by Jo Nesbo
“Coming!” Doctor Proctor replied.
The inventor and Santa Claus walked down the stairs together. “Stanislaw?” Doctor Proctor said.
“Yes, Victor?”
“Cinnamon?”
“What about cinnamon?”
“Do nice children really smell like cinnamon?”
“No. That’s crazy!”
“But, Stanislaw, you did imply that . . .”
“Yes.”
“Do you mean to say that Nilly doesn’t have any gnome or elf blood and thus no Santa abilities?”
“No, but who knows? Maybe it will help him fly the sleigh if he believes he has Santa abilities.”
“Do you really think that’s going to be enough?”
“Well,” Stanislaw said, stopping in front of the door that led to the back patio and then the yard. Through the glass they saw Lisa and Nilly waving impatiently to them. “No.”
“No?” Doctor Proctor said in alarm.
“No, but it’s the only chance we have left to save Christmas, right?”
AFTER FETCHING THE shampoo bottle with the raspberry-red time soap from Doctor Proctor’s basement, our three friends and Stanislaw rolled along through the pre-Christmas evening on Dolores, over icy streets, slippery sidewalks, through white parks and silent woods, over a frozen duck pond, and between buildings that grew gradually taller as they approached downtown Oslo.
But when they could see the palace, the cannons at Akershus Fortress and Oslo Fjord and hear the bells at the top of the sky-high city hall chime ten, Stanislaw told them to turn left.
“But there isn’t any road there,” Doctor Proctor said. “Just train tracks.”
“Yes, drive on the tracks and . . . Everybody duck!”
The vampire giraffe head was snapping its jaws like crazy but retracted back into the cuckoo clock after about ten cuckoos.
They drove along the snow-covered train tracks for a ways. The tire chains sang against the metal rails. They followed the tracks right into a tunnel. A short distance in, the glow from the headlights suddenly illuminated a man sitting next to the rails.
The man was shielding his eyes and holding up half a cigar. “Uh, anyone have a light?” he called to them.
They stopped.
“We don’t have any matches,” Doctor Proctor said. “But we do have a nuclear fission engine.”
“Huh? You mean like a nuclear bomb?”
“Just press your cigar against the pipe on the underside of the giraffe.”
“Um, so, that makes me pretty n-n-nervous.”
“It’s not dangerous,” Lisa said.
The man looked at Lisa. Then he did as she said. There was a little crackling and sparking under the sleigh, and when he held up the brown cigar, smoke was coming out of its glowing end.
“Wow! Thank you so much! And a merry Christmas to you!”
“Merry Christmas,” Doctor Proctor said, and was about to drive on, when Lisa asked him to wait and turned to the man.
“What’s your name? Where do you live? And what do you want for Christmas?”
“I’m Tommy and I live right here,” the man said. “And what do I want?”
“Yeah.”
“Heh-heh. I don’t know why you want to know that, but I guess I want a Christmas ham. Because I haven’t tasted one of those since I was a kid.”
“Noted,” Stanislaw said.
And as they drove off, it already smelled like Christmas and sweet, Cuban cigar.
They were deep, deep, deep inside the tunnel when Stanislaw asked Doctor Proctor to stop. Stanislaw cleared his throat and then said, “Open sesame!”
Nothing happened.
He cleared his throat again. “Abracadabra!”
Nilly, Lisa, and Doctor Proctor looked around at the sooty, blackened tunnel walls. “Hocus pocus!” Stanislaw yelled angrily. “Maybe ‘alakazam’?” he added with a sigh.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
“The door to the Santa workshop is right here, but I forgot the word to open it.” Stanislaw hung his head.
“Let’s start at the beginning, then,” Doctor Proctor said. “A! Abracadabra! Acne! Adverb! Aerodynamic! Aftershave! A—”
“Wait,” Lisa said. “This is going to take all night. We need to think.”
“You’re right,” Doctor Proctor agreed. “People, think!”
“Okay,” Nilly said with a yawn. He had curled up on the seat. “I think we would think best if we sleep on it for a bit.” He pulled the sheepskin up around him.
