The Claus Effect

by David Nickle

  The Army and central government were, of course, completely unaware of all this.

  Then came the August Coup, and a few weeks later a whole fleet of green helicopters with red stars on their sides swarmed down into the complex. A group of men in suits stepped out, accompanied by armed guards. They proceeded to tour the complex, finding smoking cigarette butts, lots of long tables covered with scraps of cabbage in the hangars, and thousands of used prophylactics in the silos. The leader of the tour placed a hasty radiophone call, his brows knit with worry, and an hour later five squads of the Special Engineering Corps ’coptered in, and began cleaning up.

  As evening fell the men in the suits retired topside to smoke and watch the northern horizon. They didn’t talk much, but a couple kept going over extensive notes they had brought, adjusting their glasses in the failing light and muttering to memorize the lines.

  The sun didn’t set until well after midnight, but it had no sooner done so than a flickering arose in the north, possibly a rare display of aurora borealis in the summer. A tiny speck appeared in the heart of the aurora, and grew swiftly into a demonic cart with a single wind-torn passenger. The Moscow bureaucrats nervously straightened their ties and stood in a formal line as the vehicle touched down with a sickening thud on the newly-mown lawn.

  Their visitor barely acknowledged them. He wanted to see the complex immediately, and they ended up following him. He ducked down corridors lit by new bulbs, kicking down this or that door and peering slowly around the doorjamb, then cackling at some incomprehensible private joke. In the larger corridors he bounded along with his arms raised, great foul cape billowing out behind him with a flapping sound like a loose sail. The engineers who saw him coming dove into closets or down side corridors to escape.

  He loved the hangars, and clambered through the ceiling girderwork oohing and aahing appreciatively. A minor functionary tried to follow so as to point out the features up there, but ended up falling and breaking his ankle.

  He ordered the concrete lids taken off the missile silos and at the bottom of each one he screamed loud enough to make a nearby lieutenant’s ears bleed and panic a flock of goats outside. He pronounced the acoustics in these shafts “adequate for my purposes.”

  Tension mounted among the Russians as he approached the level of the swimming pool. They had sent a squad of eight men down to clean the pool that afternoon, and none had been seen since. A small group of tight-lipped officials clustered at the top of the stairs, impotently clicking their flashlights and waiting for his arrival. But on the way he found the theatre.

  Stepping in quietly, he gazed around at the array of seats and the obsolete Soviet crests with what one of the accompanying officials later tried to call “appropriate respect.” Then he walked straight down through the seats to the stage, and standing there with his arms spread like wings, he shouted to the assembled officials, “I’LL TAKE IT!”

  Neil snapped to attention. The lights were dimming, and the constant monotonous swearing of the elfs behind him began to die down. He blinked up at the big red curtain with the irregular white paint splotch in its centre, and wondered what was about to happen.

  A terrified-looking elf staggered out on stage as if he’d been pushed. He looked off into the wings, then nervously into the audience. “Tonight’s…tonight’s lecture—” he began, but was immediately drowned by a chorus of booos. He ran back and forth on the stage frantically making shushing motions.

  “—Lecture is cancelled!” he managed to get out. The audience gasped, then cheered. Again he made shushing motions.

  “In its place,” he shouted, “the great and benevolent Claus has decided to grace us with a speech of his own!” The assembled elfs gasped as one, then fell into uneasy silence. “This will be of an, an educational and, and an inspirational nature.” He sidestepped quickly to the end of the stage. “Gentlemen: Claus.” The elf hopped off the stage and bolted for the door.

  The curtain began to open; it stopped, then started again. Spotlights came up on an empty white stage.

  Claus came out on stage, carrying an empty wooden crate and some other, unidentifiable junk in his arms. Two elfs trailed worriedly behind him. He stopped at centre stage and dropped his load with a cacophonous clatter.

  “I thought it important,” he hissed at the audience, “to remind some of you of why we’re here. Things have happened—things of great magnitude and importance which have affected us all. We have to keep these things firmly in mind, so that our course is unshakable and correct.”

