But this was little comfort to Commander Pelham, who found himself once more in the direct path of the sleigh.
“Down!” he yelled, and dropped again.
The sleigh whi-i-ished overhead, came up against a huge boulder with a crack, bounced twenty-five feet into the air, came down with a rush and a bang, and Olaf fell over the railing and out.
Santa Claus had arrived.
With a deep, shuddering breath, Olaf swung his bag over his shoulders, adjusted his beard and patted one of the silently suffering spinies on the head. Death might be coming—in fact, Olaf could hardly wait— but he was going to die on his feet nobly, like a Johnson.
Inside the shack, into which the Ossies had once more swarmed, a thump announced the arrival of Santa’s bag on the roof, and a second thud the arrival of Santa himself. A ghastly face appeared through the makeshift hole in the ceiling.
“Merry Christmas!” it croaked, and tumbled through.
Olaf landed on his oxygen cylinders, as usual, and got them in the usual place.
The Ossies jumped up and down like rubber balls with the itch.
Olaf limped heavily toward the first stocking and deposited the garishly colored sphere he withdrew from his bag, one of the many that had originally been intended as a Christmas tree ornament. One by one he deposited the rest in every available stocking.
Having completed his job, he dropped into an exhausted squat, from which position he watched subsequent proceedings with a glazed and fishy eye. The jolliness and belly-shaking good humor, traditionally characteristic of Santa Claus, were absent from this one with remarkable thoroughness.
The Ossies made up for it by their wild ecstasy. Until Olaf had deposited the last globe, they had kept their silence and their seats. But when he had finished, the air heaved and writhed under the stresses of the discordant screeches that arose. In half a second the hand of each Ossie contained a globe.
They chattered among themselves furiously, handling the globes carefully and hugging them close to their chests. Then they compared one with another, flocking about to gaze at particularly good ones.
The frowziest Ossie approached Pelham and plucked at the commander’s sleeve. “Sannycaws good,” he cackled. “Look, he leave eggs!” He stared reverently at his sphere and said: "Pittier’n Ossie eggs, huh?”
His skinny finger punched Pelham in the stomach.
“No!” yowled Pelham vehemently. “Hell, no!”
But the Ossie wasn’t listening. He plunged the globe deep into the warmth of his feathers and said:
“Pitty colors. How long take for little Sannycaws come out? And what little Sannycaws eat? ” He looked up. “We take good care. We teach little Sannycaws, make him smart and full of brain like Ossie. ”
Pierce grabbed Commander Pelham’s arm.
“Don’t argue with them,” he whispered frantically. “What do you care if they think those are Santa Claus eggs? Come on! If we work like maniacs, we can still make the quota. Let’s get started. ”
“That’s right,” Pelham admitted. He turned to the Ossie. “Tell everyone to get going.” He spoke clearly and loudly. “Work now. Do you understand? Hurry, hurry, hurry! Come on! ”
He motioned with his arms. But the frowzy Ossie had come to a sudden halt. He said slowly:
“We work, but Johnson say Kissmess come evvy year. ”
“Isn’t one Christmas enough for you?” Pelham rasped.
“No!” squawked the Ossie. “We want Sannycaws next year. Get more eggs. And next year more eggs. And next year. And next year. And next year. More eggs. More little Sannycaws eggs. If Sannycaws not come, we not work. ”
“That’s a long time off,” said Pelham. “We’ll talk about it then. By that time I’ll either have gone completely crazy, or you’ll have forgotten all about it. ” Pierce opened his mouth, closed it, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, and finally managed to speak.
“Commander, they want him to come every year.” “I know. They won’t remember by next year, though. ”
“But you don’t get it. A year to them is one Ganymedan revolution around Jupiter. In Earth time, that’s seven days and three hours. They want Santa Claus to come every week."
“Every week!” Pelham gulped. “Johnson told them—”
For a moment everything turned sparkling somersaults before his eyes. He choked, and automatically his eye sought Olaf.
Olaf turned cold to the marrow of his bones and rose to his feet apprehensively, sidling toward the door. There he stopped as a sudden recollection of tradition hit him. Beard a-dangle, he croaked: “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” He made for the sleigh as if all the imps of Hades were after him. The imps weren’t, but Commander Scott Pelham was.
The Falcon and the Falconeer - Barry N. Malzberg
Depositions taken after the event:
ROMANO, CHAPLAIN: The ways of the Deity are imponderable; the more intricate and vast the universe becomes to us, the more imponderable they must be. This is the kind of thing which must be understood; it has taken me forty years to learn it, and I cannot emphasize sufficiently how basic the point is. There was a time, I understand, at the advent of institutionalized-science and the emergence of the rational ethic, when it was thought that the further and further we went, the more we learned; the longer we voyaged, the more the mysteries would dissipate until finally, ultimately, there would be a time when knowledge outweighed mystery totally and everything was controlled. It was only within the last few centuries, I think, that we began to realize it worked the other way; that we learned only to play out our madness and insufficiency on a larger canvas; that space-drive and the colonization of the galaxy only meant that the uncontrollable had larger implications. At least, this is what I insist. Therefore, I feel no sense of guilt at what happened on Rigel XIV; it was not my responsibility. I did all that I could, of course, to discourage the disgusting adventure, but how much influence does a chaplain really have, particularly with men who have had almost to deny God to get where they are? I don’t like this testimony any more than you like taking it, gentlemen, but one must face facts. In a difficult age, you must abandon preconception, posture, even hope, and do things in a difficult way. I have found this a life-sustaining rationalization.
