by David Nickle
Otherwise, the floor was clean between him and the big door, except for one ivory bauble which must have fallen from one of the crushed tables. One side of the bauble seemed to cast a faint red glow.
Neil stood next to it, and moved the flashlight around the vista again. It was unbelievable, like some kind of mad dream, and yet he was here. He imagined giving a report on his polar excursion to Colonel Wilkit back at West Point. Not only would the Colonel not believe him, he would probably have Neil cashiered for psychiatric reasons. Hell, he probably wouldn’t believe it himself in a week.
He frowned at the faintly glowing white bauble, shrugged, and picked it up. It fit neatly into a side pocket of his suit.
Neil turned and squeezed through the bent hangar doors into starlight and even more bitter cold than he’d felt inside.
He had escaped the creatures he had decided to call elfs. This part of the ruin was a kind of tent of big shattered windows. Neil crunched over shards of broken glass indistinguishable from ice, and out into the strange hinterland around the ruin. It took him a few moments to get his bearings. The skidoos weren’t far from here. Just around that burst boiler and the ore carrier he could just see behind it. He snapped off the flashlight and padded slowly over to the boiler.
Low voices came from nearby. The heck with it, thought Neil, and ran around the boiler, ready to take them all on if he had to. Nobody was visible in the space between the boiler and the ore carrier. The voices clearly came from the other side of the carrier, where they had parked the skidoos.
“Upsem, upsem ally oop!” someone grunted.
“No not yet ya wormbait nose-sucker—ouch!” Neil heard a thump.
“Okay. Now, upseminit—” Neil heard grunting and straining. Shrugging, he trotted around the ore carrier.
There were only two elfs standing guard over the skidoos. One had his feet planted wide, and the other was standing with one foot on the left shoulder, and the other on the forehead of the first. The top elf was trying to hop higher, clutching at the lip of the ore carrier which was just out of reach. He had a sack in one of his hands, which opened as Neil arrived to spill several gold candelabra onto the tundra.
“Watchit, yer ignorant slug-wheeze—” began the bottom one; he stopped, his eyes growing huge as he spotted Neil. “Aaaaahh!” He pointed at the cadet. “Aaah, gnaaah!”
“Quit yer griping, ya festering squee,” muttered the top elf, as his hand caught the edge of the ore carrier.
Neil grinned at the bottom elf, and reaching down, got a firm grip on his ankles.
“Oooh nooo,” sang the elf as Neil straightened and lofted him and his friend straight up and over into the ore carrier. To his surprise, he heard a deep resounding splash as they landed inside it.
“Aai!” howled one, his voice echoing weirdly and amplified by the bell-shaped mouth of the carrier. “It’s full’a gas!”
No wonder it smelled like that, Neil thought as he mounted his skidoo. He gunned the motor, revelling in the strong roar it produced.
Then he realized Amoco’s skidoo was missing. He left me! Outraged, he forgot everything for a moment and just stared at the tracks, evidence of Amoco’s betrayal, that led off into the darkness.
Something whistled past his shoulder and rang the ore-carrier. “Shit!” Four sleek white snowmobiles were rounding a collapsed shed nearby. Each had two elfs manning the handlebars, and another two on the back with guns and searchlights. “Thar it is!” one shrieked, toppling in his excitement off the back of his machine.
The others opened fire.
Hot bullets slammed into the ore carrier, which was between Neil and the attacking squad. He gave his machine full throttle, and leaped forward. He leaned out to fire in time to see, in a kind of unified flash of vision, the two elfs he had thrown tumbled out of the ore carrier as sparks from ricocheting bullets exploded all around them, and a new volley of shots stitched a line along the tarmac after him.
A single, tiny ember wafted gently into the mouth of the ore carrier, and it instantly ignited like a blunderbuss, spewing a single long gout of flame into the sky. Fire spilled over its lip and onto the tarmac, then darted off in two directions with uncanny speed. Neil had a confused glimpse of two dripping elfs running into the night at full tilt, each followed by a long snake of blue flame that nipped at his heels. Then his skidoo was clear of the mess and roaring into the hinterland of the ruin.
