Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories

by Martin H. Greenberg (ed)

  Lilymary’s head. I’ve always had pretty low psi, though, and she didn’t turn around.

  Something was bothering me. There was a sort of glow from up front. I took my eyes off Lilymary’s blond head, and there was Dr. Hargreave, radiant; I blinked and looked again, and it was not so radiant. A trick of the light, coming through the basement windows onto his own blond hair, I suppose, but it gave me a curious feeling for a moment. I must have moved, because he caught sight of me. He stumbled over a word, but then he went on. But that was enough. After a moment Lilymary’s head turned, and her eyes met mine.

  She knew I was there. I backed away from the door and sat down on the steps coming down from the entrance.

  Sooner or later she would be out.

  It wasn’t long at all. She came toward me with a question in her eye. She was all by herself; inside the hall, her father was still talking.

  I stood up straight and said it all. “Lilymary,” I said, “I can’t help it, I want to marry you. I’ve done everything wrong, but I didn’t mean to. I—I don’t even want it conditional, Lilymary, I want it for life. Here or Borneo, I don’t care which. I only care about one thing, and that’s you. ” It was funny—I was trying to tell her I loved her, and I was standing stiff and awkward, talking in about the same tone of voice I’d use to tell a stock boy he was Bred.

  But she understood. I probably didn’t have to say a word, she would have understood anyhow. She started to speak, and changed her mind, and started again, and finally got out, “What would you do in Borneo?” And then, so soft that I hardly knew I was hearing it, she added, “Dear. ”

  Dear! It was like the first time Heinemann came in and called me “Department Head!” I felt nine feet tall.

  I didn’t answer her. I reached out and I kissed her, and it wasn’t any wonder that I didn’t know we weren’t alone until I heard her father cough, not more than a yard away.

  I jumped, but Lilymary turned and looked at him, perfectly calm. “You ought to be conducting the service, Father!” she scolded him.

  He nodded his big fair head. “Doctor Mausner can pronounce the Benediction without me,” he said. “I should be there but—well, He has plenty of things to forgive all of us already; one more isn’t going to bother Him. Now, what’s this?”

  “George has asked me to marry him.”

  “And?”

  She looked at me. “I—” she began, and stopped. I said, “I love her.”

  He looked at me too, and then he sighed. “George,” he said after a moment, “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, for the first time in my life. Maybe I’ve been selfish when I asked Lilymary to go back with me and the girls. I didn’t mean it that way, but I don’t deny I wanted it. I don’t know. But—” He smiled, and it was a big, warm smile. “But there’s something I do know. I know Lilymary; and I can trust her to make up her own mind. ” He patted her lightly.

  I'll see you after the service,” he said to me, and left us. Back in the hall, through the door he opened, I could hear all the voices going at once.

  “Let’s go inside and pray, George,” said Lilymary, and her whole heart and soul was on her face as she looked at me, with love and anxiousness.

  I only hesitated a moment, Pray? But it meant Lilymary, and that meant—well, everything.

  So I went in. And we were all kneeling, and Lilymary coached me through the words; and I prayed. And, do you know?—I’ve never regretted it.

  The War Beneath the Tree - Gene Wolfe

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Commander Robin,” the Spaceman said. “You’d better go to bed, or Santa won’t come.”

  Robin’s mother said, “That’s right, Robin. Time to say good night.”

  The little boy in blue pajamas nodded, but made no move to rise.

  “Kiss me,” said Bear. Bear walked his funny, waddly walk around the tree and threw his arms about Robin. “We have to go to bed. I’ll come too.” It was what he said every night.

  Robin’s mother shook her head in amused despair. “Listen to them,” she said. “Look at him, Bertha. He’s like a little prince surrounded by his court. How is he going to feel when he’s grown and can’t have transistorized sycophants to spoil him all the time?”

  Bertha the robot maid nodded her own almost human head as she put the poker back in its stand. “That’s right, Ms. Jackson. That’s right for sure.” The Dancing Doll took Robin by the hand, making an arabesque penchée of it. Now Robin rose. His guardsmen formed up and presented arms.

