Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories Read online

  “I’m going to play the Infant,” Hawkins said. “And the others will fall into place. ” He pointed to the three who had come with him. “They’re going to be the wise men, of course. ”

  Of course. Well, I had no objection. I told him so. It wasn’t my place to comment on it one way or the other; a commander’s duties are very strictly outlined under the general code, and they do not involve intermingling with the crew on projects or recreation of their own choice which does not interfere with duty.

  The idea struck me as being a little strange, of course, immature and a bit preposterous, but as far as I was concerned, that was none of my business.

  “You can have your pageant,” I said. “I wouldn’t advise abusing the natives, though, in the performance. ”

  “Oh, not at all,” Hawkins said. “They’re kind of the key to the whole thing. The pastoral element and so on. We’ll treat them very carefully. Actually, they’re quite excited about the idea. It will enable them to know us better. ”

  That’s as far as I went with it. It sounded a little crazy, of course, but men tend to get crazy on these expeditions anyway; it’s a kind of fringe benefit. I know some who have invented variations of chess and others who have papered their barracks, ceiling to floor, wall to wall, with pictures of various anatomical parts; I know more than a couple who progressed from serious alcoholism to madness during a run. This is what is going to happen inevitably when you set out to colonize the universe: men have to do it, men have to occupy it, and men are going to bring what they are along with them. The idea of having a pageant was no more insane than my conviction, during my second tour of duty on Campa I, that I was regressing to an apelike state due to boredom and would be able to write the first logical autobiography of a subhuman species. You have to go along with this kind of thing.

  When I learned that Hawkins had bowed out and Cullings had stepped in, it was of no interest to me; and when I was invited and went, it was only a way of showing the men respect and killing a couple of hours. I didn’t like what happened, of course, and in a general human way I feel kind of responsible, but there was no way that we could know. How could anybody know? Besides, in the long run, it probably won’t make any difference anyway. Cullings, I understand from people who knew him, was a sullen, non-religious type; maybe the experience will do him some good. On the other hand, I don’t like this kind of inquiry, and I have nothing more to say.

  STOCK, PSYCHOLOGIST: There is a perfectly rational explanation for what happened, but you will not obtain it from many of the others, particularly not from Williams, whom I diagnosed early on as a rigid, repressed, anal-oriented paranoid whose fantasies were an enactment and rationalization of his basic, latent homosexuality. Of course, my job is to deal more with alien psychology and social relationships, but that doesn’t prevent me from making judgments.

  You have to do something to keep the intellect alive, after all: these aliens—most of those I’ve encountered and particularly the bastards on the Rigel survey— are little better than vegetables, and there’s hardly much stimulation in working out group patterns and social interaction on a survey team because anybody who’s on these is half-crazy in the first place and then they proceed to get crazier. By the time I got wind of the pageant and the way it was going, it was my best opinion that Cullings, Hawkins and the whole batch of them had regressed to a subinfantile state where they were using magic and mysticism as a way of warding off any kind of threat; they were even below the polymorphous perverse stage. I could catch that right away by the peculiar details of the pageant which they insisted upon—the relationship of the Madonna and child in the feeding position, the way that the aliens were grouped just around, the use of special straw for the crèche... all of this was sheer compulsiveness. And the fact that a big, hulking man like Forrest was playing the role of the Madonna with little Cullings added another element to it. The implications were fascinating; it was the first truly interesting thing that had happened to me since I signed up for this cursed project. But then again it could get a thoughtful man scared.

  Several things scared me: in the first place, as I began to make my investigations, then quietly checking here and there, I found that nobody would really own up to having originated the idea of the pageant. “It just kind of came up one day and we got to work on it” was what I heard time and again, or “a lot of us just realized that it would be a honey of an idea.” The sudden imposition of a mass-obsession without clear, individual origin is one of the surest indications that something is going on. I didn’t like it

  I’m aware that it’s been brought up now that the idea might have originated with the aliens who were using their telepathic ability to plant it in the crew so subtly that the crew thought it came out of their own heads. It would be a good explanation, but it doesn’t make a pack of sense: these aliens are idiots in every possible regard; they are animalic not only in appearance but in behavior, and the fact that they have a low mimetic ability and are thus able to simulate language is no clue whatsoever to intelligence. No, the men got this up on their very own—mass-psychosis if it ever happened—and what happened to Cullings was totally their responsibility.

  When you take a group of hacks, boobs, oafs and civil servants, set them up on a bleak outpost somewhere near the center of hell—otherwise to be known as the outer arm of the Milky Way—leave them to their own devices sans sex, sans organized recreation, sans the inner resources to make things come out their own way, and when this group of men ends up raving religious fanatics who perform a strange rite out of which comes death, disappearance and madness... what other explanation do you need? It is not so much that I am an excessively rational man... but after all, how far afield does one have to go? The simplest explanation is the right one; I learned that a long time ago. The simplest explanation is the right one here. I will not cooperate with this inquiry any further, and I care little what happens to me as a result of it.

