Nikolas Claus, Space Explorer! Pt 7
Santa Claus was grateful for a few things.
He was grateful that he had made a promise to himself to tell Mrs. Claus he loved her every time he saw her, and that he had honored that promise. He was grateful that he only drank alcohol once a year (he regretted that it had to be sherry, but he realised if an entire species of human was going to give away enough alcohol to fill a small ocean it wasn’t going to be something they enjoyed drinking themselves). He was also grateful he was in what was obviously a Room, and not a featureless void in the middle of space.
It had to be a Room. It was conspicuous in its Room-ish qualities. There was a wall that wore Pictures, which spoke plainly of a desire to be appreciated, or at least noticed. There was a rug in the middle of the floor, suggesting that the ankle-deep carpets hadn't been enough. He was lying on a mattress. No, he wasn't. He was lying in a Bed. A Bed with a big fluffy blanket that does nothing to regulate temperature, pillows that were fluffy but did nothing for neck support, and a mattress that was so polite it scarcely dared come into contact or make any show of substance for fear of inappropriate touching. Only one person was left in existence who could possibly decorate a room like this without irony or self-consciousness.
She was sitting in the corner, humming a pleasant tune to herself.
"Good morning, Tooth."
"Good morning, Nikolas. Did you sleep well?"
"I did. How long was I asleep?"
"Just a few hours. Your body has been through a lot, though. You should probably take it easy."
“What happened to me?"
“You were caught in a wormhole and thrown into a random point in space and time, which just happened to be my living room, five minutes before you entered the wormhole.”
“Really?”
”Yes, really.” She paused. “You’re very lucky.”
Lucky? Thought Nik. Keeble’s eyes flashed before him, filled with mischievous malice. The Rabbit’s eyes also floated in front of him, filled with hard edged introspection.
”I think someone may have stacked my dice.” He tried for a smile, but the effort made him feel weak and shivery.
“Wait here. I’ll go get some tea.”
Nikolas lay in bed, waiting. What would happen? Would she come back? Would the tea be poison? Would she be accompanied by a zombie? Would there be something in her magical laboratory (he was sure she kept one on her, somewhere) go 'ping', thus distracting her from the task of fetching him liquid substance? He reached a pale, gaunt hand under his mattress, trying to brush up against his baton. He found nothing.
Presently, Tooth returned with Tea. It was brown and a little bit grainy towards the end, but free of poisons and quite delicious. Tooth watched him expectantly.
"So?"
"So... what?"
"So, what's happened in the universe? I've been so busy, I've hardly looked outside in... oh, I don't know, it must have been months since I left!"
"It's been at least three thousand years, Tooth." Nik smiled sadly.
"No, that's not true," she protested. "I hung a calendar! I've marked off every day, too." Tooth wheeled and pointed an accusing finger at the calendar. The stale, moistureless air had preserved it well, but it was still brown around the edges - and grey in the middle.
"Well, I'll be." she said. "Three thousand years?" she mouthed.
"At least. Now that I think of it, we were watching the missile for quite some time, too."
"The missile?" she shrieked. There was a lot of intonation in Tooth's voice, born from a millennia of time spent alone in a madwoman's palace shaped with admittedly beautiful acoustics. The shock poured forth from her mouth, rebounded as a shade of surprise before fading away as an eloquent peal of indignation.
"Yes," said Nik. "Rabbit blew up Earth."
"You mean the Easter Bunny."
"Oh, is that what he was?"
"Santa, what's gotten into you?"
"I don't remember. I just barely remember being Santa now. It never occurred to me that he was the Easter Bunny."
"Well, he's probably not any more." She tapped a finger to a pursed lip. "This bears investigating, Santa."
"Nikolas."
"Santa." she flounced out of the room.
Tooth's palace might have been described in a real estate's handbook as "a love affair with marble, filled with bright, spacious rooms and a quaint festive appeal". Deconstructed, the phrase "love affair" can mean a romantic and sentimental attachment, or a "Lady Chatterley", with lots of grunting and moaning and, in this case, an excessive amount of marble caking every spare surface. The marble was finished in marble, and varnished with marble. The bright spacious rooms referred to the luminescent state a cube with a marble interior can take on when you dispense with preconceived notions about "Furniture" and having a use for each room. The quaint festive appeal referred solely to the insanity of the owner, the builder and any prospective buyers.