  He grabbed the crate and upended it near the front of the stage. “Let’s say this is the Toy Mill,” he grated. He took a tin cup from the floor and waved it. “And let’s say this is me!” He made whooshing noises and pranced in a spiral across the stage, lofting the tin cup over his head. “Sailing the winds of the stratosphere! Gathering the aurora as my cloak as I attend the needs and wants of all the children of the world!”

  “Who else has felt such joy? Who else has made that yearly journey, a meteoric dart in the heavens, a whispering companion in the shadow of the Christmas tree, whose trembling fingers emplaced a boon for every girl and boy of earthly descent?” He paused to glare out at the audience. “Nobody, that’s who!

  “And who has wearied more of his task? Who has seen less the fruits of his labour, or heard more the contemptuous rattle of infantile laughter as toy after toy was crushed, burned, buried, spurned, sold, traded, stretched and abraded? Who has known such gentle sorrow? Who has felt such mounting rage?”

  Claus threw down the cup and rounded on the two elfs. They backed away. “You can’t possibly imagine how angry the ungrateful maggots made me,” he roared at them, “taking me for granted that way! Taking my treasures, my presents, and demolishing them as if they were theirs, for pain’s sake! My wife certainly didn’t understand. She thought it was great! She thought I was ‘doing a wonderful job!’” He screwed up his face to mimic another voice. “‘How can you hate them, Claus?’ How indeed! I never wanted to do this—I was forced into it by that bloody king!

  “Okay!” He rummaged quickly in the junk heap. From it he extracted a limp doll. “Let’s call this—you know, my wife never understood.” He shook the doll violently. “We had kind of a falling out, but you know she lied to me. She kept the letters from me! My job, you know,” and now he was addressing Neil directly, “was to give the children what they wanted. Well, she hid the letters from the little blowflies who wanted their sisters dead; who wanted their schools burned and their principals whipped; who wanted pet crocodiles and guns and…” he paused and guffawed, “nuclear bombs.” He held the doll straight out ahead of him. “Let’s call this Emily.” Malice drove the syllables from his mouth; little flecks of tooth speckled onto the floor by Neil’s foot. “Emily.”

  He ran back for the cup, and proceeded to jam the doll into the cup. It was much too big to fit, but he stood there crushing it in with great vigour as he said, “She wanted to be an elf! I made her an elf! And then she did what my wife never did—she told me about the letters! And from her I learned of the children who wanted their parents dead for Christmas.”

  He held up the tin cup. A mashed foot stuck out of it. “So this is me taking her to the Toy Mill.” He put the cup under the crate. “There.”

  Looking suddenly weary, he levered himself down to sit on the edge of the stage, directly in front of Neil. “You know,” he said in a reasonable tone, “I liked her. She was the first one who had done something positive for me. Together we set out to give the children of the world what they wanted—exactly what they wanted.” He chuckled drily. “And then my wife had to interfere.”

  He rolled over backwards and stood up. “She twisted Emily’s mind, that’s what she did. She told Emily I was evil; what a stupid thing to do! The child was naive, she’d have done anything for me.” He sighed. “Anyway. They conspired against me. And in the end, just when everything was ready, the Plan near completion, and I was to make my most glorious fl
ight out into the sleeping, unsuspecting world—they did this!”

  Claus leapt into the air. It was a spectacular leap. His great coat belled out behind him, his arms flung up while his fists clenched with a ratcheting pop, and he raised his knees up past his nose. Then he slammed down with both feet on the crate, jackknifing his body as the wooden slats exploded.

  “—and they did this!” He jumped again, straight up this time, and flattened the splintered wood. “And this! And this and this and this and this!” Again and again he pounced on the flinders, then ran in a tight circle kicking them across the stage and out into the audience. One spear of wood impaled an elf in the fifth row. A rain of sawdust settled around Neil.

  “And that is why,” Claus bellowed into the frightened crowd, “we had to take a contract with the Yankees to put their pathetic little cameras in orbit so we would afford to buy new digs and get the Plan back on track! See that you don’t forget it.”