  MARTINSON, CREW: Well, I'll give you a simple account, as best as I can remember. I don’t know why you’re asking me; all those other guys who testified would be much better able to do it than me. I’m just a simple athlete. Haven’t you heard? I’ll just stick to the facts. The rehearsals went pretty well, although the time when Cullings and Hawkins switched rotes set us back a little. The whole point was not to make a mockery of it. I was playing one of the people in the inn; I had only one line which was after the innkeeper said no room I was supposed to get up and say “But what of the child?” Just that, “But what of the child?” It was the key to the whole scene, but there was so much else going on that nobody listened.

  The aliens worked into it just great. They not only played the animals, there were plenty left over to be in the tavern as well. There was nothing peculiar about them playing human roles; we just took it for granted. They really worked into it and they were good actors, too.

  So, the night we did it, it went just like the rehearsals, all the way up to the end, when things changed a little. What we were supposed to do, as I recall, was simply to group around Cullings and look at him, and then the floodlights that we had set up would be switched off, and that would be the end of the thing. Cullings looked very peaceful; he took the role seriously. All during rehearsals, as soon as he stepped in, he was saying that he felt for the first time as if he had truly discovered himself. Recovered himself? Maybe; I forget.

  But when the lights were supposed to go on out, they didn’t. I have no idea what happened; maybe somebody at the controls wasn’t there. Anyway, the lights just kept on glaring and there were the whole bunch of us, standing on the straw, most of us in robes and some of us sitting up on the Rigellians.

  The words? Yeah. You want to know those. I don’t know who it came from, one of the donkeys, maybe mine, maybe another, and they said Thou Art My Own Beloved Son; I beckon unto thee and we art conjoined forever. That was all. The voice sounded pleased.

  Cullings... he began to shake.

  He shook and shook
and then he was drooling and slobbering and crying. It wasn’t like the rehearsals at all; it was as if he was having a fit or something, and he began to scream things like “I see, I see” and “What is going on here? ” and “The thieves, they double-crossed me! ” and it didn’t sound like his voice at all, it was so strained and high-pitched. Then he started to throw himself around on the straw. Like epilepsy. Only more interesting.

  The whole bunch of us were just so stunned that we didn’t even go in to pick him up or try to help him. We just stared. It was kind of frightening because we hadn’t counted On it, you see; we were just going to shut off the lights and go back to the ship and have a few drinks. And sing the old carols. All of a sudden, we have a situation. He was twitching and jerking like mad, Cullings; it was like he was trying to stand up but he simply couldn’t make it. He would get to his knees and then it would happen again.

  And then, of course, he said those words.

  Well, of course, I was upset. Cullings wasn’t exactly a close friend, but I knew him and when you live in close quarters with a guy, you tend to get involved. I was very sorry to see what had happened to him, but there just wasn’t a damned thing I could do. There wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do; we just stood there like a pack of fools. And the asses. After a while, when we realized that it was over and yet it wasn’t going to stop, someone said that we might as well get back to the ship and have a few drinks anyway. Nobody wanted to touch Cullings, although someone suggested we drag him over there. We just couldn’t bear to. So we left him there surrounded by the donkeys and we went back. Midway into the ship we saw the floodlights get cut, and then we went inside and got really stoned. All that I know is that Captain Williams said we should all leave the planet immediately, and that was some operation, you can imagine, with over half of us staggering drunk, trying to work on the ship. But we got it off, and we got back here in good shape, and then all of a sudden we found ourselves with this court of inquiry and like that. I don’t know what’s going on. I have great sympathy for Cullings, though. I sometimes think about what he must be doing now. If anything. But I try not to think about these things at all.

  PETERS, FIRST SECRETARY: I think that the evidence, based upon what we have heard and upon the “statement” of the alien, is pretty conclusive. Incidentally, that alien is going to die if we don’t get him back there soon. We cannot simulate their environment; there are things about it we don’t understand.

  It is really conclusive, and I don’t think there’s much point in going on further. Our decision to make is simple: do we go back to Rigel XIV or don’t we? Since I can see no basis for our returning other than to reenact a continuing madness, I think we should stay out.

  I think we should stay out of a lot of places, I really do. There are forces in this universe which we are not meant to understand, and our attempts to make them conform to our vision of rationality can only make us cosmic clowns to far more than the Rigellians if we keep this up. I think that the Bureau will carefully have to review all of its procedures and policies now and that we are in for a period of regrouping and terrible reappraisal.

  As for what may happen in the decades to come, this is something that we cannot possibly ascertain. Whatever happens, it is something that we will have to live with. I can only trust that religiosity for them, as it was for us, proves to be a localized phenomenon.

  And I call upon the mercy of this court; I do not think that charges should be filed against the deponents. What did they know? What do we know? In similar circumstances, we would have done the same. We are that kind of people. Give them desk jobs and let them alone.

  We cannot make a Civil Service adjunct of the universe. I think that this, at least, is pretty clear.

  LAST WORDS OF CULLINGS, ABSENT: My God, my God, 32 years to go —

  But I’d rather be getting crocked at the Inn!

