A Cosmic Christmas Read online

  A COSMIC CHRISTMAS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3862-2

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First Baen printing, November 2012

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ((Copyrights of stories in A Cosmic Christmas))

  Introduction: “Kosmic Kris Kringle Goes Kosmic,” © 2012 by Hank Davis.

  “Dance in Blue” by Catherine Asaro first appeared in Christmas Forever, Tor, 1993, © 1993 by Catherine Asaro. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lobo, Actually” by Mark L. Van Name first appeared in Jump Gate Twist, Baen, 2010, © 2010 by Mark L. Van Name. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “On the Hills and Everywhere” by Manly Wade Wellman first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January, 1956, © 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of David A. Drake.

  “Angel in Flight” by Sarah A. Hoyt appears here for the first time. © 2012 by Sarah A. Hoyt. Published by permission of the author.

  “Mad Holiday” by George O. Smith first appeared in Venus Equilateral, Prime Press, 1947, © 1947 by Prime Press. All attempts to locate the holder of the rights to this story have been unsuccessful. If a holder will get in touch with Baen Books, payment will be made.

  “The Grimnoir Chronicles: Detroit Christmas” by Larry Correia first appeared in Free Stories 2011, Baen.com, 2011, © 2011 by Larry Correia. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Vampires Who Saved Christmas” by S. N. Dyer first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2000, © 1999 by Mercury Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “And Visions of Sugar Plums” by S. N. Dyer first appeared in Amazing Stories, November 1986, © 1986 by TSR, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Season of Forgiveness” by Poul Anderson first appeared in Boy’s Life, December 1973, © 1973 by The Boy Scouts of America. Reprinted by permission of The Tregonier Trust.

  “Dumb Feast” by Mercedes Lackey first appeared in Christmas Ghosts, DAW Books 1993, © by Mercedes Lackey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Roads” by Seabury Quinn first appeared in Weird Tales, January 1938, © 1938 by Popular Fiction Company. Reprinted by permission of George Vanderburgh .

  “Newsletter” by Connie Willis first appeared in Asimov’s, December 1997, © 1997 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to all the contributors,

  as well as those who helped with advice,

  permissions and other kindnesses,

  including David Drake, George Vanderburgh,

  Karen Anderson, Chris Lotts, Jolie Hale,

  Bud Webster, Tony Daniel, and David Afsharirad.

  And to Toni Weisskopf,

  whose idea the whole thing was.

  Jingle, jingle.

  For Susan Palermo

  This will be the last Christmas Present I can give you.

  I hope you would have enjoyed it. Farewell, old friend.

  KRIS KRINGLE

  GOES KOSMIC

  by Hank Davis

  What is there to say about Christmas that hasn’t already been said? There was no room in the inn? God bless us, everyone? And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose? Yes, Virginia? I’m dreaming of a copyrighted song lyric? (Sung by the late, great Bing Crosby, of course.) ‘Tis the season to be jolly? (That one’s in public domain.) They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph join in the Saturday night poker games? If you’re looking for that last-minute gift for that special someone, we’re open till midnight every night this week? Well, that’s beginning to get off topic . . .

  If trying to write an introduction to a Christmas anthology that doesn’t recycle clichés or rehash old sentiments is difficult, writing a Christmas-related story must be harder, what with centuries of story tellers, from oral traditions around the fire in thatched huts to the annual TV Christmas “specials” (if only they truly were . . .) to the e-words lurking invisibly in that handy iPad, Kindle, Nook, Cranny, or other display gizmo which can deliver the original version of Mr. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in a trice, unless the battery’s run down.

  At that point, I might say, “This looks like a job for science fiction,” as I step into a convenient phone booth. Except that phone booths seem to be an extinct species. No more real than fantasy creatures like unicorns or dragons. But then, this looks like a job for fantasy, too. Both of those trans-reality genres can take the familiar and give it a new twist, a new perspective, a view through future eyes, alien eyes, or paranormal senses beyond any mere eyes.

  After all, Christmas itself, like daily life, has already become downright science-fictional. Consider how someone as late as the 1960s would react to the wrappings coming off the packages scattered under the tree to reveal cell phones, computers that can fit in a briefcase, but have more number-crunching power than all that was available to the Department of Defense and the IRS combined (a scary thought, more appropriate to Halloween) back then, video games with more realistic animation than most TV cartoons had, or those aforementioned electronic “books” that can hold more volumes than the entire school library had when I was a rotten kid. Oh, and everything except maybe the tree was ordered by computer, using the Internet. (Or maybe Christmas trees—real trees, not aluminum or plastic—can be ordered online. Need to look into that . . .)

