Season of Wonder

by Paula Guran

  SEASON OF WONDER

  PAULA GURAN

  Copyright © 2012 by Paula Guran.

  Cover art: “At the Heart of Winter” by Nick Deligaris.

  Cover design by Telegraphy Harness.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission. An extension of this copyright page can be found here.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-376-1 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-359-4 (trade paperback)

  PRIME BOOKS

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books at prime@prime-books.com.

  To Mark & Allyson(and Malcolm & Dewie)

  who are now back “home” for Christmas (and everything else.)

  Contents

  Introduction, Paula Guran

  The Best Christmas Ever, James Patrick Kelly

  Go Toward the Light, Harlan Ellison

  If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear, Ken Scholes

  Pal o’ Mine, Charles de Lint

  The Nutcracker Coup, Janet Kagan

  How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen, Gene Wolfe

  Dulce Domum, Ellen Kushner

  Julian: A Christmas Story, Robert Charles Wilson

  Loop, Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The Christmas Witch, M. Rickert

  Wise Men, Orson Scott Card

  The Night Things Changed, Dana Cameron

  Home for Christmas, Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  A Christmas Story, Sarban

  A Woman’s Best Friend, Robert Reed

  Christmas at Hostage Canyon, James Stoddard

  The Winter Solstice, Von Jocks

  Newsletter, Connie Willis

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Paula Guran

  In the earliest days of human civilization, life itself was dependent on the seasons—especially in the northern hemisphere. The sowing and harvesting of crops, the mating of animals, the necessity of storing provisions for the lean months—all were governed by what we now recognize as the yearly rotation of the Earth around the sun and the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

  The most identifiable seasonal markers are the northerly and southerly migration points of the sun: the solstices. At winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the sun appears at noon at its lowest altitude above the horizon, making it the shortest day and longest night of the year.

  For our ancient ancestors, the growing darkness that preceded the winter solstice was a fearful time. What assurance was there that the sun would return? Without the sun they could not survive. Rituals began in prehistoric times with the aim of pleasing the sun or frightening the forces of darkness away or appeasing the gods or making powerful magic to assure that the world would survive this darkest time and that the light and warmth would again return.

  Once satisfied the light would triumph, the celebrations could begin, joyful thanks could be offered. In Europe, midwinter was a perfect time to feast and make merry. Excess swine, cattle, and other livestock—animals that could not be efficiently fed during the upcoming coldest months—were slaughtered, so there was plenty of fresh meat. Grains and fruits made into beer and wine after the work of harvest had been completed had time to ferment by solstice.

  Customs, rites, and traditions that became seasonal festivals and holidays also grew from other points of the cycle of the year. Humans have been adapting and reinventing them ever since to meet whatever our psychological and cultural needs may be.

  But the winter holidays have always had more of an element of wonder to them than other observances. The concepts of magic and faith, even “good” (the life-giving light) and “evil” (the killing dark) may well have arisen in connection with the winter solstice. We seem to possess a primal need to seek light within the darkness, to find literal and metaphorical warmth, to celebrate humanity’s survival, to seek hope and joy and renewal and love—and, yes, miracles and magic—in order to continue to be human.

  It should come as no surprise that since Charles Dickens (at least), writers of speculative fiction have employed this season of wonder in many imaginative stories.

  Until fairly recently, we could not determine the exact moment—or even the precise day—of the winter (or summer) solstice, but some of our ancestors devised relatively accurate astronomical methods to determine when solstice occurred. In simple societies, observance of the weather, animal behavior, and the appearance of plants provided appropriate dates for the rituals and customs associated with the solstices.

  Even in cultures where winter’s cold was not a threat, the winter solstice was noted and considered of great significance. In ancient Egypt the annual flooding of the Nile occurred near summer solstice, but the winter solstice was important in marking the birth of the sun god and the renewal of the year. Even the Great Zimbabwe in sub-Saharan Africa was evidently used to astronomically determine the winter solstice. The Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, the Calçoene megalithic observatory in Brazil, sites in Peru, and many other ancient sites constructed for astronomical tracking bear witness to the importance of the winter solstice outside of Europe.