He turned to send a last shot back, but the gun clicked empty, so he chucked it away. Searchlights swooped and panned drunkenly across the plain and, one after another, fixed on his skidoo.
Bullets whizzed around him. He looked ahead for some kind of shelter.
On the way in, Amoco had led them in a circuitous route to avoid the many buckled concrete lots. If Neil followed that route back, he would be a sitting duck. He had no choice but to strike out directly across the tilted landscape, slewing dangerously close to capsizing to avoid the pyramids of frost-heaved paving that appeared randomly in the headlight’s beam. This action also made him a harder target. The searchlights kept losing him, and bullets ricocheted up off the slabs as he wove around them.
He hit a straight stretch, and gunned the motor. At the same time he reached back with one hand for the hunting rifle strapped to the back of the skidoo. He couldn’t quite get a grip on it and looked back to see what he was doing. When he turned to the front again, it was in time to see a huge sloping ramp of concrete dead ahead. There was no time to turn.
Neil opened his mouth for the first of many long, cathartic screams as the skidoo shot up the ramp and into black air, its headlight illuminating nothing while he seemed to hang for a terrifying moment high above the earth—then hit with a bang! and spray of snow. The shock took him in the solar plexus, and rattled loose the rifle. He caught it without thinking and stopped the skidoo in a cloud of white. Turning the now protesting machine, he drove it back under the lee of the concrete ramp, just as another snowmobile—this one festooned with screaming elfs—shot overhead. The beam of its searchlight cast a long graceful gesture across the distant hilltops and the screams dopplered down in pitch before the machine hit the ground nose-first and came apart.
Two other machines came around the ramp on the right, and one swept by on the left. Neil gunned it again, roaring out onto the plain between them.
When they realized where he was, all three machines swept their searchlights to him, but he matched their speeds and they couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting one another. He took the opportunity to lay the rifle across his forearm and aim carefully (after ensuring he had a clear drive for the next few seconds).
His first shot went high, but the second took the lead machine on the right in the windshield, lifting sheets of plexi into its wake and panicking one of its drivers. The elf rolled backward off the machine and the elf on the other handlebar, who had been hauling back to compensate, now found himself pulling them into too tight and sudden a turn. The snowmobile hopped a bit and then rolled over six times very fast before it, too, came apart.
Two down, thought Neil. Uncle Augustus would have slapped him on the back. He grinned tightly.
The riders on the last two snowmobiles decided to throw comradeship to the winds, and opened fire on Neil simultaneously. Bullets passed over him from both directions. He would have to do something.
They were in open country now. There were no more concrete obstacles, and the nearest mangled machinery was too far away for him to get to it. The only thing in sight was a long low building perhaps a quarter mile ahead. Too far away. He’d have to deal with things here.
Determinedly, Neil steered straight at the machine on his left. They saw him coming and fired back, but he got off a lucky shot and put out their searchlight. He closed with them, hunching down over the handlebars as bullets stripped away his windshield, then the headlight, then the left half of the engine cowling.
The elfs on the right-side machine were starting to get their range. Neil felt a sting in his right
thigh, and looking down, saw a dark stain spreading down the white of the suit.
Time for another cathartic scream.
Firing wildly, he swept in behind the left machine and then gunned it to come up on their other side, only a few feet away. Without his headlight his machine was dark now. Theirs was visible to the rightmost machine only as a moving headlamp. He saw the expressions of sinister enjoyment on the elfs beside him as they aimed at him point-blank, change to sudden worry. The one holding the machine gun looked over his shoulder too late to dodge a bullet from the other skidoo. The other elfs started swearing.
Neil picked off one of the drivers, and the other one jumped. That left one elf on the machine, cowering on the back. He continued cowering as the driverless machine drove full-throttle into the dark.
Three down.
