by David Nickle
Emily ran for the back of the train, carrying the sacks with a wild idea of ducking under something and hiding behind them. But she reached the back end of the car without finding a likely spot. Her last resort was the door at the end, leading outside. She slid it aside and pushed her way out onto a small balcony which had a single shaking chain as its bannister.
The irregular black walls of the train tunnel rushed headlong past her, from behind to in front. The railway ties made a dizzying Moire pattern as they whirled away. Emily felt vertigo as she looked down at them, as though she and the train were falling down a very very deep hole. Blinking, she looked straight out.
Blue sparks cascaded from the tunnel wall sixty feet behind the train. It happened again, only closer this time.
“Oh no,” Emily whispered.
The Claus’ sleigh swung wildly into the tunnel wall again, sending stone chips flying and scattering sparks and embers which settled into his beard and hair, and were instantly extinguished. The reindeer flew in a frenzied corkscrew pattern to avoid striking anything, and the sleigh kept flipping over and righting itself with an ungainly rocking motion. It dipped a bit too low and one of the runners plowed up several railway ties before catching. The runner tore free, twirling the sleigh around and tangling several reindeer in the reins.
“Fly, damn you!” the Claus roared. “Do some work for once in your wretched lives, or I’ll sell you all to Purina!”
If Emily had ever had any doubts on the matter, they were now dispelled. Claus was not only alive and well, he was his old self.
She bent to work. The mail sacks were knotted shut in a strange fashion, but she figured it out, and got the first sack open. Hoisting it up over the chain, Emily leaned back and shook it. Hundreds of letters poured flapping into the slipstream of the train.
The reindeer whinnied in terror, their tongues hanging out as their feet scrambled for purchase on the treacherous air. The envelopes came at them in a blinding storm. The Claus roared his anger and the sleigh dropped back, bouncing even more sharply off the tunnel walls.
Then the sack was empty, and he began to gain again. She bent to the other one.
Something cold pressed against the back of her neck. “Ah woulden do dat if I wuz ye,” said a menacing elfish voice.
At that moment they emerged from the tunnel into clean night air. The wind rushed in with a sucking pop that lifted Emily’s hair like a banner. “Oof,” the elf said. He batted at the interfering hair with his pistol.
Emily grabbed his belt and hoiked him over the chain and into the night. His parting “Eeeee” dopplered strangely away.
“Two c’n play adit, missy,” grated another voice. Then two tiny feet planted themselves in the small of her back, and pushed her off the platform.
The blurred ties rushed up at her—
—and then away. Familiar, icy fingers had clamped the scruff of her neck, and now lifted her to the Claus’ eye level.
Claus ground his teeth. “I’m so, so, so happy to see you,” he snarled. She saw his left front canine splinter as he clenched his jaw, and then Emily flew up, and down, and landed on the seat beside him.
Ilsa shook snow off her head and sat up. Far far above, a tiny speck of blackness eclipsed a star as it rose into the night. Godspeed, Emily, she thought. This was the fastest way; the only way. I hope you understand.
Arranged around her on the surface of this deep snow bank were five tiny toques. She pulled the fuzzy ball on the end of one, and with a sucking pop, two ears and then an elfish head emerged from the snow.
“We surnder!” cried the elf. Ten little fingertips poked up out of the snow next to its ears.
“Pleased to meet you.” She held out a hand. “My name is Ilsa.”
Operation “Best of the Season”
The jet-black triangle of the Stealth bomber glided into Lithuanian airspace like a manta ray on a moonless night. Mr. Beland glanced at the anti-detection web on the heads-up hologram in front of him then tongued the control on his helmet and made the datafield vanish. The modifications made by his team back at Fairbanks seemed to be holding up; the Claus’ Black Globe satellite shouldn’t be detecting anything more sinister than a localized snowstorm in the billion-dollar aircraft’s wake. And even if it were true that any Soviet radar station built in the last seven years could detect a Stealth bomber in a hurricane, Mr. Beland didn’t think that too many Lithuanian-born radar-ops would be calling the Kremlin with the news this Christmas. He allowed himself the thinly-assured smile of a cold-war victor and banked the bomber toward the rendezvous point.
