A Fantastic Holiday Season

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Sheriff Tate, who had gleefully attended Jimmy’s hearing on account of the number of times the boy had caused the town grief, replied rather heatedly, “Right here, McAffee! But there ain’t much I can do against heavy guns with this pea-shooter strapped to my hip!”

  The three zeppelins split, one coming straight at the courthouse while the other two started circling around the edge of town. As one, all three airships released a burst of gunfire. Thunder filled the sky as flame shot from the heavy caliber emplacements.

  Men and women screamed in horror, but the detonations of artillery rounds clearly came from well beyond the outermost buildings.

  “What the—!” one of the men yelled over the din.

  Another shouted, “They ain’t shooting at us!”

  “Those are warning shots!” one of the bailiffs yelled. “Lettin’ us know they can gun down anyone trying to leave town.”

  “ATTENTION CITIZENS OF HAYBERRY!” The words erupted from above and echoed throughout the entire town, spoken harshly and with a distinctly Tennessee accent. “THIS IS CAPTAIN WOLFORT OF THE CONFEDERATE AIRFORCE!”

  The courtroom went silent.

  “Hey,” the other bailiff observed. “They’s lowerin’ a harness of some sort out the bottom of that there zep.” He pointed to the airship that had taken up station some two hundred feet above and in front of the courthouse, hovering directly over Town Square.

  “THE CONFEDERACY REQUESTS AND REQUIRES THAT YOU HAND OVER ONE JAMES ARCHIMEDES KRINKLEPOT FORTHWITH! FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN ONE BUILDING BEING DESTROYED EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL HE IS IN OUR CUSTODY. WE WILL BEGIN WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF THE COURTHOUSE. YOU HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES TO DECIDE!”

  The courtroom went silent, and every pair of eyes save Jimmy’s turned to the boy—some in fear, some with loathing, but most with a healthy dose of confusion. Every face, save two, held the question, What did you get us into this time?

  Jimmy’s confusion was readily apparent. All he could offer the accusing looks was open palms and an innocent shrug.

  Judge Davenport, on the other hand, knew exactly what sort of game the Confederacy was playing. They were looking for a hostage, leverage against Jimmy’s father, the most renowned scientist working for the Union military. The cads were clearly gentlemen enough not to ask for Krinklepot’s wife, but they were not above taking a young man of near-legal fighting age into their custody.

  “Turn him over!” several men shouted, pointing at the bewildered youth.

  “I ain’t dying for that rapscallion!” shouted Dickey Wilson as he moved towards Jimmy.

  “Bailiffs! Restrain that man!” Judge Davenport shouted.

  Both bailiffs, pouncing like well-trained Dobermans, grabbed Dickey and held him firm.

  “Enough!” Davenport bellowed as his gavel came down like a sledgehammer. The entire courtroom went silent at the crack of wood, that silence broken only by the splintered halves of Davenport’s sounding block as they clattered from his podium onto the hardwood floor. “I have no intention of handing that boy over to the Confederacy, no matter what he’s done.”

  “But!—” Dickey started.

  Davenport’s fiery eyes locked onto Dickey’s as he cut the man off with an icy tone: “I believe I have said before that there will be no ‘buts’ in my courtroom.” He raised a fierce eyebrow, adding, “Do I make myself perfectly clear, Mister Wilson?”

  Dickey, knowing when he was outgunned, closed his mouth and left it that way.

  “So what are we gonna do?” Sheriff Tate asked.

  Another hailstorm of questions fell in a flurry against the red-faced visage of the Judge.

  Now Jimmy, being the sort of boy he was, had quietly set his gray matter to the problem at hand. At first he couldn’t fathom why the Confederacy would want him. It was his father who worked for the Union.…And therein lay his answer. Jimmy was young and perhaps a bit naive about the ways of the world, but he’d read enough penny dreadfuls in his early years to understand how powerful a hostage could be. But what to do about it? He couldn’t be handed over to the Confederacy as a bargaining chip, and the townsfolk lacked the means to withstand the assault of three heavily armed Confederate airships. And, to add insult to injury, the lot of them had just under fourteen minutes to make a decision. Jimmy pondered and finally came upon a solution.

