A Fantastic Holiday Season

by Kevin J. Anderson

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s see what we have.” He unloaded his presents from the cloth shopping bags he’d brought them in, one gift for each of the children and a big present for Melissa. He’d save those for Round Two. He picked a present for each person from Melissa’s perfect pile and handed them around. He had wondered if there would be gifts for him, as awkward and strange as the separation had been. But there were.

  Kaylee ripped paper off her present. An iPod, with headphones. She crowed with delight.

  Riley untaped his gift carefully and folded the green foil paper before seeing what he got—three classical music CDs.

  Piper opened one end of her parcel and slid the inside out: a knit hat in black with white skull and crossbones. She pulled it onto her head until it covered her from the eyebrows up and said, “Thanks, Mom!”

  Melissa sat with her present in her lap. It was one of a few under the tree wrapped sloppily, hidden behind Melissa’s showcase presents. He’d had to hunt to find a present for her. It was from Kaylee.

  Melissa unwrapped Kaylee’s crumpled purple tissue paper and held up a small clay dragon.

  “I made it in material arts class,” Kaylee said.

  “I love it!” Melissa said.

  Leo’s present was small, wrapped in gold foil. A gift from Melissa. He opened it. A utilitarian pair of steel handcuffs. Confused, he stared down at them and wondered why he felt cold. Then he wondered if Melissa had new ideas about sex she wanted to share. He looked up at her, and she flushed and stared at the floor. Sex? He reached out. He had to know.

  His tendril touched her and she hunched her shoulders, then stared up at him, her gaze intense.

  So, she wasn’t looking for bondage games. She was sending a message.

  She saw him as handcuffs. Somehow, she knew about family magic.

  He pulled back, chilled.

  “Gah, Mom, what is that about?” Piper asked, staring at the handcuffs. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  Riley and Kaylee looked up from their presents. Leo slid the handcuffs into a back pocket, out of sight. He rose, smiling. “Next round.”

  He handed around the presents he had brought. His chest felt tight. Six months since he’d spent more than a few hours a week with them, and everybody had changed. His understanding of them had changed, too; now he felt like he didn’t know any of them very well. What if he’d gotten everything wrong?

  For himself, he got a lumpy, purple-tissue-wrapped present from Kaylee. He set it in his lap and sat, his fingers digging into his knees, as he waited for verdicts. Light, light touch on the children, just so he’d know what they really thought.

  “Gee,” said Riley, “I have absolutely no idea what this is.” He ripped paper off the basketball and held it like a globe in front of him, staring at it as though he’d never touched a basketball before.

  When Riley was ten, he and Leo spent a lot of time after Leo got off work shooting baskets through a rim Leo had attached above the garage. One day the ball had deflated. Leo had patched it, but it didn’t hold air anymore, and somehow he’d let it go, and lost the close connection to Riley. Maybe that was why he hadn’t known Riley was having such a tough time.

  “So, what, you want me to be a jock now?” Riley said, his voice monotonal. Despair and bitter disappointment flowed along Leo’s connection to him.

  “No! No. I just thought maybe we could get back to playing horse.” Of course, that would be hard if he wasn’t living here.

  Riley’s eyes narrowed. He bounced the ball once and set it on the couch next to him.

  “Daaaaad,” Piper said, holding up the necklace he had bought for her. The pendant was a pink enamel heart with a Swarovski crystal in the center.

  She likes skulls and black corduroy, he thought. Another big mistake. “I’m sorry. I saved the receipt. You can trade it in.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her mouth flattened. She tucked the necklace into her jeans pocket, though it had come in a nice velvet case. Leo felt hollow.

  Kaylee pulled paper from her odd-shaped gift, frowning. “What is this?” she asked, and held up the wire frames with glittering, lacy yellow cloth stretched across them.

  “Fairy wings,” he said.

  “What? You think I’m still six years old?”

  “I think you’re magic,” he said, and then the box inside her leaped and dropped and the lid popped open and a cable shot from her into his chest, and he gasped as it hooked into him.

