A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (7 page)

When we humans go to the stars, we’ll take our holidays with us—and why not? They pack easily, and will comfort us through that cold black trek into the night; they will reaffirm our origins.

Initially, at any rate. But each colony will evolve to reflect its new habits, habitats, and technologies. Holidays will change, too—but Joy to the World—not in the most important ways.

—KO

Astronaut Nick

Brad R. Torgersen

“He’ll be here,” the red-haired girl said as she looked out the bubble window of the classroom’s south wall.

“Nah, my older brother says Astronaut Nick is a fake,” said the blue-eyed boy with the curly brown hair. He too was looking out the bubble window.

Jimmy Carrico wasn’t sure who he believed. At age nine, he didn’t want to appear too credulous in front of the older kids. After all, what could anyone say about the legend of a red-suited space man who was supposed to be flying all the way from Earth to deliver gifts to the children of Olympus Mons Colony?

“Your older brother just wants to spoil the fun,” the red-haired girl said, turning her head to make a disapproving frown at the blue-eyed boy.

Jimmy hadn’t been on Mars long enough to have learned too many names. Mostly he kept quiet, did his schoolwork as best as he was able, and endured the inevitable rude comments. It was bad enough trying to learn to function in Mars’ heavier gravity, but trying to do it and save face in front of the other kids at the same time, was often an impossible task.

“He’ll come riding in his rocket sled,” said the red-haired girl. “Him and his crew of elves.”

The blue-eyed boy snorted.

“He’s never come before,” he said. “What’s so different that suddenly he’d show up now?”

“That,” the girl said, pointing outside the bubble window.

The salmon-colored sky had faded to gray, and little ice crystals were gradually floating down to land on the brownish-red landscape below—Martian snow being the dividend of the work which had brought the Carrico family to Mars in the first place.

Every year, the Mars Terraforming Project needed more people, and every year those people hurled more comets into Mars’ upper atmosphere. Enough to begin changing Mars’ climate so that moisture was able to condense out of the air—especially in the higher elevations. Since Olympus Mons colony was dug into the foothills of the biggest extinct volcano in the solar system, and the volcano got dusted on a regular basis these days, the children had a front row seat for what their parents claimed was history in the making.

“Big whoop,” said the blue-eyed boy, who turned away from the window and sauntered back to where some other boys were gathered to eat their noon meal.

Jimmy stared out the window, watching the little white flakes fall. There weren’t many. In fact, it was hard to believe that something so small could turn the ground white in a single afternoon. But it had happened twice before in two previous weeks, and now it was happening again.

“He’ll come,” the girl said to Jimmy, nodding her head earnestly.

“What makes you so sure?” Jimmy said cautiously, sliding off of his chair and walking to stand near the girl—both of their faces pushed into the bubble window so that they could look around.

“Before my Grandma died,” said the red-haired girl, “she told me about Saint Nicholas.”

“Who?” Jimmy asked.

“You ever hear of Father Christmas?” the red-haired girl asked.

“I don’t think so. Is this a story from Earth?”

“It is,” the red-haired girl said. “At the end of every Earth year, Saint Nicholas rides through the sky in his sleigh, bringing gifts to all the good children.”

“Sounds like a fairytale,” Jimmy said.

The little girl scowled.

“Why do boys always have to ruin everything?” she said.

“Sorry,” Jimmy replied, feeling sheepish. “I guess I have a hard time believing in anyone who rides a sleigh through the sky. I’ve seen pictures of earth. I know what a sleigh looks like. They can’t get off the ground.”

“But Astronaut Nick’s sleigh has rockets,” she said. “And when he comes, he’ll bring things for all of us. Well, all of us who believe in him anyway.”

Jimmy considered. It was an enticing idea. He hadn’t been able to bring much from Ceres. The family’s small quarters in Olympus Mons were barren—their crates not yet arrived via bulk freighter—and while video games and other three-dee entertainments could be had in plentiful quantities, there were times when Jimmy missed being able to hold an actual toy in his hands.

Why had they moved, again? Jimmy could still remember how excited his parents had been. The whole family would be partaking in the greatest engineering project of the age. The robot scouts sent to retrieve the comets from the Kuiper Belt would keep bringing them until Mars had been rendered inhabitable. The Carrico family would be helping to prepare the surface. It might take decades, or even centuries. But there would come a day when there’d be no need for habitats. The air would be like Earth air, and it would be thick and warm enough to go outside without suits—something Jimmy had never done on Mars, and not on Ceres either.