  Maybe there’s a GPS under the tree. I wonder how many people griping about money “wasted” on the space program (what’s left of it) are depending on a GPS stuck to the dashboard to get over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house for Christmas? (The horse knows the way, but a Volvo doesn’t.) Imagine someone even twenty years ago seeing something the size of a paperback book that talks to you and tells you to take the next right turn. No rocket belts or keys to the new spaceship sitting outside in the driveway yet, but Christmas is very science-fictional nowadays—or “futuristic,” to use a term employed by snobbish literary critics who don’t like sf. And in the future to come, don’t be surprised by Christmas being celebrated in Marsport, on a planet of the Centauri system, or in much more distant realms and times.

  And fantasy? Ever try to get through a yuletide without encountering one of the many versions of “A Christmas Carol?” In fact, a Christmas tradition in England is having the family sit down together at Christmas time while someone reads a ghost story aloud. Accounts differ as to whether Charles Dickens started that trend, or whether it preceded him, but certainly his account of Scrooge’s spectral visitors is the high point of the tradition. Even aside from that, the season’s folklore involves levitating reindeer, living snowmen (if Frosty came back to life next Christmas as he promised, would he be a zombie snowman?), elves, and other supernatural critters.

  One popular supernatural entity, the vampire, isn’t usually associated with Christmas, but we’ve got an example between these pages.

  In fact, we have all sorts of Christmas yarns, past, present, future, both scientific and supernatural. If variety is the spice of life, it must also be the nutmeg in a winter’s eggnog. Here are humorous and serious stories, and some falling in between. Long ones, short ones, feel-good stories, and at least one scary
tale. (Christmas ghost stories are a tradition, remember. Besides, a bit of shivering is good for the spine.) Recent stories, and a couple from the grand old days of the pulp magazines. Above all, these are fun stories which I hope will brighten your holiday.

  And may all your Christmases be cosmic!

  INTRODUCTION

  DANCE IN BLUE

  Here’s a well-turned tale of an idyllic, romantic Christmas getaway to a house full of enigmatic technology. Except that the carefree weekend quickly turns into a mystery, and unless the heroine is intelligent enough to unravel the mystery, and quickly, there may be murder under the tree instead of presents.

  Catherine Asaro is a dancer, a singer, and a physicist, as in Ph.D. She’s done research at the University of Toronto, the Max Planck Institute, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She founded the Mainly Jazz Dance program at Harvard and has danced on both coasts. (Not at the same time, I think, but with quantum physics, you never know . . .) In sf, she’s best known for her Skolian Empire series. Her The Quantum Rose, a novel in that series, won the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula Award for best novel of the year. Her novella “The Spacetime Pool” won another Nebula and recently came out as part of an eBook with the same title. Her work has also won the Analog reader’s poll, the Homer, and the Sapphire Award, and three of her novels have been named the best science fiction novel of the year by the Romantic Times Book Club. She currently runs Molecudyne Research and lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter.

  * * *

  DANCE IN BLUE

  By Catherine Asaro

  The hovercar hummed on its cushion of air as I drove through the Rocky Mountains, following a narrow road between the snow-covered fir trees. I came around a curve—and saw the house.

  It stood on a plateau across the valley. I was just entering Mountains sheered up behind it, on its north side, the peaks scantily dressed in scraps of cloud. On the east and west sides, cliffs dropped down until they disappeared into the lower peaks. The house was three stories high, with arched windows on its upper levels. At first I thought the peaked roof was blue, but as I drew nearer I realized it was covered with panels of glass that reflected the sky and the drifting clouds.

  I smiled. Soon I would see Sadji again. Come to the mountains, he had said. Come spend Christmas with me. It would be my first visit to his private retreat. I wasn’t performing in the New York Ballet Theater’s production of the Nutcracker this year, so they let me have the holiday.

  Sadji Parker had been a multimedia magnate when I was in kindergarten. When we first met last year, I had been so intimidated I could hardly talk to him. But I soon relaxed. He was like me. He also had grown up on a farm, also loved walks in the country and quiet nights in front of a fire. He too had found unexpected success in an unexpected talent. For him it was holography: he built his fascination with lasers and computers into a financial empire, earning with it an unwanted fame that he sought refuge from in the privacy of his holidays.

  There was only one difficult part. Sadji had invited his son to spend Christmas with us, and I had a feeling if the son didn’t approve of me I would lose the father.

  As I pulled into a courtyard in front of the house, the wall of a small building on my right rolled up into its roof. I looked inside and saw an unfamiliar hovercar parked there, a black Ferrari that made my rental car look like a junk heap.

  I drove into the garage and pulled in next to the Ferrari. When I turned off the ignition, my car settled into the parking pad so gently I hardly felt it touch down. Then I slung my ballet bag over my shoulder, got out, and headed for the house.