As he drew closer, Mr. Beland shut off the flight computer and ignored the warning lights flashing all around the cabin. He drew his knees apart as the old-fashioned joystick slid into position.
Although he didn’t like to boast about it around the office, there wasn’t a plane on the planet that Mr. Beland couldn’t land unassisted. And on the second day before Christmas 1991, at the controls of the most advanced aircraft in the arsenal of the United States of America above an empty Lithuanian wheatfield, he did nothing to alter that record.
It was freezing in the sleigh. The last time Emily had flown the stratosphere so, her ears were pointed high and her blood ran with the supernatural warmth of a pole-dwelling elf. Now Emily was just a girl, and the sky seemed to take every ounce of warmth from her as it whipped past. Beside her, the Claus snapped his whip at his abject reindeer and howled:
“On Donner! On Rudolph! On the rest of you! On on on on! Work damn you! Fly by the blackened stool in Hell’s Own Potty!” Snap! “Time is a-wasting!”
Emily wished they had let her keep the .44 Magnum from the cottage, because she wanted nothing more than to empty its chambers into the Claus’ wind-whipped skull, just to see what it would do. Probably just make him mad, she suspected. But it would still be a worthwhile experiment.
They had been flying for what seemed like hours when Claus yanked back violently on the reins and the sleigh began to bank. With frozen fingers, Emily clutched at the cast-iron edge of the sleigh and watched as the clouds rose up towards her. The moonlight on the cloudtops made it seem as though a wall of spun silver were speeding towards them. Then the chain of reindeer circled into Emily’s view, and the sleigh snapped back in a whiplash motion as the reindeer dragged it straight down through the clouds.
The G-forces were incredible. They would never, Emily reflected, have bothered her so much had she been an elf. As things stood though, she was unconscious within a second and a half.
“He’s taken the bait!”
Mr. Beland let his helmet dangle from his wrist as he followed the enthusiastic young corporal into what would appear from orbit to be a simple Lithuanian farmer’s outhouse. Once inside, the two climbed down the spiralling metal stairs to the U.N. Special Christmas Task Force’s War Room.
“You sound pleased,” said Mr. Beland, setting the helmet down beside the War Room coffee machine. “I take it what you really mean is that degenerate old child molester has grabbed a 16-year-old Canadian girl and taken her off by reindeer-drawn sleigh to points unknown.”
“Take it easy on the boy, Beland,” said a voice that Mr. Beland recognized instantly. “After all, you were the one who created this mess in the first place.”
Mr. Beland turned to face his opposite number in MI6. “I don’t make messes,” he told the Commander. “I’m just here to clean this one up.”
The Commander brushed the greying comma of hair from his forehead and took Mr. Beland’s arm. “We all are,” he said. “And we may be close. The boy was right; the Claus has taken the bait, and in spite of some interference with the girl’s homing device on the train—all that tinsel, you know—we’ve been able to track the signal with pinpoint accuracy for the past hour.”
The Commander led Mr. Beland to a large Plexiglas table, onto which was projected a computer-generated photographic satellite map of Europe and what used to be—Mr. Beland suppressed his victory smile this time—the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In the middle, a flashing red and white light moved with geologic slowness across the mottled black waters of the Gulf of Finland.
“Ironically enough,” commented the Commander dryly, “we have your Black Globe satellite system to thank for this live-feed map. The same satellite your government paid that ‘degenerate old child molester’ three billion dollars to launch into orbit a few days ago.”
Actually, my English chum, it’s closer to three billion dollars and a weapons satellite. But Mr. Beland didn’t say anything aloud; even in the New World Order, some things would always be Classified.
Emily opened her eyes. She was lying on a narrow cot in a tiny room that appeared to have been carved from solid rock. It was brightly illuminated from a wire-caged light fixture over the thick metal door. Emily stood and flexed her fingers; they were sore with frostbite. As she was feeling her face, the eye-slat in the door slid open and Emily heard the unmistakable whir-and-click of a Polaroid One-Step camera, available at ValueLand for $39.95. “Cut that out!” Emily shouted—she hated having her picture taken.
