Somebody had gone to an awful lot of trouble.
"At least now I know why Hal wouldn't open the pod bay doors," he said.
"I'm swearing everybody to secrecy," Marianne said. "It's important that we programmers have backdoors into the computer, but it'd make some of the higher-ups a little nervous if they knew how easily I can subvert Hal."
"Is Hal just stupid, or are you just charming?" Greta asked.
"I'll never tell," Marianne said. "But I've been teaching Hal to sing. He's got a better voice than I do."
"That's not saying much," Miles said.
Marianne threw a waded-up napkin at him. "Hal, sing something for us." After a moment, the computer launched into a fair rendition of "Deck the Halls."
"Just as long as it's not 'Daisy,'" Dave said.
Ramsey Campbell
THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT
A slightly different version of this story was broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside on December 24, 1969; it was produced by Tony Wolfe, read by Gavin Richards, with a specially composed electronic score by Donald Henshilwood, and for these reasons the story is dedicated to them.
YOU SCARCELY NOTICE Christmas in Liverpool 8, except that there are more parties. On Christmas Eve I made my way early to the pub; as I hurried along Gambier Terrace I glanced up in search of party-goers, but most of the rooms of students and writers of ephemeral verse were unlit, blackly rattling in the wind which swept up from the river around the horned tower of the Anglican cathedral and across the sloughed graveyard, recently scraped clean of graves. Still, by ten o’clock in The Grapes bottles of California Chablis were gathering on the tables; my table had collected three and a half of anonymous Riesling. Not that I knew all the people behind the names: only Bill and Les and Desmond and Jill, just back from London for Christmas, whose hand I was holding. I couldn’t place the mute student on the other side of Jill; I’d caught his name and let it drift away among the stained glasses. He was one of those people you always seem to meet in the neurotics ward of O’Connor’s Tavern or arguing with the Marxists at the Phil, a face everyone knows and nobody can name, and I didn’t know what to do with him.
We hadn’t objected when he joined us, thrust smiling hopefully against our table by the deafening scarved crowd, a drooping streamer supporting his head like a red chin strap —but he’d shown no inclination to provide a bottle. I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘Look, there are enough of us already’; it was Christmas. Perhaps if we waited he might go away. But at other tables groups were clutching bottles like truncheons and rising, and outside the first police cars were howling their way to Upper Parliament and Lime Streets. ‘We might as well go,’ I said and stood with Jill, followed by the others.
At last the student spoke. Jarred, I realized that I hadn’t heard his voice, aggressive beneath the deprecating Southern whine. ‘I’ve got a present here for someone,’ he told his hands lurking under the table. ‘I wanted to be sure it’d be appreciated. Shall I give it to you, then?’ he asked me.
‘Do I take it you’ve been watching me to make sure?’
‘It was a nice thought,’ Jill said, squeezing my hand and watching my face. ‘Wasn’t it?’
I knew she needed to believe in the Christmas spirit. ‘Well, thank you very much,’ I told the student. ‘We’re going back to my place for a party if you’re free.’
‘Great,’ he said. His hands ventured forth and passed me a small box wrapped in black paper, tightly sealed and Sellotaped. ‘I’d like to be there when you open it,’ he said.
We forced out way through brimming tables and discussions of the art of cinema and emerged into Catherine Street. Fragmented by shadows of branches hard and sharp as black ice, we made our way through to Gambier Terrace, but Diana and Beatrice were out, for their cacti clawed at an unlit window. For a second I thought I hard the tin choirboys singing carols in the tree outside the Jacey Cinema, but as they faded, buffeted out of shape by the wind, I decided that they were trapped in a radio. Jill was peering through the hedge opposite the cathedral; beyond the Mersey glittered, and at Birkenhead the dinosaur skeletons of cranes had come down to the water to drink in darkness. My hand was frozen around the cardboard box. I hid Jill’s in my pocket and we turned into Canning Street,
As we did so I heard the student say ‘Look at the face on that cathedral.’
