Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories Read online

  A larl topped the ridge.

  Magda raised her rifle, and it ducked down. She began walking down-slope, parallel to the stream. The snow was knee deep and she had to walk carefully not to slip and fall. Small pellets of snow rolled down ahead of her, were overtaken by other pellets. She strode ahead, pushing up a wake.

  The hunter’s cabin was not many miles distant; if she could reach it, they would live. But a mile was a long way in winter. She could hear the larls calling to each other, soft cough-like noises, to either side of the ravine. They were following the sound of her passage through the snow. Well, let them. She still had the rifle, and if it had few bullets left, they didn’t know that. They were only animals.

  This high in the mountains, the trees were sparse. Magda descended a good quarter-mile before the ravine choked with scrub and she had to climb up and out or risk being ambushed. Which way? she wondered. She heard three coughs to her right, and climbed the left slope, alert and wary.

  We herded her. Through the long night we gave her fleeting glimpses of our bodies whenever she started to turn to the side she must not go, and let her pass unmolested the other way. We let her see us dig into the distant snow and wait motionless, undetectable. We filled the woods with our shadows. Slowly, slowly, we turned her around. She struggled to return to the cabin, but she could not. In what haze of fear and despair she walked! We could smell it. Sometimes her baby cried, and she hushed the milky-scented creature in a voice gone flat with futility. The night deepened as the moons sank in the sky. We forced the woman back up into the mountains. Toward the end, her legs failed her several times; she lacked our strength and stamina. But her patience and guile were every bit our match. Once we approached her still form, and she killed two of us before the rest could retreat. How we loved her! We paced her, confident that sooner or later she’d drop.

  It was at night’s darkest hour that the woman was forced back to the burrowed hillside, the sacred place of the People where stood the sacrifice rock. She topped the same rise for the second time that night, and saw it. For a moment she stood helpless, and then she burst into tears.

  We waited, for this was the holiest moment of the hunt, the point when the prey recognizes and accepts her destiny. After a time, the woman’s sobs ceased. She raised her head and straightened her back.

  Slowly, steadily, she walked downhill.

  She knew what to do.

  Larls retreated into their burrows at the sight of her, gleaming eyes dissolving into darkness. Magda ignored them. Numb and aching, weary to death, she walked to the sacrifice rock. It had to be this way.

  Magda opened her coat, unstrapped her baby. She wrapped him deep in the furs and laid the bundle down to one side of the rock. Dizzily, she opened the bundle to kiss the top of his sweet head, and he made an angry sound. “Good for you, kid,” she said hoarsely. “Keep that attitude.” She was so tired.

  She took off her sweaters, her vest, her blouse. The raw cold nipped at her flesh with teeth of ice. She stretched slightly, body aching with motion. God it felt good. She laid down the rifle. She knelt.

  The rock was black with dried blood. She lay down flat, as she had earlier seen her larl do. The stone was cold, so cold it almost blanked out the pain. Her pursuers waited nearby, curious to see what she was doing; she could hear the soft panting noise of their breathing. One padded noiselessly to her side. She could smell the brute. It whined questioningly.

  She licked the rock.

  Once it was understood what the woman wanted, her sacrifice went quickly. I raised a paw, smashed her skull. Again I was youngest. Innocent, I bent to taste.

  The neighbors were gathering, hammering at the door, climbing over one another to peer through the windows, making the walls bulge and breathe with their eagerness. I grunted and bellowed, and the clash of silver and clink of plates next door grew louder. Like peasant animals, my husband’s people tried to drown out the sound of my pain with toasts and drunken jokes.

  Through the window I saw Tevin-the-Fool’s bone white skin gaunt on his skull, and behind him a slice of face—sharp nose, white cheeks—like a mask. The doors and walk pulsed with the weight of those outside. In the next room, children fought and wrestled, and elders, pulled at their long white beards, staring anxiously at the closed door.

  The midwife shook her head, red lines running from the corners of her mouth down either side of her stem chin. Her eye sockets were shadowy pools of dust. “Now push!” she cried. “Don’t be a lazy sow!”