That is, Tooth's palace was big, and shiny, and real estate magazines are very good for propping up furniture. If you live in a marble palace, and enjoy living in it, you're probably reading a much classier form of literature, but all of it is good for buffing the shine on your marble.
They stopped in a garden. A row of quaint marble trees escorted them down a marble path, which stopped at a (marble) pool which was ensconced in little marble flagstones (with, as one might expect, a sort of festive appeal).
Tooth drew out a wand. It was a wand because sticks do not glisten, are not generally covered in ribbons with sequins on them, and it had a star on the end. It wobbled.
"Show me the magical rabbit's most recent habitat, please." she smiled brightly. "And be quick about it."
The pool mulled this over, but seemed willing to co-operate.
There was a patch of blank space.
"Oh my," she observed. "It seems to be missing." She tapped the pool with the wand. It didn't ripple, but instead rotated around a few degrees. Sitting in the black void of space was a red speck. Nik realised now that it had been built to look like his sleigh back on earth - just a few hundred times larger. Where he might once have been expected to sit was now the bridge, complete with a huge glass dome providing 270-degree vision. Nik whistled. "That would be my space ship".
"Are those zombies?" Tooth asked.
"Not unless they've learned to fly,"
She didn't respond verbally, but the pond focussed on the hull of the ship. The leathery-green pallor it had acquired confirmed that the zombies were still present.
"How did they survive?" yelled Nik. "Did the rabbit die for nothing?"
"Attention - I didn't die, Nik."
"Who was that?" asked Tooth.
"It sounds like the Rabbit, but I thought he was still on the planet,"
"Attention - you can phase through keyholes and survive drops through chimneys to the bottom of the planet. Are you really that surprised?"
"Where are you, Rabbit?"
The pond rippled.
The Rabbit and Keeble jostled each other for position.
"Do not touch my master's console!" barked the tiny man.
"Don't interfere with me, Elf." snarled the rabbit, brandishing the wire he'd wrenched out of the computer. It sparked menacingly.
"What are you doing?" Keeble wailed.
"I'm getting the ship's communicator to track Nikolas."
"Who?"
"Your master - Santa."
"My master is Santa?" asked Keeble dreamily. "I met Santa!"
The rabbit grabbed his spanner from the console and smacked Keeble across the back of the head. It left a nasty bruise. Rabbit made a mental note to put him in the medical bay. He made a second mental note to blame his injuries on a stray zombie.
With the wires readjusted and some of his own equipment added in, the ship's communicator was now capable of reaching somewhere other than the bathroom or low orbit. The rabbit pressed a few switches at random and sat back on his haunches and waited.
After some time, he plugged in the console.
"Spaceship to Dreamland?"
"This is Nikolas."
"Glad to make contact with you, Dreamland."
"What's happened? How did you survive?"
"I blinked."
"Oh, of course. You 'blinked'."
"Its one of the perks of being a myth. We can move long distances in the blink of an eye."
"You're a myth? So, because you don't exist, you can do whatever?"
"Have you forgotten?"
"Pretend for a moment that I have."
"Fine. We, being you, me, and I assume Tooth is with you, are creatures of Myth. 10,000 years ago, a witch started buying teeth from small children for her experiments. When she died, the children wanted her back, and she was elevated through story-telling and reputation to a new life as the Tooth Fairy. 8,000 years ago, I was crushed when a burrow I'd been digging for my mate was collapsed. When I woke up, I was on a tropical island with a functioning knowledge of English and confectionery. And I believe a mere few hundred years after that, you died a fairly peaceful death in Myra. A year later, you were sent back to us to continue giving out all the gifts you so loved to give in life."
“Oh, rabbit,” said Tooth. “You were always so good at bringing people up to date.”
"So I'm dead?"
"You were. You aren't now. And its highly unlikely you'll die again."
"Am I a ghost?"
"No. You're something new. You're a creature created and sustained by the belief of other humans."
"But there aren't any humans left, are there?"
"I don't know. Perhaps these humans... remember us, enough to sustain us.
Tooth used the break in conversation to voice her opinion. "If they can remember us, maybe we can save them."
"No."
