by David Nickle
Thus silenced, Neil listened quietly as Emily explained her plan to him. He was still foundering as Emily opened the door to the hangar and disappeared through it.
“Right,” said Uncle Augustus, as though he were beside them. “We’d better get moving.”
Still uncertain, Neil agreed. It was a good thing someone was taking charge.
The wall of Mr. Beland’s prison finally collapsed in a suffocating avalanche. It came down in his face, across his shoulders, over his head, and for that instant Mr. Beland was certain he would die on this mountainside. How ironic, he thought. A soldier who’d faced everything from orbital artillery to Cossacks, finally defeated by a simple Russian winter; God knew it wouldn’t be the first time.
It sure as hell won’t be this time, thought Mr. Beland. The snow in front of his eyes was suffused with red light—the bauble was in his right hand, which was positioned just above his head. He let it go and began scooping with his fingers, gouging tiny furrows until eventually he could move his wrist, his arm.
And then at once, there was no more snow. Mr. Beland’s fingers wiggled free in the sub-arctic night air.
Scrambling madly, Mr. Beland finished the job, and pushed his head and shoulders free. Even as he gratefully sucked air into his lungs, Mr. Beland unslung the snow-encrusted AKM from his shoulder. Firing would be chancy until he had a chance to clean it: ice and snow were wedged into every crevice, and may well have travelled a fair ways up the barrel too. Impossible to tell for sure without stripping the gun down to the bolts. Or firing off a few dozen rounds and seeing if it exploded in your hand.
It was a good thing, he reflected, that the midgets had cleared off. They must have him figured for dead…
Mr. Beland felt an uncharacteristic stillness come over him. The mountainside was draped in a nearly perfect quiet: only the distant howl of the arctic wind and Mr. Beland’s own heartbeat disturbed the silence. The world here was invisible, too. The myriad of stars overhead held a firmer reality for Mr. Beland than even the unsteady ground on which he stood. Below, the wreckage of his Stealth and the Russian Cossack scavengers might never have existed—they were dark, or obscured by some far-off outcropping, or perhaps gone.
Mr. Beland felt almost…
Teutonic. Yes, if he were to put a word to it, that was how he felt: Teutonic. Like a knight, on a perilous quest. The world’s hopes and fears hinging on his every simple act.
Mr. Beland smirked at the image. Easy, he told himself. Don’t let yourself get caught up.
As he turned to face the climb, Mr. Beland spotted a light. He squinted and blinked, and gradually began to resolve details.
It was the flame of a lamp. An oil lamp, in the window of a tower. A single, jutting tower, on top of an ancient and improbable castle structure.
A castle. Mr. Beland’s smirk turned into a rictus-like grin. Santa Claus’ castle.
Absently, Mr. Beland bent down to scoop up his lucky orb. He dropped it into his flight-suit’s breast pocket, and started once more up the mountain.
The ogre was in his castle, and Mr. Beland was on his way to join the battle.
The very thought of it made him giggle.
Emily counted: one, two, three, four, five…ten. Quickly she ran crouched down across the five metre space between two stacks of oil drums. There was no outcry, no sound of running elfish feet. She breathed a sigh of relief, and peered between the drums to reconnoitre her next destination.
She would never have imagined two weeks ago that she would be doing this—playing cops and robbers with a bunch of elfs in a secret military installation somewhere near Murmansk. Well, that was life, she supposed. All those adult comments of “you’ll understand when you get older” or “it’s a grown-up thing” began to make sense in the light of recent events.
Welcome to the adult world, she told herself as she scuttled between a heap of cracked rocket nozzles and a rack of glass ampoules with a funny little thistle design stamped on them. This is what it’s really like.
Finally, she came upon Santa’s sleigh. The reindeer were asleep, curled around each other like innocent lambs. After all these years, and despite all that had happened, Emily’s heart still softened at the sight. Of all Claus’ creatures, the reindeer remained unstained by evil. They did as they must, that was all.
She regretted she might have to incinerate them along with the Claus. Strangely, though, her regret did nothing to dissuade her from her course.
Half-crouching, Emily dashed across the expanse of cement and ducked underneath the sleigh. With any luck, this was as close to the Claus as she would have to get.
