Christmas Carol (26 page)

“It will cook slowly and be ready to eat by
noontime,” Jo said to Carol. “I have made the bread already, and
Nik is donating wine from his mysterious cellars down below.”

“Then the sweets to finish the meal,” Pen
added.

“If we took away your sweets, would you
celebrate the season as happily?” asked Jo, laughing.

“Probably not,” Pen admitted. She sent a wink
toward her brother, and winked at Carol, too.

Still laughing, they all left the warmth of
the kitchen for the damp chill of the pre-dawn square.

“Is it always so cold in winter?” Carol asked
Nik. They were picking their way through the debris that lay around
Marlowe House. With the others well ahead of them, Carol did not
think anyone would overhear what she said to Nik.

“Sometimes, it’s colder,” Nik answered. When
he spoke, his breath formed a frosty cloud.

“During my time, December is much milder in
this city.” Carol stopped talking while she negotiated a climb up a
mound of broken masonry and a sliding descent along the other side
of it. “What kind of bombs were used in the wars? Could the
detonations have sent enough dust into the upper atmosphere to cool
the climate?”

“I don’t know. It may be so.” Nik’s voice
turned bitter. “There is entirely too much we are not told. I hope
that particular situation will change soon, so we will have the
information we want and need. Car, I must warn you again. Be
careful what you say while we are outside the house. There will be
many civil guards in the square during the celebration. Some of
them will not be in uniform.”

“I understand. I won’t mention forbidden
subjects again. May I ask questions about the ceremony?”

“If you phrase them carefully and whisper
them to me.” They were past the debris and onto the flat, paved
expanse of the square. Nik took Carol’s arm. “Stay close to
me.”

There were no artificial lights. Only the
faintly brightening sky lit their way as they crossed the square
toward the World Tree at its center. A row of civil guards in
helmets and brown overcoats kept open a circular area around the
Tree, allowing no one to approach the metal artifact. There was no
pushing or shoving, and the crowd was for the most part a quiet
one. Only the occasional cry of a baby broke through the soft
murmur of whispering voices and the shuffling sound made by many
pairs of booted feet. The sky grew infinitesimally lighter, and an
air of heightened expectation rippled across the crowd.

“Here they come,” Pen whispered to Carol. She
and Al were standing next to Carol and Nik, but in the semidarkness
Carol could not discern the presence of anyone else she knew.
Presumably, Bas, Jo, Luc, and the rest of Nik’s group had melted
into the throng.

At a nod from the officer commanding the
civil guards the crowd separated, opening an aisle from one corner
of the square to its center. Along this aisle walked a procession
of notables. A man in flowing golden robes came first. Beneath his
gold headdress his face was solemn as that of any priest, and Carol
quickly decided that must be what he was. Behind him walked two
women in sky-blue gowns. Since they were not shivering, Carol
wondered if they were wearing thermal underwear. Her own hands and
feet were fast reaching a state of numbness, and she could not see
how anyone could move so lightly while wearing gowns so sheer and
loose unless they possessed an unapparent source of warmth.

“The next person is one of the Leaders.” Nik
spoke to Carol in a voice just above a whisper. “His name is
Fal.”

He was a plump, pompous-looking fellow with a
slight limp. His tunic, trousers, and boots were all a deep shade
of red, and a round medal of some kind hung from a heavy chain to
rest on his too-wide chest. He was surrounded by a dozen or so
attendants in black and gray. A collection of civil guards in brown
and another group of military types in gray uniforms ended the
procession.

“The Leader’s personal guard,” Nik murmured
into Carol’s ear. “We have only one Leader with us today. The other
two are celebrating elsewhere.”

