Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  TAG

  ‘Twas the day after Christmas, and Santa got a gift of his own.

  ONCE there was a man who hated Santa Claus.

  Not for the reasons you might imagine; he had neither wife nor child, nor, now that he had come to middle age, any other living relatives whom he need remember at Christmas, or who might remember him . . . but perhaps that was why.

  Or perhaps it was because, when he was still young and credulous, someone had told him that there is no Santa Claus.

  However that might be, at every Christmas season this man suffered the tortures of the damned. He could not venture out without meeting his enemy—red-suited, white-whiskered, bell-ringing, guffawing with a false and hateful joviality—on every street-corner, in the public places and the shops, pictured, postered and effigied.

  He knew, of course, that the department store and Salvation Army Santas were only mummers; nevertheless, he could not pass them without a surge of unreasoning anger, and he looked with bitter and lofty contempt at the swarms of children—and grownups, too—fawning upon the despised saint.

  Early in one dreary December, having gone to one of the great stores to make some everyday purchases, he found himself compelled to visit the lavatory. There to his horror, he beheld no less than three Santa Clauses, who had retired thither to smoke cigars and talk shop.

  At sight of them, the newcomer lost his head.

  “Damn you!” he shouted. “Must you hound me everywhere I go?”

  The three stared. One of them, a tall, skinny Santa, asked, “What’s eating you, mac?”

  The man drew himself up, fists clenched, trembling a little. “Do you realize,” he demanded bitingly, “that you’re living a lie? That you are impersonating a most abominable fiction?”

  “Ho! ho!” laughed a squat Santa without benefit of pillows. “Listen to this, boys . . . the character’s a comedian!”

  “ASSAULT and battery,” said the arresting officer, and then in a hushed aside, “Your Honor, this is the guy that socked Santa Claus.”

  “Dear me!” said the judge. He eyed the accused as if seeking to deduce from his appearance the motive which had led to this atrocious behavior. “Why did you do it?”

  “It was a mistake,” said the prisoner unhappily. “For a moment . . . I don’t know what came over me, Your Honor, but it seemed as if it was really Santa Claus before me, not just a man in a red suit.”

  The judge blinked uncomprehendingly.

  The prisoner added by way of explanation, “I hate Santa Claus.”

  “I don’t believe in jailing mental cases,” said the judge. “If you promise to consult a psychiatrist, I’ll let you go with a fine.”

  The psychiatrist listened raptly to the tale of the man who hated Santa Claus. Once or twice he nodded. Finally he said:

  “Ah, yes. Clearly, a paranoid delusion complex, with overtones of hypertrichophobia. Very similar to the trouble of a former patient of mine, an industrialist, who also thought himself followed by men with beards. In his case, they were Bolsheviks; in yours, they are Santa Clauses—but at the unconscious level it is all much the same thing. The root of your difficulty lies, of course, in the Oedipus complex; for you, Santa Claus is an image of your father, whom you also hated.”

  “I don’t see how that could be,” said the patient. “My father died ten years before I was born.”

  “All right,” said the doctor a little huffily. “You tell me why you hate Santa Claus.”

  “Because he’s too good to be true. No one could possibly be so inexorably jolly, generous, good-natured, altruistic. See how they picture the fat saint, slaving year after year in a stuffy polar workshop, rushing madly around the world on Christmas night to shower gifts on millions of unworthy and ungrateful recipients! You and I know that we are mean, stingy, greedy creatures—human beings. How could we endure to live in a world that held such a monster of benevolence?

  “What would we think of a man who behaved like that in real life? We would call him insane, and fear and hate him as a mad and dangerous man. And . . . what would such a man suffer in himself, as his madness drove him to violate the sacred creed of the ape, his grandfather: ‘What is mine is mine and what is thine is mine’ ? Why, he would be the most miserable being on earth!” The psychiatrist took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “A difficult case,” he muttered a little hopelessly.

  “I’ve considered suicide,” said the man dully. “Would you advise it?”

  “Eh? . . . No, certainly not!” The doctor roused himself. “You must face your problem, not flee from it. You must fight this thing!”