  Dropping to all fours, Claus scuttled over to the compressed ruin of the crate. He picked over it with one hand. “But there is…” he said quietly, “one outstanding thing…” his hand wormed its way under some bent nails, “which has to be taken care of.”

  He straightened, holding a crushed, flattened, folded, mutilated and spindled doll. Very slowly, holding the doll in front of him, he leaned out over the stage, inching his face close to Neil’s so that the cadet could smell his acrid and carious teeth.

  Claus fixed him with his mad, vibrating eyes, and said:

  “Ho!”

  Two for Lithuania!

  Ilsa’s hair was clipped short and bleached blond when she met Emily at the train station in Dresden. She wore a long skirt and matching grey suit jacket, and wore her makeup in such a way that at first Emily did not recognize her at all. When Ilsa lifted her arms and shouted, “Sally-Jane! Welcome to Christmas in Dresden!” Emily thought she was talking to someone else until the driver prodded her: “Play along. This is your cover!”

  Emily ran up to Ilsa and gave the German secret agent a big warm hug. An unfamiliar German Christmas carol was playing over the station’s loudspeakers, the platform was decorated with tinsel angels and red and blue baubles, and Emily did her best to play the role of the German-Canadian cousin meeting her long-lost auntie—her aunt, Emily corrected—for a jolly holiday indeed. Her name for this train trip, she was told, was Sally-Jane Hoffmann, Ilsa’s was to be Ingrid Hoffman, and the two were to act only as though they were enjoying themselves and their journey, even if the bullets started flying and the train derailed.

  Emily was clearly needed. The multinational force of crack commandos in Lithuania knew very little about Santa Claus. It would be her job to educate them in the wiles and habits of this ancient monster. She suspected their East Block training methodologies were out of date, so she intended to bring them up to speed using the latest in ValueLand Security techniques. It was going to be hard, but she knew her duty.

  Emily—Sally-Jane, she told herself—collected her luggage and Ilsa—Ingrid! Ingrid!—called a conductor to help her load it onto the train.

  “I’m afraid I don’t speak any German, Mister Conductor,” said Emily as the red-cheeked old man made some grinning comment to her.

  “Please excuse me, little Fraulein,” he said as he hefted her single bag up the steps. “I was only saying have a Merry Christmas on our jolly train-ride.” Over his head, a string of tiny silver bells jingled as they passed. “This is the first Christmas we will be able to celebrate properly on this train since the Communists took over and banned the practice. It will be—how do you say in Amerika? A blow-out!”

  “But it’s still days until Christmas, Mister Conductor,” said Emily, playing it to the hilt.

  The big man’s grin widened. “This way, please,” he said, leading them down a narrow corridor festooned with wreaths of real pine boughs and holly. “In Germany, fraulein, Christmas has been here since August. Since reunification, in fact.”

  Ilsa smiled. “Isn’t that exciting, Sally-Jane?”

  “Yes, Aunt Ingrid. I’ve never been on a real steam locomotive before,” she gushed. She could smell cloying coal-smoke, and though it reminded her of the Mill, she was determined not to let on.

  “It is a privilege you may not have again,” he said importantly. “This train is on a special Christmas run, and will only be making this one trip. So enjoy!”

  The conductor stopped at sleeper compartment 6, and opened it for them. Ilsa/Ingrid stepped in first, ducking around the doorframe in a conspicuously military manner. The conductor didn’t seem to notice. Emily entered and watched as he put her bags on a rack above the forward seat. She sat down next to the darkened window; Ilsa sat opposite her, smiling and bouncing a little with the motion of the train.

  The conductor leaned close to Emily, smiling in a grandfatherly way. “If there is anything the little fraulein needs, you come see Hauser, ya? Anything. Just say, ‘Where is Hauser?’”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. He patted her on the head and left the compartment.