Ceres.
On Ceres, Jimmy had real friends. On Ceres, he could fly down the corridors and across the gym, at the merest push of his toes. Stuck on Mars, Jimmy plodded and sweated, his cheeks pink, and his muscles and joints complaining. The doctor said it was normal, for children born in the asteroid belt—that Jimmy would get used to it. But the longer Jimmy endured the struggle, the more he hated it. And hated the fact that his parents had applied for emigration from Ceres in the first place.

“Does Astronaut Nick only bring toys?” Jimmy asked.

“Astronaut Nick brings you whatever you wish for,” the girl said.

Jimmy frowned, and slowly pulled his head out of the bubble.

The girl stared at him.

“Why does that make you sad?” she asked.

“Nevermind,” Jimmy said, turning to leave.

“Wait!” she said. “You’re new, but you don’t talk to people. What’s your name? You can at least tell me your name.”

“James,” he sighed.

“That’s probably what your Mom calls you,” she said. “What do
you
call you?”

“Jimmy,” he said, looking back at her over his shoulder.

She smiled at him—her eyes lighting up pleasantly.

“That was my Great Grandpa’s name,” she said. “I like that. My name’s Tessa.”

“Hello,” Jimmy said, still looking over his shoulder. She seemed to be waiting for him to say more to her.

He merely turned and walked out of the room, his feet slapping painfully hard on the deck.

The next day, Tessa found Jimmy eating by himself.

“Mind if I sit here?” Tessa asked.

“No,” Jimmy said, not looking up from his tray of microwaved turkey and beans.

“Did I make you mad?” she asked, setting down her own tray.

“What?” he asked.

“Yesterday, when you left. It seemed like I made you mad.”

“No,” Jimmy said. “It’s just that … I’d like to believe this Astronaut Nick guy can help me, but I
don’t
believe it.”

“Why not?” she said sharply.

“It sounds to me like one of those things parents tell to little kids, that always wind up not being true.”

“Well if you don’t believe in him,” Tessa said, “of
course
he’s not going to be true. Astronaut Nick doesn’t bring presents to doubters.”

Jimmy closed his eyes, remembering how delightful it had been on Ceres, flying through the sports chambers with his friends as they played Wall Ball. You had to be good with angles, and you had to learn how hard to throw the ball to get it to carom just right, while not throwing so hard that you flipped yourself completely around. Teams of Wall Ball players could use each others’ inertia to make shots at the goal without spinning out of control. Of course, if the other teams were equally good at working together, they could use their inertia to deflect the ball and make return shots. Players would hang onto each others’ ankles, knees and elbow interlocked, all of them pirouetting as a unit …

“Did you hear me?” Tessa said, her voice quiet, breaking his reverie.

Jimmy looked up at her.

“Okay, so Nick doesn’t bring gifts for doubter,” he said, perhaps a bit harder than he’d wanted.

“No need to be rude,” she said. “I don’t make up the rules.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Nobody can help me anyway. Here on Mars … they hardly ever let us go outside, and I’m
heavy
no matter where I go, and always dropping things or bumping into stuff, and our quarters are
small
and my friends are all far away, and I won’t ever get to see them again.”

“Maybe you can make … new friends?” Tessa said.

Jimmy stared at his spork, then plunged it into the turkey on his plate, carved off a hunk of the meat, and stuck the hunk into his mouth.

When Jimmy didn’t speak further, Tessa’s smile slowly disappeared.

“Astronaut Nick comes the night of December 24,” she said primly.

“That’s in … four days?” Jimmy guessed.

“Two,” she said. “Olympus Mons uses the New Solar Calendar like all the other off-Earth colonies and stations, but I have an app on my desk computer that stays synchronized to the old Earth calendar.”

“What will he bring you, if you’re right?” Jimmy asked.

Now it was Tessa’s turn to be circumspect. She poked at her beef strips covered in brown gravy.

“I’m keeping my wish a secret,” she said. “Supposedly if you keep it secret, there’s a better chance it might come true.”

“Then how is Astronaut Nick ever supposed to find out what you want?” Jimmy asked, somewhat exasperated. He’d put his spork down and was staring across the table, directly into Tessa’s face. Her red hair fell across her forehead and partially obscured his view.