"Why not?" she sounded indignant. "There's still some vestige of innocence in every human. Some goodness. There has to be!"
"These aren't humans. Not really. Maybe there was innocence in the first humans to enter the limited warp field, but since then they've reproduced. Most of these humans had never seen Earth. And they don't speak English. They just have a sort of vague genetic memory, I suppose."
"Is it safe for you to rejoin us?"
"I can't blink to you."
"Why not?"
"When I blinked, they followed me. I think these zombie-humans have been saturated in the warp field for so long they can latch on to any tomfoolery I can cook up. It was all I could do to force them back out on to the hull of the ship."
"Can you move the ship?"
"Maybe. The Elf-"
"Who?" asked Tooth, but no-one answered.
"-has rigged up some kind of containment field outside the ship to hold the zombie-humans in place and give them enough air to breathe."
"Why?"
"He disagrees with my theories."
"What shall we do?"
"I'm going to fly the ship into the sun. Its the only way to get rid of these creatures. They're a danger to all of us."
"Never!" shrieked Tooth.
"Its the only way, Tooth! Let me do this thing. I'm happy to die if it means these creatures perish."
Tooth gave a wild screech and waved her wand. It seemed to have changed ever so slightly, as though behind the plastic star and gaudy pink ribbons there was a far more sinister entity at work, an entity that remembered midnight skies and black moons and the dark rites and the real reason a witch collects a children's tooth. Nikolas stared transfixed by the power that arced from the wand to the pool.
They Will Come To Me, She Said. They Will Come To Me And I Will Set Them Free.
And the universe quivered in acknowledgment.
"What are you doing, Tooth?" demanded Nik, angrily. "What's going on?"
Tooth straightened her glasses. Nik hadn't looked at Tooth properly until this moment. She appeared to be a middle-aged woman with an infantile wardrobe, but now there was more. Her skin was leathery, not so much wrinkled as thoroughly plowed. Her hair was pulled back in a sensible bun under a conical hat, but the hair itself was grey going on to silver, and seemed electrified, constantly straining against the imprisoning hair tie. And underneath the pink dress and the gossamer wings, she wore black, knee-high stiletto heels. Nik tried to make sense of it. This was Tooth. She was the tooth fairy. It was written on every surface of her body, like a blank canvas. Only, not a blank canvas...
"Nikolas Claus, sometimes Father Christmas,” she announced curtly. “We Have Work To Do."
Her tone brooked no opposition. "What can I do for you, mistress?"
"We must prepare for the arrival of the humans. I have great plans for them. I Will Not Be Denied." she trilled gaily. "Oh my, I haven't done this for quite some time. I miss the clarity, you know?"
Nikolas stared dumbfounded at the woman. She was clearly insane.
"Straighten Up, Young Man."
Keeble stirred in the medical bay. His head ached like a drumskin might after a rehearsal session with a thousand hyperactive pre-school children.
"Stupid fat rabbit," he moaned. "Destroying my head for what? So he can kill what is already dead."
The Rabbit ran by his door. Keeble quailed with fear. A split second later, led on by Keeble's involuntary sobbing, the Rabbit returned to his room.
"Keeblei'msorryihityouintheheadbutheyyoupatchedupoksomaybeyoucanhelpmecrash
thisshipbecauseToothisamadwomanandshe'stryingtodoomthisuniverse..."
"You are crazier than I am."
Rabbit paused for breath.
"Maybe. But Tooth is crazy. She's done something to this ship with magic. And I really need to crash this ship. Because of the zombies."
"No."
Rabbit raised his spanner and shook it.
"RABBIT IN THE MEDICAL BAY WITH THE SPANNER! NOT MY PRETTY HEAD!"
"The only way to live right now, Keeble, is to do the right thing and help me get control of this ship back."
Keeble led the Rabbit to a disused back room. "This is the door to the Engine Room. Do not touch what I tell you not to touch."
Rabbit nodded his assent.
Keeble descended into the bowels of the ship. A massive crystal nested in the hub of a circular room. In concentric circles around it, there were wires and cables, pipes and pistons, gears and shafts, and tiny flints sparking off tiny rock. The ship's engine appeared to be an art piece entitled "Technology Through The Ages", a testament to the increasing fervor and understanding with which the first elves had built it.