The actual ceremony did not take long. This
was doubtless because of the astronomical requirements of the
Solstice, since sunrise only lasted for a few minutes, but Carol
could not help wondering if the biting cold played its part to keep
the participants moving through their roles with brisk efficiency.
The priest in the gold robes approached the World Tree and began a
singsong incantation which, after a few verses, was taken up by the
women in blue and then, gradually, by the rest of the people in the
square. As if at the command of the man who stood with golden arms
outstretched, the sky began to take on a touch of yellowish dawn
color. Against this pale shade the fingers of the World Tree arched
upward, pleading.

“Our square is used for this ceremony,” Nik
informed Carol in a low voice, “because, thanks to the destructive
wars, from here we have a direct view of the horizon for the
midwinter sunrise.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the
upper rim of the sun began to rise above the horizon. At the exact
moment when the first ray of sunlight shone forth, the Orb
appeared.

It came out of nowhere, an enormous
golden-orange sphere with a metallic sheen to its surface. Carol
heard no sound from it, and while she had admittedly been watching
the sunrise and the priest, still she was sure the Orb had not come
gradually. It simply materialized in the air above the square as if
by magic and hung there, motionless. The people standing beneath
the Orb gaped at it, murmuring their wonderment in hushed, reverent
voices.

Very clever
, Carol thought,
appreciating the effect the Orb was having upon the crowd, though
she could not participate in the emotions it was evoking in most of
the onlookers.
Does it have an engine inside it and perhaps a
pilot, or is it moved by remote control, like one of those toy
airplanes that people fly in the park on Sundays
? Since Carol
could discern no break in the smooth surface of the Orb to indicate
a door by which a pilot might enter, she decided the object must be
moved by remote control. And a very precise control, too, to judge
by its subsequent motions.

After a few minutes the hovering Orb began to
move. Slowly it descended, sinking toward the square with
remarkable timing. Exactly as the disk of the sun stood full upon
the southeastern horizon, the Orb settled into the waiting arms of
the World Tree. The metal fingers curved around it, holding it
securely in place.

A cheer went up from the crowd. Some laughed,
others openly wept for joy, still others did both. Carol noted with
some cynicism that the Leader and his guards were among the few who
stood unmoved by the spectacle.

“And now,” intoned the gold-clad priest,
speaking above the soft, continuing chanting of the women in blue,
“now the Solstice is upon us. Cold winter’s end can be foreseen.
From this moment onward, the days will grow longer. Now we can be
certain that spring will in truth come, and with the returning
warmth all life will be renewed.” Again he raised his arms toward
the Tree.

“Now we see with great thanksgiving the
Blessed Orb held within the Sacred Embrace of the World Tree, which
will keep it secure for us and not let its warmth and light flee
from us.”

He went on in this way for some time, but
Carol soon grew tired of listening to his repetitious invocations.
She tugged at Nik’s arm, and when he bent his head to her, she
whispered her question in his ear.

“Do people actually believe the sun is held
fast like that, in the branches of a tree?”

“I am sure some do believe it,” he replied.
“It makes a pretty picture. Once in late afternoon I saw the
branches of a dead tree against the setting sun, and what I beheld
looked much like the Orb resting in the World Tree. Were this
ceremony presented to us as a symbol only, I could accept it, for
it’s true enough that the days will now begin to grow longer. But
this worship of Tree and Orb is a state religion and no other
beliefs are allowed. Men and women have died for saying it ought to
be otherwise.”

“So this Government practices religious as
well as political oppression.”

“Do not say so here,” Nik cautioned, and
Carol obediently fell silent.

Once the ceremony was over and the officials
marched away in another solemn procession, the atmosphere in the
square changed. A young man pulled a homemade flute from beneath
his jacket and began to play a cheerful tune. Someone else had
brought along a small drum, and began to keep time on it with his
hands. A third fellow produced a stringed instrument on which he
plucked out a soft harmony to the flutist’s song.

A woman began to sing. She was joined by a
second and then by a third voice. This was nothing like the formal
chanting during the ceremony. This was folk music, cheerful and
boisterous, requiring the clapping of many hands. The musicians
played louder, providing backup for the song the women were
singing.

