A Lot Like Christmas

by Connie Willis

  “All right,” I said when I found him. “I believe you. What do we do now?”

  We rented movies. Actually, we rented only some of the movies. Attack of the Soul Killers and Invasion from Betelgeuse were both checked out.

  “Which means somebody else has figured it out, too,” Gary said. “If only we knew who.”

  “We could ask the clerk,” I suggested.

  He shook his head violently. “We can’t do anything to make them suspicious. For all we know, they may have taken them off the shelves themselves, in which case we’re on the right track. What else shall we rent?”

  “What?” I said blankly.

  “So it won’t look like we’re just renting alien invasion movies.”

  “Oh,” I said, and picked up Ordinary People and a black-and-white version of A Christmas Carol.

  It didn’t work. “The Puppet Masters,” the kid at the rental desk, wearing a blue-and-yellow Blockbuster hat, said inquiringly. “Is that a good movie?”

  “I haven’t seen it,” Gary said nervously.

  “We’re renting it because it has Donald Sutherland in it,” I said. “We’re having a Donald Sutherland film festival. The Puppet Masters, Ordinary People, Invasion of the Body Snatchers—”

  “Is Donald Sutherland in this?” he asked, holding up A Christmas Carol.

  “He plays Tiny Tim,” I said. “It was his first screen appearance.”

  “You were great in there,” Gary said, leading me down to the other end of the mall to Suncoast to buy Attack of the Soul Killers. “You’re a very good liar.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pulling my coat closer and looking around the mall. It was freezing in here, and there were hats everywhere, on people and in window displays, Panamas and porkpies and picture hats.

  “We’re surrounded. Look at that,” he said, nodding in the direction of Santa Claus’s North Pole.

  “Santa Claus has always worn a hat,” I said.

  “I meant the line,” he said.

  He was right. The kids in line were waiting patiently, cheerfully. Not a single one was screaming or announcing she had to go to the bathroom. “I want a Masters of Earth,” a little boy in a felt beanie was saying eagerly to his mother.

  “Well, we’ll ask Santa,” the mother said, “but he may not be able to get it for you. All the stores are sold out.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then I want a wagon.”

  Suncoast was sold out of Attack of the Soul Killers, but we bought Invasion from Betelgeuse and Infiltrators from Space and went back to Gary’s apartment to screen them.

  “Well?” he said after we’d watched three of them. “Did you notice how they start slowly and then spread through the population?”

  Actually, what I’d noticed was how dumb all the people in these movies were. “The brain-suckers attack when we’re asleep,” the hero would say, and promptly lie down for a nap. Or the hero’s girlfriend would say, “They’re on to us. We’ve got to get out of here. Right now,” and then go back to her apartment to pack.

  And, just like in every horror movie, they were always splitting up instead of sticking together. And going down dark alleys. They deserved to be turned into pod-people.

  “Our first order of business is to pool what we know about the aliens,” Gary said. “It’s obvious the purpose of the hats is to conceal the parasites’ presence from those who haven’t been taken over yet,” he said, “and that they’re attached to the brain.”

  “Or the spinal column,” I said, “like in The Puppet Masters.”

  He shook his head. “If that were the case, they could attach themselves to the neck or the back, which would be much less conspicuous. Why would they take the risk of hiding under hats, which are so noticeable, if they aren’t attached to the top of the head?”

  “Maybe the hats serve some other purpose.”

  The phone rang.

  “Yes?” Gary answered it. His face lit up and then fell. His ex-wife, I thought, and started watching Infiltrators from Space.

  “You’ve got to believe me,” the hero’s girlfriend said to the psychiatrist. “There are aliens here among us. They look just like you or me. You have to believe me.”

  “I do believe you,” the psychiatrist said, and raised his finger to point at her. “Ahhhggghhh!” he screeched, his eyes glowing bright green.

  “Marcie,” Gary said. There was a long pause. “A friend.” Longer pause. “No.”

