives me an incredible amount of pleasure to announce it.
I call my blazingly 1960s-lime-green secretary in. She flounces in like her literary namesake (except for the mustache), wearing a festive apron made out of tracts and my cravat (though this time it was wrapped around her heel—she has apparently been doing the foot-stomping ritual again).
“Well?” she says. “Have you decided?”
“Yes,” I say. I snatch the cravat from her bleeding heel and tie it around my neck.
“I have,” I say, curling my mustached lip as I speak. “Frankly, Scarlet, I don’t give a dam.”
INTRODUCTION
AWAY IN A MANGER
THERE’S NO SIGN that the very unusual characters in this enigmatic but comical tale have ever heard of Christmas, though it’s obviously getting near that time of year. And just how this situation came about and what has happened to certain absent entities is for the reader to wonder about. But then, Christmas is a time of wonders, and they certainly got a gift they weren’t expecting . . .
JOHN W. CAMPBELL Award Winner Wen Spencer resides in paradise in Hilo, Hawaii with two volcanoes overlooking her home. Spencer says that she often wakes up and exclaims “Oh my god, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific!” This, says Spencer, is a far cry from her twenty years of living in land-locked Pittsburgh. According to Spencer, she lives with “my Dalai Lama-like husband, my autistic teenage son, and two cats (one of which is recovering from mental illness). All of which makes for very odd home life at times.” Spencer’s love of Japanese anime and manga flavors her writing. The Elfhome series opener, Tinker, won the 2003 Sapphire Award for Best Science Fiction Romance and was a finalist for the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Fantasy Novel. Wolf Who Rules, the sequel to Tinker, was chosen as a Top Pick by Romantic Times and given their top rating of four and a half stars. Other Baen books include SF adventure thriller Endless Blue and the third Tinker novel, Elfhome. Her latest novel is Eight Million Gods.
AWAY IN A MANGER
by Wen Spencer
IT WAS SO COLD IN THE TOWER when Jack woke, his breath turned to smoke as he breathed out. From the windows of the overlook, dawn’s pale light revealed no telling glitter of frost on the asphalt below. Nor was there any on the patches of green among the tall buildings that they’d deemed pasture and hay field. The wind carried the scent of autumn leaves but nothing of grass sheared by the cold.
“So we have at least one more day?” Renard yawned, showing off his mouth full of sharp teeth, and then stretched lazily.
“How could you tell?”
“Your tail.”
Jack glanced at his backside and saw that the white stub of his tail was indeed wagging. “Traitor.”
The cat laughed as he strutted toward the nearest window and thumbed the latch. “Honestly you’re as easy to read as a book with big bold font and little bitty words. That little tail is shouting ‘yay, yay, let’s make hay.’”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to catch my breakfast.”
“Don’t let the cold in.” Jack trotted to the opening. “And make sure you don’t catch anything that can talk.”
“If it can talk, I’ll thank it kindly for its brave sacrifice.”
Jack huffed out a cloud that wisped away on the bitter cold wind. He hated the idea of eating anything you could argue morality with, but the simple truth was that they were losing the luxury every moment as the world turned colder. Last winter they barely survived. “Go on, let me shut the window. The cold is going to get to the bird.”
Renard glanced across the room at the jury-rigged nest. “Too late.”
“What?” Jack’s tail stopped wagging.
“I told you it was too little, too late in the year.”
Jack bound to the nest an
d peered into it. The tiny featherless bird inside lay on its side, smelling of death. Despite the heat lamp and curtain to keep out wind, the chick had been dead for hours. “Damn.”
“Not your fault; they always die.”
Which was nicer than what Renard usually said. Jack realized that the cat was still staring intently at the body.
“Fine! Take it.”
The cat picked the dead chick up in its mouth and slunk away.
Alfie was asleep in the small room off the garage. Jack could never understand how the pony slept standing up. The little hairdressing robot was fussing with Alfie’s long silky black tail that contrasted sharply with his gleaming golden hide. The robot had brushed out all the dirt and matted knots and was currently tying bits of bright colored ribbons into it.
Jack had learned to keep a safe distance from the sleeping pony. “Yo, Alfie! Alfie! Time to make hay!”
A flick of the ear was the only warning that the pony was waking up. His rear hoof lashed out, caught the hairdresser square on and kicked it across the room.
Jack winced, torn between the knowledge it could have been him that gotten kicked and the fact he would have to fix the robot if Alfie had broken it. “Hey, watch it now. That’s the last one. I won’t be the one pulling briars out of your tail if you broke this one too.”
Jack righted the hairdresser. “You all right?”
“All right.” The robot stated but it still sounded a little whoozy.
“Alfie, look what you did.” Jack pointed to a hoof-shaped dent in the hairdresser’s chassis.
Alfie snorted. “Serves it right; it’s an annoying little fucker.” He flicked his tail in irritation. “Stupid little bows.”