He brought his machine to a halt and throttled it down. Then he dove off into a handy snowbank, and waited as the final machine made a long, arcing turn to come at him. He had plenty of time to aim, while their shots kept going wild because of the bouncing of their machine. He got one elf, then clipped a back running wheel. The machine started to move in fits and starts. But they were coming straight for him now, firing steadily and the bullets were kicking up snow feet away, then inches…
Then something appeared, like a great black raindrop plummeting from the sky. It flattened the oncoming snowmobile with a bone-grating crunching sound, then bounced back up into the night.
Neil heard the sound of laughter from somewhere overhead. Then a faint whinny. The dark blot moved up in a high arc, then swung down—coming straight for him.
He sat up, aiming the rifle awkwardly. He wasn’t fast enough, and got just a glimpse of a pointed face with big, innocent friendly eyes passing overhead, then a chafing, blood-soaked harness on a brown-furred back, and then a giant ungainly sleigh was thudding into the snow a little ways away.
Neil could no longer pretend that he didn’t know who this man was.
“Good night, lady, good night, lady, good night, lady,” sang Santa Claus as he capered about in the back of the sleigh. After a few seconds he hopped nimbly out and stood stamping the ground and shaking his fist at the long low building Neil had spotted earlier, which was now quite close. It seemed to be built out of logs, unlike any other structure up here, and there were even ginger-bread workings around the windows. Neil blinked, because he would have sworn he saw a curtain move aside, just a bit, in one of those windows—and was that a single candle burning deep inside? “I hope you’re happy!” Claus bellowed at the distant window. “I hope you’re bloody well bloody happy!”
Neil aimed carefully, his heart thudding, and put a shot straight through the left side of Santa’s chest.
Claus coughed. He stopped dancing, and pounded his chest, coughing again. Neil put a second bullet through him.
Claus hiccoughed. Then his ice-festooned head swung round, and he glared down at Neil.
“Stop that, you little infection!” he bellowed.
Neil tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. Claus stalked over and, in one great sweeping motion, grabbed Neil out of the snowbank.
He pinched the collar of Neil’s snowsuit with two fingers and dangled the cadet in front of his face. “Ooo,” he began, “a—” Neil kicked him in the chin.
Santa sputtered. “Now see here, young man. We must behave for our elders, mustn’t we? Yes, you’ll behave, you’ll behave—or else I’ll squish you and polish my runners with the oil!”
Neil glowered at him. He was well beyond fear at this point. Might as well just annoy the old bastard a bit before he died. What more was there? He had done his best.
“I have to thank you,” said Santa Claus. As he spoke, an answering squeak issued from his chest, in the area where Neil had shot him. His one good eye twinkled merrily, and the icicles around his teeth rose in neat ranks as he smiled.
He held this pose in perfect, expectant stillness, until Neil grudgingly said, “Why?”
“Why? Ah, why. Why why why why why. Funny you should ask. Tell me, my wriggly little parasite, how do you imagine old Claus found you?”
Sensing a trick question, Neil didn’t answer, until the Claus shook him a bit. “Satellite,” he muttered finally. “Black globe machine.”
“Ooo, good guess. But wrong!” Claus shook his head—and Neil—sadly. The ice in his hair clinked. “Terribly, horribly, tragically wrong. No, you see, I have been searching for something. Searching for eight years now, for a missing part of myself. My little helpers were hard at work looking for it when you so thoroughly interrupted them. Can you guess what it was?”
Neil shook his head dumbly.
“Strange. Considering that you found it, after all their efforts failed.”
“What are you talking about, you senile old fart?” rasped Neil.
“I like you,” said the Claus equably. “So I’m not going to bite you for that. No, I found you because I was with you. The moment you picked up my missing part I could see again, and I watched your charming little encounter with my elfs on the flight down here. It would be a shame to destroy someone so violent and destructive as yourself…so I won’t. But I will take my treasure, thank you.” He reached up his other hand and his spidery fingers groped through the pocket of Neil’s coat.
They came out holding the round white object Neil had picked up. If he had examined it at all earlier he would have realized it was an eye.
Claus blinked at the eye. It blinked back.
He dropped Neil and tore the red eye-patch off his head. “About time too!” he shouted as he jammed the frozen orb, prong-like nerve first, into his empty socket. “Aaaah.”