  The hero’s girlfriend ran down a dark alley, wearing high heels. Halfway through, she twisted her ankle and fell.

  “You know that isn’t true,” Gary said.

  I fast-forwarded. The hero was in his apartment, on the phone. “Hello, Police Department?” he said. “You have to help me. We’ve been invaded by aliens who take over your body!”

  “We’ll be right there, Mr. Daly,” the voice on the phone said. “Stay there.”

  “How do you know my name?” the hero shouted. “I didn’t tell you my address.”

  “We’re on our way,” the voice said.

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Gary said, and hung up.

  “Sorry,” he said, coming over to the couch. “Okay, I downloaded a bunch of stuff about parasites and aliens from the Internet,” he said, handing me a sheaf of stapled papers. “We need to discover what it is they’re doing to the people they take over, what their weaknesses are, and how we can fight them. We need to know when and where it started,” Gary went on, “how and where it’s spreading, and what it’s doing to people. We need to find out as much as we can about the nature of the aliens so we can figure out a way to eliminate them. How do they communicate with each other? Are they telepathic, like in Village of the Damned, or do they use some other form of communication? If they’re telepathic, can they read our minds as well as each other’s?”

  “If they could, wouldn’t they know we’re on to them?” I said.

  The phone rang again. “It’s probably my ex-wife again,” he said. I picked up the remote and flicked on Infiltrators from Space again.

  Gary answered the phone. “Yes?” he said, and then warily, “How did you get my number?”

  The hero slammed down the phone and ran to the window. Dozens of police cars were pulling up, lights flashing.

  “Sure,” Gary said. He grinned. “No, I won’t forget.”

  He hung up. “That was Penny. She forgot to give me my Holiday Goodies slip. I’m supposed to take in four dozen sugar cookies next Monday.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Now, there’s somebody I’d like to see taken over by the aliens.”

  He sat down on the couch and started making a list. “Okay, methods of fighting them. Diseases. Poison. Dynamite. Nuclear weapons. What else?”

  I didn’t answer. I was thinking about what he’d said about wishing Penny would be taken over.

  “The problem with all of those solutions is that they kill the people, too,” Gary said. “What we need is something like the virus they used in Invasion. Or the ultrasonic pulses only the aliens could hear in War with the Slugmen. If we’re going to stop them, we’ve got to find something that kills the parasite but not the host.”

  “Do we have to stop them?”

  “What?” he said. “Of course we have to stop them. What do you mean?”

  “All the aliens in these movies turn people into zombies or monsters,” I said. “They shuffle around, attacking people and killing them and trying to take over the world. Nobody’s done anything like that. People are standing on the right and walking on the left, the suicide rate’s down, my sister’s dating a very nice guy. Everybody who’s been taken over is nicer, happier, more polite. Maybe the parasites are a good influence, and we shouldn’t interfere.”

  “And maybe that’s what they want us to think. What if they’re acting nice to trick us, to keep us from trying to stop them? Remember Attack of the Soul Killers? What if it’s all an act, and they’re only acting nice till the takeover’s complete?”

  If it was an act, it
was a great one. Over the next few days, Solveig, in a red straw hat, announced she was naming her baby Jane, Jim Bridgeman nodded at me in the elevator, my cousin Celia’s newsletter/diary was short and funny, and the waiter, sporting a soda-jerk hat, got both Tonya’s and my orders right.

  “No pickles!” Tonya said delightedly, picking up her sandwich. “Ow! Can you get carpal tunnel syndrome from wrapping Christmas presents? My hand’s been hurting all morning.”

  She opened her file folder. There was a new diagram inside, a rectangle with names written all around the sides.

  “Is that your Christmas schedule?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, showing it to me. “It’s a seating arrangement for Christmas dinner. It was crazy, running the kids from house to house like that, so we decided to just have everybody at our house.”

  I took a startled look at her, but she was still hatless.

  “I thought Tom’s ex-wife couldn’t stand his parents.”

  “Everybody’s agreed we all need to get along for the kids’ sake. After all, it’s Christmas.”

