Rise of the Miser: Claus, #5

by Tony Bertauski

  A sliver of the sun rested on the ocean, the tips of cresting waves dyed orange and red. As the ocean extinguished the last of it, the sun gave a desperate flash and then it was gone.

  Her dad grabbed one of his tool kits and off they went to fix something on an island that seemed to have everything. This wasn’t a roller coaster, but a ride that promised to be thrilling and frightening.

  It was just beginning.

  NETWORK

  I know everything. Seriously, everything.

  I have a billion eyes to see you when you’re sleeping; a billion more to see when you’re awake.

  For instance, Patrick Trebelowski stole his sister’s allowance when she was in the shower. He did it right in front of her computer. I saw that. I saw Gabby Pelovich shovel Ms. Hargrove’s sidewalk early one morning from the house surveillance system. And I watched Bryce Burns spend Thanksgiving alone on his phone.

  Like I said, a billion eyes.

  I’m not a he, not a she. I don’t have a name. I’m countless bubbles of data flowing through a vast network that bounces through satellites and sleeps in your computers and watches you through your cameras.

  There’s no time or space where I am. You can’t wrap your mind around that because you’re human. Imagine being everywhere at the same time. There’s no going here or there.

  There just is.

  Where did I come from? I was born on an island and charged with protecting a very special person. My protocol doesn’t allow me to get involved with the human race. I watch and listen and record, but I don’t manipulate. But if I stayed that way, there wouldn’t be a story to tell.

  It started with that letter to Santa, remember?

  I don’t know sensations like you. I don’t experience cold or hot, and emotions are a foreign concept. For you, emotions are bodily sensations coupled with thoughts. They’re intellectual shortcuts. I have no use for them.

  But then I found Naren.

  I shouldn’t say found, since I’ve always known he was out there. Let’s just say I had an idea. After much analysis, I came to the conclusion it was a very good one. It could land me on the naughty list, what I did. I’m not supposed to get involved, but I so did. I watched him and his daughter in their house, listened to them on their Jeep’s Bluetooth, and saw them on the airport’s surveillance. Technically, you could say I lured them to the island. But let’s be honest.

  I brought them here.

  Here’s the weird thing. It’s difficult to describe, but when they arrived, my circuits rose to an excited state. My analysis suggests something very unexpected.

  It was my first emotion.

  Despite my immeasurable computer prowess, I do not know the future. I concluded, after much analysis, that this event would be a very good thing. You see, I was born to protect. That is my sole purpose. I am an organization of information charged with protecting the people on this island. I am tiny bubbles of data interconnected by gossamer circuits. Within my network, I hold secrets. These are my eggs.

  It’s sort of what drives this story.

  These are memory eggs. Not my memories, I’m not like you. These are her memories, and she doesn’t know I have them. She believes they’re gone. I’m not breaking protocol by hiding them from her. She instructed me to get rid of them.

  But in my existence, nothing really goes away.

  I think the same goes for the human race. All your moments are somewhere, whether you remember them or not. The more space you make for them, the more at peace you are. You won’t be perfect; you will always make mistakes. You are human. And so is she. She wanted me to protect her, but that’s not really what she needs.

  It’s help.

  That’s why Naren came to the island. And his daughter. They’re here to help. So is the fat man. She believes she brought them here. But that was my idea.

  She just doesn’t know it yet.

  CLAUS

  5

  A sugar plum bounced out of the dark.

  It looked like a purple bouncy ball, the kind Claus had left for little Mindy Malhelm in Columbus, Ohio. It was joined by another one. Pretty soon a horde of them were jumping up and down, their bellies bulging and squishing.

  They were joined by a pack of cookies.

  Big, round discs that spun like quarters. Dollops of chocolate chips twirled in one direction then another, mingling with the sugar plums and pairing off. They didn’t have appendages and they didn’t have faces, either. But they were stuck to each other, one pressed against another.