  Christmas Roses - John Christopher

  The skipper cushioned us in nicely. I had my eyes on the dial the whole time and the needle never got above four and a half G’s. With a boat like the Arkland that was good; I’ve known a bad pilot touch seven G’s on an Earth landing. All the same, I didn’t feel so hot. Young Stenway was out of his cradle before the tremors had stopped. I lay still a moment while he stood over me, grinning.

  He said: “Break it up, Joe. Dreaming of a pension? ”

  I got up with a bounce and landed him a playful clip that rocked him back into his own cradle. There was normal gravity underneath us; the feeling of rightness you know in your bones and muscles no matter how long you’ve been away. It was good to feel myself tough still.

  Stenway said: “So this is Washington. What day is it? ”

  I said: “You revert to type quick, kid. How should I know what day it is? I’m only a visitor. ”

  He grinned, flushing a little, and went over to the multiple calendar. I saw him fingering it, his face screwed up.

  He said: “Friday. Say, Joe. If we take more than fourteen days on the turn-round we’ll make Christmas here. ”

  I said: “If we take more than ten days on the turn-round the whole Board of Directors will commit gory suicide. What’s worrying you? You’ll get plum duff in Luna City. ”

  He grinned lopsidedly and went out in a hurry. I was a bit sorry for him. He’d done less than a year in the service. Things weren’t the right pattern for him yet. He probably thought some of us were tough eggs. But we had to ride him down now and then for his own good.

  I went along to see Louie. He’d been in space only a couple of years less than I had, and we’d both been with the Arkland since she was commissioned eight years before. But we didn’t see each other much, working on different shifts and pretty nearly at opposite ends of the boat. I found him in the mess, sprucing up.

  He said: “Hello, Joe. You still with us? ”

  I said: “Why not? I’m only young once. ”

  “Borrowed time,” he said. “Just borrowed time.”

  I said: “Louie. Do me a favor. ”

  He said: “Any little thing.”

  He put down a hairbrush and started powdering his face, overlaying the finely raveled seams of red that told he’d been out in vacuum. I couldn’t understand that myself. It made you a bit unusual on Earth, it stamped you as a spaceman—but, hell, who’d be ashamed of that? Still, I’ve never been branded myself, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.

  I said: “You’re handling the loading for the next trip?”

  He pressed the powder in with his fingertips, and nodded.

  “I want to get something on board,” I said.

  “How big?” he asked.

  I shrugged lightly. “About five feet long. Maybe three feet across each way, at its widest. But it will squeeze a bit. ”

  Louie jutted his chin out and flicked a patch of black velvet across his face. He spoke through his teeth.

  “What about the Pentagon building, if you want a souvenir?”

  I said: “What would I do with the Pentagon building?”

  Louie turned around.

  “Look, Joe, you know how things are. You know the cost of space-freighting. There isn’t a quarter-ounce of cargo-weight that isn’t accounted for. What do you want to fit in, anyway? ”

  “It’s for old Hans,” I told him. “I thought of taking him a Christmas-tree.”

  Louie didn’t say anything for a moment He had brushed the powder well in, but you could still see the crimson network underneath. At last he said:

  “O. K. Get it up here the night before we blast. I’ll fix it for you. ”

  I said: “Thanks, Louie. When will that be, by the way? Have they told you? ”

  “Nineteenth,” he said. “Now go and raise hell for nine days. Don’t forget the medical tomorrow. ”

  I looked at him sharply, but he was brushing another layer of powder in. Medical was a routine, always taken between eighteen and twenty-four hours after cushioning. The doctors knew why, or said they did. It wasn’t the sort of thing you nee
ded to be reminded of. But it wasn’t worth taking him up on it.

  The Arkland touched at Washington every fifth trip. I knew quite a few numbers and I went all out to raise my usual cain. There was a somber moment once when one of the girls relaxed and the wrinkles stood out, but it passed. There’s always the younger generation. I let it get round to two days from blasting before I dropped in on the company’s office. They’ve got a block of masonry on Roosevelt Boulevard that's bigger than Luna City. Welfare is on Floor 32. It makes me airsick to look out of their windows.

  There was a little blonde at the desk. She said hello very brightly. It occurred to me that next time I might contact Welfare at the beginning of a furlough. She looked as though she could get through my back-pay as well as any.

  I said: “You can help me out. I want to buy something. ”

  She was restrained but eager.

  I said: “Yeah. I want to buy a Christmas-tree. ”

  She looked surprised and rather disappointed, but she was business-like. She waded through a pile of directories like a terrier after rats.

  “Christmas-trees,” she said. “Your best bet is the Leecliff Nurseries. Mr. Cliff. About fifteen miles out. You can pick up a gyro on the roof. ”

  I said: “Don’t tell me there’s a roof on this thing.” She smiled very nicely.

  I said: “Keep a week free next November. I’ll be back. ”

  The gyro did the trip in just over ten minutes. Where it put me down you wouldn’t guess such a place as Washington existed. One way there were a lot of low sheds and a few glass-houses. The other way there were just fields and fields of plants growing. I realized that it was more than ten years since I’d been outside a city on an Earth furlough. You get into habits. It occurred to me that I might have been missing something.