We looked. An edge of the night-wind slipped into me as I took in the image; the tower’s horns had pricked up triumphant and mocking, the long windows were eyes, drawn down and slitted into static evil. "I wish it had a mouth. Then at least we could guess its thoughts,’ I said.
‘It looks as if it’s shouldering its way up from the graveyards,’ Jill said, and then immediately: ‘Don’t make me say things like that.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘There no longer is a graveyard.’
‘Thanks for trying,’ said Jill. ‘I’ve just been staring into that graveyard. If you hadn’t pulled me away I might still be there. Why is it so crowded? And why in heaven’s name do they have to light it up at night?’
‘Come on, Jill, this is no party mood,’ I protested and hurried her back to the corner of Hope Street, the others curving back in formation and following us like a tail. ‘They’ve cleared the graveyard out completely. I’ll show you.’
‘No, John, please don’t!’ Jill cried.
‘Look, don’t force her,’ the student intervened. ‘He’s quite right, you know. No graveyard at all.’
Jill steered us back toward my flat. I nodded thanks to the student. ‘What is your name, by the way?’ I asked.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ he promised.
‘When you’ve decided in our favour?’
‘If you like.’
‘My God!’ I shouted beerily, but Jill gripped my arm.
‘Look!’ she said. ‘We’re being followed.’
‘By what?’
‘Darkness.’
I persuaded myself to relax. Turning, I saw that the light at the end of Canning Street was unlit. Behind us our procession plodded; a dark figure, probably Bill, waved a bottle at me. Briefly I thought: surely there were only eight more of us in the pub? How many are there now? But as they stepped one by one over the edge of light, I saw that there were no more than eight—certainly not the few dozen dark shapes that for a moment I thought I’d seen.
When the second light went out I said quickly to Jill: ‘Someone in the power station is stoned. ’
‘Surely they can’t turn off individual lamps,’ she whispered.
‘Of course they can,’ I said, letting her cling to me as she strode on. The third light vanished almost before we reached it, transformed into a dwindling image of brightness which receded like hope. Behind us the others shouted comments. There wasn’t a car to be seen in Canning Street except the shells at the kerb, and there were two more lights ahead to be passed. Jill was almost running, snatching at the light before it was extinguished. I gripped my present and hurried with her. Beside her the student moved with us. His face suggested an expression which I couldn’t read; as it seemed about to identify itself a fist of darkness clamped over his face. We were running. His face reappeared, expressionless, and we’d reached my flat. I glanced back; the others, however many there were, arrived panting. On the steps I hesitated, staring back along the fake Regency facades; surely some of the houses had been lit when we passed? But, an incoherent singing bus weaved past on Catherine Street, my key slipped into the lock, and we piled inside.
Jill and I plunged straight into the party, filling glasses where I’d placed them ready on the mantelpiece, sweeping up my abandoned afternoon’s manuscript and burying it in the bedroom beneath coats, drawing back the curtains to attract those who might still be wandering with bottles, lighting the fire and throwing up the window. A record smacked the turntable and caught the needle. A bottle drained; conversations intertwined; laughter sprang up. Someone was dancing; a comer of my Beatles poster tore from the wall, but I’d meant to throw it out a month ago.
Jill and I leaned against the chiming mantelpiece and sipped. Jill saw the student before I did, standing at the open window, staring down the lightless street toward the cathedral. As the next record hung alert for the needle, Jill cried: ‘Listen, everyone! John’s had a present!’
‘Well, open it,’ Bill called.
I tooked the sealed box from among the glasses on the mantelpiece, but the student turned. ‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘Wait until midnight.’ ‘Why midnight?’ Bill demanded.
‘Christmas Day.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ Bill agreed. ‘That’s tradition.’
‘Tradition,’ Jill hissed. I could feel her tensing.
‘Come on, Jill, sit down, love,’ I said.
But Bill called: ‘What’s wrong with tradition?’
‘Oh, not tradition,’ Jill said from the couch. ‘Myths. How can we all stop for a couple of days and get stoned on the myth of human fellowship when people are being murdered in Vietnam?’
