Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories

by Martin H. Greenberg (ed)

  “We mean you well,” Juan stammered. “We’ll give you things—”

  Tokonnen’s mane lifted haughtily against darkling cliff, twilit sky. From his face, unseen in murk, the words rang: “Do you imagine things matter more to us than our liberty or our land?” Softer: “Yield me your weapon and come along. Tomorrow we will bring a message to your chief.”

  The warriors trod closer.

  There went a flash through Juan. He knew what he could do, must do. Raising the blaster, he fired straight upward.

  Cloven air boomed. Ozone stung with a smell of thunderstorms. Blue-white and dazzling, the energy beam lanced toward the earliest stars.

  The Ivanhoans yelled. By the radiance, Juan saw them lurch back, drop their spears, clap hands to eyes. He himself could not easily look at that lightning bolt.

  They were the brood of a dark world. Such brilliance blinded them.

  Juan gulped a breath and ran.

  Up the slope! Talus rattled underfoot. Across the hills beyond! Screams of wrath pursued him.

  The sun was now altogether down, and night came on apace. It was less black than Earth’s, for the giant stars of the Pleiades cluster bloomed everywhere aloft, and the nebula which enveloped them glowed lacy across heaven. Yet often Juan fell across an unseen obstacle. His pulse roared, his lungs were aflame.

  It seemed forever before he glimpsed his vehicle. Casting a glance behind, he saw what he had feared, the warriors in pursuit. His shot had not permanently damaged their sight. And surely they tracked him with peripheral vision, ready to look entirely away if he tried another flash.

  Longer-legged, born to the planet’s gravity, they overhauled him, meter after frantic meter. To him they were barely visible, bounding blacknesses which often disappeared into the deeper gloom around. He could not have hoped to pick them all off before one of them got to range, flung a spear from cover, and struck him.

  Somehow, through every terror, he marveled at their bravery.

  Run, run.

  He had barely enough of a head start. He reeled into the hull, dogged the door shut, and heard missiles clatter on metal. Then for a while he knew nothing.

  When awareness came back, he spent a minute giving thanks. Afterward he dragged himself to the pilot chair. What a scene! passed across his mind. And, a crazy chuckle: The old definition of adventure. Somebody else having a hard time a long ways off.

  He slumped into the seat. The vitryl port showed him a sky turned wonderful, a land of dim slopes and sharp ridges—He gasped and sat upright. The Ivanhoans were still outside.

  They stood leaning on their useless spears or clinging to the hilts of their useless swords, and waited for whatever he would do. Shakily, he switched on the sound amplifier and bullhorn. His voice boomed over them: “What do you want?”

  Tokonnen’s answer remained prideful. “We wish to know your desire, Earthling. For in you we have met a thing most strange.”

  Bewildered, Juan could merely respond with, “How so?”

  “You rendered us helpless,” Tokonnen said. “Why did you not at once kill us? Instead, you chose to flee. You must have known we would recover and come after you. Why did you take the unneeded risk?” “You were helpless,” Juan blurted. “I couldn’t have ... hurt you... especially at this time of year.” Tokonnen showed astonishment. “Time of year? What has that to do with it?”

  “Christmas—” Juan paused. Strength and clarity of mind were returning to him. “You don’t know about that. It’s a season which, well, commemorates one who came to us Earthlings, ages ago, and spoke of peace as well as much else. For us, this is a holy time.” He laid hands on controls. “No matter. I only ask you believe that we don’t mean you any harm. Stand aside. I am about to raise this wagon.”

  “No,” Tokonnen said. “Wait. I ask you, wait.” He was silent for a while, and his warriors with him.

  “What you have told us—We must hear further. Talk to us, Earthling.”

  Once he had radioed that he was safe, they stopped worrying about Juan at the base. For the next several hours, the men continued their jobs. It was impossible for them to function on a sixty-hour day, and nobody tried. Midnight had not come when they knocked off. Recreation followed. For four of them, this meant preparing their Christmas welcome to the ship.

