The Claus Effect

by David Nickle

  “Any chance we can climb out of here?”

  Neil looked at the smudge of Emily’s face as if she were crazy. “Down that mountain? We’d break our necks!”

  “Well do you have any better ideas?”

  Neil shrugged. “We can’t stay in this room; it’s too open. But there might be somewhere in here that we can hide until they call off the search.”

  Emily was quiet for a moment, as though she were listening for something. But however much Neil strained to hear, he couldn’t make out anything above the steady whistle of wind through the high windows. Finally, Emily tugged at his hand.

  “Come on,” she said and began to cross the rush-littered floor. Neil followed.

  “What do you hear?” he whispered.

  “I don’t hear anything. Now hurry up. It’s this way.”

  Neil had to duck as Emily led him through a low set of arches. The floor here was even more cluttered, and Neil was surprised to immediately find himself brought up short against a smooth stone wall. They were in some kind of alcove; not a very decent hiding place at all, Neil thought as Emily let go of his hand…

  “Hey!” Neil groped around the tiny space, searching for Emily. “Where—”

  “Up here,” said Emily.

  Neil looked up, but it was too dark to see anything.

  “Where?” he repeated.

  “I’m in the chimney. Now are you going to stand there all night, or are you coming up too?”

  Neil reddened. This was no alcove after all; this was the castle’s main fireplace, big enough to roast whatever passed for oxen around here. She might have said something earlier.

  Neil stuffed the plunger into his belt. Wordlessly, he followed Emily up the wide castle chimney.

  Mr. Beland landed about a kilometre outside the target compound, maybe two klicks away from the Stealth’s point of impact. The job of gathering his ’chute was unhampered by potentially tangling underbrush, so within four minutes and as many seconds, Mr. Beland had secured the parachute, inspected his sidearm and adjusted his nitefinder goggles to the maximum amplification level required by the moonless sub-arctic night.

  Mr. Beland reviewed the plan he’d formulated during the 45 second descent by parachute. He would have to penetrate the compound on foot, unless any other means presented themselves. Lacking more specific intelligence, he would have to assume the fencing surrounding the place was electrified, and that the Claus had posted some form of guard around the perimeter. His Heckler & Koch held ten teflon-coated rounds in each clip, and he had only two extra clips, so he would have to avoid any protracted firefights until he was able to procure some greater firepower…

  But he had at least partial surprise. While the Claus had obviously figured out how to operate the Black Globe particle beam, Mr. Beland’s survival up to this point had made clear that it had sighted neither the Stealth nor his parachute. Mr. Beland smiled thinly: the Stealth may have been visible to the old Soviet radar stations, but tonight it had snuck past the most sophisticated satellite weapon system the American military industrial complex could turn out. Let the Senate Appropriations Committee put that in their pipe and smoke it. Without another thought, Mr. Beland set out across the tundra in the direction of Santa Claus’ mountain hideout.

  Neil might have imagined that sitting very close to a girl in the dark would be romantic. But as he shifted atop the grit of some kind of metal valve, little flecks of soot settling on his face, he felt anything but amorous. He wiped at his face, and coughed.

  Emily displayed an uncanny familiarity with the interiors of chimneys. She had found this shelf immediately, just as if she’d been here before. When he asked her about it, all Neil got was a terse reply of, “Job I once had.”

  “How long do you think we should wait?” she asked now, with considerably less surety in her voice.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s the catch, in’it? If we want to escape, we might just be able to do it if we stick around for a week or so. But…”

  “By then it’ll be too late!” she said. “We have to do something now!”

  “Maybe,” he said, beginning to feel desperate again, “I could distract them, while you make it to the elevator, and then…” he wasn’t sure what then, but anyway the heroine always said no to suggestions like that, at least in any story he’d seen. Emily would say, ‘no, we have to stick together’ and take him by the arm now.

  “Yeah, that might work,” she said. “How will you distract them?”

  “Uh,” said Neil.

  Just then a crunching sound came from overhead, and a small rain of coal and grit fell on Neil’s head. “What the—?” He wiped at his eyes, which had started to water furiously what with all the soot in them.