‘Oh, come on,’ Bill said, offering a bottle. ‘Never mind that for now. It’s Christmas.’
‘In Vietnam too?’
‘You can’t ignore myths,’ the student interrupted. ‘A war is a clash between a myth and its antithesis.’
‘Don’t be pretentious,’ Jill said.
‘All right, you stay on your debating-society level, but you wait. I’ll show you that myths are dangerous.’
Jill recoiled. The arrested dancers looked uneasy. ‘That’s a hell of a generalization,’ I intervened. ‘How dangerous?’
‘All belief needs is a mob to give it form,’ he said. ‘Listen, mate, there’s nothing more frightening than people gathering round a belief. And I’ll tell you why. Because if a belief exists it must have an opposite. That exists too but they try to ignore it. That’s why people in a group are dangerous.’
He’d given me a present but I couldn’t resist saying: in that case I’m surprised you came here.’
‘Ah, well,’ he said, I’m safe now.’
I think all this was above most of our heads. The second record had fallen unheard, but the touch of the needle on the third galvanized us all; we danced frenetically. Someone tried to draw the student into the dance, but he shook her off and returned to the window. As I whirled with Jill I saw him push the window up and climb into the balcony, his hair springing up against the darkness. The record spin to a climax and lost the needle, and in the suspended silence we all heard the bell.
At least, we couldn’t imagine what else it might be. ‘It’s the cathedral. What’s wrong?’ Bill demanded. For the bell sounded drowned, its note boomed and then choked, muffled, swept away screaming and was engulfed. It dragged itself back, clanged unbearably loud and then dulled, thudded tonelessly in mud. We all stared at the student’s intent back, but he never turned.
'It must be the electricity, like the lights,’ Bill said, and was about to go when the voices began. ‘Carol-singers,’ he said happily.
Yes, we thought, carol-singers, they can’t be anything else. But there seemed to be so many coming up from the cathedral, an entire choir. I didn’t recognize the tune, and I could tell that everyone was baffled, for the tune led toward recognition and then fled squealing and growling into impossible extremes, notes leaping like frogs and falling dead. The voices squirmed between the suffocated tones of the bell, voices thin and cold as the wind, thick and black as wet earth, and paced toward us up Canning Street.
‘What are they singing?’ Bill said desperately.
‘Does it matter?’ Jill muttered.
I pushed past the student and gripped the chill iron of the balcony. But Canning Street was an abyss of blackness, leading to the powerful horned form of the cathedral. I could see nothing, only hear their voices fling a contorted mass of sound toward the sky and into the earth, and wonder whether they were moving to the music. I could only imagine their faces turned up to me as they chanted and knocked at the door beneath my feet.
When I thrust my head back through the window it was too late. ‘I’ll go and give them something,’ Bill said. ‘After all, it’s Christmas,’ and he’d gone.
Nobody else moved. Perhaps they were right; perhaps Bill was right. The bell swung reverberating through the sky. I peered down through the mesh of the balcony. Before I could strain sight from the darkness, I heard the street door open. I listened for minutes, waiting to hear more than the clangour of the bell and the packed insistent voices. But there was nothing, except determined conversation in the room behind me, until Jill gripped my arm through the window and whispered urgently: ‘John, they’re in the house. They’re coming upstairs.’
I dragged myself over the sill and fell into the room. I could hear the voices turn at the first landing, mount the stairs lethargically like a gigantic worm. ‘Where’s Bill?’ I demanded.
'I don’t know.’
‘Quickly,’ I shouted. The voices were bursting forth at the top of the stairs. ‘Everyone. We’ll take a collection. Give them money, Jill, you collect half.’
But she was staring aghast out of the window. I whirled. On the balcony the student bent ecstatic against the gale of sound. Jill stood, a cry blocking her mouth; her face drained of colour and wrinkled like an apple. The voices massed toward the door of the flat. ‘Don’t offer them money,’ Jill choked. ‘Give them that present.’