  In our western culture, the most notable winter celebrations are Christmas (with or without its religious association) and New Year’s. In some predominately Christian regions, Twelfth Night/Epiphany (January 6) and its eve are also celebratory dates. Chanukah, although it is not really a solstice holiday, has been adapted into a winter holiday. Thanks primarily to the influence of neopagans, there’s been a return to celebrating Winter Solstice itself.

  Kwanzaa is not religious or attached to the solstice, but it is the most recently introduced (1966-67) winter holiday. So far, the fiction inspired by this cultural celebration of African-American heritage has been primarily in the field of children’s literature. I could find no professional short genre fiction with a Kwanzaa theme.

  There are numerous other winter festivals—from the Shinto Ameratsu marking the reemergence of the sun goddess from her cave to Ziemassvētki (celebrating the birth of Dievas, the supreme god of Baltic mythology)—that are still celebrated or that have customs and traditions that have been assimilated into current holidays.

  This multitude of winter observances are, however, left mostly unexplored in this anthology of science fiction and fantasy. Perhaps such fictions will, in time, evolve.

  But, fear not: the ingenuity, personal viewpoints, and creative powers of these writers still provide us with stories as diverse and wonderous as the season itself.

  Happy Holidays!

  Paula Guran

  Winter holidays mark the end of one year and the beginning of another. It may be a time of darkness, but it is also a time for rebirth, renewal, and the promise that spring will come again. In this Hugo-nominated story, we are reminded that, no matter what, there are reasons to celebrate life and continue to live.

  The Best Christmas Ever

  James Patrick Kelly

  Aunty Em’s man was not doing well at all. He had been droopy and gray ever since the neighbor Mr. Kimura had died, shuffling around the house in nothing but socks and bathrobe. He had even lost interest in the model train layout that he and the neighbor were building in the garage. Sometimes he stayed in bed until eleven in the morning and had ancient Twinkies for lunch. He had a sour, vinegary smell. By midafternoon he’d be asking her to mix strange ethanol concoctions like Brave Little Toasters and Tin Honeymoons. After he had drunk five or six, he would stagger around the house mumbling about the big fires he’d fought with
Ladder Company No. 3 or the wife he had lost in the Boston plague. Sometimes he would just cry.

  BEGIN INTERACTION 4022932

  “Do you want to watch Annie Hall?” Aunty Em asked.

  The man perched on the edge of the Tyvola sofa in the living room, elbows propped on knees, head sunk into hands.

  “The General? Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Spaced Out?”

  “I hate that robot.” He tugged at his thinning hair and snarled. “I hate robots.”

  Aunty Em did not take this personally—she was a biop, not a robot. “I could call Lola. She’s been asking after you.”

  “I’ll bet.” Still, he looked up from damp hands. “I’d rather have Kathy.”

  This was a bad sign. Kathy was the lost wife. The girlfriend biop could certainly assume that body; she could look like anyone the man wanted. But while the girlfriend biop could pretend, she could never be the wife that the man missed. His reactions to the Kathy body were always erratic and sometimes dangerous.

  “I’ll nose around town,” said Aunty Em. “I heard Kathy was off on a business trip, but maybe she’s back.”

  “Nose around,” he said and then reached for the glass on the original Noguchi coffee table with spread fingers, as if he thought it might try to leap from his grasp. “You do that.” He captured it on the second attempt.

  END INTERACTION 4022932

  The man was fifty-six years old and in good health, considering. His name was Albert Paul Hopkins, but none of the biops called him that. Aunty Em called him Bertie. The girlfriend called him sweetie or Al. The pal biops called him Al or Hoppy or Sport. The stranger biops called him Mr. Hopkins or sir. The animal biops didn’t speak much, but the dog called him Buddy and the cat called him Mario.