  “Oh no,” whispered Emily in a tone of pure horror. “He’s found us.”

  Now she did reach out to him, knocking his chin with her elbow and nearly toppling him off the shelf as she clung to him. “Of course, of course,” she muttered into his shoulder, “he’d look here, wouldn’t he? Oh no.”

  Neil didn’t feel at all heroic. He clung to her as tightly as she was holding him.

  “Filthy.”

  Neil frowned. That wasn’t Claus; the accent was wrong, and so was the volume. It was almost as though the voice was buzzing rather than speaking; almost as though he hadn’t even heard it.

  “Filthy kinder,” the voice repeated. “That is Emily, is it not?”

  Neil felt Emily pull away as she adjusted her position to look up.

  “Krampus?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  “Who?” demanded Neil.

  “It is indeed I,” said the weird voice. “Mind your manners, Emily, my little Fraulein, and please introduce me to the boy you are embracing so scandalously.”

  Emily let go of Neil very quickly. He heard her sitting up and dusting herself off. “Mr. Krampus, allow me to introduce Cadet Lieutenant Neil Nyman,” she said in a formal tone that didn’t sound like her usual self at all. “Neil Nyman, um, Herr Krampus.” She leaned close and whispered in his ear, “One of those agent types I told you about. I think he used to be a Soviet or something.”

  “What are you saying?” Krampus buzzed. It seemed to Neil as though a talking fly were hovering inches above his head. He restrained an urge to swat at the voice. “It is impolite to whisper.”

  “How—how did you get here, Mr. Krampus?” Emily asked. Neil didn’t like the way she acted with this Krampus fellow. He decided that, if he succeeded in getting her away from the Claus, he would try to get her away from this guy as well.

  “I travelled here by my own means,” he said thinly. “I arrived by corners. You have chosen an odd one to sit in, kinder. Why is it you are here?”

  “Santa has nukes!” Emily blurted. “And he means to use them!”

  “Well well. This is indeed a new development.”

  Neil was beginning to feel very uncomfortable with the thought of this Krampus hovering above him. He was trying to imagine what the fellow was holding on to; earlier Neil had stood and passed his hands about up there, and found nothing but creosote-gummed stone as far up as he could reach. “Sir, could we get out of here?” he asked in what he hoped was a polite tone.

  “You could learn something from Cadet Nyman, Emily,” said Krampus in a pompous tone. “Polite kinder are good kinder. Yes, perhaps we should leave. It is time I found Claus and neutralized him, as your people would say.”

  “Can you do that?” Emily asked hopefully.

  “Of course, my dear. It is why I have come.”

  “Oh, Neil! This is wonderful.”

  Neil wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he edged off the metal shelf, dangling his feet into the black. He felt around for the grate. “What if we run into some of Claus’ people?” he asked. “They have guns.”

  “I know a way whereby we can avoid them,” Krampus said with great confidence.

  Neil let go, not with any great degree of confidence, and landed sooner
than expected, in a great gout of dust and ancient soot. He scuttled swiftly into the open, sneezing and blinking. Emily thudded down behind him, and then Krampus…unfolded…into the hall.

  Neil blinked. Even in this semidarkness, it was obvious Krampus was like nothing he’d encountered before. The first thing that struck him was the pair of gigantic eyes, like 30 watt bulbs flickering on the edge of burnout. Behind the eyes, his face and head were narrowed as if he were a TV image whose horizontal pan had failed, scrunching the whole picture into a two-inch strip in the middle of the screen. His tiny feet made no sound as they touched down on the cold stone of the castle floor.

  So mesmerized by this was Neil that he didn’t hear the approach of the search party until Emily grabbed his arm and turned him around. “Look!”

  A party of elfs had entered the great hall at the far end. They carried big electric torches whose shafts of light ducked and wove across the floor and up the walls in stomach-churning sweeps. They were being completely unsystematic; every one of them closely inspected the cobwebbed back of a saint’s statue on the way by, but none even shone his light in the direction of the niche opposite that. They squabbled among themselves as they walked.