I lunged for the mantelpiece, thrusting bodies aside. Everyone seemed determined to ignore what was happening, to leave the decision to me; I waded through entangled conversations and clusters of faces like blank bubbles. I threw out my hand and caught up the cardboard box, and the student pinioned my arm. ‘Don’t touch it, you fool!’ he cried. ‘Not now!’
The voices were at the door, roaring a single note or a million, a sound which could never have emerged from throats but might have burst forth from a tunnel. I struggled with him. ‘One moment more,’ he pleaded. ‘Just to see.’
And Jill shrieked and snatched the cardboard box from me and threw it into the fire.
For a moment the trembling flames were crushed, struggling, helpless. The bell crashed like tons of drowned iron; the voices squealed in triumph. Then the flames sprang up, swarmed up the corners of the box, and a minute later it puffed like rotten wood and collapsed into shapeless ash. The bell swung up into an aching silence; a draught muttered where the voices had been.
We waited until Bill knocked on the flat door. ‘Why on earth did I go downstairs?’ he wondered.
‘So much for your myths,’ Jill said to the student. ‘Damn you.’
I controlled myself. ‘There’s one thing I want to know,’ I said. ‘What did you put in that box?’
‘Surely you can see that that doesn’t matter,’ the student said. ‘Just something to give form to a belief, that’s all. It was a sort of anti- Christmas present, actually. The antithesis of a Christmas present. An experiment, mate, you know. Or do you mean the actual contents of the box?’
‘We don’t need to know that,’ I told him. ‘In fact, I think Jill would rather not.’ I hit him only once, but he fell.
‘Here, hang on,’ Bill protested. The others looked away. That I expected; but Jill clutched my shoulders and cried: ‘Bring him round! Bring him round, for God’s sake! How do we know where he was before he met us? How do we know he didn’t give someone else a present?’
And now we can’t bring him round.
James S. Dorr
A CHRISTMAS STORY
HE WASN’T DREAMING of reindeer and sugarplums. At least not yet.
But as Timmy Hunter lay in his bed, still half awake, he did think about the new fallen snow, ideal for the runners of Santa's sled when it came in to land. He thought about the crisp night air, and about how Santa would be bundled up against the cold. About how, with so many homes to visit, so many more presents to be delivered before Christmas morning, Santa would be tired when he got there.
Tired and hungry.
* * *
Downstairs, Timmy's mother, Annet, was finishi
ng decorating the tree. She turned to her friend, Charles.
"Darling," she said. "How's the eggnog coming? Did you leave some unspiked like I asked you?"
"Just about finished," Charles replied. He straightened the red, fur trimmed cap on his head, then looked at her sternly. "The unspiked for you?"
Annet giggled. "Only if I've been a good little girl, Santa. What do you think?"
Charles laughed as well as he poured out two cups with rich, sweet rum in them. He handed one to the slim, dark-haired woman who reached out to take it, then put it down on the table behind her. "First things first, Santa," Annet said, smiling.
He set down his own drink and pulled her to him, his lips meeting hers, as she, in turn, steered him toward the soft fleece rug in front of the fireplace. "Not too loud, darling," she said between kisses. She guided his hand to the back of her skirt.
"One time, before . . . before Robert died, Timmy actually came downstairs thinking he'd heard the real Santa Claus and. . . ."
Charles held her to him. "You're sure you're okay, Annet? I mean, I know it's been more than a year since the accident, but some memories stay on. They should stay on. They. . . ."
Annet touched her finger to Charles' lips. "Shhh, darling," she said. "Of course I loved Robert, but I love you too, now. And Timmy likes you. The really sad memory -- you'll think this is silly -- but Timmy's so young. The really sad thing was, what with the funeral expenses and all, I couldn't afford to get Timmy the presents he'd wanted that Christmas. And you know what?" She giggled the way she had before. "I tried to explain to Timmy, about the money, but he was too young to understand. Instead, he blamed Santa."
Charles reached to straighten his cap again, then glanced to his right, to the jumble of brightly wrapped packages heaped underneath the tree. "Well," he whispered, "I hope this Santa will have helped make it up to him this year."
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 91