  AT home, the man brooded over the psychiatrist’s words. He had tried fighting before, but his blows had fallen only on innocents, such as the department store Santa. Yet his spirit was not broken. Determination came to him; he sprang to his feet and smote the table with his fist.

  “This time,” he swore, “there will be no mistake!”

  He went out, drew all his money from the bank, and chartered a plane for Baffin Bay. At a trading post he bought a gun, warm clothing and provisions. He rented a dog team and set out across the Arctic ice.

  For many days he fought his way northward, following the compass needle through blinding blizzards and sunny days when the immense snow-fields were one featureless glare. His fingers and toes froze; he grew gaunt and haggard, and sprouted whiskers which the bitter wind festooned with icicles; yet he plodded on, upheld, like many a hero before him, by indomitable will.

  At last, he came in sight of the North Pole. It was morning of the day after Christmas, but the Pole was sunk in winter darkness.

  Trembling with cold and excitement, he peered through the dimly-lit windows of Santa’s workshop.

  Inside, as far as the eye could see, was a gargantuan confusion and disarray—scraps of wrapping paper, empty boxes, crates, barrels, chips, shavings, string, wire, nails, screws, damaged and leftover goods, jumbled in places almost to the ceiling.

  On a bench in the midst of all this appalling litter sat Santa Claus—shoulders drooping, white beard unkempt, red breeches rolled up and feet buried in a tub of steaming hot water. The old saint was staring fixedly at the floor, as if afraid to look up and see the chaos which last night’s furor of activity had left, from which order must yet be restored before another long year’s toil could begin.

  With infinite stealth, the man pushed the unlocked door open and circled around among the rubbish-heaps so as to come upon his quarry from behind. At such close range that he could not miss, he cocked the gun loudly.

  SANTA Claus turned and looked wearily, and with a curious absence of surprise, at the leveled weapon and the bristling, fur-clad, burning-eyed figure behind it. There was an instant in which the silence stretched to the breaking point, and then—

  Santa Claus chuckled. “You surely don’t mean it, young fella,” he said benignly. “Nobody shoots Santa Claus.”

  “Oh, don’t they?” the man snarled, and fired. His aim was true.

  But Santa Claus’s expiring breath still carried a ghost of the chuckle. “Son, the joke’s still on you,” he whispered. “Now you’re it.”

  He vanished. All except for the red suit and white beard, which fell to the floor.

  The man dropped the gun and tried to run. He couldn’t. He stopped trying, walked over and picked up the red coat and put it on. It was cold in here, and he had a mess to clean up with almost a year to do it.

  THE FIREFIGHTER

  Fire is, in Bradbury’s recent Fahrenheit 451 as in the Norse myth of Loki and Ragnarok, the symbol of evil destruction. But symbolically it is also the gift of Prometheus and of the Holy Spirit. . . .

  THE FIRE DANCES, and spits at the dark, puts out red and yellow and orange tongues at the crying night. We sit by the fire and are not afraid.

  In the darkness great padded feet go by with snuffing breath, and hooved feet ring fleeing over the flinty ledges, and down by the unseen waterhole some creature screams briefly as hunte
r finds hunted. And sometimes eyes flash red or green from beyond the circle of firelight, but they do not venture near.

  And out there, somewhere in the wolfish dark, walks the Firefighter. . . .

  The wind is chill, rattling the reeds along the water’s edge and moving cold ripples there. This evening, in the gathering dusk, we shivered on the stony slopes and among the thorny thickets, bundling up dry grass and branches. When the first star shone, the old man Hulan labored for us all, muttering words of power, striking the chosen flints to catch a spark in a pinch of tinder from his skin pouch, the good tinder made from the shelf-fungus that grows high on rotting trunks. . . . Now here is the fire and around it a place of warmth until morning.

  The tall youth Keraz flings a fresh handful of sticks on the fire, and the fire leaps high and laughs at the night. Keraz’ hand seeks and finds the hand of the girl beside him; her drowsy head rests on his shoulder.