Certainly I cautioned against it. I said to Williams the moment I heard about it and was able to gain access to him, “Captain Williams, I urge you to put an end to these plans. They are sacrilegious, they are abrupt, they are irrelevant, and they might even be actually dangerous. We should celebrate Christmas in the hallowed fashion, or we should not celebrate it at all, but we are not in any way directed to make a spectacle which can only be apostate. Besides, some of the more irreverent may be led to make remarks and come to conclusions which could only be justified under the circumstances. The idea of the crèche is bad enough, but populating it with living figures is even more disgusting. Besides, the atmosphere here is absolutely intolerable, and the men will be forced to don heavy spacegear if the ceremony takes any time whatsoever. And the Rigellians, while certainly affecting creatures in their own way, are unfortunately not of an appearance or manner which should be included in any serious religious ceremony. Aside from all the jokes which have been made about their physical aspect, they smell badly and they have a foul sense of humor. ”
Williams didn’t listen, of course. There was no way he could. By the time I had managed to secure an appointment with him—a chaplain, as you are finding out, has very low rank on these survey teams—it was only two hours before the ceremony. There was no time to cancel, even if he had been disposed to do so anyway, which he said he was not. He said my ideas were laughable. He said that I was looking at things in a totally didactic and sentimental fashion. He said that the men in this far-flung outpost needed their entertainment any way they could get it, sex to the contrary, and that the fact that they had wanted to have a Christmas pageant indicated that they might even be able to make something serious out of it, alon
g with the other parts. He got up and paced excitedly and finished off a bottle of whiskey, which he said he was drinking in his quarters to celebrate the occasion, and then he threw me out, politely, saying that he had to get ready for the ceremony himself since he had been enlisted to play the part of a Pharisee, a very great honor. I came in without hope and I left without despair. There was nothing that I could do. To the best of my ability I had stated my warning. Beyond that it could not be my responsibility.
As to the grievous events which followed and which resulted in all of us being here, I have nothing to say about them. I could have predicted it. We voyage further and further into the darkness, only to see the universe cleave and shriek under us. Of course. Of course. I furnished what moderate spiritual counseling that I could, and as far as the ceremony itself is concerned, I saw nothing of it. All that happened I derived only at third hand. You need only take it up, then, with those that were there. Why bother me, anyway? I realize that you need a religious expert to make a deposition, but I simply cannot help you, gentlemen, I have my own problems.
HAWKINS, BOTANY TECHNICIAN: Well, I guess lucky is the word for it. It could have been me. I was originally scheduled to play the role, only I changed my mind at the last moment, and they slipped Cullings in. Boy, was I horrified when I saw what happened to Cullings! It was like everything that was going on was happening to me, only I wasn’t there. I ended up with a small role, tending one of the donkeys, which was bad enough under all the circumstances.
The reason I backed out at the last moment was because of Dr. Romano, the team chaplain, and I really appreciate everything that he did for me now, although I wasn’t happy about it then. Just when the rehearsals were beginning, Dr. Romano came up to me and said he wanted to talk to me when I got a chance, and because I didn’t want to get in any trouble—he was an officer, after all—I went to his room later on and we chatted a bit. He said he knew from looking up my record that I came from a religious background and under all the circumstances he wanted to know how I got involved in something like this. I told him that the reason I had volunteered to play the Child was exactly because of this religious background of mine; I had always taken this seriously and had had a good upbringing and taking the role
I did was like I was making a contribution to what I believed in. But then Dr. Romano explained to me that it wasn’t so much of a religious thing as an apostasy, he called it, because the thing was being done only for entertainment and spectacle and not because most of the people involved believed in it at all, and I began to understand what he was trying to say to me. He said that in any situation at any time you were going to find people who were going to play upon faith and use its appearance rather than its meaning for purposes of their own, but the thing the truly religious man learned to do was to recognize it and avoid it. Fight it with all his heart's might, Dr. Romano said, or something like that. So I backed right out of playing the role; I felt bad about it, of course, because they had already fitted the garments for me and arranged things my way, but knowing what a fool I had almost been taken for, it was a guaranteed thing I wasn’t going to do it. I took one of those small, supporting roles instead, and they slotted Cullings in because he was kind of the same size as I was and they didn’t have to make too many changes. Actually, Cullings was happy to do it; the way it worked out it was a kind of an honor to play that role, which was another one of the reasons I was unhappy. But when I saw the way it worked out, I started being grateful, and I haven’t stopped being grateful to this day.