Emily pulled out the walkie talkie and the GPS. As Neil had shown her, she called up her precise position, thought better and stood up to hold the GPS over the driver’s seat of the sleigh. There. That ought to be precise enough.
“Unit thirteen,” she whispered into the walkie talkie. That was the code they had decided on.
The walkie talkie crackled very loudly. “Thirteen,” Neil’s voice barked. “Condition green. Go ahead.”
She rolled her eyes. Condition green, yeah right. Just like Neil. “Shh,” she whispered. “The number is…” She read off the figures on the GPS’ screen.
Neil read them back. “Roger,” she said. Good; now to get out of here before the patrol comes around again.
She turned—and found herself staring into two huge, dewy black eyes. One of the reindeer had woken up, and now stood on its spindly, knock-kneed legs, moist nose inches from her own. The leather collar around its neck had a steel dog-tag attached. The name on it was BLITZ** (the two final letters having been scraped off with some kind of sharp implement).
Emily knew her duty. She raised the GPS over her head, hoping that it would only take one blow to brain the poor thing…and found she couldn’t do it. The reindeer peered up at her raised arm with no trace of suspicion in its eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Blitzen huffed and shook its head: Don’t mention it.
Emily was about to make for the ampoules at a dead run when the doors to the east and west cycled open. She pressed herself against Blitzen, and shooed him away when he bent to groom the salt from her forehead.
A column of elfs goose-stepped into the hangar. Behind them marched Santa Claus, his lips torn into a hellish grin underneath a single red eye that blinked fast as a new-born’s.
“Ha ha!” screamed the thousand-year-old baby.
“Ready my sleigh, boys! Grease up the reindeer! I’ve a mind to light some fires!”
Neil switched off the walkie talkie as he stepped back into the castle’s great hall. He ran the seven-digit datastring through his head like a mantra as he picked his way around the centuries-old detritus in the darkened chamber. It chilled him to consider that even if he made it to the console, defeated whatever Claus had set to guard it, and managed to get the Black Globe up and running, everything would be lost—everything!—if he misplaced so much as a single digit in the co-ordinates that located Santa Claus’ sleigh.
And it galled him—particularly the Uncle-Augustus side of him—that he had allowed Emily to be the one to take the real risks.
Neil stopped at the base of stairs leading into the tower. The steps spiralled too tightly to see more than a few feet ahead, so Neil hugged close to the wall. Somewhere ahead, he could hear elfish mutterings, but the 11th-century acoustics of the castle made it impossible to tell how close they were.
Cautiously, Neil proceeded. He held a plunger in one hand, his single remaining bottle of toner in the other. He hoped that together they would be enough.
Halfway up, Neil froze. The elfish chatter had stopped, and as he stood still, heart pounding, he heard the distinct clip-clop of hobnail baby-boots on stone steps overhead.
Uncle Augustus started to say something, but Neil shut him up. This was serious. Neil’s hands felt like ice had welded them to his two weapons.
He saw the candle-light before he saw the elf, who when he rounded the
spiral bore an unsettling resemblance to Richard Nixon: a high dark widow’s peak, jowly cheeks and a nose sharp enough to burst a birthday balloon. He was carrying a candle in an old metal holder, and his sidearm was in its holster, lashed safe over his shoulder.
Neil hesitated barely a second before he brought the plunger down on the Nixon-elf’s head.
“Heya—” squawked the elf as the plunger’s rubber cup bounced twice off his skull. But the doweling connected on the third stroke, and the elf crumpled. The candle went out as it struck the steps, and Neil cursed as it clattered down the stairs.
“Wozzat?” came a second cry from above. Neil lifted the two-foot-tall replica of a former president’s unconscious form and hurried up the stairs. As he climbed, he wrestled the elf’s handgun from its holster, dropping the toner and the plunger as he went.
There was only one other elf, in the chamber immediately below the parapets, and when Neil emerged from the staircase he was still scrambling for his Uzi. Before he could grab it, Neil held up the limp Nixon in one arm and the Tokarev auto-pistol in the other.
