“Precisely, sir.”
“But I wasn’t expecting him for weeks.”
“He’s being dropped off now,” the robot butler said. “The supply ship is already in the ionosphere.”
“How did you know that? Have you been sneaking a look at the radar readouts?”
“Certainly not, sir,” the Butler answered quietly. “We robots simply know things like that.”
Grandfather turned to Amelia. “It’s perfectly all right, my dear. Just one of those robot customs that we humans know little about.”
Then Miss Baxter, the robot Cook, called out, “Here he comes!” And she pointed with a skinny metal arm. Amelia looked and saw a cluster of tiny dots in the sky. They grew larger as they descended, resolving into a number of big packing cases hanging from brightly colored parachutes. They came down all together within a fifty-yard circle in the middle of the Landing Field.
“Isn’t the supply ship going to land?” Amelia asked.
Grandpa shook his head. “Time is money. Interstellar Free Delivery wastes no time with frills. They just parachute it down.”
The robots hurried out to the field and retrieved the packing cases. Most of them contained machine tools and food supplies, but one was marked “Robot.” The workers opened this one. Out of the packing case stepped a tall skinny robot dressed in blue jeans, with a ragged round hat on his head and a red bandanna around his neck.
The new robot cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Good morning, sir,” he said to Grandpa. “I am QR32112W, also known as Victor. My papers are in the packing case.”
“Welcome aboard my planet, Victor,” Grandpa said. “I think you will find conditions here are quite satisfactory. Do your work as the factory programmed you to, and you will find me a fair master and a strict observer of all the agreements entered into between the Federal Government and the Federation of Intelligent Robots.
“Thank you, sir,” Victor said. “As my first act upon this planet, Let me wish you a very merry Christmas.”
“Bless my soul!” said grandfather. “Is it that time of year again?”
“It is indeed, sir. And I have brought the Christmas play.”
The robots all cheered. Grandfather cleared his throat several times and looked displeased.
“What is he talking about, Grandpa?” Amelia asked. “What Christmas play?”
“It is a custom among the off-world robots,” Grandfather said, and he didn’t look happy about it. “A new arrival from Earth always brings with him the newest version of the Christmas play. Then there’s nothing for it but that they must perform it immediately.”
“Oh, how exciting!” Amelia said. “You mean right now?”
“That is correct, little lady,” Victor said. “That is why they are all in costume. They have been waiting for me.”
“You’re not in costume, though,” Amelia said.
“That is because I am the narrator,” Victor said. “I’m supposed to be invisible. And now if both of you will take a seat . . .”
“How will they learn their lines?” Amelia said, pulling up a packing case for her grandfather.
“They all know them already,” Victor said. “It is the advantage of short-range robotic telepathic circuit.”
The robots took their places. They waited until Grandpa had lighted a cigar and gotten himself comfortable. Then Victor stepped forward and began.
Once upon a time, he told them, back in the Old Days, the Three Weisenheimers went forth in the Christmas ship in search of the Manager. The Three Weisenheimers sat in the Crow’s Nest and watched the starfields come up and vanish. The ship was going very fast.
Sometimes the people in the ship became worried, and sent messages to the Weisenheimers, saying, “Where are we going?”
The First Weisenheimer usually replied for all of them. “We are going to a planet at the back of beyond where original sin was never known. It is a place That does not know Christmas.”
“And what will we do when we get to this place?” the crew asked.
“Change it,” the Third Weisenheimer replied, and then laughed in that crazy meaningless way that Weisenheimers have.
Three of the farm mechanicals took the part of the Weisenheimers, and one of the robot housemaids acted out the role of the Crew. Amelia watched, entranced. She had never seen a live play before. It was even better than Ship’s Television.
There was movement among the robots. Three of them separated and came to center stage. They crowded close together and peered outward, hands to their foreheads, making small noises as they looked. “What are they doing?” Amelia asked.
“They are imitating the Three Weisenheimers,” the narrator told her. “They are sitting in the Crow’s Nest, steering the ship across the bottomless oceans of time and space.”
They sat up there in the spaceship’s Crow’s Nest, those three entities known as the Three Weisenheimers. One had his hands over his eyes, and he was saying, “I see a planet down below,” and the second one had his fingers in his ears and he said, “I hear the sound of human babble,” and the third was sucking his toes and saying, “I am seeing it all through new modalities of the visible.” And they looked at each other and decided it was time for the Big Announcement. And so they rang the golden bell that awoke Captain Admiralson from his dogmatic slumber.
And he came to them and louted low and said, “Oh mighty threesome, what is it you have seen?”
And the three Weisenheimers said, “We have found a planet without Christmas, and we can assure you it needs some very badly.”
Then Captain Admiralson knew that the time for action had come at last. It was for this he had been born, brought up in the suburbs, attended the space academy. It was for this he had fought in wars to make wars safe for warfare. So he gave the signal to turn on the apparatus that unaided brought the ship into a parking orbit close to the parking garage where all the spaceships that came to this planet took refuge. And they sent Admiralson down to the planet to announce the good tidings.