"Did you make all this?" asked the Rabbit.
"No," whispered Keeble, a tear forming in the corner of his blackened eye. "I inherited it."
"Well, now we're going to destroy it," hissed the rabbit gleefully. "Help me do it." He clenched his spanner.
"Silly Rabbit. Sticks are for Trips."
"I beg your pardon?" he began, but Keeble had already bowled him to the ground with a spare piece of pipe.
"What are you doing?" the rabbit growled. "We need to stop this thing."
"And we will," said Keeble primly. "But I will simply turn it off so that it does not resist gravity anymore. We will be pulled into the sun. We will not," he said, eyeing Rabbit's spanner, "destroy it like dirty zombies."
The elf leaped from gear to spinning gear, across the cables and to the heart of the crystal. He paused as he drew closer, impressed by the enormity of his task and the magnitude of the crystalline edifice. He turned to face the rabbit, illuminated in unearthly glow. He raised a hand as if to wave. The rabbit waved tersely back.
"Do what you have to do."
"I planned to." The elf touched the crystal with his pinky finger. It seared his skin, but he did not seem to mind. The ship lurched.
"What have you done?"
"What I had to do. Silly Rabbit."
The ship began to shake as its flagging engines were rejuvenated. Rabbit braced himself against the wall, Keeble against the floor. Both felt their skin beginning to flap as the ship punched a hole through the solar system.
Tooth sat across from Nik, folding her legs on the chaise lounges she'd procured. They were not, as far as he could tell, made out of marble, and so he had no idea where they had come from.
"So you see, its simple. When the zombies arrive, we will have had plenty of time to prepare a method of containing them and put my plan into action. Within three generations we should have restored them to their initial genetic condition, and in five, there should be no trace of the warp's effect on their cells. We could even have rudimentary speech and culture reintegrated to the human psyche by then, if we're lucky."
"You really believe this will work?"
She held up a tiny glimmering shard of white. "I've been here, alone, for six thousand years with nothing but my thoughts. And I've been thinking mostly of this. Belief has powered our existence throughout the milennia, and my belief should sustain this."
They sat for a while longer, basking in the glow of the object. Nik felt something brush up against his leg. It was a terrier, with a long shaggy coat.
"Is this yours?"
Tooth looked dumbfounded. "I don't own a dog."
The dog yapped happily and wagged its tail.
Nik looked around him. They were sitting on a balcony overlooking the garden with Tooth's scrying pond, and in three directions there were nothing but long featureless corridors which would have echoed loud enough to reach their ears. Yet this dog had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
"Its wearing a name-tag," he read aloud. "Murphy."
"What a funny name for a dog."
The ship screeched to a halt nearly an hour later.
"What did you do?" screamed Rabbit. "What did you do?"
"What needed to be done. Keeble is a genius, you know."
There was a pause.
"If you're a genius, could you stick to proper grammar?"
"Don't be snarky. This ship is too fine a creation to be plowed into the sun to suit a little bunny rabbit's death wish."
"I don't-"
"Hush, you. As I was saying. The master will take care of us."
"Where is your master, though? I'll bet you don't even know. This is all just a shot in the dark, isn't it?" The rabbit gloated.
"No," said the elf calmly. "He's on the planet drinking tea. We're plowing into the atmosphere above the complex where he is waiting."
The rabbit blinked out of the engine room. When Keeble found him, he was standing at the helm of the spaceship, deeply engaged in a staring contest with a zombie on the viewing screen.
"Too late for you, human" he jeered. "You'll burn up on re-entry."
"No, sir. I have seen to that. There is a protective field 20 feet out from this spaceship. They will be safe. Humankind is safe from you, Rabbit."
The rabbit glared at him. "I wish you death, elf."
Keeble jutted his chin forward. "I welcome it."
Death did not respond to his invitation. When Keeble opened a tremulous eye, the helm was empty.
"Thank goodness. Computer, activate the protective field. A distance of twenty feet, if you please. Ensure no human being is harmed in re-entry."
The computer's humdingers clacked their assent.
Tooth drained the last of her tea and stood up, dusting imaginary particles away from her skirt. "Well, we had best check on the ship before we activate the stasis chambers. I wonder how far its come along?"