  Then they danced.

  The ballroom performance included partner changes and dips and chocolate chip cookies twirling in the air. Snow-tipped conifers emerged from the dark, their branches burdened and sagging. The cookie-plum couples swung in and out of them.

  The North Star was smiling.

  The old faithful that had guided so many sailors across oceans held its post in the sky. Even Claus had used it when technology failed him. It flickered white then pink. Pretty soon, it glowed red.

  The ballroom dancers vanished. The trees, too.

  A familiar ache cursed his back. It had been some time since he’d felt the dull pain radiate through his hips. He needed a cushion in his sleigh. He wasn’t a young man anymore.

  He wasn’t in his sleigh.

  I’ve fallen off a roof, he thought. Jessica won’t be happy.

  The last time he’d had such an accident was in Denver, Colorado. The weather was nasty that year. The reindeer were having a time keeping their course steady. The sleigh was all over the place, turning on its side as they skipped from town to town. It was the only time he’d felt motion sick.

  He was dizzy.

  Roofs were sheets of ice. A gust of wind threw him off balance as he emerged from a chimney. He dropped into a snowdrift headfirst. Lucky. The reindeer watched him pull himself out with a string of lights.

  There were no lights this time.

  Wherever he was, he was stuck. The inside of his head was stuffy and numb. He began rocking side to side and gained momentum. He reached a tipping point then went over the edge. He thought he’d thrown himself off a roof.

  The fall was short.

  But the landing was hard. He rolled free of a blanket and struck the hard edge of a brick chimney. Claus looked up to see stars. The North Star was among them, a white twinkling beacon, once again. He sat up and saw city lights in a valley.

  And a chair.

  It was wide and cushioned and positioned next to the chimney. This did not make sense any more than sugar plums foxtrotting with chocolate chip cookies.

  I’ve hit my head.

  There was no other explanation. His head was stuffy and his belly ached. If he had fallen while in the timesnap, that could be a problem. But the reindeer would revive him if that happened. They would drag him to the sleigh and carry him home.

  But the reindeer were gone.

  He got to his feet and puffed out thick, white clouds. His nose and cheeks were numb. He huffed into his thick mittens, not remembering when he put them on but also not remembering a chair on the roof. This was North Pole weather, the kind that would freeze water before it hit the ground. But there weren’t houses on the North Pole.

  Not like this.

  He walked to the far side of the roof, his toes almost as cold as his nose. The streetlights laid a grid across the valley. This was a sight he never grew tired of seeing: coming over the horizon to see twinkling lights in a sleepy town. The toes of his black boots hung over the edge.

  He looked over his belly and something very hard hit his head. He stumbled back. His stocking cap slid back and the bitter wind bit the lobe of his ear. It felt like a tree branch. When he looked up, there were no overhanging limbs or even trees.

  Just the cold, black night.

  So strange was this that he expected the sugar plums to come marching out with their chocolatey partners, but the night remained calm and silent. Once again, he stepped to the edge of the roof. His breath escaped
in billowing clouds, but now it seemed to stop in midair and disperse outwards. With his mittened hand, he reached out carefully, slowly. As the town slept below and the North Star kept watch, he touched something quite odd.

  The air was solid.

  “Are you cold?” a voice called.

  Claus jumped back instead of falling forward or hitting his head on the mysterious wall of space. The voice was as sweet as gumdrops.

  “I’m sure you’re quite warm,” it continued, “in your special red suit all trimmed in white and that bowl full of jelly in your jolly good belly. A large man does quite well on the North Pole, girded with insulation and a cheery outlook. I know you like it frosty, but I’ll admit it’s a bit chilly even for you. I covered you with blankets. You’re welcome, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas.

  He was slightly nauseous and a little dizzy and a wee bit more than frosty. But it wasn’t the weather that was giving him fits or the reclining chair on the roof or the strange hardness of space. He hadn’t been called by his birth name in quite some time. He had been Nicholas Santa back when he was just a man.