Down below on the planet, the people of the place were not lax in turning to their telescopes and finding in the prismatic reflecting lenses an unfamiliar object in the nightime sky. It became apparent very rapidly that it was a spaceship.
This planet was called Bounty and it was situated in a distant part of the galaxy. This planet had one of the finest ecologies in existence, and its climate was nonpareil. It had been settled by Earth people, who had come out here in a spaceship in search of a kindlier environment. They had found one here in this mild and pleasant corner of the cosmos, and here they settled down and forgot how it had been on Earth.
Some old customs were lost. A lot of them, in fact, because when you’ve got better who needs good? This matter of gift-giving was one. They were aware of the oldfashioned uses of Christmas as a time when grim gifts were exchanged every year and those who did not give were obliterated or worse. They decided it was not a useful custom and did not conduce happiness. And so the people of Bounty determined to exchange no gifts, but rather to give each other mental gifts of love and divine intensity, and this served a lot better, though it was not the sort of thing you could wrap in a cardboard box and tie with red ribbons. They preferred it that way, however, and why this is so is difficult to say, yet it is true. They liked their lives better than anything Earth had ever had to offer, their motivations were as it were predetermined and so they went on leading their lives as they saw fit and carring not a wot for what anybody else might think if they should turn up like the Christmas ship did.
The people of Bounty looked out and they saw the Christmas ship appearing in the sky above the chief settlement of Bounty. It was a big red and green cigar-shaped spacecraft, with a billboard on the side in which Merry Christmas was spelled out in neon lights.
Silently it lowered itself, this spaceship, and it was about a mile long by some two thousand yards wide. Starshine glittered off its polished aluminum hull. Navigation lights winked at various points a
long its curved hull, like a carapace of a manufactured monster of dire intent. The twinkling of little photons glittered in its wake as it ploughed its way through the immensity of space, all but lost in the infinity of nothingness, a strange manufactured object lost there in the midst of all that cosmic naturalness.
The workforce robots sat in a line and imitated the council of Bounty being told that the Christmas ship had come. What droll comical faces they pulled! Amelia laughed to see one of the workforce robots imitating Captain Admiralson in his launch, floating down to the planet’s surface from the ineffable beauty of the sky above. What a spendid sight he was, as he floated down to the surface in his glittering robes of office.
The robots demonstrated how Admiralson walked, his feet turned out just so, and how he looked at them, seated at their long table with the boxes of cigars and other good things, and how he said, “Hello there, I come to you from the Christmas ship.”
“We were afraid of that,” they said.
Admiralson ignored that. Seductively he said, “We have many good things to give you.”
“Thanks all the same, but we’ve already got a lot of good things.”
“There can’t be anything wrong in getting a few more, can there?”
“We hate to disagree with you, but yes, that would be bad, too much of a good thing, you know, but as long as you’re here, you might as well show us.”
And so Admiralson took out his Pandora’s Box, which he had thought made an excellent sort of gift, a box with many woes in it, and he displayed it, saying, “These give divine intimations of unrest and uncertainty. We also have the Suit of Sins to bestow on some lucky fellow. It converts any man who wears it into a sinner, without the dreary go-between time of having to do something to deserve the title. We have a gift of four horsemen to ride in your holiday processions. They are named Conquest, Slaughter, Famine and Death, and appear on white, red, black and pale horses respectively. They will ride in your holiday procession, and three of them are dark, and one of them is white all over. We also have the great beast from Revelation; he will give you something to think about over the coming year. We have a fool’s hat with little tinkling bells that we are sure you will like very much. It is to be worn by your Abbot of Unreason.”
“We have no such person in our midst,” the council reported.
“No Abbot of Unreason? Perhaps you know him as the Lord of Misrule.”
“No, sorry, no such person here.”
“Then take it and give it to whoever you wish.” But the men of the council were proud and contumacious and wouldn’t accept the fool’s cap, and Pandora’s Box and Admiralson knew his mission had been a failure. So he said, “If you don’t take it from me, you’ll have to take it from Santa Claus.” And they said, boo, go away.
The men of the Christmas ship decided to act unilaterally. It was time to unleash Santa Claus. Accordingly a message was sent to the dark cave at the lowest level of the ship where Santa slept and snored. The ceiling of Santa’s cave was low and covered with horror posters, and when Santa took in a breath, his head lifted just enough to catch the end of a stalagmite on the tip of his nose. When this happened, he gave a mighty sneeze, and the walls of the cave shook. The cave was faintly illuminated by a dim phosphorescence resident in the walls. The floor of the cave was covered to shinbone depth in bones, some ghastly white and of considerable antiquity, others recent, as evidenced by the congealed yellow fat that still clung to them in gobbets. There were skulls mixed in with the other bones. They were small, for Santa liked jellied babies’ heads for his snacks.
Santa got up and went to his workshop at the North Pole and thought dire thoughts. He wasn’t having a very good time. Santa was getting very depressed about everything. It all sucked. That was his considered opinion on it all. It sucks.
He talked to his elves about it. It sucks, he said to them. They nodded in agreement. Sure it sucks. What else is new? It was a cold bleak day at the spaceship’s North Pole. As you’d expect. Santa had little going for him. He’d lost his yo-ho-ho long ago. He really wanted to get into some other line of work. Being an embodiment wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. What do you think about when you’re an embodiment?