  Amidst the confusion, he quietly walked over to a nearby table where Exhibit A stood waiting … and wanting.

  “Excuse me, Your Honor?” Jimmy said quietly. His voice was drowned out by the cacophony flying between the judge, the sheriff, and the townsfolk. He stood up upon the table so that he might be heard better. “Your HONOR!” he shouted over the din.

  Davenport spun at the intruding and somewhat high-pitched voice as the rest of the crowd continued to argue amongst themselves.

  “What is it, boy?” he asked and then paused, silently contemplating the apparatus Jimmy held up in his hands. Said apparatus was offered with a mischievous grin and a raised eyebrow.

  At first Davenport reveled at the thought of Rebels getting a dose of Jimmy’s fricassee pistol, but then images of his prize chickens, featherless, cooked, and scattered about his yard came to mind. The thought of fricasseed men dotting the streets of Hayberry, Rebel or not, filled him with dread.

  “Boy, I will not see those men fricasseed before the eyes of our fellow townsfolk, before the eyes of your lovely mother, and before God Himself! It is indecent! Inhuman! I do not care if they are Rebels! I will surrender before I allow your mother to see such a sight!”

  Jimmy glanced at his mother who was, thankfully, still unconscious.

  “Well, technically, Your Honor,” he said a bit sheepishly, “my mother is still unaware of these events.”

  Davenport raised a warning finger, preparing for the “but” he could clearly discern in Jimmy’s words.

  “However,” Jimmy continued, realizing his position was untenable, “I do see your point.” Jimmy’s mischievous grin had turned to a frown, and his gray matter poured over this new obstacle to his freedom and the safety of the Hayberry.

  Then his eyes fell upon Davenport’s iced lemonade.

  Iced.

  The entire town of Hayberry enjoyed iced beverages as a result of a minor invention provided to the people by Jimmy’s father some years ago. Virtually every household, and even the courthouse, had a small icemaker that made the hot months of Missouri more bearable. And Judge Davenport was well known for his veritable addiction to iced beverages, even in the winter months. He had declared to Jimmy’s father some years hence that the icemaker was perhaps civilized man’s greatest achievement.

  Indeed, the device was remarkable, and Jimmy had used its design as a foundation for his fricassee pistol, simply altering both current and polarity to achieve heating rather than cooling. His device, of course, was capable of exponentially greater output, but that was more a whim of youth than an engineering requirement.

  Jimmy visualized the interior of the fricassee pistol’s powerpack, crossed a few wires in his head, adjusted a couple of condensers, and immediately had a solution with which the judge would not be able to argue.

  Jimmy raised his hand once again.

  “YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES!” the southern voice boomed.

  Jimmy stepped through the doors of the courthouse into frigid December air. William followed close behind, his knees shaking more from fear than the cold. He would rather be anywhere else in the world, but he was familiar with the device’s controls, so he’d gotten the job of turning the thing on.

  Judge Davenport and Sheriff Tate stepped out into the cold several steps behind the boys, Tate aiming his pistol at the boys’ backs as if he were forcing them forward. It was a ruse, of course, meant to ease the trigger fingers of the Confederate gunners.

  “Are you sure that thing will work the way you say?” Davenport hissed from behind Jimmy.

  Jimmy nodded without looking back.

  The waiting harness swung back and f
orth slowly several feet above the street as the zeppelin held its position.

  “You best get to shootin’, son,” Tate said quietly. “That thing is almost on top of us.”

  Jimmy stopped several paces past the courthouse steps and turned to William.

  “Turn it to eleven and flip all three switches,” he said a bit nervously.

  William nodded and licked his lips. He turned the dial, his hand shaking, and flipped the first switch. What had originally been a buzz from Jimmy’s powerpack issued forth as an ear-splitting whine like a band saw. William flipped the second switch, and a drone pressed in upon them all like deep water. William flipped the third and felt his bones rattling inside his skin.

  “You should all go back inside,” Jimmy said nervously over his shoulder. He turned just in time to see William already backed up against the building and Sheriff Tate disappearing through the courthouse doors.