  “On the other hand,” Robin’s mother said, “they’re children only such a short time.”

  Bertha nodded again. “They’re only young once, Ms. Jackson. That’s for sure. All right if I tell these little cute toys to help me straighten up after he’s asleep?”

  The Captain of the Guardsmen saluted with his silver saber, the Largest Guardsman beat the tattoo on his drum, and the rest of the guardsmen formed a double file.

  “He sleeps with Bear,” Robin’s mother said.

  “I can spare Bear. There’s plenty of others.”

  The Spaceman touched the buckle of his antigravity belt and soared to a height of four feet like a graceful, broad-shouldered balloon. With the Dancing Doll on his left and Bear on his right, Robin toddled off behind the guardsmen. Robin’s mother ground out her last cigarette of the evening, winked at Bertha, and said, “I suppose I’d better turn in too. You needn’t help me undress, just pick up my things in the morning.

  “Yes’um. Too bad Mr. Jackson ain’t here, it bein’ Christmas Eve and you expectin’ an’ all.”

  “He’ll be back from Brazil in a week—I’ve told you already. And Bertha, your speech habits are getting worse and worse. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be a French maid for a while?”

  “Maize none, Ms. Jackson. I have too much trouble talkin’ to the men that comes to the door when I’m French.”

  “When Mr. Jackson gets his next promotion, we’re going to have a chauffeur,” Robin’s mother said. “He’s going to be Italian, and he’s going to stay Italian.”

  Bertha watched her waddle out of the room. “All right, you lazy toys! You empty them ashtrays into the fire an’ get everythin’ put away. I’m goin’ to turn myself off, but the next time I come on, this room better be straight or there’s goin’ to be some broken toys around here.”

  She watched long enough to see the Gingham Dog dump the largest ashtray on the crackling logs, the Spaceman float up to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, and the Dancing Doll begin to sweep the hearth. “Put yourselfs in your box,” she told the guardsmen, and turned off.

  In the smallest bedroom, Bear lay in Robin’s arm. “Be quiet,” said Robin.

  “I am quiet,” said Bear.

  “Every time I am almost gone to sleep, you squiggle.”

  “I don’t,” said Bear.

  “You do.”

  “Sometimes you have trouble going to sleep too, Robin,” said Bear.

  “I’m having trouble tonight,” Robin countered meaningfully.

  Bear slipped from under his arm. “I want to see if it’s snowing again.” He climbed from the bed to an open drawer, and from the open drawer to the top of the dresser. It was snowing.

  Robin said, “Bear, you have a circuit loose.” It was what his mother sometimes said to Bertha.

  Bear did not reply.

  “Oh, Bear,” Robin said sleepily, a moment later. “I know why you’re antsy. It’s your birthday tomorrow, and you think I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Did you?” Bear asked.

  “I will,” Robin said. “Mother will take me to the store.” In half a minute his breathing became the regular, heavy sighing of a sleeping child.

  Bear sat on the edge of the dresser and looked at him. Then he said under his breath, “I can sing Christmas carols.” It had been the first thing he had ever said to Robin, one year ago. He spread his arms. All is calm. AU is bright. It made him think of the lights on the tree and the bri
ght fire in the living room. The Spaceman was there, but because he was the only toy who could fly, none of the others liked the Spaceman much. The Dancing Doll was there too. The Dancing Doll was clever, but, well... He could not think of the word.

  He jumped down into the drawer on top of a pile of Robin’s undershirts, then out of the drawer, softly to the dark, carpeted floor.

  “Limited,” he said to himself. “The Dancing Doll is limited.” He thought again of the fire, then of the old toys, the Blocks Robin had had before he and the Dancing Doll and the rest had come—the Wooden Man who rode a yellow bicycle, the Singing Top.

  In the living room, the Dancing Doll was positioning the guardsmen, while the Spaceman stood on the mantel and supervised. “We can get three or four behind the bookcase,” he called.

  “Where they won’t be able to see a thing,” Bear growled.

  The Dancing Doll pirouetted and dropped a sparkling curtsy. “We were afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said.

