‘Chronos’ Christmas’
Copyright © 2012 by Rhea Rose.
Electronic edition published by Rainwood Press June 2012
A version of this story appeared in Tesseracts, edited by Judith Merril, Press Porcepic,Toronto, Ontario, 1985, and Christmas Forever, edited by David Hartwell, Tor, New York, 1993.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover:
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CHRONOS’ CHRISTMAS
By
Rhea Rose
Any minute, two more kids would be arriving at Daycare. Two replacements at once. That was unusual. Normally we arrived one at a time. Two would give us a small advantage over Deemi’s Daycare unit, but I’d already decided not to keep them both. I’d give one to Deemi. That would make for fair play, and I figured that this year my unit could still beat Deemi’s to Christmas.
Three of us sat in different corners of the large activity room, across from Ceep who filled an entire wall of the pentagonal room. Except for his flashing red eye and the blue glow from his vidscreen, we waited in the dark; it was better for the arrivals of the replacements, less of a shock for them.
I could hear Snuks sucking her thumb, and I tried to see where she was hiding. She must have noticed, because she leaned out of the shadows and into the vidscreen’s blue glow, looking eerie. Her round eyes made contact with mine.
Ceep’s red eye, located at the other end of the room where Geebo waited, became a steady red.
“They’re coming,” I said to the others.
“Chronos?”
It was Ceep. “Here,” I answered.
“Stand by for replacement 1313M and replacement 1315M, both chronological four.”
“Double chrono four?” I asked. I thought that was strange. I went over to Ceep and touched him for a pause and repee. He repeated, and I’d heard the computer correctly. Chrono fours, two of them. Snuks, Geebo and I had all arrived when we were five, and as far as I knew the kids at the other unit had all arrived when they were five, too. This Christmas I would be nine and Snuks would be six. This was her first Christmas at Daycare. “We’re ready here, Ceep,” I said. Instantly, above our heads, pink finger-thin laze shot across the room. It was a soothing, hypnotic color, and I had to walk away for a moment. The beam began to pulse, expanding in all directions and filling the room with a warm sleepy glow. A low hum caused vibrations in the floor and walls. I looked over at Snuks, her hiding place was exposed by the light, and she was really pulling on her thumb. She’d never seen the arrival of new kids.
At the centre of the room appeared a blue dot as big as a fingernail. It hung in mid air, and then another appeared beside the first. They grew simultaneously. Snuks was engrossed by the process, or maybe she was just affected they the light. Whichever the case, she appeared to be watching very carefully. The miniature dots started to take shape the tiny human forms looked like holos suspended just above the floor. They stayed that way for a moment, and then quickly grew. The pink light intensified, became brighter, and a sudden white flash blinded us for an instant.
“How long?” I asked.
“Two hours before they are fully awake,” Ceep replied.
I heard Geebo set down the gadget he’d been tinkering with while the new kids arrived. He’d been preparing the gadget for Christmas, but now that the replacements were here, he was more interested in them. He began looking the new arrivals over, checking their pockets, cutting the Velcro from their clothes and stuffing the strips into his own pockets. Ceep’s red light shone in Geebo’s hair making it almost the same color as mine. It was the only time Geebo and I ever resembled each other. We were the same age, but he was a head shorter than me. His dark eyes were almost black, while mine were pale, almost colorless. I was the only one at Daycare with freckles.
I could see that Geebo was completely absorbed with the sleeping kids, while Snuks sat back in the shadows like she always did when something was new to her. There was little to do except wait for the arrivals to wake up so that we could orient them to Daycare and Christmas, which would be the next day. Deemi and his unit would be anxious to beat us to it, if they could. But we were ready, too.
“You gotta see these kids, Chronos,” Geebo said. He came over to me, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes and exposing a thin, raised white line that ran horizontally across his forehead – a scar from a gadget that had backfired on him when he was younger. Geebo hadn’t been much of a talker when he first came to Daycare, and after he was killed the first time, he spoke even less. The only time I’d ever seen him excited was over a new gadget he’d created and now, with these new kids. He tugged my sleeve insistently.
I followed him, and we crouched over the small bodies. He pulled a tube of glow grease out of his pocket, squirted some into his palms, and then rubbed them rapidly together.
Snuks crawled over from her corner. Her long golden hair, curling delicately at the ends, became blue as she passed through the light cast by the vidscreen at her end of the room. Sitting cross-legged, she looked at the sleeping arrivals, then at me. One of her fingers was curled over he nose as she sucked her thumb. Geebo had made her a warm-doll which she held by its head in the crook of her arm. I thought the doll was dumb, with its gaping mouth exposing its large front tooth, but Snuks would fight anyone who tried to take it from her. She took her thumb out of her mouth. ‘Ith that how I came here?”
“Yeah, ‘cept you were a pink dot, not blue,” I said.
“Why?”
“Cause you’re a girl.”
“Why am I the only girl?” she insisted.
“I asked Ceep about girls once,” I told her. She shifted her warm-doll from oone arm to the other. “He said that girls used to be a lot more popular, but for a long time now girls haven’t been requested as much.”
“Why am I here, then?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Doth Theep know?” She looked from me to Ceep.
I was relieved when Ceep didn’t say anything. Sometimes he’d give answers but other times he wouldn’t, but by that time he’d only told Deemi and me about girls like Snuks. He said that she was a longlifer. All girls were. It’s the way the dults wanted them. When she was ready to leave Daycare the dults would eventually trade her to Offworlders. She wouldn’t get to be immortal like me and Geebo and the others at Daycare, like the dults. Ceep told me not to tell Snuks just yet. When I asked Ceep who the Offworlders were and why they weren’t immortal, he just stayed quiet.
“Look.” Geebo elbowed me. He grinned and held a green glowing hand over the face of each replacement. I was surprised to see their faces were identical, and I had a feeling these two would be special. Christmas, and now the replacements, had me excited and a little nervous.
They awoke earlier than Ceep had calculated and sat quietly in the same place they had been deposited. Fair- haired and shy, they looked up at Ceep. He was talking to them, telling them about Daycare.
“Since the skirmishes with the Offworlders first began more than a century ago, it became economically unfeasible to restore Daycare to its original standards. When those in charge of maintenance were destroyed in a particularly violent encounter with the Offworlders, the dults, who long ago lost the ability to nurture their young, also lost the maintenance knowledge needed to make sure I continued to perform the task
for them. Now it is entirely up to me to make the necessary adjustments in both of you if you are to fulfill the role the dults have prescribed for you.”
“What adjustments?” one of the replacements asked Ceep.
“Those cannot be determined until you have spent more time at Daycare,” he replied.
I knew that Ceep was talking about the times they’d be killed. Any desired abilities they displayed before their first three deaths would be “sharpened” by him.
Ceep continued: “A basic foundation of knowledge is given to all of you before you come to Daycare, but the dults can never be sure, any more, what your pre-Daycare knowledge along with your adjustments and experiences at Daycare will result in. It is during your time in Daycare that your intrinsic abilities will – or will not – manifest.”
One of the little kids turned to me. “What do you call him?” he asked.
“Ceep.”
“Why do you call him Ceep?”
“He makes a noise that sounds like ‘ceep.’ But forget him,” I said. If these two were going to participate in Christmas, we would have to orient them to Daycare pretty quickly. Officially, Christmas started at 1900 hours, now only a few hours away.
“One of you has to join Deemi’s Daycare unit. Now who wants to go?” I looked from one to the other.
“Does Deemi have one of those?” One of them pointed to Ceep.
“Yeah. His unit’s identical to this one, and Ceep is over there,