  Before he’d become Santa Claus.

  “I apologize for the cold. You know, no matter how much you plan, something is bound to go wrong at the least convenient time. You’re here and now this happens, and you’d think with everything I can do, I could at least fix it, but I’m not perfect!”

  There was an audible sigh. Claus tried to follow the voice, but it was like locating a snowflake. He tried to recall his last memory, the last moment before he woke up. He was on his practice run in Colorado. It was the first day of December. Or was he thinking of last year?

  “Where am I?”

  “I know, it’s weird to have a recliner on the roof. You don’t see that every day, but I thought it would be easier for you to wake up to familiar surroundings. You do love the roof life. But if one second you’re crawling out of a chimney and then next second you’re here... well, if you think about it, you were there one second and here the next.”

  He imagined whoever was speaking leaned closer.

  “I have a timesnapper, too.”

  Claus went back to the recliner. He needed something to keep him from falling. The cushions were cold and stiff. The blankets were already frozen into rigid folds. Two hundred years ago, when he was Nicholas Santa, when he trekked into the North Pole with his wife and son, he’d stumbled onto the elven and their long-hidden existence. It had been difficult to absorb that new reality.

  This was shaping up in the same way.

  “It’s a bit of a shock. I get it. It’s like having the sleigh yanked out from under you, and now everything’s different. You’re not special, Nicholas. You’re still human, mostly. We all are.”

  She was admitting to something he couldn’t understand.

  “It’s not that hard, the timesnapper. Not really. It’s a physics problem and I’m a nerd. You wouldn’t understand. The elven would. They’ve been around long enough to know how everything works.”

  Crystals had formed on his mustache. His white, curly whiskers were knotted with icy beads. He pulled his stocking cap over his eyebrows and covered his ears. This cold was dangerous, even for an elven.

  He didn’t know where he was or why, but he took comfort in the obvious. The person responsible for this was female. She was smart. She knew about the North Pole. And she didn’t want to bring him harm.

  She covered me in blankets.

  “Whoever you are”—he spoke to the North Star—“it’s very cold out here. I won’t last long.”

  She laughed. Something he said was funny, something he didn’t understand.

  “You’re not ready for the sun,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “What do you want?”

  There was a long pause. The wind picked up. He hunched over to make himself smaller and conserve body heat. Snow swirled around him. He noticed the roof didn’t have shingles. It was hard and shiny.

  “What do I want, what do I want?” she said. “Don’t you know, Nicholas? Didn’t you get my letter, the long list of things I wanted you to bring me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Be honest, don’t tell a lie. You don’t read them, do you? And don’t tell me you speed-read because that’s not really reading. That’s skimming and you know it, and I bet you don’t even do that. Tell the truth now, Nicholas.”

  He shook his head and pulled his coat over his cheeks.

  “It’s not what I want. It’s what I need.”

  The wind suddenly died. An angry funnel of snow fell like a snow globe after a violent shake. It rested on his shoulders. Her chuckle was colder than shaved ice.

  “I know all about your toys and gadgets. The elven carve homes in the ice and your technology keeps you from the rest of the world, but I know, Nicholas. I know more than you because I’ve been watching for a very long time. The elven have lived there for thousands of years, but time is running out. The polar ice is thinning. How much longer do they have?”

  A sinking feeling turned over in his stomach. An orange glow began to haunt the horizon. The sun is rising.

  Whether it was a practice run or Christmas morning, he’d always returned to the North Pole before morning. But he’d always been within the protection of the timesnapper. He’d never watched the sun rise from a roof.

  His steamy breath vanished.

  The morning’s rays were warm on his cheeks and stung his nose. He could feel the warmth through his coat. Feeling so lost, he hadn’t considered the obvious.

  “What... what day is it?”

  “They know you’re missing, your precious elven and sweet, sweet Jessica. And soon enough they’ll know why.”