  Judge Davenport, to his credit and quality of character, stood only three steps behind Jimmy, his hands over his ears. “Go ahead, son,” he declared over the din, “I have no intention of letting you do this alone.”

  Jimmy smiled and nodded, his respect for Judge Davenport soaring.

  Jimmy raised the apparatus and took aim at the airship above them, its nose just short of where he stood. He held his breath and pulled the lever.

  CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

  A cool green beam erupted from the weapon and splashed against the nose of the zeppelin. Energy enveloped the entire craft in a bright, green glow. The temperature at street level dropped twenty degrees in the blink of an eye as wisps of frozen air and crystalized water swirled around the coherent beam.

  The slowly spinning rotors of the zeppelin froze in place. Ice formed where the beam contacted the envelope and spread, flash freezing across the entire surface of the aircraft. And then the ice around the envelope shattered as the whole thing expanded.

  Jimmy released the lever, and the beam ceased. He watched in scientific fascination as some unexpected chemical reaction caused the envelope to bulge more and more with each passing moment.

  “Holy shit,” Davenport said, his eyes locked on the doomed airship.

  The expanding dirigible ruptured with an explosive WHOOF! as the top split apart. A tremendous gout of white swirled into the air and expanded. What remained of the upper frame as well as the gondola slipped from the sky, plummeting towards terra firma.

  Davenport made a quick estimation and realized that the zeppelin would not hit them upon impact. He grabbed Jimmy and spun the boy towards another zeppelin, this one turning as its guns swiveled towards them.

  “SHOOT!” Davenport shouted as he pointed to the vessel.

  Jimmy fired just as the first zeppelin crashed down into Town Square and collapsed in a heap of splintering timber and sagging canvas.

  Jimmy’s beam hit the second dirigible amidships, and seconds later it burst with a WHOOF, sending another white cloud into the air as the craft crashed to the ground.

  Jimmy spun and aimed his weapon at the third Confederate zeppelin, but the craft was already turning away, its rotors screaming as it headed away at flank speed.

  “Ease up, Mister Krinklepot,” Davenport said, placing a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let them go.”

  “But—”

  Davenport nearly reprimanded the boy for using another “but,” but realized that they were no longer in his courtroom. Instead, he said, “Let them get home and tell the rest of those Rebels what happened here. They’ll not be coming back if they know we can drop them with one shot.” Davenport eyed Jimmy with newfound respect. The boy was more than a chip off the old block of his father.

  Jimmy lowered the weapon and stared at the wreckage filling Town Square. The gondola had shattered, sending wood—and its occupants—flying out to the left and right. The shapes of frosty-white, ice-covered Confederate airmen littered the street, each one frozen solid, a surprised look captured on his face precisely as it was when Jimmy’s beam hit.

  “Well,” Davenport observed, somewhat embarrassed by the presence of corpses littering the streets. “At least they’re not fricasseed.”

  William stepped up behind Jimmy and flipped the switches. The drone of the powerplant faded to silence as he dialed the device back to its lowest setting.

  The three stood there silently as large, moisture-laden snowflakes fell about them in what promised to be a short-lived blizzard at Confederate expense. A fine layer had already coated everything in sight, and a gentle smile spread across Jimmy’s face.

  Filled with pride, he victoriously raised the apparatus once again above his head. “I dub this … the Precipicrystalistivator.”

  Davenport and William turned confused faces towards Jimmy, astonished that so many syllables could come out someone’s mouth in so short a time.

  Finally, William said, “But I thought you called it the fricassee pistol.”

  “I did,” Jimmy intoned seriously, “but this is something else entirely.”

  “It’s the same thing,” William pointed out. “All you did was cross a couple of wires.”

  “Shhh …” Jimmy hissed, not wanting his moment of glory spoiled by trivialities like the facts.

  “Okay … fine.” William said, exasperated. “It’s a precip—a precipacry—what on Earth does that mean, Jimmy?” William finally asked, his mouth unable to stagger out the torrent of phonemes.