  I was still staring at her.

  She put her hand up to her hair. “Do you like it? It’s a wig. Eric got it for me for Christmas. For being such a great mother to the boys through the divorce. I couldn’t believe it.” She patted her hair. “Isn’t it great?”

  “They’re hiding their aliens under wigs,” I told Gary.

  “I know,” he said. “Paul Gunden got a new toupee. We can’t trust anyone.” He handed me a folder full of clippings.

  Employment rates were up. Thefts of packages from cars, usually prevalent at this time of year, were down. A woman in Minnesota had brought back a library book that was twenty-two years overdue. “Groups Praise City Hall Christmas Display,” one of the clippings read, and the accompanying picture showed the People for a Non-Commercial Christmas, the Holy Spirit Southern Baptists, and the Equal Rights for Ethnics activists holding hands and singing Christmas carols around the crèche.

  On the ninth, Mom called. “Have you written your newsletter yet?”

  “I’ve been busy,” I said, and waited for her to ask me if I’d met anyone lately at work.

  “I got Jackie Peterson’s newsletter this morning,” she said.

  “So did I.” The invasion apparently hadn’t reached Miami. Jackie’s newsletter, which is usually terminally cute, had reached new heights:

  “M is for our trip to Mexico

  E is for Every place else we’d like to go

  R is for the RV that takes us there….”

  And straight through MERRY CHRISTMAS, A HAPPY NEW YEAR, and both her first and last names.

  “I do wish she wouldn’t try to put her letters in verse,” Mom said. “They never scan.”

  “Mom,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “My arthritis has been kicking up the last couple of days, but otherwise I’ve never felt better. I’ve been thinking, there’s no reason for you to send out newsletters if you don’t want to.”

  “Mom,” I said, “did Sueann give you a hat for Christmas?”

  “Oh, she told you,” Mom said. “You know, I don’t usually like hats, but I’m going to need one for the wedding, and—”

  “Wedding?”

  “Oh, didn’t she tell you? She and David are getting married right after Christmas. I am so relieved. I thought she was never going to meet anyone decent.”

  I reported that to Gary. “I know,” he said glumly. “I just got a raise.”

  “I haven’t found a single bad effect,” I said. “No signs of violence or antisocial behavior. Not even any irritability.”

  “There you are,” Penny said crabbily, coming up with a huge poinsettia under each arm. “Can you help me put these on everybody’s desks?”

  “Are these the Christmas decorations?” I asked.

  “No, I’m still waiting on that farmer,” she said, handing me one of the poinsettias. “This is just a little something to brighten up everyone’s desk.” She reached down to move the pine-cone dish on Gary’s desk. “You didn’t eat your candy canes,” she said.

  “I don’t like peppermint.”

  “Nobody ate their candy canes,” she said disgustedly. “They all ate the chocolate kisses and left the candy canes.”

  “People like chocolate,” Gary said, and whispered to me, “When is she going to be taken over?”

  “Meet me in Hunziger’s office right away,” I whispered back, and said to Penny, “Where does this poinsettia go?”

  “Jim Bridgeman’s desk.”

  I took the poinsettia up to Computing on fifth. Jim was wearing his baseball cap backward. “A little something to brighten your desk,” I said, handing it to him, and started back toward the stairs.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” he said, following me out into the stairwell.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound calm. “What about?”

  He leaned toward me. “Have you noticed anything unusual going on?”

  “You mean the poinsettia?” I said. “Penny does tend to go a little overboard for Christmas, but—”

  “No,” he said, putting his hand awkwardly to his cap, “people who are acting funny, people who aren’t themselves?”

  “No,” I said, smiling. “I haven’t noticed a thing.”

  I waited for Gary in Hunziger’s office for nearly half an hour. “Sorry I took so long,” he said when he finally got there. “My ex-wife called. What were you saying?”