  The orange glow turned red. Claus walked toward it. Each step chased the bitter cold from his bones. He undid one of the buttons on his coat and swiped the hat from his head.

  He was standing near the edge of the roof, but it wasn’t a roof. It looked more like a floor. He put out his hand, reaching for the sun. Like before, it thudded against hard thin air. This time, he slid it side to side. It was slightly curved.

  The sun wasn’t rising.

  The glow hovered in space like a magical window. Inside the flaming red light that brought sweat to his brow was a dark image.

  It’s very cold out here, he had said. And the woman chuckled. It was very cold, that was true. But he wasn’t outside. This is a room.

  “Merry, merry, Nicholas.”

  JESSICA

  6

  The aurora borealis was in full swing.

  A bright cloud had been dragged through the night sky like a dust cropper had lost his way, tracing meandering lines of green and red against a background of stars.

  Jessica never tired of nature’s fireworks. Something so grand and vibrant and celebratory as that reminded her that all of life was worth living.

  Even in her darkest nights.

  The distortion field that hid her and the elven from the world had turned the stars into dull points of illumination. Elven scientists were tending instruments and taking measurements. Despite the cold, many wore simple lab coats. Several thousand years had adapted them to the brutal temperatures of the Arctic.

  They moved precisely, efficient with every thought and action. It was their job to watch the ice, to monitor the planet, and evaluate their exposure. It was so difficult to stay secret on the North Pole. Satellites were watching and occasional expeditions trekked nearby. Explorers would stay in tents to write blogs and send back pictures to prove they had touched the top of the world. Jessica and her family had been the first ones to ever do so.

  Although the history books would never know.

  To remain secret was the elven’s mission. Jessica questioned this way of life. A century ago, she believed their secret utopia beneath the ice was valid. Their technology and wisdom could only cause problems with the human race. It was better to help behind the scenes.

  And give the people a present or two as a remi
nder.

  But the human race was catching up. They were growing too fast. If they discovered all the elven secrets, something very bad could happen.

  Today proves it.

  Jessica had waited on the ice that morning. Every elven was with her. They were watching the sky and waiting for the crack of the timesnapper to break the sound barrier. When it did, the elven would jump into a celebration. There would be snowball fights and dances, the occasional nude elven indulging in the courage and naiveté of youth as they plunged into the frigid water of the open leads. All of this for a practice run.

  On Christmas, they would do it again.

  Now it was just Jessica on the ice with all the brilliant elven minds with bodies too old for such foolishness. The reindeer crowded nearby. Their snouts were buried in feedbags. Exhausted from the long trip, they would usually have returned to the mainland by now to graze and rest.

  No one spoke to Jessica.

  They had offered kind words on the morning the sleigh landed on one rail and slid to a crooked stop, but since then they had left her to her thoughts. They had been through troubling times before. This was not a time to panic or be hasty but an opportunity.

  Opportunity, they call it.

  Jessica had been through loss. She knew how to be strong, knew how to weather the worst of a tragedy. But she did not call it opportunity. Then again, she was only a few hundred years old. An elven lived much, much longer. She listened to them and heeded their advice.

  But this is not an opportunity.

  Dancer looked up. The reindeer’s chin moved sideways as she ground the special blend to soothe overworked muscles and fatigued joints. She walked with her head down and antlers swinging. Jessica took her snout—soft and damp and littered with grain. Dancer snorted grassy breath into her hands.

  Jessica kissed her snout. “We’ll find him.”

  A long moan bellowed from below the ice as if a mammoth whale was about to surface. The elven scientists picked up their pace, sliding on paths that exposed the ice for their wide scaly feet to glide on. They were fat and hairy, the men with bushy beards and the women with braided hair, scurrying to finish before the call to come below the ice was heeded. The distortion field that hid them from satellite eyes would evaporate and leave them exposed if they were not below the ice.