  As they worked outdoors, more and more Dahians gathered, fascinated, to stand silently around the plaza and watch. Overbeck stepped forth to observe the natives in his turn. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

  A tree had been erected on the flagstones. Its sparse branches and stiff foliage did not suggest an evergreen; but no matter, it glittered with homemade ornaments and lights improvised from electronic parts. Before it stood a manger scene that Juan had constructed. A risen moon, the mighty Pleiades, and the luminous nebular veil cast frost-cold brilliance. The beings who encompassed the square, beneath lean houses and fortress towers, formed a shadow-mass wherein eyes glimmered.

  Feinberg and Gupta decorated. Noguchi and Sarychev, who had the best voices, rehearsed. Breath from their song puffed white.

  “O little town of Bethlehem,

  How still we see thee lie—”

  A muted “A-a-ahhh!” rose from the Dahians, and Juan landed his flitter.

  He bounded forth. Behind him came a native in a steel breastplate. Overbeck had awaited this since the boy’s last call. He gestured to Raffak, speaker of the Elders. Together, human and Ivanhoan advanced to greet human and Ivanhoan.

  Tokonnen said, “It may be we misjudged your intent, City folk. The Earthling tells me we did.”

  “And his lord tells me we of Dahia pushed forward too strongly,” Raffak answered. “That may likewise be.”

  Tokonnen touched sword-hilt and warned, “We shall yield nothing which is sacred to us.”

  “Nor we,” said Raffak. “But surely our two people can reach an agreement. The Earthlings can help us make terms.”

  “They should have special wisdom, now in the season of their Prince of Peace.”

  “Aye. My fellows and I have begun some hard thinking about that.”

  “How do you know of it?”

  “We were curious as to why the Earthlings were making beauty, here where we can see it away from the dreadful heat,” Raffak said. “We asked. In the course of this, they told us somewhat of happenings in the desert, which the far-speaker had informed them of.”

  “It is indeed something to think about,” Tokonnen nodded. “They, who believe in peace, are more powerful than us.”

  “And it was war which destroyed the Empire. But come,” Raffak invited. “Tonight, be my guest. Tomorrow we will talk.”

  They departed. Meanwhile the men clustered around Juan. Overbeck shook his hand again and again. “You’re a genius,” he said. “I ought to take lessons from you.”

  “No, please, sir,” his apprentice protested. “The thing simply happened.”

  “It wouldn’t have, if I’d been the one who got caught.”

  Sarychev was puzzled. “I don’t quite see what did go on,” he confessed. “It was good of Juan to run away from those nomads, instead of cutting them down when he had the chance. However, that by itself can’t have turned them meek and mild.”

  “Oh, no.” Overbeck chuckled. His cigar end waxed and waned like a variable star. “They’re as ornery as ever—same as humans.” Soberly: “The difference is, they’ve become willing to listen to us. They can take our ideas seriously, and believe we’ll be honest brokers, who can mediate their quarrels.”

  “Why could they not before?”

  “My fault, I’m afraid. I wasn’t allowing for a certain part of Ivanhoan nature. I should have seen. After all, it’s part of human nature too.”

  “What is?” Gupta asked.

  “The need for—” Overbeck broke off. “You tell him, Juan. You were the one who did see the truth.” The boy drew breath. “Not at first,” he said. “I only found I could not bring myself to kill. Is Christmas not when we should
be quickest to forgive our enemies? I told them so. Then... when suddenly their whole attitude changed... I guessed what the reason must be.” He searched for words. “They knew—both Dahians and nomads knew—we are strong; we have powers they can’t hope to match. That doesn’t frighten them. They have to be fearless, to survive in as bleak a country as this.

  “Also, they have to be dedicated. To keep going through endless hardship, they must believe in something greater than themselves, like the Imperial dream of Dahia or the freedom of the desert. They’re ready to die for those ideals.

  “We came, we Earthlings. We offered them a fair, profitable bargain. But nothing else. We seemed to have no other motive than material gain. They could not understand this. It made us too peculiar. They could never really trust us.