“Send him an e-mail,” Tessa said.

“Astronaut Nick has e-mail?”

“Of course,” Tessa said, as if it were common knowledge.

“Did you e-mail him what you want?” Jimmy asked.

“Not yet. I am trying to figure out how to word it just right. I’m using the school house net to do it. You can do the same.”

Jimmy thought about it. The whole idea sounded highly improbable. But the earnestness of Tessa’s words, the seriousness of her expression, had him halfway convinced.

“Can you share that e-mail?” Jimmy asked.

“Sure!” Tessa said, sitting up and grinning. “After lunch, come over to my desk and I will type it into a message I’ll send to you, and then you can use it to type your own message.”

“Seems like short notice,” Jimmy said. “I mean, two days. How can he possibly be ready to deliver anything without knowing far enough ahead of time? When my parents moved us from Ceres we knew months in advance that we were coming to live here, and the Olympus Mons people knew months in advance, too.”

“You just have to trust him,” Tessa said. “Astronaut Nick won’t let you down. If you’ve not been making trouble, and if you believe hard enough, Astronaut Nick will keep his promises.”

They ate quickly and in silence for the rest of the meal break, Jimmy’s head beginning to spin with the imagined possibilities.

The following day, Jimmy used all of his recess and lunch period to compose his note to Astronaut Nick. The address Tessa had given Jimmy seemed as legitimate as any, and since Tessa said she’d sent hers off in the morning, Jimmy felt compelled to get his sent as quickly as possible.

Only, he agonized over how to phrase his request. Composition had never been Jimmy’s strong suit, and every time he thought he had his message put together in a coherent fashioned, he saved it as a draft, came back to look at it later, and realized he wanted to change everything around.

Finally, as the school day came to a close, he pestered his teacher into letting him have an extra twenty minutes at his desk. He erased everything he’d written previously, typed in three succinct sentences, and clicked the SEND button on the message header, watching it vanish from his desk screen.

Jimmy went home that night, exhausted, and slept more fitfully than usual. Which was saying something, since Jimmy had not enjoyed a solid night’s rest since coming to Olympus Mons.

The next day, Tessa and Jimmy kept an eye on each other, but didn’t talk much. If there were other kids in their class who’d also sent e-mail to Astronaut Nick, nobody was saying so openly. Jimmy definitely got the impression that the older children found the whole idea preposterous, and this meant the younger kids were keeping a low profile—whether they actually believed in Astronaut Nick, or not.

Finally, when the day was over, and people were headed out the door to go find their parents in one of Olympus Mons’ many and various work labs, Tessa and Jimmy met in the same window bubble where they’d had their first conversation a few days before.

The tiny white water crystals were falling again. This time in what seemed to be record quantity. The rock and soil outside had already begun to turn white, and Tessa watched the natural display with a look of rapt fascination on her face.

“My Mom says that the snow on Earth gets so thick, you can ski on it,” Tessa said.

“What’s
ski
mean?” Jimmy asked.

“People go up in the mountains and put these long, thin, springy boards on their feet, and they sort of coast down the mountain riding on nothing but the snow.”

“It’s that deep?”

“Meters deep,” Tessa said.

“Wow,” Jimmy said, trying to imagine just how much snow would have to fall in order for it to heaped around the walls of their classroom to that level. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it was possible, though he’d certainly seen the pictures of the great mountain ranges on Earth, such as the Grand Tetons and the Himalayas. If the snow didn’t melt every summer season, it would build up over thousands of years to form giant bodies of ice called
glaciers.

Mars had some permanent ice at its poles, which Jimmy had also seen in pictures. But compared to some of Earth’s glaciers, Martian ice was puny. Though, maybe, if the terraforming worked as planned, that wouldn’t be true forever? Jimmy tried to imagine the slopes of Olympus Mons having enough snow on them for riding down, using nothing but a pair of thin boards strapped to the bottoms of his feet.

“Are you going to wait up to see him?” Jimmy asked.

“Who?” Tessa asked.

“Astronaut Nick,” Jimmy said.

“No, that’s a bad idea,” Tessa said. “Grandma says that you have to be asleep when Astronaut Nick visits, or you’re going to get passed by. He knows when you’re asleep, and when you’re awake.”