“Freeze!” Neil waved the gun in the air, finally settling its barrel against the rising bruise on Nixon’s skull. “I’m not fooling!”
The second elf—who didn’t resemble any president with ears like those, thought Neil—thrust his hands into the air.
“Din’t shyute!” he squeaked.
It was amazing the things you could accomplish with a hostage and a gun. From far off, Uncle Augustus made disapproving noises.
“All right,” said Neil, “that’s good.” Neil motioned to a coil of rope at one end of the circular room. “Grab that, then up the stairs.”
The elf did as he was told, and led the way up the final flight of stairs to the parapets. The wind howled like a new widow, and Neil had to repeat himself twice before the elf understood. Neil set Nixon down against a crenel, and watched as the other elf trussed him head to foot. Then Neil tied the other elf up, checked the knots on both of them, and turned to the console.
It was already on, the hologram sparking merrily as fine lines of blowing snow cut through the projection. Neil sat down and plugged in the numbers, and watched as the icons formed themselves into distinct targets.
In spite of his success, Neil felt his heart sink.
The picture before him only confirmed what he had suspected. It was Emily, not he, who was taking the real risks.
At first, Emily watched the procession from the underside of the sleigh, her head scraping against the black-iron belly as she peered out. But as the Claus’ army drew closer, it became clear that the underside of a sleigh was no place to hide from two-foot-tall elfs. Emily tried to think of anything she’d learned at ValueLand that might have even a remote application here, but try as she might, she drew an unambiguous blank. Even ValueLand had its limits, and hiding from Uzi-wielding elfs in the middle of a hangar at the northernmost seaport on the planet was well on the other side of them. In desperation, Emily crawled forward to where the reindeer were now all standing, and crouched amid their sapling-thin legs.
The Claus stopped some twenty yards off and waited, toes tapping impatiently as his elfs charged with his greatcoat struggled through the muttering throng. Their eyes were for the most part on the Claus, and Emily realized that if she were ever to make the run across the floor, it would have to be now.
On her hands and knees, Emily made her way to the front of the reindeer, where old, beaten Rudolf glowed weakly. He looked down at her with a rheumy eye, and for an instant Emily was sure he’d give her away. But then he looked up—deliberately? Emily wondered—and shut his eyes.
As Emily was about to make the dash, a hand fell on her shoulder. It belonged to an elf, and as he brought up his .45, Emily wheeled around and struck him on the side of the head with her GPS.
“Owieiee!” The elf dropped his gun, reeled back three steps from the sleigh and tumbled to the ground. Emily dove back among the reindeer and had made it back underneath the sled as a dozen other elfs ran to his rescue.
Emily swore under her breath. Now she’d never get away from the sled—they’d be watching it too closely. And even as things stood, it was literally a matter of seconds before the dwarfish little louts noticed her crouching here so low to the ground.
Really, thought Emily, there is only one place to go. And that’s up.
Without another thought, Emily took hold of the front edge of the sleigh and pulled herself up and over. An instant later, she lay shivering on the sleigh’s floor, certain she’d been spotted as she topped the rim. If she had, she was as good as dead. At any moment, a squad of heavily-armed elfs might jump into the sleigh, fill her full of machinegun bullets and move the sleigh.
But none did. After a moment, the Claus began to laugh again, and Emily realized with a little chill that he was approaching the sleigh. Hurriedly, she moved among the sacks, secreting there just as the Claus’ terrible white head appeared over the edge of the sleigh. He took hold of the rim of the sleigh with both hands and swivelled his head back and forth across the assembly.
“This is the ride!” he cried. “This is the ride that ends the cycle, breaks the spell! Can y’ feel it?”
The hangar fell silent. Claus reared back, fleeting display crossing his face like cracks on a parched riverbank. “Well I can sure as hell feel it, y’ damnable wee grubs!”
With a tree-branch creak, the Claus lifted a leg over the side and hoisted himself into the sleigh. He reached back over the edge and took hold of his great coiled bullwhip. Without even a “Stand back!” he sent the whip out first to his left, then his right. The elfs moved back in a wave, clearing a vast circle in the middle of the hangar. Only the Claus, eight reindeer, a parcel-ful of nukes and Emily remained as Claus shouted the order.