  When Aunty Em beamed a summary of the interaction to the girlfriend biop, the girlfriend immediately volunteered to try the Kathy body again. The girlfriend had been desperate of late, since the man didn’t want anything to do with her. His slump had been hard on her, hard on Aunty Em too. Taking care of the man had changed the biops. They were all so much more emotional than they had been when they were first budded.

  But Aunty Em told the girlfriend to hold off. Instead she decided to throw a Christmas. She hadn’t done Christmas in almost eight months. She’d given him a Gone With the Wind Halloween and a Fourth of July with whistling busters, panoramas, phantom balls, and double-break shells, but those were only stopgaps. The man needed cookies, he needed presents, he was absolutely aching for a sleigh filled with Christmas cheer. So she beamed an alert to all of her biops and assigned roles. She warned them that if this wasn’t the best Christmas ever, they might lose the last man on earth.

  Aunty Em spent three days baking cookies. She dumped eight sticks of fatty acid triglycerides, four cups of C12H22O11, four vat-grown ova, four teaspoons of flavor potentiator, twelve cups of milled grain endosperm, and five teaspoons each of NaHCO3 and KHC4H4O6 into the bathtub and then trod on the mixture with her best baking boots. She rolled the dough and then pulled cookie cutters off the top shelf of the pantry: the mitten and the dollar sign and the snake and the double-bladed ax. She dusted the cookies with red nutriceutical sprinkles, baked them at 190°C, and brought a plate to the man while they were still warm.

  The poor thing was melting into the recliner in the television room. He clutched a half-full tumbler of Sins-of-the-Mother, as if it were the anchor that was keeping him from floating out of the window. He had done nothing but watch classic commercials with the sound off since he had fallen out of bed. The cat was curled on the man’s lap, pretending to be asleep.

  BEGIN INTERACTION 4022947

  “Cookies, Bertie,” said Aunty Em. “Fresh from the oven, oven fresh.” She set the plate down on the end table next to the Waterford lead crystal vase filled with silk daffodils.

  “Not hungry,” he said. On the mint-condition 34-inch Sony Hi-Scan television Ronald McDonald was dancing with some kids.

  Aunty Em stepped in front of the screen, blocking his view. “Have you decided what you want for Christmas, dear?”

  “It isn’t Christmas.” He waved her away from the set, but she didn’t budge. He did succeed in disturbing the cat, which stood, arched its back, and then dropped to the floor.

  “No, of course it isn’t.” She laughed. “Christmas isn’t until next week.”

  He aimed the remote at the set and turned up the sound. A man was talking very fast. “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese . . . ”

  Aunty Em pressed the off button with her knee. “I’m talking to you, Bertie.”

  The man lowered the remote. “What’s today?”

  “Today is Friday.” She considered. “Yes, Friday.”

  “No, I mean the date.”

  “The date is . . . let me see. The twenty-first.”

  His skin temperature had risen from 33°C to 37°. “The twenty-first of what?” he said.

  She stepped away from the screen. “Have another cookie, Bertie.”

  “All right.” He turned the television on and muted it. “You win.” A morose Maytag repairman slouched at his desk, waiting for the phone to ring. “I know what I want,” said the man. “I want a Glock 17.”

  “And what is that, dear?”

  “It’s a nine millimeter handgun.”

  “A handgun, oh my.” Aunty Em was so flustered that she ate one of her own cookies, even though she had extinguished her digestive track for the day. “For shooting? What would you shoot?”

  “I don’t know.” He broke the head off a gingerbread man. “A reindeer. The TV. Maybe one of you.”

  “Us? Oh, Bertie—one of us?”

  He made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and aimed. “Maybe just the cat.” His thumb came down.

  The cat twitched. “Mario,” it said and nudged the man’s bare foot with its head. “No, Mario.”

  On the screen the Jolly Green Giant rained peas down on capering elves.