  It would be good to see Sadji. I had missed him these past weeks. He had been traveling, something to do with his business rival Victor Marck, the man who owned the Marcksman Corporation. Sadji’s preoccupation with the war he and Marck were fighting had spilled past the usually inviolate barrier between his private and professional lives. Before he left on his trip he had told me how much he needed the respite of our holiday together.

  I stopped in front of the house, faced by two imposing doors made from mahogany. The mirrors of a solar collector were set discreetly into the wall above the door frame, their surfaces tilted to catch the sun. When I rang the doorbell, chimes inside played a Mozart sonata.

  No one answered. After a while I knocked. Still no answer. I looked around, but there was no other entrance. Nor was there any way around the house. A rough stone wall bordered both the east and west sides of the courtyard, and on the other side of each wall, cliffs dropped down in sheer faces. Beyond that, the spectacular panorama of the Rocky Mountains spread out for miles.

  “Hello?” My breath came out in white puffs. I rang the bell again, then pulled on the door handles.

  “Bridget Fjelstad?” the doors asked.

  I jumped back. “Yes?”

  They swung open. “Please come in.”

  I blinked at them. Then I walked into a wonderland.

  Tiles covered the walls, the floor, even the ceiling of the entrance foyer. Shimmering globes hung in the air in front of each square. The spheres weren’t solid. When I stretched out my hand, it passed right through them. If I moved my head from side to side, they shifted relative to each other as if they were solid. When I moved my head up and down, their relative positions stayed fixed but they changed color. Rainbows also filled the foyer, probably made from sunlight caught by the solar collector and refracted through prisms. It was like being in a sea of sparkling light.

  I smiled. “Sadji? Are you here? This is beautiful.”

  No one answered. Across the foyer, a doorway showed like a magical portal. I walked through it, coming out into an empty room shaped like a ten-pointed star. The doorway made one side of a point on the star, with the hinges of the door in the tip of the point. The three points on the east side of the room were windows, six floor-to-ceiling panes of glass. Pine tiles covered the other walls, each a palm-sized square of wood enameled with delicate birds and flowers in colors of the sunrise. Light from the foyer spilled out here, giving the air a sparkling quality. It made faint rainbows on the wood and the white carpet.

  But there was no Sadji. I felt strange, alone in his oddly beautiful house. I went to the windows and stood in a point of the star. Outside, the wall of the house fell away from my feet, dropping down into clouds. All that stood between me and the sky was a pane of glass.

  Something about the window bothered me. Looking closer, I realized a faint glimmer of rainbows showed around its edges. Was it spillover from the foyer? Or was that breathtaking view only a holo? It wouldn’t surprise me if this place had the best holographic equipment the twenty-first century had to offer. If anyone had the resources to create a mountain-sized holo it was my absent host, Sadji Parker. Why he would do it, I had no idea.

  Then I had an unwelcome thought: what if the view was real but not the glass? Although there were no sounds to make me think I stood in front of an open window, there wasn’t really anything to hear out in that chasm of sky. And I had been in stores with exits protected by moving screens of air that kept heat in and wind out better than a door. The newer ones were so sophisticated you couldn’t detect them even if you were right next to them.

  But if this was a holo, where was the hologram? My only knowledge of holography came from a class I had taken in school. This much I remembered, though, to make a holo you needed a hologram, a recording of how light bouncing off an object interfered with laser light.

  I shook my head and my reflection in the glass did the same, showing me a slender woman with yellow hair spilling over her wool coat down to her hips.

  Then I smiled. Of course. This couldn’t be a holo. There was no way my reflection could show up in it unless I had been there when the hologram was made.

  I reached out and pressed glass on both sides. It wasn’t until my shoulders relaxed that I realized how much I had tensed.

  There’s no reason to get rattled, I thought. Then I went to
look for Sadji.

  Footsteps. I was sure of it.

  I peered through the glittering shadows. Coming in here had been a mistake. I couldn’t see anything. It was dark except for sparkles from a chandelier on the ceiling. The chandelier itself wasn’t lit, but its crystals spun around and around, throwing out sparks of light. There had to be laser beams hitting them, but the scintillating lights made it impossible to see anything clearly.

  More footsteps.

  “Who’s there?” I asked. “Who is that?”

  The footsteps stopped.

  “Sadji?” So far I had found no trace of my host in the entire house. But I had made other, much less welcome discoveries. The front doors had locked themselves. There was no way out of the mansion, no food, no usable holophones, not even a working faucet.

  A man’s accusing voice came through the glittering darkness. “You’re Bridget Fjelstad, aren’t you? The ballet dancer.”

  I tensed. “Who are you?”

  He walked out of the shadows, a tall man with dark hair and big eyes who was a few years my junior. I recognized him immediately. Sadji kept his picture on the mantel in the New York penthouse.