“Open up!” Lisa commanded the tunnel wall.
“Santa Claus!” Doctor Proctor said.
“Spare ribs!” Stanislaw said.
Meanwhile, Nilly just closed his eyes and smacked his lips contentedly.
“User name and password!” Lisa yelled.
“One, two, three, four, five!” Doctor Proctor yelled.
“October thirteenth, 1775!” Stanislaw yelled. Lisa gave him a quizzical look.
“That’s my birthday,” he said.
“Oh, right. Let’s see . . . Jet reindeer!”
“Six geese a laying!”
“Cristiano Ronaldo!”
A faint snoring sound could be heard from the seat. Almost an hour later Nilly was still asleep, and no door had shown any sign of opening yet.
“I can’t think of any more words.” Lisa moaned.
“Me either. Wait!” Doctor Proctor said hopefully. “Integral variable displacement adjustment factor!”
But it didn’t seem like those were the magic words either.
“I’m sorry about this,” Stanislaw said. “I suggest we give up, head back to the Lonely Tombstone, and have a beer. Let’s leave Christmas to its own devices.”
The cuckoo clock creaked.
“Ugh,” Lisa moaned. “I’m so sick of that vampire gira—”
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
They climbed back into the sleigh, and after about eleven cuckoos it got quiet. Then they looked at the wall again.
“Well, apparently ‘cuckoo’ isn’t the right word either,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Huh? What’s going on?” Nilly asked with a yawn, stretching.
“We’ve tried everything and we can’t get the door to the workshop to open.” Lisa sighed.
“Move over. Let me try,” Nilly said.
They heard something that sounded like the hiss of a giant constrictor, and part of the wall in front of them slid aside. Our friends found themselves staring dumbfounded into a large, well-lit room.
“Of course!” Stanislaw said, slapping himself on the forehead. “How could I forget!”
“The password is ‘let me try’?” Lisa asked in disbelief.
“No, it’s møø!” Stanislaw said. “As in møøve over. Get it?” He marched in.
“That way the reindeer can open the door on their own,” Doctor Proctor explained, following him in.
“Huh?” Nilly and Lisa said. They stood in the tunnel for a moment, stunned, wondering if they had known the answer to the question “What does the reindeer say?” Then they snapped out of it and hurried inside before the doors slid shut again behind them.
There was an enormous gift-wrapping table in the middle of the room, with wrapping paper and ribbons. Little robots in elf hats were stationed around it. Behind the table there was a kind of control panel with knobs, buttons, levers, and gauges, and beyond that there was a large fireplace. Next to the fireplace, six little reindeer lay watching them and chewing their cud in a stall with hay on the floor.
“Møø,” they said contentedly.
While Doctor Proctor started unscrewing the covers on the robots’ backs to change their batteries, Stanislaw showed Nilly and Lisa around Santa’s workshop.
“The workshop hasn’t been used for many years, so it is a little dilapidated,” Stanislaw said, brushing cobwebs off a stack of wish lists. “But once we get the fire going, it’ll be warm and very cozy in here.” He pointed to a picture hanging over the
fireplace.
Lisa saw that the picture had been taken right here in this very workshop. It showed a long table with little elves wrapping gifts and a rounder, younger Stanislaw standing at the end of the table, keeping an eye on things.
“That shows you how things looked back when this place was in full swing,” Stanislaw said. “Those are real elves, mind you. Such tremendously talented gift wrappers. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take the acid rain back in the seventies and had to move to the Canary Islands where we managed to buy them some time-share apartments. Victor’s father, Hector Proctor, had to invent these robots for me instead. They’re pretty pleasant robots, always polite and they almost never oversleep. But they just don’t have the sense of humor the elves have. They don’t sing sad songs that make you first cry and then laugh, so they can never quite be the same, can they?”
“Oh, I looove songs that are sad in the middle but end well,” Lisa said.
“What used to be in that picture frame?” Nilly asked, pointing to an empty frame hanging next to the one of the elves.
