Cynthia Manson (ed) (48 page)

As the elevator eased up
into the interior of the Polar icecap, Bigtoes focused his mind on Shortribs.
Suppose the dead elf had stumbled on your well-laid plan to kill Santa. Suppose
you botched Shortribs’ murder and therefore knew that Security had been
alerted. What would you do? Stage three fake attempts on Santa’s life to
provide Security with a culprit, hoping to get Security to drop its guard?
Possibly. But the bomb in the Board Room could have killed Santa. Why not just
do it that way?

The elevator reached the
surface and the first floor of the Control Tower building which was ingeniously
camouflaged as an icy crag. But suppose, thought Bigtoes, it was important that
you kill Santa in a certain way—say, with half the North Pole looking on?

More Security elves were
waiting when the elevator doors opened. Bigtoes moved quickly among them,
urging the utmost vigilance. Then Santa and his party stepped out onto the frozen
runway to be greeted by thousands of cheering elves. Hippie elves from Pumpkin
Corners, green-collar elves from the Toyworks, young elves and old had all
gathered there to wish the jolly old man godspeed.

Santa’s smile broadened
and he waved to the crowd. Then everybody stood at attention and doffed their
hats as the massed bands of the Mushroom Fanciers Association, Wade Snoot
conducting, broke into “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” When the music reached
its stirring conclusion, Santa, escorted by a flying wedge of Security elves,
made his way through the exuberant crowd and toward his sleigh.

Bigtoes’ eyes kept
darting everywhere, searching for a happy face that might mask a homicidal
intent. His heart almost stopped when Santa paused to accept a bouquet from an
elf child who stuttered through a tribute in verse to the jolly old man. It
almost stopped again when Santa leaned over the Security cordon to speak to
some elf in the crowd. A pat on the head from Santa and even Roger
Chinwhiskers, leader of the Sons and Daughters of the Good Old Days, grinned
and admitted that perhaps the world wasn’t going to hell in a handbasket. A
kind word from Santa and Baldwin Redpate tearfully announced—as he did every
year at that time—that he was off the bee wine for good.

After what seemed an
eternity to Bigtoes, they reached the sleigh. Santa got on board, gave one last
wave to the crowd, and called to his eight tiny reindeer, one by one, by name.
The reindeer leaned against the harness and the sleigh, with Security elves
trotting alongside, and slid forward on the ice. Then four of the reindeer were
airborne. Then the other four. At last the sleigh itself left the ground. Santa
gained altitude, circled the runway once, and was gone. But they heard him
exclaim, ere he drove out of sight: “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good
night!”

The crowd dispersed
quickly. Only Bigtoes remained on the wind-swept runway. He walked back and
forth, head down, kicking at the snow. Santa’s departure had gone off without a
hitch. Had the Security Chief been wrong about the frame-up? Had Hardnoggin
been trying to kill Santa after all? Bigtoes went over the three attempts
again. The bomb in the Board Room. The poison. The bomb on the sleigh.

Suddenly Bigtoes broke
into a run.

He had remembered
Brassbottom’s pretext for taking Santa into the Map Room.

Taking the steps three at
a time, Bigtoes burst into the Control Room. Crouchback was standing over the
remains of the radio equipment with a monkey wrench in his hand. “Too late,
Bigtoes,” he said triumphantly. “Santa’s as good as dead.”

Bigtoes grabbed the phone
and ordered the operator to put through an emergency call to the Strategic Air
Command in Denver, Colorado. But the telephone cable had been cut. “Baby Polar
bears like to teethe on it,” said the operator.

Santa Claus was doomed.
There was no way to call him back or to warn the Americans.

Crouchback smiled. “In
eleven minutes Santa will pass over the DEW Line. But at the wrong place,
thanks to Traffic Manager Brassbottom. The American ground-to-air missiles will
make short work of him.”

“But why?” demanded
Bigtoes.