  Emily examined the compartment. They had rather overdone the Christmas stuff here, she thought. Two conical gold angels dangled from one of the screws in the wood-veneer ceiling, and every angle—ceiling, floors, the corner of the tiny closet where Ilsa hung her suit jacket—was strung with tinsel. Little baskets full of honey cakes sat on each seat, and Emily’s also had a German picture book full of angels and trolls and inaccurate renderings of the Claus. She threw it on the floor in disgust.

  The train began to move. Ilsa had pulled the curtain on the window, but Emily found herself peeking out from under it to watch the lights of Dresden retreat. It was very pretty.

  Somebody banged loudly on the door; Emily jumped. Ilsa rose in a single cat-like motion and flattened against the closet door. From somewhere she had produced a Smith and Wesson handgun. She turned back the curtain over the door a bit and peered out. Then she shoved the pistol in her belt and opened the door.

  “Hiya,” boomed a loud voice. Ilsa stood aside as a tall, square-jawed blond man in a fuzzy beige sweater and tight-fitting spandex ski pants stepped into the room. He was followed by a second man, this one wearing a bright orange nylon windbreaker and jeans. The second man was carrying a long set of skis, which he stacked by the closet. They shut the door and both grinned slackly at the women.

  “I’m John,” said the first one. He shook Emily’s hand vigorously.

  “Martin,” said the second. There was no room for three people to stand in the compartment; Ilsa sat down.

  “We’re your bodyguards,” said John, plunking himself onto the seat next to Ilsa. “Just call us if you need us. Right, Ingrid?”

  Ingrid waved a hand. “As you wish,” she drawled. “Please, John, we vant to be alone.”

  “Oh? Sure! Well, we’ll be right next door if you need us. Compartment 4.” He bounced to his feet again; Martin gathered up his skis with a clatter.

  “Thank you,” Emily said meekly. John and Martin left the compartment. She and Ilsa listened to them banging and chattering their way down the hall.

  There was a brief silence. Then Emily said, “How far is Lithuania?”

  Ilsa giggled. She cocked her head, leaning it on the window, and flicked the curtain aside to look out. “It’s a ways yet. Don’t worry, Sally-Jane, the boys are quite competent. They merely cultivate the ski-bunny look to throw off suspicion.”

  She frowned at something outside, then brightened. “Oh, this is a treat. Look, Sally-Jane.” She rolled the curtain up and lowered the lights.

  Curious, Emily pressed her nose against the black glass. They were passing a long white field with some buildings at one end. There were lots of people in the field, each holding something she couldn’t make out.

  Then they all started firing at once.

  “Yikes!” Eyes dazzled by the light of at least six hundred muzzle-flashes, Emily dove for the floor. The firing went on; she could hear the roaring of it over the train’s rat
tle.

  After a moment she looked up. Ilsa was laughing gently at her. “It’s all right, Sally-Jane. They’re just getting a head start on the Rauhnachte.”

  “The-the what?” She sat up, and peeked out the window. There were indeed hundreds of people in that brightly-lit field, all firing rifles into the air in well-orchestrated volleys.

  “The Rauhnachte,” said Ilsa. “The twelve days of Christmas. Those are the days when spirits roam the land, and can inhabit the living. They have to be frightened away. It’s not technically Rauhnachte yet, but different places have different customs and do things on different dates. Those men are shooting because loud noises drive the Wilde Jagd—the Wild Hunt—away. In many places, children dress up in fierce masks to scare the spirits. Like your Halloween.”

  Emily climbed back on her seat. “Well, they sure scared me,” she pouted.

  “Ah, you’re a bit of a wild spirit yourself,” Ilsa laughed. She patted Emily on the knee. “But a good one.”

  For the first time in days, Emily’s smile was genuine.

  “Can we, can we?” clamoured the kinder. Hauser laughed richly. He loved this part of the trip, when he got to open his ‘tickle closet’ and the children on his train saw the immense heap of presents there for the first time.

  “Now wait,” he said sternly, “those aren’t for you.” The small mob groaned in unanimous disappointment. “But I’ll tell you what,” Hauser said slowly, as if the idea was just occurring to him. “You could help me with something.”