  HOW DID YOU KNOW? Kaylee’s voice roared inside him.

  “Oh, Kaylee,” he said, his voice coming out high and twisted.

  She pulled on her cable and he slid from the couch to the floor. He clapped a hand to his breastbone, trying to break the connection before it strangled him.

  HOW DID THAT WORK? I NEVER DID THAT BEFORE. HOW DO I STOP IT?

  “Come here, honey,” he whispered, and she came and knelt next to him. “You talk to it, ask it to let go and come home to you.”

  GET BACK HERE, she thought furiously.

  The tugging in his chest lifted him a couple inches off the ground. He coughed, and said, “Not like that. First you have to relax. Then ask nicely. Take a deep breath, let it out, take another, let it out. Okay, honey?”

  “Leo, what are you doing?” Melissa asked.

  “Uh—” He stared up at his daughter, who was staring back, her eyes wide, looking through him as she drew in deep breaths and let them out. LET GO, she thought. OKAY, LET GO OF DAD AND—COME BACK.

  Her connection unhooked and pulled back into her. Leo thunked to the ground as Kaylee heaved a huge sigh. Then she threw herself on him and started crying. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  He stroked her back and said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’ll be all right, honey. I can help you with this.” So Kaylee ended up with the family magic. He wondered if Riley or Piper had, too. It didn’t always transfer, and Kaylee was pretty young to manifest. She had manifested more strongly than anybody he’d ever known.

  She would need his help dealing with this. He needed to start training her right away.

  Or maybe after they finished opening presents.

  “Leo!” Melissa said.

  Piper was staring at him, her face expressionless. Riley hugged the basketball and gazed at the ceiling.

  Leo pushed Kaylee back gently and sat up. “Sorry, Melly. We had a moment.”

  “That’s not good enough. What just happened?”

  Leo looked down into Kaylee’s face. Her eyes were bright with tears. “I think we need to talk about that,” he said slowly. Kaylee was going to have to learn to handle what she had, and that didn’t happen overnight. Melissa would need information. Leo needed to tell her, maybe everything. “Could we do it later?”

  Melissa looked at Piper and Riley, then at Leo. “You’re going to explain?” she asked.

  “Yes. I want to tell you.”

  “I want to know.” She sounded fierce. “Later.” She nodded. “Tonight.”

  “Good.” He climbed back onto the couch, tugging Kaylee to sit beside him, and unwrapped the present Kaylee had made for him. It was another clay creation, this time a purple octopus. He touched his breastbone, thinking about unfolding tendrils, and how they could be thought of as tentacles. Kaylee rubbed her fist against her breastbone, too. “Thanks, baby,” he said. “I love it. I’ll keep it on my desk.”

  She hugged his head, then went back to the kids’ couch and slid her arms through the straps of the fairy wings, settling them on her back. She looked adorable. Then she scowled, and looked adorable and grumpy.

  “Open your present, Mom,” Riley said.

  Melissa set the heavy rectangular package on her lap. It was wrapped in paper with little Santas running all over. She lifted the taped edges gently enough not to tear anything, and discovered a stained and varnished wooden paint box. She gasped, then unlatched the lid and looked inside. “Oh, Leo,” she said, her voice full of wonder. The box had compar
tments inside stocked with brushes, wipes, and tubes of the best acrylics he could find, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, cadmium red and yellow, dioxazine purple, and other, more fanciful colors—poodleskirt pink, moon yellow, mint julep green. The lid had grooves in it, and he had slid some stretched canvases into them.

  When she looked up at him, her eyes shone.

  “I know I can’t fix everything overnight,” he said.

  “You got that right.”

  “I’d like a chance to try.”

  She closed the paint box and latched the lid. “It can’t be like before.”

  He thought of his mother and father, the magic bond they’d formed, and how it strangled him. How his father’s magic had shifted into his mother over the years, and what she did with it. He didn’t want to turn into a parent like the ones he had. Maybe Rick was the smart one, marrying people he couldn’t use family magic on, letting his powers wither. “You’re right. You’re so right.”