“Nothing destroys a
dissident movement like a modest success or two,” said Crouchback. “Ever since
Santa came out for unilateral disarmament, I’ve felt SHAFT coming apart in my
hands. So I had to act. I’ve nothing against Santa personally, bourgeois
sentimentalist that he is. But his death will be a great step forward in our
task of forming better children for a better world. What do you think will
happen when Santa is shot down by American missiles?”

Bigtoes shaded his eyes.
His voice was thick with emotion. “Every good little boy and girl in the world
will be up in arms. A Children’s Crusade against the United States.”

“And with the Americans
disposed of, what nation will become the dominant force in the world?” said
Crouchback.

“So that’s it—you’re a
Marxist-Leninist elf!” shouted Bigtoes.

“No!” said Crouchback
sharply. “But I’ll use the Russians to achieve a better world. Who else could
eliminate Acme Toy? Who else could limit world population to our rate of toy
production? And they have agreed to that in writing, Bigtoes. Oh, I know the
Russians are grownups too and just as corrupt as the rest of the grownups. But
once the kids have had the plastic flushed out of their systems and are back on
quality hand-crafted toys, I, Dirk Crouchback, the New Santa Claus, with the
beautiful and beloved Carlotta Peachfuzz at my side as the New Mrs. Santa, will
handle the Russians.”

“What about Brassbottom?”
asked Bigtoes contemptuously.

“Brassbottom will be
Assistant New Santa,” said Crouchback quickly, annoyed at the interruption. “Yes,”
he continued, “the New Santa Claus will speak to the children of the world and
tell them one thing: Don’t trust anyone over thirty inches tall. And that will
be the dawning of a new era full of happy laughing children, where grownups
will be irrelevant and just wither away!”

“You’re mad, Crouchback.
I’m taking you in,” said Bigtoes.

“I’ll offer no resistance,”
said Crouchback. “But five minutes after Santa fails to appear at his first pit
stop, a special edition of
The Midnight Elf
will hit the streets announcing that he has been the victim of a conspiracy
between Hardnoggin and the CIA. The same mob of angry elves that breaks into
Security headquarters to tear Hardnoggin limb from limb will also free Dirk
Crouchback and proclaim him their new leader. I’ve laid the groundwork well. A
knowing smile here, an innuendo there, and now many elves inside SHAFT and out
believe that on his return Santa intended to make me Director General.”

Crouchback smiled. “Ironically
enough, I’d never have learned to be so devious if you Security people hadn’t
fouled up your own plans and assigned me to a refrigerator in the Russian
Embassy in Ottawa. Ever since they found a CIA listening device in their smoked
sturgeon, the Russians had been keeping a sharp eye open. They nabbed me almost
at once and flew me to Moscow in a diplomatic pouch. When they thought they had
me brainwashed, they trained me in deviousness and other grownup revolutionary
techniques. They thought they could use me, Bigtoes. But Dirk Crouchback is
going to use them!”

Bigtoes wasn’t listening.
Crouchback had just given him an idea—one chance in a thousand of saving Santa.
He dived for the phone.

“We’re in luck,” said
Charity, handing Bigtoes a file. “His name is Colin Tanglefoot, a stuffer in
the Teddy Bear Section. Sentenced to a year in the cooler for setting another
stuffer’s beard on fire. Assigned to a refrigerator in the DEW Line station at
Moose Landing. Sparks has got him on the intercom.”

Bigtoes took the
microphone. “Tanglefoot, this is Bigtoes,” he said.

“Big deal,” said a grumpy
voice with a head cold.

“Listen, Tanglefoot,” said
Bigtoes, “in less than seven minutes Santa will be flying right over where you
are. Warn the grownups not to shoot him down.”

“Tough,” said Tanglefoot
petulantly. “You know, old Santa gave yours truly a pretty raw deal.”

“Six minutes, Tanglefoot.”

“Listen,” said
Tanglefoot. “Old Valentine Woody is ho-ho-hoing around with that ‘jollier than
thou’ attitude of his, see? So as a joke I tamp my pipe with the tip of his
beard. It went up like a Christmas tree.”

“Tanglefoot—”

“Yours truly threw the
bucket of water that saved his life,” said Tanglefoot. “I should have got a
medal.”