  “It’s quite simple, really,” Jimmy said loftily. “‘Precipi’ referring to precipitation, ‘crystali’ referring to the crystallization of said precipitation, and ‘tivator’ a derivative of motivation, referring to the complete and utter lack of motivation and therefore ambulation of the subject after being exposed to my device’s ray.”

  The judge blinked his eyes in disbelief for several breaths, shaking his head. “You just came up with that off the top of your head,” he finally asked, stunned at the convolutions Jimmy Krinklepot’s brain was capable of.

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmy replied. “And look …” he added, pointing to the accumulating snow. “It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas after all.”

  “Indeed we will, Mister Krinklepot. I shall personally compose a Thank You letter to General Lee.”

  The judge and both boys laughed at the thought of Lee getting such a correspondence.

  Jimmy turned his gaze to the window where the townsfolk cheered. His mother, who had apparently come around during the battle, stood in the middle of the crowd, beaming with pride.

  William, of course, could only shake his head, realizing full well that there would be little to stop Jimmy Krinklepot in the future. And Judge Davenport contemplated several of his friends in Washington, who would be very interested in working with such a remarkable young man. He then said a prayer to God in Heaven for anything unfortunate enough to get in the way of the boy’s not inconsiderable intellect.

  “Mister Krinklepot,” the judge said slowly, “in recognition of your service to the Union and in no small part for having saved the entire town of Hayberry, I do hereby commute your sentence. Don’t you dare stop going to that junkyard of yours and doing what you do.” Jimmy looked up at Davenport, a broad smile across his face. “Merry Christmas,” the judge added almost jovially, and then his voice grew firm. “But if I catch you near my chickens again, young man, I will personally lock you up and throw away the key. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jimmy smiled. “And Merry Christmas.”

  There’s no place like home for the holidays, right? And home can mean many things: one’s house, one’s country, one’s family, one’s loves, one’s freedom …

  Loneliness may drive Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s thoughtful Paris fantasy away from this sentiment at first, but a very special magic keeps the tale on track.

  —KO

  Midnight Trains

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Nights he would find himself in the Metro, just before closing. The wide tunnels emptied around 11:30 p.m. Most
locals did not use the Metro late, avoided the buses that some ridiculous city planner believed could replace the trains in the wee hours, and generally, found their own ways home. Sometimes, he imagined that savvy Parisians simply stayed wherever they ended up, in some on-going party to which he would never ever be invited.

  Alex was 100 percent American. Nothing reminded him of that as much as Paris, which looked familiar, but always, always had an air of impenetrable mystery. Perhaps to the French, it was simply their grand city, like New York was to him—marvelous, yes, but not mysterious at all.

  He shoved his hands in his coat pockets—a heavy wool great coat he’d found in some thrift shop, not that thrift shops here were anything like the thrift shops at home. Here, they smelled not of mothballs and sadness, but of cigarettes and perfume, forgotten traces of someone else’s life.

  He loved the coat. It warmed him and made him feel like a local, only because he dressed like one. Only because the coat had history. He did not.

  His first Christmas in Paris left him flat-footed and unprepared. No one had warned him that the city shut down over the holiday. Even some of the ATMs stopped working.

  Before he left America, his friends spoke enviously of his assignment—Imagine Christmas in Paris, they’d say. Imagine the City of Lights. The City of Lights was beautiful—holiday markets, decorations everywhere, elaborate baked goods that he couldn’t imagine seeing at his last job in Chicago.

  He’d come here to work, and his job, ostensibly in tech, was so high-up, he had trouble finding anyone at work who wasn’t a subordinate, and therefore off-limits.

  He had friends in the city now, but they didn’t ask him to their Christmas celebrations. He never mentioned the holiday, but one-by-one, his French friends pulled him aside to tell him why they couldn’t ask him to join them. As one woman told him, The holiday, she is for family, no?

  Only he had none. That was why the company had chosen to send him to France. That, and the fact that he spoke fluent French, although he soon learned that what he actually spoke was fluent American-flavored prissy and dated French, the kind that actually made the French wince and ask if they could practice their English instead. It was the polite French way of telling him that they didn’t want to hear him mangle the language.