  “Put one behind each leg of the coffee table,” Bear told her. “I had to wait until he was asleep. Now listen to me, all of you. When I call, ‘Charge!' we must all run at them together. That’s very important. If we can, we’ll have a practice beforehand.”

  The Largest Guardsman said, “I’ll beat my drum.”

  “You’ll beat the enemy, or you’ll go into the fire with the rest of us,” Bear said.

  Robin was sliding on the ice. His feet went out from under him and right up into the air so he fell down with a tremendous BUMP that shook him all over. He lifted his head, and he was not on the frozen pond in the park at all. He was in his own bed, with the moon shining in at the window, and it was Christmas Eve...no, Christmas Night now...and Santa was coming, maybe had already come. Robin listened for reindeer on the roof and did not hear reindeer steps. Then he listened for Santa eating the cookies his mother had left on the stone shelf by the fireplace. There was no munching or crunching. Then he threw back the covers and slipped down over the edge of his bed until his feet touched the floor. The good smells of tree and fire had come into his room. He followed them out of it ever so quietly, into the hall.

  Santa was in the living room, bent over beside the tree! Robin’s eyes opened until they were as big and as round as his pajama buttons. Then Santa straightened up, and he was not Santa at all, but Robin’s mother in a new red bathrobe. Robin’s mother was nearly as fat as Santa, and Robin had to put his fingers in his mouth to keep from laughing at the way she puffed, and pushed at her knees with her hands until she stood straight.

  But Santa had come! There were toys—new toys!— everywhere under the tree.

  Robin’s mother went to the cookies on the stone shelf and ate half of one. Then she drank half the glass of milk. Then she turned to go back into her bedroom, and Robin retreated into the darkness of his own room until she was past. When he peeked cautiously around the door frame again, the toys— the new toys—were beginning to move.

  They shifted and shook themselves and looked about. Perhaps it was because it was Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was only because the light of the fire had activated their circuits. But a Clown brushed himself off and stretched, and a Raggedy Girl smoothed her raggedy apron (with the heart embroidered on it), and a Monkey gave a big jump and chinned himself on the next-to-lowest limb of the Christmas tree. Robin saw them. And Bear, behind the hassock of Robin's father’s chair, saw them too. Cowboys and Native Americans were lifting the lid of a box, and a Knight opened a cardboard door (made to look like wood) in the side of another box (made to look like stone), letting a Dragon peer over his shoulder.

  “Charge!” Bear called. “Charge!” He came around the side of the hassock on all fours like a real bear, running stiffly but very fast, and he hit the Clown at his wide waistline and knocked him down, then picked him up and threw him halfway to the fire.

  The Spaceman had swooped down on the Monkey; they wrestled, teetering, on top of a polystyrene tricycle.

  The Dancing Doll had charged fastest of all, faster even than Bear himself, in a breathtaking series of jeté, but the Raggedy Girl had lifted her feet from the floor, and now she was running with her toward the fire. As Bear struck the Clown a second time, he saw two Native Americans carrying a guardsman— the Captain of the Guardsmen—toward the fire too. The Captain's saber had gone through one of the Native Americans and it must have disabled some circuit because the Native American walked badly; but in a moment more the Captain was burning, his red uniform burning, his hands thrown up like flames themselves, his black eyes glazing and cracking, bright metal running from him like sweat to harden among the ashes under the logs.

  The Clown tried to wrestle with Bear, but Bear threw him down. The Dragon’s teeth were sunk in Bear’s left heel, but he kicked himself free. The Calico Cat was burning, burning. The Gingham Dog tried to pull her out, but the Monkey pushed him in. For a moment, Bear thought of the cellar stairs and the deep, dark cellar, where there were boxes and bundles and a hundred forgotten corners. If he ran and hid, the new toys might never find him, might never even try to find him. Years from now Robin would discover him, covered with dust.

  The Dancing Doll’s scream was high and sweet, and Bear turned to face the Knight’s upraised sword.

