Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  He wasn’t destroying Santa. He was simply transferring the memories. First, they would download them from his brain into a database. Then, from the blood samples and skin scrapings, they would grow a clone of Santa that would look and sound exactly like the one sitting on that chair. And then they would download the memories into the body.

  How would he know the difference? Would that still be Santa?

  Claus couldn’t answer those questions. He shouldn’t even be asking them. He was a scientist, not a philosopher. Claus only wanted to ask one question: What is good for my people?

  What is good for the world?

  Santa was recalling the moment that would shape the rest of his life, the time he decided to follow Jessica around the corner, hiding in the shadows until he discovered where she lived.

  Claus tapped the countertop.

  The lights around Santa dimmed. The equipment pulled away from his head.

  The subject was experiencing stress; psychological collapse was inevitable.

  That’s what he’d tell Jack.

  Warmbloods were weak; they couldn’t tolerate a complete memory drain at once. Patience was prudent.

  And it will give me more time.

  That he wouldn’t tell Jack.

  Claus filed the blood and skin samples to be transferred to another lab for analysis before the reconstruction began. He called for a carrier to take Santa back to his personal laboratory, where he would sleep.

  Maybe he wouldn’t remember that he’d been robbed.

  C L A U S

  21.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Nog said.

  They had stopped in a tunnel. Merry sighed.

  “I’m sorry, dearies,” she said as Nog searched for his bag, “I wanted to let you go at your own pace, but my husband has the patience of a hungry polar bear.”

  “Practical, Merry. I’m just being practical.”

  Nog dug deep into his bag. He pulled out two pairs of what looked like foot molds. They were flimsy and flat. The toes jiggled.

  “What are they?” Jessica asked.

  “They’ll get you around faster.” They jiggled like jelly. “They’ll mold to the bottom of your feet. Go on, don’t be afraid.”

  “Don’t shame them, Nog,” Merry said.

  “I’m not shaming. I’m encouraging.”

  “Shhhhht.”

  “You shhhhht–”

  Jessica took the smaller pair. They were malleable and spongy.

  When she picked up her left foot – leaning on Jon when she did – the thing sucked against her sole and slid between her toes. When she had them both on, they gripped the floor like sandpaper.

  “Oh, this is better,” she said. “Much better.”

  Nog’s mustache rose and his cheeks blushed. He nodded vigorously enough so that Merry could see, looked at her and winked. Then he gave her the thumbs-up–

  “All right, all right. I knew they would work,” Merry said. “I just didn’t want you insulting them.”

  “What’s insulting?”

  “You! Telling them they’re too slow!”

  “I didn’t say that. I simply offered–”

  “WHOA!” Jon shouted.

  He shot between them, sliding on one foot and waving his arms for balance. He was nearly out of sight.

  “TURN YOUR FEET!” Nog shouted.

  There was a distant shoooosh.

  Silence.

  Then laughter.

  Jon came sliding back, turning his feet to the side. “It’s like magic skating.”

  “Not magic, my boy. They simply have scales pointed toward the heels that grab the ice to propel you forward.”

  “These are fantastic, Nog.”

  “I’m sorry.” Nog put his hand to his ear. “What did you say?”

  “I said these are fantastic and thank you.”

  “One more time. I don’t think everyone quite heard you–”

  Merry elbowed her husband. “I got it.”

  There were many doorways along the tunnel that appeared as dim outlines on the wall. Jessica assumed they were rooms like hers. The tunnel, however, ended at a large circular room – a hub or town square. There was a large cylinder of ice in the center and around that were tables and benches, like a park setting. Elven were lounging around, in conversation or playing tabletop games or simply drinking from a mug.

  The ceiling was quite low, as usual. Although the ceiling was much higher around the perimeter, enough that Jessica and Jon could stand. Like it had been carved for them.

  Merry and Nog led them around the hub, pointing down tunnels and explaining this and that. “The dining hall is there. The observation room, there. That’s the hospital, over there…”

  All the elven, no matter what they were doing, stopped to watch them pass.

  “Jon!” An elven with red hair waved. “Hey, Jon. Hi!”

  Jon ducked to see Tinsel outside one of the doorways. He waved back.

  “Do you mind if I…” Jon pointed in her direction.

  Jessica nodded.

  “Go along, my boy,” Merry added. “You can meet Jocah another time. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  Jon ducked to slide over to Tinsel.

  “Ah, Tinsel,” Merry said. “Poor young lass has been such a loner for so long. She left her parents behind in the Fracture and spends all her time with the animals.”

  “Or the science lab,” Nog added.

  “The Fracture?” Jessica asked.

  “When we left our homeland,” Merry said. “We’ve been nomads. They almost caught us a few times, but it’s difficult for them to keep up. We took all the technology with us. And the brightest minds.”

  “Well,” Nog said, “all but one.”

  Hmm. “It’s been almost one hundred fifty years,” Merry said.

  “Has it been that long?” Nog said, scratching in his beard. “Seems like yesterday.”

  “One hundred fifty years?” Jessica said. “That’s… impossible.”

  Merry and Nog laughed.

  “How old are you?” Jessica asked.