Then the dancing started. Luc appeared, to
clasp hands with Pen and Carol. Al grabbed Pen’s free hand and Nik
was on Carol’s other side. A woman Carol did not know moved next to
Nik, a man joined the woman, and so it went, hands linked into a
circle for a community dance. Around and around the square they
went, first in a circle and then in a long, spiral line, always
with the World Tree and Orb at their center. Knowledge of the exact
steps was unimportant. It was only necessary to keep up with the
other dancers.

They generated their own heat. A cloud of
exhaled breath hung over the square. Above the heads of the dancers
the Orb glowed orange-gold where the low rays of the midwinter sun
struck it, and seemed to shed both warmth and light on those
gathered to celebrate the beginning of its slow return from
southern regions.

There followed a period of perhaps an hour
when Carol felt at one with the emotions of the people around her
who were dancing and singing so joyfully. This future world was so
gray and bleak, and so restrictive, that the cold and rain and snow
of winter represented a real additional hardship in most lives. The
turning of the year brought with it fresh hope. No doubt summer
held other miseries—excessive heat, vermin, diseases—but from the
depths of winter that other, warmer, season appeared to be one of
bright promise, fresh food, and an end to numbing cold and
dampness. If they could not drink down the darkness as the ancient
Vikings had once tried to do, these people would sing and dance
away the year’s shortest day and longest night.

Shortly after midday the weather brought an
end to outdoor celebrating. For all its golden brightness, the sun
was too low in the sky to be able to shed much genuine warmth upon
the northern half of the world. After hours in the cold, noses were
red and dripping, and lips had become too stiff and blue for more
singing. The crowd broke into smaller groups, families or clusters
of friends heading homeward for their holiday meal. As if to signal
the official end of the morning’s celebration, a troop of civil
guards marched through the square in tight formation, ignoring the
people, staring straight ahead, scattering merrymakers to the left
and right.

While adults and teenagers had been dancing,
the children too small to join in were left to play at one side of
the square under the care of elderly men and women. Now parents
hastened to collect their children, and a few of the young ones,
seeing mothers and fathers coming toward them, ran to meet their
parents.

The civil guards continued their march,
knocking down a couple of little boys along the way. A murmur of
irritation erupted from the grown-ups. The guards did not stop or
change direction, but marched straight on toward the other side of
the square. Directly in their path stood a child perhaps three or
four years old, so heavily bundled in jackets and sweaters and
scarves that it was impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl.
The child appeared to be frozen in place, staring at the oncoming
guards out of huge, round eyes.

“No!” Carol saw what was happening and knew
the guards would not stop. They had already knocked down a few
children; one more would be nothing to them. They did not care
about the civilians in the square. Ordinary folk were unimportant
to them. And for some reason—were they too cowed by the guards and
thus afraid to react?—Carol knew no one was going to stop the
inevitable collision. Nik was talking to someone, his back turned
to the scene. Carol could not see anyone else who might help, and
time was running out.

She moved forward, running toward the child
on cold-numbed feet, pushing aside the few people who stood between
her and the innocent who would be knocked to the ground and perhaps
trampled.

“Stop, damn you! You bloody lunatic!” She saw
the total lack of concern in the eyes of the guards’ commander and
knew her cry was wasted. The guards would not stop. Throwing out
her arms she scooped up the child and kept on running. The guards
marched on out of the square.

The whole incident had lasted for only a few
moments, and during that time Carol’s eyes had connected with those
of the guards’ commander for but a second, yet she was more chilled
by the encounter than she was from hours spent outside in the cold
of winter. Something about the commander’s indifferent expression
and his blank eyes that saw nothing except his path directly across
the square tugged at Carol’s mind. She did not know the man—had
never seen him before—yet in a vague, illogical way she
recognized
him. And feared him as if he had laid a curse on
her.

“Car!” Nik was beside her, and with him was
the woman who had taken his hand when the dancing started, who
seemed to know him.