  “Trial period. Understand?”

  “Melly,” he said. He hugged her, her warmth and prickliness and smell of mint shampoo and waffles, and felt hope for the first time in too long.

  When we humans go to the stars, we’ll take our holidays with us—and why not? They pack easily, and will comfort us through that cold black trek into the night; they will reaffirm our origins.

  Initially, at any rate. But each colony will evolve to reflect its new habits, habitats, and technologies. Holidays will change, too—but Joy to the World—not in the most important ways.

  —KO

  Astronaut Nick

  Brad R. Torgersen

  “He’ll be here,” the red-haired girl said as she looked out the bubble window of the classroom’s south wall.

  “Nah, my older brother says Astronaut Nick is a fake,” said the blue-eyed boy with the curly brown hair. He too was looking out the bubble window.

  Jimmy Carrico wasn’t sure who he believed. At age nine, he didn’t want to appear too credulous in front of the older kids. After all, what could anyone say about the legend of a red-suited space man who was supposed to be flying all the way from Earth to deliver gifts to the children of Olympus Mons Colony?

  “Your older brother just wants to spoil the fun,” the red-haired girl said, turning her head to make a disapproving frown at the blue-eyed boy.

  Jimmy hadn’t been on Mars long enough to have learned too many names. Mostly he kept quiet, did his schoolwork as best as he was able, and endured the inevitable rude comments. It was bad enough trying to learn to function in Mars’ heavier gravity, but trying to do it and save face in front of the other kids at the same time, was often an impossible task.

  “He’ll come riding in his rocket sled,” said the red-haired girl. “Him and his crew of elves.”

  The blue-eyed boy snorted.

  “He’s never come before,” he said. “What’s so different that suddenly he’d show up now?”

  “That,” the girl said, pointing outside the bubble window.

  The salmon-colored sky had faded to gray, and little ice crystals were gradually floating down to land on the brownish-red landscape below—Martian snow being the dividend of the work which had brought the Carrico family to Mars in the first place.

  Every year, the Mars Terraforming Project needed more people, and every year those people hurled more comets into Mars’ upper atmosphere. Enough to begin changing Mars’ climate so that moisture was able to condense out of the air—especially in the higher elevations. Since Olympus Mons colony was dug into the foothills of the biggest extinct volcano in the solar system, and the volcano got dusted on a regular basis these days, the children had a front row seat for what their parents claimed was history in the making.

  “Big whoop,” said the blue-eyed boy, who turned away from the window and sauntered back to where some other boys were gathered to eat their noon meal.

  Jimmy stared out the window, watching the little white flakes fall. There weren’t many. In fact, it was hard to believe that something so small could turn the ground white in a single afternoon. But it had happened twice before in two previous weeks, and now it was happening again.

  “He’ll come,” the girl said to Jimmy, nodding her head earnestly.

  “What makes you so sure?” Jimmy said cautiously, sliding off of his chair and walking to stand near the girl—both of their faces pushed into the bubble window so that they could look around.

  “Before my Grandma died,” said the red-haired girl, “she told me about Saint Nicholas.”

  “Who?” Jimmy asked.

  “You ever hear of Father Christmas?” the red-haired girl asked.

  “I don’t think so. Is this a story from Earth?”

  “It is,” the red-haired girl said. “At the end of every Earth year, Saint Nicholas rides through the sky in his sleigh, bringing gifts to all the good children.”

  “Sounds like a fairytale,” Jimmy said.

  The little girl scowled.

  “Why do boys always have to ruin everything?” she said.

  “Sorry,” Jimmy replied, feeling sheepish. “I guess I have a hard time believing in anyone who rides a sleigh through the sky. I’ve seen pictures of earth. I know what a sleigh looks like. They can’t get off the ground.”

  “But Astronaut Nick’s sleigh has rockets,” she said. “And when he comes, he’ll bring things for all of us. Well, all of us who believe in him anyway.”