“Hmm,” Stanislaw said, running his fingers over his beard. “You know, I don’t remember. But it can’t have been anything important since the picture’s been removed. Are you ready for your first flying lesson, Nilly?”
“Now? In the middle of the night?”
“It’s best to fly when no one can see you. And since Santa flights usually take place at night, it makes sense to practice at night.”
“Okay! Test pilot Nilly the Flying Ace is ready!”
More or Less Exactly Twenty-Four Hours until Christmas Eve—
for the Few Who Will Get to Celebrate the Holiday, That Is
“YIPPPEEE!” NILLY SCREAMED.
He screamed because he was standing in a sleigh behind six reindeer. They had just emerged from a cloud and were once again flying under a starry sky high, high above the Oslo Fjord. He saw the lights from all the houses twinkling below, the streets that looked like little snakes of light in the white winter landscape. This was the most fun Nilly had had since the first time he’d tried Doctor Proctor’s fart powder. He could steer the reindeer. When he pulled on the left rein, they turned left. Right rein, right. When he lowered the reins, they immediately flew higher. But most exciting of all was lifting the reins over his head, because then they went into a steep dive, careening toward the ground below, picking up speed, making his stomach drop and the air hit his face so he had tears in his eyes. But right now he was aiming at the moon and climbing up, up, higher and higher.
“Watch out. Don’t go any higher, Nilly!” Stanislaw’s voice spoke from the earpiece in Nilly’s left ear.
“Just a little,” Nilly said into the tiny pink little microphone attached to his headset.
“No, no! You’re almost at the same height they use for the midnight flight from Paris to Oslo, and . . .”
“I can see it,” Nilly yelled.
Because way out over the fjord he saw the flashing lights from an approaching airplane. It was heading right for him, and it was coming in fast! Nilly put on Doctor Proctor’s motorcycle goggles.
“Nilly!” Stanislaw warned.
“Yiipppeee!” Nilly screamed.
The plane passed over them with a roar. And the sudden gust of wind that followed it sent the sleigh, Nilly, and the reindeer swirling and tumbling around and around as they careened toward the ground.
“HOW’S HE DOING?” Doctor Proctor asked, screwing the cover plate onto the last robot.
“He’s really not that bad at flying,” said Stanislaw, who was sitting at the control panel toward the back of the Christmas workshop. “But he’s really not that good at doing what he’s told.”
“Now that sounds like the test pilot I know.” Doctor Proctor sighed and hit the button on the robot. A red light blinked on its head, and a metallic voice chimed from the speaker where its mouth would have been: “OUT OF PAPER! OUT OF PAPER!”
“Oh, I forgot about that. I don’t have any more wrapping paper,” Stanislaw said. “I . . . uh, got a little too short on funds to buy any more.”
“I can bring some from home,” Lisa said. “My mom has a cupboard full of gently used, neatly ironed Christmas wrapping paper.” She’d come over to the control panel. It had a bunch of antennae, small, gray screens, and instruments with gauges and switches. “What’s Nilly doing now?”
“He’s racing the midnight flight from Paris.” Stanislaw sighed. “And he’s winning.”
Lisa leaned closer to the screen, where the in-sleigh camera showed Nilly’s beaming grin and flapping cheeks as he pulled up alongside a big airplane and waved, trying to catch the attention of the passengers. But they mostly seemed to be asleep inside the lit-up plane windows.
“Nilly, get away from there!” Stanislaw said into the microphone on the control panel. “The whole point is for them not to see you.”
“But . . .” Nilly’s voice came through the speaker.
“That’s an order, directly from Santa Claus, okay?”
“Roger.” Nilly groaned.
On the screen Lisa saw Nilly relax the taut reins, and the jet reindeer clearly must have picked up the pace, because suddenly the plane was way behind them.
“I think you’re doing great at this, Nilly!” Lisa called out.
Nilly grinned at the screen. “Thank you, thank you, nice little girl, but when you’re an elf, this kind of thing is second nature.” Nilly loosened the tightly wrapped scarf around his neck so that the ends fluttered majestically behind him. “I’m coming in for a landing now at number twenty-six Sognsveien to deliver the final present to Oslo’s next-nicest child.” With that Nilly raised the reins, and the sleigh dove down toward a line of row houses.