“Mind Yer Manners, Priz’ner!” came a muffled shout from behind the door.
“Mind your own beeswax!” snapped back Emily. She was really in no mood, and the elf on the other side of the door seemed to sense that. She listened to the elf’s shuffling gait as it moved off down the corridor and eventually faded completely. Stupid little cretin. Emily sat back on her bunk and crossed her arms.
This was just great. Emily had allowed herself a moment of optimism when she and Ilsa boarded the train for Lithuania—maybe she could make a difference in the fight against Claus; maybe she could end the cycle of consumption and death that had been begun two thousand years ago by King whatsisname of Pictland and still continued to the present day.
Now the train was chugging on towards Lithuania without her and the Claus had locked her in an escape-proof prison cell with a jailer who liked taking pictures. At least, reflected Emily bitterly, she wasn’t crying.
A gentle rapping brought her out of her reverie. It seemed to be coming from the combination sink-toilet in the corner of the cell. It had a rhythm, she noticed—three long, three short, three long again. Morse code. Her ValueLand training had covered that too: “Remember,” Mitchell had cautioned, “there will be situations on the job when verbal parley with your co-workers will not be feasible. Learn the code, students. It may one day save your life.”
And how, thought Emily. She tapped back a reply: W-H-O-A-R-E-Y-O-U.
She wished she had a notebook to take down the next message, because she must have gotten it wrong:
S-T-I-C-K-Y-O-U-R-H-E-A-D-I-N-T-H-E-T-O-I-L-E-T.
W-H-A-T, she tapped back.
I-A-M-S-E-R-I-O-U-S-S-T-I-C-K-I-T-I-N-T-H-E-T-O-I-L-E-T.
“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” said Emily and—careful not to get her hair wet—bent over and lowered her head into the commode.
“Christ in heaven I thought you were never going to catch on.” The voice had a tinny echo to it, but it wasn’t speaking Pole-ish and didn’t sound like the Claus. “The pipes in these cells are all interconnected—”
“Believe me I know about septic systems,” Emily snapped. “Now answer my question.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. My name’s Neil. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but I don’t think it’s been more than a few days. You’re the first prisoner they’ve brought in besides me. Your name wouldn’t be Emily would it?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Does everybody in the world know who I am?”
“I didn’t mean to make you mad, Emily. It’s just that I’ve been hearing your name a lot around here lately. You’re the one who blew up the Toy Mill, aren’t you?”
“What do you know about the Toy Mill?”
“I’ve only just been there,” drawled the voice. “It’s as bad as Baghdad after Desert Storm, worse even. Now you answer my question. Are you the one?”
“Kind of,” said Emily. “I had help.” She paused and thought about it. “Yeah, I blew up the friggin’ Toy Mill.”
“Good. Emily, we’ve got to get out of here and call in an air strike. Santa Claus is a lunatic, and there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“Do you know any way out?” said Emily. “I was unconscious when they brought me in here.”
“The cells themselves are escape proof,” said Neil. “I checked that when they brought me in here. We might be able to do something with the jailer. He’s pretty scrawny, and basically nuts; always filling out reports, taking your picture.”
Emily thought about it. “Is there only the one?”
“As far as I know.”
“Just a second.” Emily took her head out of the commode and looked around her cell. A bed. No mattress. A door. A very bright light. The commode. What would Mitchell do in her place? Emily pulled off her left sock and crumpled it into a ball.
Taking a deep breath, Emily lowered her head again. “I think I’ve got a plan,” she said, and flushed.