  “Now that they know we have our own sacrednesses, well, they see we are not so different from them, and they’ll heed our advice.”

  Juan uttered an unsteady laugh. “What a long lecture, no?” he ended. “I’m very tired and hungry. Please, may I go get something to eat and afterward to bed?”

  As he crossed the square, the carol followed him:

  “—The hopes and fears of all the years

  Are met in thee tonight.”

  Christmas without Rodney - Isaac Asimov

  It all started with Gracie (my wife of nearly forty years) wanting to give Rodney time off for the holiday season and it ended with me in an absolutely impossible situation. I’ll tell you about it if you don’t mind because I’ve got to tell somebody. Naturally, I’m changing names and details for our own protection.

  It was just a couple of months ago, mid-December, and Gracie said to me, “Why don’t we give Rodney time off for the holiday season? Why shouldn’t he celebrate Christmas, too?”

  I remember I had my optics unfocused at the time (there’s a certain amount of relief in letting things go hazy when you want to rest or just listen to music) but I focused them quickly to see if Gracie were smiling or had a twinkle in her eye. Not that she has much of a sense of humor, you understand.

  She wasn’t smiling. No twinkle. I said, “Why on

  Earth should we give him time off?”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you want to give the freezer a vacation, the sterilizer, the holoviewer? Shall we just turn off the power supply?”

  “Come, Howard,” she said. “Rodney isn’t a freezer or a sterilizer. He’s a person.’’

  “He’s not a person. He’s a robot. He wouldn’t want a vacation.”

  “How do you know? And he’s a person. He deserves a chance to rest and just revel in the holiday atmosphere.”

  I wasn’t going to argue that “person” thing with her. I know you’ve all read those polls which show that women are three times as likely to resent and fear robots as men are. Perhaps that's because robots tend to do what was once called, in the bad old days, “women’s work” and women fear being made useless, though I should think they’d be delighted. In any case, Gracie is delighted and she simply adores Rodney. (That’s her word for it. Every other day she says, “I just adore Rodney.”)

  You’ve got to understand that Rodney is an old-fashioned robot whom we’ve had about seven years. He’s been adjusted to fit in with our old-fashioned house and our old-fashioned ways and I’m rather pleased with him myself. Sometimes I wonder about getting one of those slick, modern jobs, which are automated to death, like the one our son, DeLancey, has, but Gracie would never stand for it.

  But then I thought of DeLancey and I said, “How are we going to give Rodney time off, Gracie? DeLancey is coming in with that gorgeous wife of his” (I was using “gorgeous” in a sarcastic sense, but Gracie didn’t notice—it’s amazing how she insists on seeing a good side even when it doesn’t exist) “and how are we going to have the house in good shape and meals made and all the rest of it without Rodney?”

  “But that’s just it,” she said, earnestly. “DeLancey and Hortense could bring their robot and he could do it all. You know they don’t think much of Rodney, and they’d love to show what theirs can do and Rodney can have a rest.”

  I grunted and said, “If it will make you happy, I suppose we can do it. It’ll only be for three days. But I don’t want Rodney thinking he’ll get every holiday off.”

  It was another joke, of course, but Gracie just said, very earnestly, “No, Howard, I will talk to him and explain it’s only just once in a while.”

  She can’t quite understand that Rodney is controlled by the three laws of robotics and that nothing has to be explained to him.

  So I had to wait for DeLancey and Hortense, and my heart was heavy. DeLancey is my son, of course, but he’s one of your upwardly mobile, bottom-line individuals. He married Hortense because she has excellent connections in business and can help him in that upward shove. At least, I hope so, because if she has another virtue I have never discovered it.

  They showed up with their robot two days before Christmas. The robot was as glitzy as Hortense and looked almost as hard. He was polished to a high gloss and there was none of Rodney’s clumping. Hortense’s robot (I’m sure she dictated the design) moved absolutely silently. He kept showing up behind me for no reason and giving me heart-failure every time I turned around and bumped into him.