  I groaned and arched my back. I shoved my head back and it grew smaller, eaten up by the pillows. The bedframe skewed as one leg slowly buckled under it.

  My husband glanced over his shoulder at me, an angry look, his fingers knotted behind his back.

  All of Landfall shouted and hovered on the walls.

  “Here it comes!” shrieked the midwife. She reached down to my bloody crotch, and eased out a tiny head, purple and angry, like a goblin.

  And then all the walls glowed red and green and sprouted large flowers. The door turned orange and burst open, and the neighbors and crew flooded in. The ceiling billowed up, and aerialists tumbled through the rafters. A boy who had been hiding beneath the bed flew up laughing to where the ancient sky and stars shone through the roof.

  They held up the child, bloody on a platter.

  Here the larl touched me for the first time, that heavy black paw like velvet on my knee, talons sheathed. “Are you following this?” he asked. “Can you separate truth from fantasy, tell what is fact and what the mad imagery of emotions we did not share? No more could I. All that, the first birth of human young on this planet, I experienced in an instant blind with awe, I understood the personal tragedy and the communal triumph of that event, and the meaning of the lives and culture behind it. A second before, I lived as an animal, with an animal’s simple thoughts and hopes. Then I ate of your ancestor and was lifted all in an instant halfway to godhood.

  “As the woman had intended. She had died thinking of the child’s birth, in order that we might share in it. She gave us that. She gave us more. She gave us language. We were wise animals before we ate her brain, and we were People afterward. We owed her so much. And we knew what she wanted from us.” The larl stroked my cheek with his great, smooth paw, the ivory claws hooded but quivering slightly, as if about to awake.

  I hardly dared breathe.

  “That morning I entered Landfall, carrying the baby’s sling in my mouth. It slept through most of the journey. At dawn I passed through the empty street as silently as I knew how. I came to the First Captain’s house. I heard the murmur of voices within, the entire village assembled for worship. I tapped the door with one paw. There was sudden, astonished silence. Then slowly, fearfully, the door opened.”

  The larl was silent for a moment. “That was the beginning of the association of People with humans. We were welcomed into your homes, and we helped with the hunting. It was a fair trade. Our food saved many lives that first winter. No one needed know how the woman had perished, or how well we understood your kind.

  “That child, Flip, was your ancestor. Every few generations we take one of your family out hunting, and taste his brains, to maintain our closeness with your line. If you are a good boy and grow up to be as bold and honest, as intelligent and noble a man as your father, then perhaps it will be you we eat.”

  The larl presented his blunt muzzle to me in what might have been meant as a friendly smile. Perhaps not; the expression hangs unreadable, ambiguous in my mind even now. Then he stood and padded away into the friendly dark shadows of the Stone House.

  I was sitting staring into the coals a few minutes later when my second-eldest sister—her face a featureless blaze of light, like an angel’s—came into the room and saw me. She held out a hand, saying, “Come on, Flip, you’re missing everything.” And I went with her.

  Did any of this actually happen? Sometimes I wonder. But it’s growing late, and your parents are away. My room is small but snu
g, my bed warm but empty. We can burrow deep in the blankets and scare away the cave-bears by playing the oldest winter games there are.

  You’re blushing! Don’t tug away your hand. I’ll be gone soon to some distant world to fight in a war for people who are as unknown to you as they are to me. Soldiers grow old slowly, you know. We’re shipped frozen between the stars. When you are old and plump and happily surrounded by grandchildren, I’ll still be young, and thinking of you. You’ll remember me then, and our thoughts will touch in the void. Will you have nothing to regret? Is that really what you want?

  I thought once that I could outrun the darkness. I thought—I must have thought—that by-joining the militia I could escape my fate. But for all that I gave up my home and family, in the end the beast came anyway to eat my brain. Now I am alone. A month from now, in all this world, only you will remember my name. Let me live in your memory.

  Come, don’t be shy. Let’s put the past aside and get on with our lives. That’s better. Blow the candle out, love, and there’s an end to my tale.