Charklin the jailor had never been so happy. It had been three months since he had taken over the responsibility of guarding the dusty, echoey labyrinth that was Cell Block One from that layabout Fergusim; and now, within two days he had more work than he knew what to do with. Two prisoners! One a day ago, and now a second one. He sat at his desk in the office amid stacks of polaroid photographs nine inches high and the big yellow thingamajig he’d taken from the first prisoner’s satchel, working on the second copy of the triplicate report on the prisoner in Cell 35-One. He was busy explaining to himself once more what the order of numbers signified in the cell’s name—“Y’see, the tharty-five sig’n’fees the number of the cell in a ’ticular block, while One, all spelt-oot, means its number tharty-five in Block One, which is me own block. An’ o course a werd ‘Cell’ afore it means we’re talkin’ aboot a cell and not sumfin else”—when the pool of water snaked its way across the floor in front of him. Charklin dropped his pencil stub and screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Ayee!” Charklin jumped down from his stool, nimbly avoiding wetting his dainty elfish toes, and danced over to the far wall. “A mess!”
One of the disadvantages of having had fewer than one prisoner to look after for the past three months was a certain difficulty in dealing with surprises, and Charklin recognized this as a problem for himself. So he took a long deep breath and looked intently at the growing puddle of water.
It could be a lot worse, he reasoned. This appeared to be more of a plumbing emergency than anything else; it wasn’t as though someone was attempting a prison break—Like they’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of that, Charklin sneered—or choking on their borscht or anything. This was something that shouldn’t be a problem to deal with at all. Just isolate the source of the problem, bring to it the proper tools and expertise and work like the dickens to bring about a proper and economical resolution. Charklin let the air out of his lungs in a long, healthy breath, then set off to find a plunger.
“Widdent ye know it,” said Charklin. “Cell tharty-five One.”
Charklin’s feet were soaked through, and he looked at the rippling torrent of water coming out from under the cell door with real irritation. The prisoner would really be in for it when he was done cleaning this up. He hefted his plunger and was about to unlock the door when he thought better of it and climbed up to look through the peep hole. Yes, there she was. Standing on her bed to keep her feet dry. The more he looked at her, the more he hated her.
But at least she wasn’t hanging from the ceiling, waiting to jump down on him the moment he entered. At least this prisoner knew her place. Charklin searched through the enormous key-chain at his side and finally found the one marked Cell 35-One. He unlocked the door and swung it open.
The prisoner grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and lifted him off the floor. Charklin gasped. She had moved! The prisoner had moved off the bed! All the way to the door! He had underestimated this
prisoner! Something fierce!
Like an expert martial artist in one of the videos the elfs all watched in the media room when Claus was away on business, the prisoner grabbed the huge key-ring from Charklin’s belt and punched him in the nose. Then, in one fluid motion, she threw him on the bed, stepped out of the cell and locked the door.
Sitting alone in Cell 35-One Charklin rubbed his throbbing nose in disbelief. She hadn’t even left him his plunger.
And the water was still rising.
After what seemed like forever, the door to Neil’s cell swung open and a girl wearing a tattered pair of blue jeans, a dirty blouse and one damp sock stepped in. She was carrying a plunger.
She didn’t look like the sort of person who could have caused such rampant destruction at the site of the Toy Mill, but at the same time Neil had no doubt that this was Emily.
“Come on,” she said. “If you know a way out of here, you’d better speak now.”
Neil followed Emily out of the cell. “This way,” he said, pointing down one of three corridors that presented themselves immediately. I think, he added silently.
The red and white light on the map of the former Soviet Union flashed for a second and then extinguished. The Commander and Mr. Beland looked at one another with slightly raised eyebrows.
“We’ve lost her,” said a technician. “It’s more than just signal interference this time; that baby’s dead.”
Mr. Beland looked at the Commander coolly. “Your people were the ones responsible for the tracer,” he said. “What happened?”
The Commander opened his cigarette case as he spoke. “No idea, old man. The device is reliable; a modified Echo tracer, slaved to your Black Globe system to increase its range and capable of surviving up to twenty minutes of full immersion in water, temperatures of up to two hundred degrees fahrenheit and as low as minus ninety-two degrees fahrenheit. Planted it on the girl’s toe as she slept. Miniaturization, you know.” He lit his cigarette and exhaled a spreading cloud of smoke over the spot on the table where the dot should have been.