  “Now what?” Emily wailed.

  “This way,” said Krampus, an economy of words unusual for him. He stilted quickly over to an ancient, rotten tapestry which hung by one corner from somewhere far above. It looked to Neil like a soiled handkerchief about to be dropped, and he didn’t much want to touch it. “They’re sure to look behind that!” he hissed as he ran to catch up with Krampus.

  “They will not find us,” the creature assured him. Neil was not encouraged. According to Emily this Krampus used to be some kind of commie spy. Might he now be intending to turn them in, for the kind of nebulous (but bad) satisfaction Neil’s teachers had told him commies took from such acts?

  But, rather than sidling down into the full shadow of the tapestry as Neil expected, Krampus pushed against a slightly jutting stone in the wall. To Neil’s astonishment, a whole section of the wall behind the tapestry swung back soundlessly.

  “It was part of my responsibility to know all the corners of this castle, such as this one,” Krampus explained as he led them into the dark opening. “I know all the secret passages in all the Soviet military installations.”

  “It figures,” said Neil. “Hey, I can’t see anything.” He put out his hands, and found rough stone walls close on either side.

  “We wish to descend into the bowels of this complex, where the Claus has doubtless stored his nefarious devices,” Krampus said. “Please watch your step, kinder, there is a staircase here.”

  “Wow.” He’d never been in a real secret passage before. He wished he could see something; the place should have been illuminated by clever backlighting, like all the ones in movies he’d seen. Or by torches. He supposed the Soviets weren’t big on torches.

  Emily was behind Neil, and now she put her hand on his shoulder to guide herself. Neil smiled. He tried to clench the muscles on that side of his chest, to convey to her an impression of strength, but that only resulted in his arm cramping. “Ouch.”

  Emily snatched her hand back. “Sorry,” she said.

  “No, uh, you—” He nearly fell down the sudden pit of the stairwell.

  “Careful, kinder,” buzzed Krampus from below and ahead of them.

  The staircase was steep, and went down a long way. When it finally levelled off, they must have been below the foundations of the castle. This place smelled of old fungus and ice. “Wait here,” said Krampus. Neil heard a faint, disturbing clicking sound, like beetle’s feet on stone, and then, from the blackness ahead of him a flashlight beam sprang out.

  “Good. The cache is still here,” Krampus said. He waved the beam around, illuminating an earth-walled, stone-floored chamber piled with unidentifiable debris. Krampus’ head was nearly lost in the low wooden rafters, and the many uprights supporting them cast long shadows into the jumbled background.

  “Where are we?” Emily whispered. It was very cold here, and hoarfrost adorned most visible surfaces, implying that warmth here would only bring damp and discomfort of another kind.

  “This is a storage place for useless and politically undesirable things,” Krampus explained. “Another tunnel leads from here down into the modern part of the complex. You must go that way if you want to prevent Claus’ minions from loading the nuclear weapons onto his sleigh. I, on the other hand, must go up again. It is high time I confronted Claus, and took him to task for the great evils he has caused.”

  “What will you do?” asked Emily, a bit wide-eyed.

  “I think a good caning is in order,” said the strange being who called himself Krampus. “I will leave you this light. In the crate from which I took this there are some rations and other things you may find useful.”

  Neil went over to the crate and lifted the lid. The thing looked like nobody’d been into it in years. “Where will we meet, I mean rendezvous?”

  “Have no fear,” said Krampus as he glided back to the stairs. “When I have dealt with the Claus, we will be able to leave by the front door.” With that he moved silently up and disappeared in the darkness.

  “Shine that light down here, would you?” Neil asked. Emily held the light while he rooted around in the crate. It did indeed hold some biscuit tins, and Neil was about to open one when he noticed the date printed on it: 1946. “Damn.” He put them aside and searched the rest of the crate, but came up with some oily rags, a metal kerosene lamp with a rusted-through bottom, and some aircraft-identification cards, which might have been valuable to a collector but which wouldn’t even make adequate kindling just now.