He looked down at Neil with his two eyes. One moved quickly, the other jerked slowly to follow, with an odd wooden creaking sound. “Thank you again, my festering little eruption.” He grabbed Neil up by one leg and dumped him in the back of the sleigh.
“And now,” Claus proclaimed cheerfully, “back to the office!”
The Bottom of Things
“Who are you people?” demanded Emily.
“We are friends.” The driver spoke with a barely perceptible accent, and he smiled reassuringly into the rearview mirror, but the long scar that ran from his left nostril down his neck and under his high, stiff collar did not look particularly friendly to Emily. And the lack of handles on the inside of the doors of the black Mercedes wasn’t very reassuring either.
The car had picked her up at the Novotel that morning, just six hours after she had landed at Frankfurt Airport. Gunther was still convalescing in Canada, so it was only her and Ilsa on the trans-Atlantic flight. “It will be just we girls,” Ilsa had said, and at the time Emily had rolled her eyes.
Ilsa was the first one Emily had seen after the explosion at Lake Voltaire, and that was when she had started with the “we girls” thing. Emily supposed that was the dark-haired German woman’s way of being comforting—and at first, crawling out from amid the wreckage of the cottage, stepping around the steaming carapaces of tar-sealed iron, through the clouds of ancient septic stink, it was comforting. Sylerphayne and his private army of elfs had been effectively buried in the aftermath of the blast, and intellectually at least Emily knew she was out of danger for the moment. But as the enormous helicopter circled and finally settled, and the team of white-clad soldiers and medics tumbled out of the back and set about “establishing a perimeter” as Mitchell would have termed it, Emily was grateful for the camaraderie that Ilsa offered her.
“We must let my people do their job here,” said Ilsa. “We girls will go inside and have a nice cocoa, yes?”
“Sure,” Emily replied.
They didn’t stay long at the ruins, though. Emily was still blowing on her cup to cool it by the time they’d loaded Gunther on board, shut up the cargo bay and took off to pick up “the stragglers” back at the elfs’ cottage—two other team members that Ilsa had thought dead, but who had apparently radioed in with their positions just minutes ago.
“Ha!” Ilsa’s pale cheeks flushed red with a sudden exultation. “Good news, Emily—no one killed after all! We girls have reason to celebrate! More cocoa, yes?”
And that was the last time that Emily hadn’t found Ilsa’s “we girls” shtick irritating.
Now, though, driving through Germany with the scar-faced Aryan man, she found herself missing the overly-familiar secret agent. “Where are we going?” she asked, trying not to sound plaintive.
“A safe place.”
She had a strong suspicion she wasn’t going to get any real answers from this man, but she had to ask anyway: “Why are you doing this?”
Sure enough, he answered with: “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Emily slumped back and pouted out the window.
At least the scenery was nice enough. They had passed some long straight rivers—actually, she supposed they were canals—with open water and neat little house-boats on them. There were lots of towns and villages on this drive, but the road was narrow and wound a lot, so Emily would catch tantalizing glimpses of old stone houses and big red barns. At first she had tried memorizing the names of the villages, but there were too many of them and she hadn’t seen more than half the signs anyway, so she had given up. By now she didn’t even know what direction they were driving in.
She had learned nothing from Ilsa. At first they had been too busy getting cleaned up at some cabin called the Den. A frowning woman had put makeup over the abrasions on Emily’s wrists and made her wash her hair. Then there was another gruelling helicopter trip, and then when they got to the airport departure lounge, she’d had to put up with Ilsa coaching her on how to behave. “Stop looking around like that. Smile. Read this magazine. Act natural. We’re just a couple of girls on a trip to Europe.”
On the airplane, she had simply fallen asleep.
Hectic though things had been, Emily had come to some conclusions, anyway. The Germans knew about Claus, that was the first thing. Secondly, they were against him—if being for Emily was to be against Claus, which was likely. Third, the Germans knew who she was…though that conclusion was a bit shakier. All they really needed to know was that Claus wanted her. Emily hadn’t asked, because she still didn’t trust them enough to give anything away.