He sat at the North Pole and sulked. His elves sulked, too. A polar bear, wandering around outside, sat down on a floe of ice and sulked. There were several sulky seals around. They too were sulking. Sulking was the big thing that year. There was nothing else going but sulking. And this was the entire content of the experience. It was later that a man came to the door. “I want to see Santa.”
“Sorry, Santa is sulking.”
The man seemed startled. This didn’t seem like the answer he was expecting. “Oh,” he said, “is he allowed to?”
“Lissert,” the dwarf said, “Santa can do anything he pleases. He doesn’t have to actually do anything. He just goes to the default position.”
There’s Santa in the default position. He doesn’t care much about stuff. He’s just hanging out waiting for something to happen. The fact was, the world had frozen solid. All values had frozen. All sentiments had turned to frozen sludge. It was a very bad time. The viscosity was down to you wouldn’t believe. Santa felt it. He felt bad about how bad everything was. He felt bad that everything was like everything else. He was a depressed Santa Claus and he didn’t care who knew it.
He looked at his bag of presents. He didn’t think anyone deserved anything. He himself never got any presents. Why should he bring presents to others? What did they care? What did it matter? He was tired, and, yes, he had to face it, he was getting old. Didn’t have the same old bounce. His elves were getting old, too. And his reindeers had seen better days. The sledge was paint-sick and decrepit. Sledge, sludge. His mind was filled with dismal associations.
Nevertheless, and despite this, Santa came down to the surface of Bounty, determined to give presents or know the reason why. He knew that first he was going to have to find The Manager. And so he searched far and wide. He looked for it in the valleys, and on the mountaintops. He looked in caves and tunnels. He searched in villages and in cities. And he came to a man, and this man had a daughter. And Santa took the daughter and bound her to a stake. And then he said to the man, “Shoot this apple from her head and you will be freed.” And the man thought various thoughts of a dire nature, and at last he aimed the bow and fired it, but not at his daughter. He shot Santa Claus, and upon seeing that, the peasants rose in revolt against the ranks of the rich and their gift-making machines. And the Little Match Girl, upon seeing this, put on the Phrygian cap of freedom and addressed the people in a loud harangue. And the people arose and threw out the tyrants, and that was the end of Christmas. And the robots were all freed, and everyone lived happily ever after.
1994
THE CITY OF THE DEAD
We fly through the streets of the city of the dead, a ghost among ghosts, and we turn the corners and respect the masses of the buildings, even though we could fly right through them. This is a documentary about hell, not a commentary. The city of the dead, the city of hell, is abstract enough without us worsening the situation by flying through walls that are supposed to be solid.
It is quite wonderful to be able to fly through the streets. Most of this city is built of a soft white marble, and it is a very classical sort of place. Plenty of pillars so that you could almost think you were in Athens in about 400 B.C. But the streets are empty, there’s no traffic of any sort; the city of the dead is a dead sort of place, although people have tried to start some entertainment.
It stands to reason, what else do the dead have to do but entertain themselves? What to do has been a problem for hell for a long time. What is death there for? What’s it all about? This sort of thing begins to bother people once they find themselves dead. The first thing they do is check out their situation. OK, I’m dead, I’ve got that. So is this supposed to be punishment? If so, what for? Is it for my sins? Which sins, specifically? Is atonement permitted? What do I have
to do to atone? Or is it a question of serving a specific sentence? Or is this one forever, and should we just relax and take it one day at a time?
The main question of course is, how long does this go on? Most people would even take “Forever” as an answer. But that’s not what they tell you, once you start asking. On the contrary. You are led to believe from the start that hell is for a period of time, after which there will be something else. Maybe this is the only way they can get you to think over your life. Because you’re going to have to do something about it. Or so you think.
“By the way,” I said, “would you like a pomegranate seed?”
I was Hades, a large well-built fellow with black hair and a black, closely trimmed beard. I was a sort of piratical looking fellow, though soft in nature to belie my bold looks. My grabbing Persephone the way I did was the first thing of its kind I had ever done. Put it down to irresistible impulse. There she was, gathering flowers in the meadows with her girlfriends, and I was riding by in my golden chariot drawn by my four fiery black horses, and the next thing I knew she was in my arms and there was hell to pay.
Persephone of course was beautiful. She had long light brown hair that reached to her waist. Her nose, also, was quite finely drawn. It was one of those perfect Greek noses that merge up into the forehead.
That was then and now was now, six months later, and she and I were sitting in the little shaded platform on the banks of the Styx, at the place where Charon ties up his houseboat. She looked at the two pomegranate seeds I was holding out to her, and said, “You’re not trying to trick me, are you?”
“No,” I told her. “I’m not a tricky sort of a guy. I don’t play games. That’s not how we operate here in hell. We’re direct, straightforward, just like I was when I kidnapped you in the first place. Do you remember that day?”
“I remember it all too well,” Persephone said. “I was out in the fields, harvesting with my friends. You came riding up in your chariot of gold drawn by four fiery horses. You were wearing black.”
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