  When Robin’s mother got up on Christmas Morning, Robin was awake already, sitting under the tree with the Cowboys, watching the Native Americans do their rain dance. The Monkey was perched on his shoulder, the Raggedy Girl (programmed, the store had assured Robin’s mother, to begin Robin’s sex education) in his lap, and the Knight and the Dragon were at his feet. “Do you like the toys Santa brought you, Robin?” Robin’s mother asked.

  “One of the Native Amer’cans doesn’t work.” “Never mind, dear, we’ll take him back. Robin, I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  Bertha the robot maid came in with Corn Flakes and milk and vitamins, and café au lait for Robin’s mother. “Where is those old toys?” she asked. “They done a picky-poor job of cleanin’ up this room.” “Robin, your toys are just toys, of course—”

  Robin nodded absently. A Red Calf was coming out of the chute, with a Cowboy on a Roping Horse after him.

  “Where is those old toys, Ms. Jackson?” Bertha asked again.

  “They’re programmed to self-destruct, I understand,” Robin’s mother said. “But, Robin, you know how the new toys all came, the Knight and Dragon and all your Cowboys, almost by magic? Well, the same thing can happen with people.”

  Robin looked at her with frightened eyes.

  “The same wonderful thing is going to happen here, in our home.”

  The Santa Claus Planet - Frank M. Robinson

  “I think the town is over this way, sir,” Hawsworthy said, his words coming out in little puffs of steam.

  Leftenant Harkins waited until there was a brief calm in the flurries of snow whirling about him, then shielded his eyes and stared in the direction that Hawsworthy had pointed. There was a small cluster of lights in the distance—a good two or three snowy miles away, he judged sourly—but it couldn’t be anything but the twinkling lights of some primitive village.

  He sighed and pulled the collar of his heavy tunic tighter around his neck, then turned for a last look at the Churchill, the sleek and shiny line-cruiser bulking huge in the valley a few hundred yards to the rear. Her ports were radiating a cozy, yellow warmth and he could catch glimpses of her officers and enlisted men standing around the brightly bedecked tree in the main lounge. He even fancied that he could hear the strains of Cantique Noel and smell the hot, spicy odor of the wassail drifting up on the cold, sharp air.

  Christmas Eve...

  He bit his thin lips in disappointment. Outside in the cold on a fool’s errand while inside the Churchill the Christmas celebration was just getting started. He had done the best he could in making arrangements with Ensign Jarvis to save him some of the wassail, but knowing Jarvis’ own enthusiasm for the monthly liquor ration; they were shaky arrangements at be
st.

  A sudden gust of snow hid the ship and he and Hawsworthy wheeled and started trudging towards the faint glow on the horizon.

  It was traditional in the service, Harkins thought, to set the ship down on some hospitable planet for Christmas. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without the solid feeling of the good earth under you and the smell of pine and the soft mistiness of snow drifting gently down from the sky.

  Naturally, there had been a lot of enthusiasm aboard ship. The commissary had been busy all week filling the ship with the appetizing odors of synthetic roast goose and plum pudding and the pleasant spiciness of fruit cakes. And the carpentry shop had spent many a hard afternoon building the tree out of fine dowels and daubing it with green paint, just in case they were unable to obtain the genuine article.

  Then—only an hour ago, Harkins thought bitterly—the captain had asked to see him and his own personal enthusiasm had collapsed like a pricked balloon.

  The captain had discovered that the planet supported a human culture, so it was naturally incumbent on the Churchill to send forth a deputation to invite members of the Terran speaking community—if any—aboard to celebrate Christmas with the crew, present the ship’s credentials to the powers that might be, and try and arrange for possible planet leave.

  And as he had once dabbled in anthropology, the deputation was to be made in the person of Leftenant Junior Gracie Harkins. Which meant that he would miss most of the celebration. On top of that, he had drawn Hawsworthy for an assistant. (There was nothing wrong with Hawsworthy, of course, except that he had an amazing talent for making you feel ill at ease and unsure of yourself. He was a twenty-year man and you always suspected that his feelings towards the junior grades were composed more of toleration than respect.)

  “It can’t be much further, sir. I think I can make out some of the buildings.” The lights of the town were considerably nearer now and the rough shapes of small houses had begun to separate themselves from the snow-filled blackness.