  END INTERACTION 4022947

  BEGIN INTERACTION 4023013

  The man stepped onto the front porch of his house and squinted at the sky, blinking. It was late spring and the daffodils were nodding in a warm breeze. Aunty Em pulled the sleigh to the bottom of the steps and honked the horn. It played the first three notes of “Jingle Bells.” The man turned to go back into the house but the girlfriend biop took him by the arm. “Come on now, sweetie,” she said and steered him toward the steps.

  The girlfriend had assumed the Donna Reed body the day before, but unlike previous Christmases, the man had taken no sexual interest in her. She was wearing the severe black dress with the white lace collar from the last scene of It’s A Wonderful Life. The girlfriend looked as worried about the man as Mary had been about despairing George Bailey. All the biops were worried, thought Aunty Em. They would be just devastated if anything happened to him. She waved gaily and hit the horn again. Beep-beep-BEEP!

  The dog and the cat had transformed themselves into reindeer for the outing. The cat got the red nose. Three of the animal biops had assumed reindeer bodies too. They were all harnessed to the sleigh, which hovered about a foot off the ground. As the man stumped down the steps, Aunty Em discouraged the antigrav, and the runners crunched against gravel. The girlfriend bundled the man aboard.

  “Do you see who we have guiding the way?” said Aunty Em. She beamed the cat and it lit up its nose. “See?”

  “Is that the fake cop?” The man coughed. “Or the fake pizza guy? I can’t keep them straight.”

  “On Dasher, now Dancer, now Comet and Nixon,” cried Aunty Em as she encouraged the antigrav. “To the mall, Rudolf, and don’t bother to slow down for yellow lights!” She cracked the whip and away they went, down the driveway and out into the world.

  The man lived at the edge of the biop compound, away from the bustle of the spaceport and the accumulatorium with its bulging galleries of authentic human artifacts and the vat where new biops were budded off the master template. They drove along the
perimeter road. The biops were letting the forest take over here, and saplings of birch and hemlock sprouted from the ruins of the town.

  The sleigh floated across a bridge and Aunty Em started to sing. “Over the river and through the woods . . . ” But when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the look on the man’s face, she stopped. “Is something wrong, Bertie dear?”

  “Where are you taking me?” he said. “I don’t recognize this road.”

  “It’s a secret,” said Aunty Em. “A Christmas secret.”

  His blood pressure had dropped to 93/60. “Have I been there before?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. No.”

  The girlfriend clutched the man’s shoulder. “Look,” she said. “Sheep.”

  Four ewes had gathered at the river’s edge to drink, their stumpy tails twitching. They were big animals; their long, tawny fleeces made them look like walking couches. A brown man on a dromedary camel watched over them. He was wearing a satin robe in royal purple with gold trim at the neck. When Aunty Em beamed him the signal, he tapped the line attached to the camel’s nose peg and the animal turned to face the road.

  “One of the wise men,” said Aunty Em.

  “The king of the shepherds,” said the girlfriend.

  As the sleigh drove by, the wise man tipped his crown to them. The sheep looked up from the river and bleated, “Happy holidays.”

  “They’re so cute,” said the girlfriend. “I wish we had sheep.”

  The man sighed. “I could use a drink.”

  “Not just yet, Bertie,” said Aunty Em. “But I bet Mary packed your candy.”

  The girlfriend pulled a plastic pumpkin from underneath the seat. It was filled with leftovers from the Easter they’d had last month. She held it out to the man and shook it. It was filled with peeps and candy corn and squirtgum and chocolate crosses. He pulled a peep from the pumpkin and sniffed it suspiciously.

  “It’s safe, sweetie,” said the girlfriend. “I irradiated everything just before we left.”

  There were no cars parked in the crumbling lot of the Wal-Mart. They pulled up to the entrance where a Salvation Army Santa stood over a black plastic pot holding a bell. The man didn’t move.