  Jimmy considered. It was an enticing idea. He hadn’t been able to bring much from Ceres. The family’s small quarters in Olympus Mons were barren—their crates not yet arrived via bulk freighter—and while video games and other three-dee entertainments could be had in plentiful quantities, there were times when Jimmy missed being able to hold an actual toy in his hands.

  Why had they moved, again? Jimmy could still remember how excited his parents had been. The whole family would be partaking in the greatest engineering project of the age. The robot scouts sent to retrieve the comets from the Kuiper Belt would keep bringing them until Mars had been rendered inhabitable. The Carrico family would be helping to prepare the surface. It might take decades, or even centuries. But there would come a day when there’d be no need for habitats. The air would be like Earth air, and it would be thick and warm enough to go outside without suits—something Jimmy had never done on Mars, and not on Ceres either.

  Ceres. On Ceres, Jimmy had real friends. On Ceres, he could fly down the corridors and across the gym, at the merest push of his toes. Stuck on Mars, Jimmy plodded and sweated, his cheeks pink, and his muscles and joints complaining. The doctor said it was normal, for children born in the asteroid belt—that Jimmy would get used to it. But the longer Jimmy endured the struggle, the more he hated it. And hated the fact that his parents had applied for emigration from Ceres in the first place.

  “Does Astronaut Nick only bring toys?” Jimmy asked.

  “Astronaut Nick brings you whatever you wish for,” the girl said.

  Jimmy frowned, and slowly pulled his head out of the bubble.

  The girl stared at him.

  “Why does that make you sad?” she asked.

  “Nevermind,” Jimmy said, turning to leave.

  “Wait!” she said. “You’re new, but you don’t talk to people. What’s your name? You can at least tell me your name.”

  “James,” he sighed.

  “That’s probably what your Mom calls you,” she said. “What do you call you?”

  “Jimmy,” he said, looking back at her over his shoulder.

  She smiled at him—her eyes lighting up pleasantly.

  “That was my Great Grandpa’s name,” she said. “I like that. My name’s Tessa.”

  “Hello,” Jimmy said, still looking over his shoulder. She seemed to be waiting for him to say more to her.

  He merely turned and walked out of the room, his feet slapping painfully hard on the deck.

  The next day, Tessa found Jimmy eating by himself.

  “Mind if I sit here?�
� Tessa asked.

  “No,” Jimmy said, not looking up from his tray of microwaved turkey and beans.

  “Did I make you mad?” she asked, setting down her own tray.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Yesterday, when you left. It seemed like I made you mad.”

  “No,” Jimmy said. “It’s just that … I’d like to believe this Astronaut Nick guy can help me, but I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” she said sharply.

  “It sounds to me like one of those things parents tell to little kids, that always wind up not being true.”

  “Well if you don’t believe in him,” Tessa said, “of course he’s not going to be true. Astronaut Nick doesn’t bring presents to doubters.”

  Jimmy closed his eyes, remembering how delightful it had been on Ceres, flying through the sports chambers with his friends as they played Wall Ball. You had to be good with angles, and you had to learn how hard to throw the ball to get it to carom just right, while not throwing so hard that you flipped yourself completely around. Teams of Wall Ball players could use each others’ inertia to make shots at the goal without spinning out of control. Of course, if the other teams were equally good at working together, they could use their inertia to deflect the ball and make return shots. Players would hang onto each others’ ankles, knees and elbow interlocked, all of them pirouetting as a unit …

  “Did you hear me?” Tessa said, her voice quiet, breaking his reverie.

  Jimmy looked up at her.

  “Okay, so Nick doesn’t bring gifts for doubter,” he said, perhaps a bit harder than he’d wanted.

  “No need to be rude,” she said. “I don’t make up the rules.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Nobody can help me anyway. Here on Mars … they hardly ever let us go outside, and I’m heavy no matter where I go, and always dropping things or bumping into stuff, and our quarters are small and my friends are all far away, and I won’t ever get to see them again.”