  “I was saying that even you have to admit it would be a good thing if Penny was taken over,” I said. “What if the parasites aren’t evil? What if they’re those—what are those parasites that benefit the host called? You know, like the bacteria that help cows produce milk? Or those birds that pick insects off of rhinoceroses?”

  “You mean symbiotes?” Gary said.

  “Yes,” I said eagerly. “What if this is some kind of symbiotic relationship? What if they’re raising everyone’s IQ or enhancing their emotional maturity, and it’s having a good effect on us?”

  “Things that sound too good to be true usually are. No,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re up to something, I know it. And we’ve got to find out what it is.”

  On the tenth when I came to work, Penny was putting up the Christmas decorations. They were, as she had promised, something special: wide swags of red velvet ribbons running all around the walls, with red velvet bows and large bunches of mistletoe every few feet. In between were gold-calligraphic scrolls reading “And kiss me ’neath the mistletoe, For Christmas comes but once a year.”

  “What do you think?” Penny said, climbing down from her stepladder. “Every floor has a different quotation.” She reached into a large cardboard box. “Accounting’s is ‘Sweetest the kiss that’s stolen under the mistletoe.’ ”

  I came over and looked into the box. “Where did you get all the mistletoe?” I asked.

  “This apple farmer I know,” she said, moving the ladder.

  I picked up a big branch of the green leaves and white berries. “It must have cost a fortune.” I had bought a sprig of it last year that had cost six dollars.

  Penny, climbing the ladder, shook her head. “It didn’t cost anything. He was glad to get rid of it.” She tied the bunch of mistletoe to the red velvet ribbon. “It’s a parasite, you know. It kills the trees.”

  “Kills the trees?” I said blankly, staring at the white berries.

  “Or deforms them,” she said. “It steals nutrients from the tree’s sap, and the tree gets these swellings and galls and things. The farmer told me all about it.”

  As soon as I had the chance, I took the material Gary had downloaded on parasites into Hunziger’s office and read through it.

  Mistletoe caused grotesque swellings wherever its rootlets attached themselves to the tree. Anthracnose caused cracks and then spots of dead bark called cankers. Blight wilted trees’ leaves. Witches’ broom weakened limbs. Bacteria caused tumorlike growths o
n the trunk, called galls.

  We had been focusing on the mental and psychological effects when we should have been looking at the physical ones. The heightened intelligence, the increase in civility and common sense, must simply be side effects of the parasites’ stealing nutrients. And damaging the host.

  I stuck the papers back into the file folder, went back to my desk, and called Sueann.

  “Sueann, hi,” I said. “I’m working on my Christmas newsletter, and I wanted to make sure I spelled David’s name right. Is Carrington spelled C-A-R-R or C-E-R-R?”

  “C-A-R-R. Oh, Nan, he’s so wonderful! So different from the losers I usually date! He’s considerate and sensitive and—”

  “And how are you?” I said. “Everybody at work’s been down with the flu.”

  “Really?” she said. “No, I’m fine.”

  What did I do now? I couldn’t ask “Are you sure?” without making her suspicious. “C-A-R-R,” I said, trying to think of another way to approach the subject.

  Sueann saved me the trouble. “You won’t believe what he did yesterday. Showed up at work to take me home. He knew my ankles had been hurting, and he brought me a tube of Bengay and a dozen pink roses. He is so thoughtful.”

  “Your ankles have been hurting?” I said, trying not to sound anxious.

  “Like crazy. It’s this weather or something. I could hardly walk on them this morning.”

  I jammed the parasite papers back into the file folder, made sure I hadn’t left any on the desk like the hero in Parasite People from Planet X, and went up to see Gary.

  He was on the phone.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” I whispered.

  “I’d like that,” he said into the phone, an odd look on his face.

  “What is it?” I said. “Have they found out we’re on to them?”

  “Shh,” he said. “You know I do,” he said into the phone.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve figured out what it’s doing to people.”

  He held up a finger, motioning me to wait. “Can you hang on a minute?” he said into the phone, and put his hand over the receiver. “I’ll meet you in Hunziger’s office in five minutes,” he said.