  All this happened long ago, on a planet whose name has been burned from my memory.

  Christmas on Ganymede - Isaac Asimov

  Olaf Johnson hummed nasally to himself and his china-blue eyes were dreamy as he surveyed the stately fir tree in the corner of the library. Though the library was the largest single room in the Dome, Olaf felt it none too spacious for the occasion. Enthusiastically he dipped into the huge crate at his side and took out the first roll of red-and-green crepe paper.

  What sudden burst of sentiment had inspired the Ganymedan Products Corporation, Inc. to ship a complete collection of Christmas decorations to the Dome, he did not pause to inquire. Olaf’s was a placid disposition, and in his self-imposed job as chief Christmas decorator, he was content with his lot.

  He frowned suddenly and muttered a curse. The General Assembly signal light was flashing on and off hysterically. With a hurt air Olaf laid down the tack-hammer he had just lifted, then the roll of crepe paper, picked some tinsel out of his hair and left for officers’ quarters.

  Commander Scott Pelham was in his deep armchair at the head of the table when Olaf entered. His stubby fingers were drumming unrhythmically upon the glass-topped table. Olaf met the commander’s hotly furious eyes without fear, for nothing had gone wrong in his department in twenty Ganymedan revolutions.

  The room filled rapidly with men, and Pelham’s eyes hardened as he counted noses in one sweeping glance.

  “We’re all here. Men, we face a crisis!”

  There was a vague stir. Olaf’s eyes sought the ceiling and he relaxed. Crises hit the Dome once a revolution, on the average. Usually they turned out to be a sudden rise in the quota of oxite to be gathered, or the inferior quality of the last batch of karen leaves. He stiffened, however, at the next words.

  “In connection with the crisis, I have one question to ask.” Pelham’s voice was a deep baritone, and it rasped unpleasantly when he was angry. “What dirty imbecilic troublemaker has been telling those blasted Ossies fairy tales?”

  Olaf cleared his throat nervously and thus immediately became the center of attention. His Adam’s apple wobbled in sudden alarm and his forehead wrinkled into a washboard. He shivered.

  “I—I—” he stuttered, quickly fell silent. His long fingers made a bewildered gesture of appeal. “I mean I was out there yesterday, after the last—uh—supplies of karen leaves, on account the Ossies were slow and—”

  A deceptive sweetness entered Pelham’s voice. He smiled.

  “Did you tell those natives about Santa Claus, Olaf?”

  The smile looked uncommonly like a wolfish leer and Olaf broke down. He nodded convulsively.

  “Oh, you did? Well, well, you told them about Santa Claus! He comes down in a sleigh that flies through the air with eight reindeer pulling it, huh?”

  “Well—er—doesn’t he?” Olaf asked unhappily.

  “And you drew pictures of the reindeer, just to make sure there was no mistake. Also, he has a long white beard and red clothes with white trimmings.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Olaf, his face puzzled.

  “And he has a big bag, chock full of presents for good little boys and girls, and he brings it down the chimney and puts presents inside stockings.”

  “Sure.”

  “You also told them he’s about due, didn’t you? One more revolution and he’s going to visit us.”

  Olaf smiled weakly. “Yeah, Commander, I meant to tell you. I’m fixing up the tree and—”

  “Shut up!” The commander was breathing hard in a whistling sort of way. “Do you know what those Ossies have thought of?”

  “No, Commander.”

  Pelham leaned across the table toward Olaf and shouted:

  “They want Santa Claus to visit them!"

  Someone laughed and changed it quickly into a strangling cough at the commander’s raging stare.

  “And if Santa Claus doesn’t visit them, the Ossies are going to quit work!” He repeated, “Quit cold— strike!”

  There was no laughter, strangled or otherwise, after that. If there were more than one thought among the entire group, it didn’t show itself. Olaf expressed that thought:

  “But what about the quota?”

  “Well, what about it?” snarled Pelham. “Do I have to draw pictures for you? Ganymedan Products has to get one hundred tons of wolframite, eighty tons of karen leaves and fifty tons of oxite every year, or it loses its franchise. I suppose there isn’t anyone here who doesn’t know that. It so happens that the current year ends in two Ganymedan revolutions, and we’re five per cent behind schedule as it is.”