  The child in its mother’s arms stretches hands to the fire and chuckles. Its young mother draws it back and scolds, but softly: “Hush, baby, hush. The Firefighter will hear you.”

  Gray old Hulan starts from his nodding doze, looks round at the shadows beyond the light. His lips move, and his fingers fumble with the tinder pouch on its thong about his neck.

  Out there somewhere the Firefighter stalks. He walks upright like one of us, and in his great crooked hands he carries a massive club or a crude ax of stone. But he is shaggy all over with black hair, and beneath the sloping bones of his forehead is no knowledge of the fire, but only a terrible fear and hatred of it.

  The Firefighter is huge and stronger than all of us, but he is not strong enough. When the flames dance high he is afraid like the other beasts. He smells the smoke from afar and growls speechless hate in his throat. If he were strong enough or cunning enough, he would stamp out every fire in the world, and the nights would be black for him and his kind to walk in darkness forever.

  Across the fire Hulan beckons silently to young Keraz. He takes from his neck the pouch with the chosen flints and the tinder; he presses it into the young man’s unwilling hand. “Take these, and keep them safely for me and after me. I have already taught you their use, all the secrets. When the buffalo charged four days ago, I was lucky; my heart in me knows I shall not be lucky much longer.”

  He brushes Keraz’ protests aside with authority. “Tonight,” he says, “you shall watch and keep the fire.”

  The youth subsides into his place on the farther side of the flames. He knots the thong about his neck, staring darkly into the darkness, feeling the others’ eyes.

  The night deepens and the cries of the hunting beasts diminish. We sleep, huddled in furs and skins close to our friend, the fire. Old Hulan sleeps, and stirs and groans in his slumber.

  The young man watches, chin heavy in his hands. From time to time he feeds twigs and branches to the flickering blaze, and the shadows draw back and the fire crackles loudly above the sleepers’ breathing.

  Keraz looks down at the parted lips of the girl curled sleeping beside him, and back to the fire’s heart of glowing coals, aflame and always changing, radiant and never again the same. . . . His head is weary and his eyes are darkened by too much light and too many dreams. The fire burns low and lower, the surrounding shadows move stealthily along the ground and descend noiselessly from the air above us. . . .

  The Firefighter comes.

  He roars, and hurls a stone that no man could lift, full into the midst of the fire. It is smothered, the coals flung far and wide. The shadows leap. In the smoke and smoldering glare as we awaken the Firefighter stands like a nightmare, crooked and black, lifting a great branch torn from a tree.

  We struggle, dazed, to rise and flee, for there is no hope but in flight. Someone screams; the young mother sobs and clutches her child.

  The Firefighter roars.

  Old Hulan totters to his feet and forward, straight into the subman’s path, between him and the scattered remnants of the fire. For a moment the Firefighter falters, while we flee, scattering like the sparks. . . . The little eyes glint cruel under their massive brow ridges, and the great club descends.

  We flee stumbling in the blackness, unheeding the sharp flints and thorns, seeking shelter like lizards in the dark crevices of the hillside rocks, like monkeys in the tops of trees. When we look back, we see him running, shaggy and black, to and fro among the strewn brands of the fire, stamping them out, beating them out with his club, searching out every spark.

  The last spark flares briefly up, winks redly and goes out, and the night falls absolute. The wind is cold.

  We shiver in our hiding places, and listen. We hear the voice of the Firefighter, calling to his own kind, bellowing, wordless, his hatred and his triumph over the fire and the people of the fire. We hear his shuffling tread as he prowls among the rocks, sniffing and rumbling deep in his chest.

  It is night, and the beast walks in the darkness that he loves, as it was in all the ages past.

  But yet a little while and the east will lighten. In the gray dawn we will steal forth from our hiding places. We will call softly to one another and find one another again, we, the People of the Fire.

  And we will make the fire again.

  I, Keraz, who slept—I will strike the flints, and blow upon the flame, and it shall not be forgotten.

  WHEN THE MOUNTAIN SHOOK

  Dark was the Ryzga mountain and forbidding; steep were its cliffs and sheer its crevasses. But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer. . . .