“Open the doors! Swivel ’em! Swing ’em wide!”
With a grinding of gears and a cloud of oilsmoke, the rooftop doors began to open.
“Haha!” cackled the Claus. “Now it’s just me, Krampus. Me against the world!”
At that moment, Emily’s walkie talkie crackled to life.
“Thirteen report. Report on location,” said Neil.
Emily was still swearing as the Claus wheeled around.
“Well,” he cooed softly, interrupting Emily mid profanity. “That’s where you got to. It looks like we’re both going for a ride, then. Just like old times, eh Emily me girly?”
“Repeat,” squawked Neil. “Report on location, Thirteen. Are you clear?”
Santa Claus squinted down at the walkie talkie. “Why who else have we here? Be a good girl and give that to me.” He extended a skeletal hand.
“Go to hell,” said Emily, and hugged the walkie talkie to her chest.
“Repeat, thirteen, report on location. Are you all right Emily? Are you clear yet?”
“Ha!” Claus’ hand lurched down and snatched the walkie talkie from Emily’s grip. He pressed the talk button.
“Emily can’t come to the phone right now,” said the Claus in his politest voice. “She’s going on a trip, my little baby-spit. Maybe she’ll call you when she gets back.”
Emily looked up. There was a crack perhaps twenty feet wide up the seam of the door, and it was widening excruciatingly slowly. To assure the strike, the doors would have to be completely open. But Neil was this close to giving everything away.
Emily dove at the Claus. He was holding the walkie talkie high, but she managed to lay hold of the lapels of his greatcoat, and before he could react she lunged towards the walkie talkie arm. It was still on “talk.”
“Neil!” she shouted. “Fire now! Take the chance!”
And then she was on the floor, her face smarting from Claus’ open hand. He snarled something into the walkie talkie, then dropped it to the floor beside Emily and lifted his whip into the air.
“Fire away, boy!” The Claus screamed as he snapped the whip over the backs of his reindeer. “Fire if you can, we’re out of here!”
W
ith a jarring lurch, the sleigh left the ground. Emily scrambled across the floor, and grabbed the walkie talkie. “Fire, Neil! It’s moving!”
“Then get off the sleigh!” crackled Neil. “I’m not going to fry you too!”
And then it was too late. Looking up, Emily could see the circle of the hangar door growing before them, the impossibly thin gap growing marginally wider as the sleigh closed the distance.
The Claus glanced back over his shoulder. “Not to worry, wee Emily. We’ve passed through tinier fissures than this, you and I. Isn’t it so?”
“That was then,” said Emily, the gee-forces making it nearly impossible to speak. “I’ve gotten bigger since then.”
“Ha! Yes you have, Emily. Much, much bigger. Tell me, though. Have you stopped believing in Santa Claus?”
“Yes,” replied Emily. “A long time ago.”
“You sting me, Emily. You really do.” The Claus turned around then, and sent the whip up over the reindeer one more time, even as he yanked hard to the right on the reins and banked the sleigh a few degrees. The doors filled Emily’s vision with concrete, and wind roared nearby, and then the sleigh was corkscrewing into the moonlit night.
Emily pressed “talk” on the walkie talkie. “Neil,” she said, “I’m in the air.”
Neil came on in a voice so small she could barely hear him. “Jesus. I’m sorry, Emily. But I couldn’t shoot with you there.”
Emily felt like throwing the walkie-talkie over the edge of the sleigh she was so angry. Instead, she pressed “talk” again.
“Look, Neil,” she snarled. “I don’t know who trained you at West Point, but at ValueLand, I was taught something about responsibility. If you don’t shoot this sleigh, you’ll be unleashing a certain nuclear holocaust on all the good little girls and boys of the world Christmas morning. It’ll be your responsibility. Now I’m going to read off some co-ordinates again, you’re going to enter them into the computer-thingy, and then you’re going to blast this sleigh and everything on it to kingdom come! Have you got that?”
“But what about you?”
“Let me worry about me,” said Emily quietly. She looked down at the GPS. The figures representing longitude and latitude were fairly constant, but the altitude was cycling upward in a blur of numerals.