“You’ll get your medal!”
shouted Bigtoes. “Just save Santa.”

Tanglefoot sneezed four
times. “Okay,” he said at last. “Do or die for Santa. I know the guy on
duty—Myron Smith. He’s always in here raiding the cold cuts. But he’s not the
kind that would believe a six-inch elf with a head cold.”

“Let me talk to him then,”
said Bigtoes. “But move— you’ve got only four minutes.”

Tanglefoot signed off.
Would the tiny elf win his race against the clock and avoid the fate of most
elves who revealed themselves to grownups—being flattened with the first object
that came to hand? And if he did, what would Bigtoes say to Smith? Grownups—suspicious,
short of imagination, afraid—grownups were difficult enough to reason with
under ideal circumstances. But what could you say to a grownup with his head
stuck in a refrigerator?

An enormous squawk came
out of the intercom, toppling Sparks over backward in his chair. “Hello there,
Myron,” said Bigtoes as calmly as he could. “My name is Rory Bigtoes. I’m one
of Santa’s little helpers.”

Silence. The hostile
silence of a grownup thinking. “Yeah? Yeah?” said Smith at last. “How do I know
this isn’t some Commie trick? You bug our icebox, you plant a little pinko
squirt to feed me some garbage about Santa coming over and then, whammo, you
slip the big one by us, nuclear warhead and all, winging its way into
Heartland, U. S. A.”

“Myron,” pleaded Bigtoes.
“We’re talking about Santa Claus, the one who always brought you and the other
good little boys and girls toys at Christmas.”

“What’s he done for me
lately?” said Smith unpleasantly. “And hey! I wrote him once asking for a
Slugger Nolan Official Baseball Mitt. Do you know what I got?”

“An inflatable rubber
duck,” said Bigtoes quickly.

Silence. The profound
silence of a thunderstruck grownup. Smith’s voice had an amazed belief in it. “Yeah,”
he said. “Yeah.”

Pit Stop Number One. A
December cornfield in Iowa blazing with landing lights. As thousands of elfin
eyes watched on their television screens, crews of elves in coveralls changed
the runners on Santa’s sleigh, packed fresh toys aboard, and chipped the ice
from the reindeer antlers. The camera panned to one side where Santa stood out
of the wind, sipping on a hot buttered rum. As the camera dollied in on him,
the jolly old man, his beard and eyebrows caked with frost, his cheeks as red
as apples, broke into a ho-ho-ho and raised his glass in a toast.

Sitting before the
television at Security headquarters, a smiling Director General Hardnoggin
raised his thimble-mug of ale. “My Santa, right or wrong,” he said.

Security Chief Bigtoes
raised his glass. He wanted to think of a new toast. Crouchback was under guard
and Carlotta and Brassbottom had fled to the Underwood. But he wanted to remind
the Director General that SHAFT and the desire for something better still
remained. Was automation the answer? Would machines finally free the elves to
handcraft toys again? Bigtoes didn’t know. He did know that times were
changing. They would never be the same. He raised his glass, but the right
words escaped him and he missed his turn.

Charity Nosegay raised
her glass. “Yes, Virginia,” she said, using the popular abbreviation for
another elf toast; “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Hardnoggin turned and
looked at her with a smile. “You have a beautiful voice, Miss Nosegay,” he
said. “Have you ever considered being in the talkies?”

By the second week of December, when
they light up the giant fir tree behind the statue of a golden Prometheus
overlooking the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, Christmas in New York
has got you by the throat.

Close to five hundred street-corner
Santas (temporarily sober and none too happy about it) have been ringing bells
since the day after Thanksgiving; the support pillars on Macy’s main selling
floor have been dolled up like candy canes since Hallowe’en; the tipping season
arrives in the person of your apartment-house super, all smiles and open-palmed
and suddenly available to fix the leaky pipes you’ve complained about since
July; total strangers insist not only that you have a nice day but that you be
of good cheer on top of it; and your Con Ed bill says Happy Holidays at the top
of the page in a festive red-and-green dot-matrix.