“Yipppeee!”
A few seconds later the sleigh hovered in the air right over a chimney while Nilly hopped out with a small gift in his hand and disappeared from view.
“How’s it going?” Doctor Proctor called out.
“It looks like the boy is starting to get the hang of it,” Stanislaw said. “How are you doing with the robots?”
“Good,” Doctor Proctor said, patting one of the robots on the head. They had all stopped yelling for paper and were instead whirring, humming, vibrating, sputtering, and purring like cats. “They’ve read the wish lists and now they’re printing out the presents.”
“Printing?” Lisa asked.
“That’s what my dad called it when he invented the process fifty years ago. 3D printing. The robots read a wish, find a picture of the thing in their database, and then they make what’s in the picture. Simple, easy, and fast.”
“About the fast part,” Stanislaw said. “Soon Nilly will be on his way here to pick up the last load of presents I have in the warehouse. It’ll almost be dawn, so he’s going to have to go back to yesterday evening. Did you fill the pool, Lisa?”
“Yes,” Lisa said.
“Where’s the time soap?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“Here.” She held up the shampoo bottle.
“Nilly is back in the sleigh,” Stanislaw said. “It’s time to go prepare the time-travel bath.”
Doctor Proctor and Lisa exited through the door at the very back of the Santa workshop, which led out to the hangar cave. Just like the Santa workshop, the hangar cave had been carved out of the mountain, but while the workshop was warm and cozy and the walls painted white, the hangar cave was cold and unfinished, and the fluorescent lights only just barely lit the dark rock walls. Doctor Proctor had explained that the hangar cave was the garage for the sleigh. At the mouth of the cave there was some wooden scaffolding that was the takeoff and landing ramp, and beyond that there was an enormous spruce tree. Just inside from the ramp there was a little swimming pool that the reindeer usually liked to swim in when they came back all sweaty from long flights. It was still steaming because Nilly had asked them to keep the water in the pool a “comfortable bathtub temperature for a little boy and small reindeer.”
Lisa turned th
e plastic bottle upside down and carefully squeezed it, dispensing two drops of time soap into the pool. Doctor Proctor stirred the water with a garden rake, and the soap immediately started to foam. When the water was covered with bubbles, they walked out onto the takeoff ramp and over to the big spruce tree. Doctor Proctor pushed aside some of the branches, and Lisa gasped. Because the rock face of the mountain plunged nearly straight down to the Oslo Fjord. Doctor Proctor had told Lisa that they’d built the hangar cave in the middle of the side of the mountain overlooking the fjord so that when they saw the jet reindeer slip behind the spruce tree growing on the rocky ledge, they could go up and wait for them to land.
Lisa leaned out and looked up into the sky. “Where is he?” she asked.
“He ought to be here by now,” Doctor Proctor said.
“It would be typical Nilly to be out joyriding right now.” Lisa sighed.
“The bubbles won’t last that long, and we only have this one bottle of time soap,” Doctor Proctor said, nervously scratching the back of his hand.
“Victor! Lisa!” It was Stanislaw.
They ran through the hangar cave, into the workshop, and over to the control panel.
“We have a problem,” Stanislaw said, pointing at the screen.
They saw Nilly and the sleigh flying. But instead of the subdued light of the moon, he and the sleigh were quite harshly lit.
“What are those lights?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“Those,” Stanislaw said, “are the floodlights from Akershus Fortress. They’ve discovered the sleigh.”
“Oh no!” Lisa said. “Daddy, no!”
“COMMANDANT!” CRIED THE chief cannoneer on the cannon team at Akershus Fortress, staring up at the sky over the fortress. “Commandant!”
“Yes, yes, I’m coming!” Lisa’s father said, crossing the smooth snow on the rampart in small, rapid steps. All the medals on his uniform rattled and jingled, and the field glasses hanging from a cord around his neck danced up and down.
“There’s something flying up there!” the chief cannoneer ordered. “Don’t lose sight of that jet fighter!”