  “Old enough, dearie. But not nearly the oldest. Jocah is eleven thousand years old.”

  Impossible.

  “I forgot,” Merry said. “Warmbloods are so short-lived. One day, your people may solve the science of aging, but you’ll have to learn balance before that. Can’t be filling the planet with warmbloods.”

  Jessica detected some bite in her words. Nog agreed.

  C L A U S

  22.

  Jon never liked attention.

  “Hey there.” Tinsel grabbed each braid, thick as ropes, and twisted them nervously. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “You going somewhere?”

  “I’m going to the science lab. Want to come?”

  “Anywhere but here. You’re a scientist?”

  “No, no. I just work there, when I’m not herding. Mainly just clean up and some assembly.” She twisted her braids. “Maybe I play some, too.”

  They ducked through an open doorway that led down a low tunnel. Jon walked hunched over. They passed several doorways.

  “How big is this place?” he asked.

  “As big as we need it to be.”

  “And you desert it every two weeks and build a new one?”

  “About that,” she said. “We’ve been doing it so long, I don’t really notice.”

  “Why don’t you go back to the main… village? You know, make peace with the rest of your people.”

  “It’s not good back there, Jon. The Cold One, he doesn’t want peace.”

  “What’s he want?”

  She didn’t answer. She slid ahead of him.

  Jon couldn’t really follow, even though he had the sliding soles on his feet. Tinsel stopped at the end and waited. Jon sat down.

  “The scientists get cranky if you watch them, so just don’t get too nosy,” she said.

  “You don’t think they’re going to notice me?”

  Sh
e giggled. “They’re not like the rest of the elven. They’re consumed with their work. A giant could stomp through their bedroom and they wouldn’t stop snoring.”

  Jon put out his hands. Duh.

  Tinsel giggled again.

  Jon assumed the hub was the largest room in the colony.

  He was way off.

  The lab appeared to be a hundred feet in all directions and filled with short, fat elven in white coats, some with glasses perched low on their noses and others squinting through microscopes. Not one of them looked at the awkwardly hunched-over giant blocking the entrance.

  Jon sat down and pulled his knees against his chest. Whoooaaa.

  “Almost all the greatest minds are in this room,” Tinsel said. “It’s what keeps us free.”

  There were benches and tables and stacks and stacks of objects in a somewhat organized grid layout. The random mutterings of lively discussion, debate and thinking out loud rattled the air. Jon’s head was on a swivel, absorbing the strange colors and wicked shapes. One scientist was pouring metal shavings into a flask. The gray particles swirled in the glass container.

  “Those are watchers,” Tinsel said. “They’re nanobots.”

  Nano-whats?

  “I’m sorry. They’re like miniature robots. Their circuitry is mainly subatomic, but they’re so short-lived. The scientists are working on longevity.”

  “You’re speaking another language.”

  Tinsel giggled. “Those particles are like sand, but they can ride air currents and record data, like video and stuff. We used to release them to see what the, um, warmbloods” – she blushed, like she uttered a bad word – “to see what you were doing.”

  “Elven are spies?”

  “Not really spying or anything, just to see how your society was coming along. We know when you’re sleeping, we know when you’re awake. You have so much potential for good. And bad. Actually, come to think of it, we did send spies.”

  She covered her mouth, thinking.

  “It was a long time ago, but there used to be elven that could tolerate the warm climate long enough to walk among your people. That was before we had the nanobots. They would bring back reports, but Jocah put a stop to it because it was influencing your culture.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your language and arts, stuff like that. The elven spies weren’t supposed to interact with anyone, but they couldn’t help it. Words and songs and myths started showing up in your culture. Technology, too. We accidentally started the Industrial Revolution. You know the steam engine?”

  Jon nodded.

  “That was us. Jocah was afraid your people were learning too fast, that your technology was growing faster than your wisdom.”

  Jon felt like there was so much in the world he didn’t know about.

  “Anyway, we don’t do it anymore. Once the Cold One took over, we took the nanobots with us so they couldn’t use them. Their scientists are clueless. Well, most of them.”

  Beneath it all a faint buzz emanated from an object in the center: a wicked-looking thing with four metallic arms angling from the base of a spherical object, with electrical arcs dancing between them.

  “That’s the Monitor,” Tinsel said. “It’s what keeps us hidden, scanning the horizon for the Cold One’s searchers. But it does more than that.”

  Jon followed Tinsel, stopping once to let a scientist with his nose buried in a manual walk by without notice. The closer he got to the Monitor, the more he felt the hairs on his body vibrate.

  “This is the reason we’re able to escape the Cold One.”

  The globe in the center of the Monitor seemed to pulse, throwing waves of bluish light over Tinsel’s pinkish complexion. “Not only does it cloak our presence, but it’s armed with an explosive nullifier. It can detect and detonate bombs with a wave frequency before they ever get near us. Pretty much makes weapons useless.”

  She turned to Jon without a smile.

  “He’d blow us through the bottom of the Arctic Ocean if we didn’t have this.”

  “Good thing,” was all Jon could say. He looked around the lab. “Why is everyone working so hard if you’ve got this thing?”