  “There must be something here we can use…” He went to rummage through the heaps of junk that undulated off, like dunes, into the dark. “Hello, what’s this?” Under one of the wooden stanchions, half hidden by shadow and an infall of dirt, was a long, narrow crate. The sort of crate rifles were shipped in. They went over to it and Neil kicked the dirt off the top with his boot.

  “Something’s stencilled there,” Emily pointed out. “A.H. What’s that stand for?”

  “Hmm.” Neil tried to remember the names of Russian rifles. He drew a blank, but it did look promising. He flipped the simple latch and lifted the lid of the crate. Emily shone her light inside.

  “Damn.” There was nothing inside but a pile of mouldy, charred bones. Neil picked up the burnt skull and frowned sourly at it. There was a big hole in the back of the thing and, clinging on a little bit of mummified skin over the upper teeth, an absurdly small black moustache.

  “Who do you think that was?” asked Emily.

  He dropped the skull back in the box. “Who cares?” It wasn’t in good enough condition to even put a candle on for your desk. He slammed the crate shut and turned to survey the rest of the room.

  “What are you looking for, anyway?” Emily asked. She sat tiredly on the crate and waved the beam of the flashlight ahead of him.

  “Dunno. Know it when I see it.”

  After a comprehensive and thorough search, using the best of his reconnaissance skills, Neil was able to turn up four ancient crystal radio receivers, a bag full of aircraft instruments, sixteen vandalized busts of Stalin, two broken chairs, a rusted samovar, eighteen rotted Soviet airman’s uniforms dating back to the 1950s, a bridle, a stained map of Poland printed on silk, a 12.7 mm machine gun (minus shells) which he was unable to even lift, three tires, a portrait photo of Khrushchev, a portrait photo of Brezhnev, six crates full of mimeographed forms stamped with the official seal of the Soviet Bureau of Agriculture, and, under a soiled tarpaulin, fourteen automobile engine blocks. “Guess we’re out of luck,” he said as he walked back to Emily.

  “So I guess we should go down that tunnel Krampus said leads to the new complex,” she suggested. “And try to hijack those nukes.”

  “Yeah.” They set off toward a low arch he had spotted during his search. Neil was formulating plans t
o blow up trucks or otherwise stop the loading of the bombs, so at first he didn’t notice Emily lagging behind. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure. It’s just that…well, I’ve fought Claus. So have you. You know what he’s like.”

  “Yeah. What do you mean?” But he thought he knew.

  “Neil, do you really think Krampus can beat him?”

  He sighed. He’d had misgivings all along; now he was glad she agreed. “I wonder. Do you think we should go back?”

  “Yes, Neil. I do.”

  Neil took one more look into the black maw of the tunnel. Emily was right. He had a bad feeling about the outcome of Krampus’ meeting with the Claus. The smart thing would be to try to disable the nukes, so even if Krampus lost, so would the Claus. But he certainly hadn’t gotten this far by doing the smart thing.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Mr. Beland had been pistol-whipped twice before in the service of his country, and each time he’d managed to stay conscious. That he’d passed out like a light this time was a matter of no small consternation for him. It wasn’t age, he concluded as he tried to sit up in the back of the army truck as it rattled and shook over the poorly maintained Soviet road. The last whipping was just two years ago, New Year’s Eve in Panama. And that one had barely given him pause.

  No, Mr. Beland told himself, it wasn’t age…it was politics. Like so many of his colleagues, he’d just gotten soft with the end of the Cold War. Soft, he thought, and arrogant. So when the woman the others called Olga brought down the barrel of the Tokarev across his temple, he simply hadn’t been ready.

  They’d spotted him just as he’d sighted the compound’s north gate. They were driving a loose convoy of jeeps and trucks in the direction of the crash, their own version of rock and roll blaring out of speakers mounted by duct tape on the old Soviet army vehicles. There was literally no cover, so when Mr. Beland felt the glare of their searchlight, all he could do was surrender. At the time, he imagined it might actually work to his advantage, getting him inside the compound. That was before he met Olga…