No, of course I didn’t understand what was going on there. What was there to understand? Who could know? How could it get over to us? It was just a game, a kind of game we were playing in that damned place because we were so bored and the natives there were so anxious to please and because Christmas was coming on. If it happened to me in some other way in some other place, I still wouldn’t know what was going on. But it won’t happen because I’m getting out of the service; my enlistment would have been up a week ago if it hadn’t been for this hearing; and no matter what you do to us, I’m never going out there again. Even if I’m kept somewhere for thirty years. Because you reach a point when you finally reach a point, you know what I mean? I didn’t know Cullings well at all; he was just a guy. There were a lot of us out there, you know; it was like a good-sized town and everybody had their own jobs and fitted in with the people who were working around them. I was sure sorry to see what happened, though.
XCBNMJY, NATIVE: The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible for behold I tell you a mystery we do not sleep but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet (transcript becomes illegible).
WILLIAMS, COMMANDER: I’ll tell this as simply and straightforwardly as possible, and then I’ll have nothing more to say. I think that a court of inquiry has been called on this sad incident is disgraceful. There is absolutely no reason for it, and were it not for the fact that certain elements of the bureaucracy felt their own positions to be obscurely threatened by the events, this never would have occurred. They’re merely trying to hang us so they won’t be touched. I was always a straightforward man, and I speak the truth. This is one of the hazards of command. What do those hacks and clerks know of responsibility?
Sure, I okayed the pageant. Rigel XIV is a dismal outpost, one of the worst assignments in the survey corps. The terrain is lousy; the view is impossible; the climate is intolerable; and to top it all off, the atmosphere, which seems perfectly benign on first exposure, turns out to kill you if you’re exposed to it for more than thirty minutes. That was found out by trial-and-error, of course, a long time ago.
It’s a lousy detail and the best types don’t generally end up there; most of us didn’t have a connection of any sort, or we wouldn’t have been on the post in the first place. In my case, they were out to nail me for that mess on Deneb X years ago, where they still think I was responsible for the survey missing the uranium deposits. There’s no truth in that at all, but they’ve been after me ever since.
The only saving grace of the assignment is the natives. Friendly little beasts; stupid as hell, of course, and almost uneducable, but cooperative. They can learn the language after a fashion, and they can be taught to perform simple tasks, but I do not believe that this in itself indicates human intelligence. Too, they look like asses, and it may just be my xenophobia, but nothing that looks like an ass can earn my respect.
But they’re pleasant creatures, they make ideal pets, and even a man in the heaviest gear can ride on them for hours. They have an amazing tolerance and they’re curious as hell in the bargain, so one way or the other I guess that you could say that it is possible to establish some kind of a relationship with them. I don’t want to get into this business of telepathy at all;
I know that it’s being discussed here, along with all those other mysterious powers they’re supposed to have. I never saw any evidence of it, and I should know. And the whole history of the survey, which I know as well as anyone, shows that there’s never been any trouble between them and us. They just function on their own level.
I heard about the idea of the pageant only when it was presented to me by a group of the men. Hawkins, one of the botany detail, was the spokesman, more or less, which I found surprising because Hawkins has always struck me as a kind of nonentity, one of those civil servants who make up the bulk of these teams, doing their jobs with all the efficiency and imagination they might possess if they were working in a huge bureau back here. I suppose certain things are timeless after all, but Hawkins was really enthused. I had never seen so much life in the man.
“We want to have a Christmas pageant,” he said. “We can build a crèche right outside, and the men will take the various roles, and the Rigellians can be the donkeys in the manger and the sheep on the fields. The idea is to reenact the Nativity and give us all something to think about in our pasts or back home. We want your permission to go ahead and build the crèche.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, which I truly didn’t. “Do you mean to say that you’re going to assign the various roles of the story to people in the crew and just go through with this thing outside, in that terrain? ”
“Exactly. We all kind of worked it out on our own, the engineers and the science detail. We think something should be done for Christmas. We didn’t always live out here, you know. ”
“But what’s the point? Why all the enthusiasm?” and indeed, Hawkins and the others were trembling with interest; I had never seen the men so involved. “And what’s the point of it?”
“It’s kind of a tribute to our history. To what we are as men and where we used to be and what we once wanted to believe and where we are going. It’s a reconstitution of myth within a contemporary framework, an infusion of dreams into the reality so that in the blending the two, dreams and reality, must be known together.”
“That’s a strange way to talk,” I said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you talk like that before. ”
“We kind of worked it out beforehand,” Hawkins said and looked at the floor. “Is it all right? Can we go ahead and do it then?”
“I don’t even know if you need my permission. This would come under recreation which, you are permitted on your respective schedules. I suppose it would take place inside the project? ”
“Well, no. We wanted to go outside. There’s a nice depression, only a few hundred yards from here where the crèche can be set up, and we kind of thought that it should be in the open air. I can’t explain why, but it seemed nicer that way. ”
“And these roles? You’ve already selected the people to play them? Won’t there be some embarrassment about—uh—some of the assignments? ”
Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories Page 5