  “We have to stay ahead of him. They developed a timesnapper device that accelerates subatomic particles and could make time appear to stop.”

  Jon shook his head. Subatomic what?

  Tinsel’s smile returned. “If you had one, you could activate it and everything around you would appear to freeze in time. You could travel around the world in a single night. Fortunately, we invented one, too. If they activate their timesnapping device, ours matches it, so it’s a draw. After a while, they stopped using it because it’s such an energy drain.”

  “Is that what those are?” Jon asked.

  Jon assumed the timesnappers were the metallic spheres, each precariously balanced and spinning on the tip of a narrow rod anchored in the floor. There were four of them, one stationed between each of the four arms of the Monitor.

  Tinsel’s eyes widened. “Those are the A-bombs.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have bombs.”

  “Not bombs… abominables. They are the guardians of our colony.” She touched one of the spheres, causing it to spin a little faster. “You want to meet one?”

  Jon looked around. “What do you mean… meet?”

  Tinsel’s hand moved so quickly that Jon didn’t notice she’d palmed one of the spheres. There was just an empty space at the end of the rod.

  “Did you just…” He looked around again. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “I do it all the time,” she said. “Remember when I said that sometimes I come here to play? Follow me.”

  Jon couldn’t breathe.

  He dressed to come above the ice, but the wind was blustery and far below zero. Tinsel was just a smudge in the hazy swirl of snowflakes. He blinked away the tears. Tinsel was so short and so close to the ground, the wind wasn’t affecting her like Jon.

  He blinked again. She was still out of focus. He realized there were long, vertical strands waving around them, like hair follicles extending from the ice.

  “What are those?” He put his hand out, but they moved out of his grasp.

  “Wind harvesters. As the wind blows them around, the kinetic energy is stored below the ice. They’re sensitive to objects, such as polar bears, and will retract so they don’t disturb anything.”

  “You get all your energy from these?”

  “Most of it. We also have tidal turbines in the ocean below the ice. Now, are you ready?”

  Tinsel held up the metallic sphere.

  Tiny lights flashed on the surface, racing around it. More lights joined up until the sphere looked like a globe of jiggling light. It was liquidy, oozing between her fingers. Snowflakes began to swirl around it. More snowflakes were drawn into the sphere’s gravitational field. Tinsel tossed it and snow trailed like a comet.

  The snowdrift was glowing like a beating heart. Jon stepped next to Tinsel. Just as he was about to comment–

  The drift exploded.

  Jon stepped back. Tinsel clapped.

  Jon blinked away the tears. The swirling, quivering snow looked to be forming a body. He could faintly see the glowing globe inside. There were legs and arms. What looked like a squatty head.

  It was a snowman.

  A snowman with a glowing globe inside its chest.

  Tinsel wrapped her arms around the snowman’s leg. It bent down and wrapped an arm around Tinsel. Sort of like a hug.

  “I call him Frosty,” Tinsel said. “He’s the only A-bomb with personality. The other three are bores, believe me. They’re just about the business of protecting us. Frosty loves me.”

  Frosty turned his head.

  There were faint depressions that resembled eyes and a mouth, but they were no more than dark impressions. The eyes were wide and kind. The mouth, just a line that curved upwards.

  Jon touched Frosty’s arm. It quivered,
like the snow was still swirling but tight enough that it felt strong and solid.

  “How does this work?” Jon asked.

  “The sphere creates an energy field that manipulates the particles around it. Frosty builds a body of ice and snow.”

  Tinsel stepped back. Frosty plodded back a few steps, the snow legs crunching like freshly packed snow. He looked around, surveying the landscape.

  “He’s not real,” Jon muttered. “It’s just an illusion.”

  “He’s as real as you and me.”

  “He’s made of snow, Tinsel. That’s not blood and bone.”

  “Is that what makes someone real, blood and bone? A body? Please, Jon. You’re not your body any more than Frosty is snow and ice.”

  Frosty turned around. He pushed his hands (with fingers as thick as tree limbs) into his chest and pulled it open. Inside was the sphere, glowing and pulsing.

  “Well, if he’s that” – Jon pointed at Frosty’s sphere – “then what am I?”

  “That’s a question we should always ask.” Tinsel looked serious.

  It was so easy for something like Frosty. The question of who he was, it was right there in his chest. Something he could grab and point to. Maybe the elven knew the answer. Not so easy for a warmblood.

  Frosty stomped holes in the snow. He seemed to grow with every step. He extended his arm; the hand opened. Jon shook it. Frosty’s hand engulfed his forearm.

  “I’m Jon.”

  The thin line that looked like a mouth curved deeply. The eye spots sank wider and deeper. Jon took that as a smile. He wasn’t real, but Jon liked him, nonetheless.

  SPLAT!

  A snowball exploded on Jon’s head.

  Tinsel was thirty yards away, balling up another.

  Through the wind and snow and wiggly wind follicles, she was just a blur. But the blur was reaching down for another snowball. She seemed too far away to throw it from that distance, especially with any accuracy–

  SPLAT!

  The second one hit him in the chest so hard it knocked him over.