  There was pure, horrified silence.

  “And now the Ossies won’t work unless they get Santa Claus. No work, no quota, no franchise—no jobs! Get that, you low-grade morons. When the company loses its franchise, we lose the best-paying jobs in the System. Kiss them good-by, men, unless—” He paused, glared steadily at Olaf, and added: “Unless, by next revolution, we have a flying sleigh, eight reindeer and a Santa Claus. And by every cosmic speck in the rings of Saturn, we’re going to have just that, especially a Santa!”

  Ten faces turned ghastly pale.

  “Got someone in mind, Commander?” asked someone in a voice that was three-quarters croak.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”

  He sprawled back in his chair. Olaf Johnson broke into a sudden sweat as he found himself staring at the end of a pointing forefinger.

  “Aw, Commander!” he quavered.

  The pointing finger never moved.

  Pelham tramped into the foreroom, removed his oxygen nosepiece and the cold cylinders attached to it. One by one he cast off thick woolen outer garments and, with a final, weary sigh, jerked off a pair of heavy knee-high space boots.

  Sim Pierce paused in his careful inspection of the latest batch of karen leaves and cast a hopeful glance over his spectacles.

  "Well?” he asked.

  Pelham shrugged. “I promised them Santa. What else could I do? I also doubled sugar rations, so they’re back on the job—for the moment.”

  “You mean till the Santa we promised doesn’t show up.” Pierce straightened and waved a long karen leaf at the commander’s face for emphasis. “This is the silliest thing I ever heard of. It can’t be done. There ain't no Santa Claus!”

  “Try telling that to the Ossies.” Pelham slumped into a chair and his expression became stonily bleak. “What’s Benson doing?”

  “You mean that flying sleigh he says he can rig up?” Pierce held a leaf up to the light and peered at it critically. “He’s a crackpot, if you ask me. The old buzzard went down to the sub-level this morning and he’s been there ever since. All I know is that he’s taken the spare lectro-dissociator apart. If anything happens to the regular, it just means that we’re without oxygen.”

  “Well,” Pelham rose heavily, “for my part I hope we do choke. It would be an easy way out of this whol
e mess. I’m going down below.”

  He stumped out and slammed the door behind him. In the sub-level he gazed about in bewilderment, for the room was littered with gleaming chrome-steel machine parts. It took him some time to recognize the mess as the remains of what had been a compact, snugly built lectro-dissociator the day before. In the center, in anachronistic contrast, stood a dusty wooden sleigh atop rust-red runners. From beneath it came the sound of hammering.

  “Hey, Benson!” called Pelham.

  A grimy, sweat-streaked face pushed out from underneath the sleigh, and a stream of tobacco juice shot toward Benson’s ever-present cuspidor.

  “What are you shouting like that for?” he complained. “This is delicate work.”

  “What the devil is that weird contraption?” demanded Pelham.

  “Flying sleigh. My own idea, too." The light of enthusiasm shone in Benson’s watery eyes, and the quid in his mouth shifted from cheek to cheek as he spoke. “The sleigh was brought here in the old days, when they thought Ganymede was covered with snow like the other Jovian moons. All I have to do is fix a few gravo-repulsors from the dissociator to the bottom and that’ll make it weightless when the current’s on. Compressed air-jets will do the rest.”

  The commander chewed his lower lip dubiously.

  “Will it work?”

  “Sure it will. Lots of people have thought of using repulsors in air travel, but they’re inefficient, especially in heavy gravity fields. Here on Ganymede, with a field of one-third gravity and a thin atmosphere, a child could run it. Even Johnson could run it, though I wouldn’t mourn if he fell off and broke his blasted neck. ”

  “All right, then, look here. We’ve got lots of this native purplewood. Get Charlie Finn and tell him to put that sleigh on a platform of it. He’s to have it extend about twenty feet or more frontward, with a railing around the part that projects. ”