  Worse, DeLancey brought eight-year-old LeRoy. Now he’s my grandson, and I would swear to Hortense’s fidelity because I’m sure no one would voluntarily touch her, but I’ve got to admit that putting him through a concrete mixer would improve him no end.

  He came in demanding to know if we had sent Rodney to the metal-reclamation unit yet. (He called it the “bust-up place.”) Hortense sniffed and said, “Since we have a modern robot with us, I hope you keep Rodney out of sight.”

  I said nothing, but Gracie said, “Certainly, dear. In fact, we’ve given Rodney time off.”

  DeLancey made a face but didn’t say anything. He knew his mother.

  I said, pacifically, “Suppose we start off by having Rambo make something good to drink, eh? Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, a bit of brandy—”

  Rambo was their robot’s name. I don’t know why except that it starts with R. There’s no law about it, but you’ve probably noticed for yourself that almost every robot has a name beginning with R. R for robot, I suppose. The usual name is Robert. There must be a million robot Roberts in the northeast corridor alone.

  And frankly, it’s my opinion that’s the reason human names just don’t start with R any more. You get Bob and Dick but not Robert or Richard. You get Posy and Trudy, but not Rose or Ruth. Sometimes you get unusual R’s. I know of three robots called Rutabaga, and two that are Rameses. But Hortense is the only one I know who named a robot Rambo, a syllable-combination I’ve never encountered, and I’ve never liked to ask why. I was sure the explanation would prove to be unpleasant.

  Rambo turned out to be useless at once. He was, of course, programmed for the DeLancey/Hortense ménage and that was utterly modern and utterly automated. To prepare drinks in his own home, all Rambo had to do was to press appropriate buttons. (Why anyone would need a robot to press buttons, I would like to have explained to me!)

  He said so. He turned to Hortense and said in a voice like honey (it wasn’t Rodney’s city-boy voice with its trace of Brooklyn), “The equipment is lacking, madam.”

  And Hortense drew a sharp breath. “You mean you still don’t have a robotized kitchen, grandfather?” (She called me nothing at all, until LeRoy was born, howling of course, and then she promptly called me “grandfather.” Naturally, she never called me Howard. That would tend to show me to be human, or, more unlikely, show her to be human.)

  I said, “Well, it’s robotized when Rodney is in it.” “I dare say,” she said. “But we’re not living in the twentieth century, grandfather.”

  I thought: How I wish we were—but I just said, “Well, why not instruct Rambo how to operate the controls. I’m sure he can pour and mix and heat and do whatever else is necessary.”

&
nbsp; “I’m sure he can,” said Hortense, “but thank Fate he doesn’t have to. I’m not going to interfere with his programming. It will make him less efficient.”

  Gracie said, worried, but amiable, “But if we don’t interfere with his programming, then I’ll just have to instruct him, step by step, but I don’t know how it’s done. I’ve never done it,”

  I said, “Rodney can tell him.”

  Grade said, “Oh, Howard, we’ve given Rodney a vacation.”

  “I know, but we’re not going to ask him to do anything; just tell Rambo here what to do and then Rambo can do it.”

  Whereupon Rambo said stiffly, “Madam, there is nothing in my programming or in my instructions that would make it mandatory for me to accept orders given me by another robot, especially one that is an earlier model.”

  Hortense said, soothingly, “Of course, Rambo. I’m sure that grandfather and grandmother understand that” (I noticed that DeLancey never said a word. I wonder if he ever said a word when his dear wife was present.)

  I said, “All right, I tell you what I’ll have Rodney tell me, and then I will tell Rambo.”

  Rambo said nothing to that. Even Rambo is subject to the second law of robotics which makes it mandatory for him to obey human orders.

  Hortense’s eyes narrowed and I knew that she would like to tell me that Rambo was far too fine a robot to be ordered about by the likes of me, but some distant and rudimentary near-human waft of feeling kept her from doing so.

  Little LeRoy was hampered by no such quasi-human restraints. He said, “I don’t want to have to look at Rodney’s ugly puss. I bet he don’t know how to do anything and if he does, ol' Grampa would get it all wrong anyway.”