  AT SUNSET they were in sight of the Ryzga mountain. Strangely it towered among the cliffs and snow-slopes of the surrounding ranges: an immense and repellently geometric cone, black, its sides blood-tinted by the dying sun.

  Neena shivered, even though the surrounding cold could not reach her. The ice-wind blew from the glacier, but Var’s love was round her as a warming cloak, a cloak that glowed softly golden in the deepening twilight, even as her love was about him.

  Var said, “The Watcher’s cave should be three miles beyond this pass.” He stood rigid, trying to catch an echo of the Watcher’s thoughts, but there was nothing. Perhaps the old man was resting. From the other direction, the long way that they two had come, it was not difficult to sense the thought of Groz. That thought was powerful, and heavy with vengeance.

  “Hurry,” said Neena. “They’re closer than they were an hour ago.”

  She was beautiful and defiant, facing the red sunset and the black mountain. Var sensed her fear, and the love that had conquered it. He felt a wave of tenderness and bitterness. For him she had come to this. For the flame that had sprung between them at the Truce of New Grass, she had challenged the feud of their peoples and had left her home, to follow him. Now, if her father and his kinsmen overtook them, it would be death for Var, and for Neena living shame. Which of the two was worse was no longer a simple problem to Var, who had grown much older in the last days.

  “Wait,” he commanded. While she waited he spun a dream, attaching it to the crags that loomed over the pass, and to the frozen ground underfoot. It was black night, as it would really be when Groz and his henchmen reached this place; lurid fire spewed from the Ryzga mountain, and strange lights dipped above it; and for good measure there was an avalanche in the dream, and hideous beasts rushed snapping and ravening from the crevices of the rock.

  “Oh!” cried Neena in involuntary alarm.

  Var sighed, shaking his head. “It won’t hold them for long, but it’s the best I can do now. Come on.”

  There was no path. Now they were descending the steeper face of the sierra, and the way led over bottomless crevasses, sheer drops and sheer ascents, sheets of traitorous glare ice. Place after place had to be crossed on the air, and both grew weary with the effort such crossings cost. They hoarded their strength, helping one another; one alone might never have won through.

  It was starry night already when they saw the light fro
m the Watcher’s cave. The light shone watery and dim from beneath the hoary back of the glacier, and as they came nearer they saw why: the cave entrance was sealed by a sheet of ice, a frozen waterfall that fell motionless from the rocks above. They heard no sound.

  The two young people stared for a long minute, intrigued and fearful. Both had heard of this place, and the ancient who lived there to keep watch on the Ryzga mountain, as a part of the oldest legends of their childhood; but neither had been here before.

  But this was no time for shyness. Var eyed the ice-curtain closely to make sure that it was real, not dream-stuff; then he struck it boldly with his fist. It shattered and fell in a rain of splinters, sparkling in the light that poured from within.

  THEY FELT the Watcher rouse, heard his footsteps, and finally saw him—a shrunken old man, white-haired, with a lined beardless face. The sight of him, more marred by age than anyone they had ever seen before, was disappointing. They had expected something more—an ancient giant, a tower of wisdom and strength. The Watcher was four hundred years old; beside him even Groz, who had always seemed so ancient, was like a boy.

  The Watcher peered at them in turn. “Welcome,” he said in a cracked voice. He did not speak again; the rest of his conversation was in thought only. “Welcome indeed. I am too much alone here.”

  “You were asleep!” said Var. Shock made his thought accusing, though he had not meant to be.

  The old man grinned toothlessly. “Never fear. Asleep or awake, I watch. Come in! You’re letting in the wind.”

  Inside the cave it was warm as summer. Var saw with some surprise that all the walls were sheathed in ice—warm to the touch, bound fast against melting by the Watcher’s will. Light blazed in reflections from the ice walls, till there was no shadow in the place. Behind them began a tinkling of falling water, thawed from the glacial ridges above to descend sheet-wise over the cave mouth, freezing as it fell into lengthening icicles. The old man gazed at his work for a moment, then turned questioningly to the young pair.