"Quite a long way, I imagine."
"No, it will take years to reach us. We'll need every one to test my theory."
"Well, you have two minutes."
Tooth followed the line of Nik's pointing finger. A massive red sleigh was closing in on the palace. Murphy barked at the ship. Tooth began to cry.
"We're doomed," she said flatly. "Unless you can hold them off for a thousand years while I work in the labs night and day, they'll simply swarm us and gobble us up."
"Aren't we immortal?"
"Yes. We will live forever in their digestive systems."
The ship landed in the courtyard. The rabbit appeared next to Nik, shaking and holding his fists up in a fighting position.
"You look ridiculous."
"Said the fat man wearing a red suit in a tropical climate" retorted the rabbit.
"How many are there?"
"As many humans as can be created by a group of bored rich humans with no need to eat or sleep over a course of three thousand years with no space constraints."
"A few million?"
"Rounds out at three billion, actually. They breed like..." the rabbit quietened. "They bred. And reproduced. They're certainly hungry now, though," he said brightly. "You should take the first billion. I could take the second billion."
"Third?"
"Tooth. She's still good in a fight."
The zombies poured out on the grass. Murphy barked at them happily. Tooth turned away. Nik could see her hair uncoiling, like a python just waking up. As she did so, the palace seemed to whip itself into a frenzy around her. The seats faded away into nothingness as room after room collapsed, bringing with it a legion of vats, all filled with Nik-knew-not-what.
"If they're going to kill me, they can't have the palace." she declared. "I've collapsed the palace down to just these grounds. Everything I have is here. If they win, they won't gain anything from it. They'll just starve."
"How did she do that?" Nik queried.
"She's still a witch under that hat, Nik." said the Rabbit. "Creating magical lairs and collapsing them is just something she does. She used to have this neat trick with gingerbread. We ate so much of it one time she got herself sick." He seemed to be lost in a daydream. "Those were the days."
Nik felt that if Tooth was busy preparing her scorched earth policy, and rabbit was reliving past glories, there was something he ought to do, too. He reached a mitten into the front of his suit and brought out an ornate gold crucifix. He hadn't really touched it since he'd been a bishop, and he doubted there was anyone else left on earth - make that, in the universe - who would recognise it for what it was. He kissed it and murmured a prayer.
"Lord,
I've been busy. I've sort of ignored why I'm here.
I'm sure you brought me to where I am for a purpose,
but I never thought to find out what it was.
Please, defend me and show me your way. Let me do your will.
I make this prayer in Christ my Lord,
AMEN."
The rabbit fixed a beady little eye on his comrade. "Holy cow, Nik. You're a Christian?"
"I was a bishop before I became Santa," he said. "Why wouldn't I still be?"
"So you met Jesus, did you?" asked the Rabbit.
"No, not really." he admitted.
"So, you died, you didn't go to heaven, and you're reincarnated. Doesn't that challenge your faith a little?"
"Not really." Nik shifted back on to his right leg. "As I see it, I didn't really die."
"Really?"
"No... After everyone else left me, I sort of got up and started walking. Didn't stop till I got to the North Pole."
"You didn't die?"
"I guess not," he said. "There isn't much of a gap between me finishing up being a bishop and starting being Santa Claus. I don't think I had time to go there."
"You simply nerver died, huh?” muttered the Rabbit. "Well, I'll be."
What happened next was a moment etched in a certain kind of history book as a jolly great bloodbath. The zombies, plopping off the ship like so many barnacles, converged on the three friends and were mowed down by Tooth's wicked incantations, Nik's baton and the Rabbit's furious spanner and occasional "Murphy Throw Maneuver". Eventually, however, the three were separated in the melee, pushed to separate ends of the courtyard, and worn down beyond even the ability to blink as the hours went by. Nikolas, resolute, stood his ground, crucifix flashing in the sun as he swung his baton about his head. He heard a barking noise at his feet. Of all the people, only Murphy seemed to have the freedom to move around the courtyard.
"At least you're here to help me, little friend," said Nik, fending off a human's fist.
The dog barked in agreement and ran directly under Nik's next footfall. Nik tripped and was pressed backwards by a surge of humans.
He raised his baton above his head, fighting the burning sensation in his arms. There was a -clink-, as the curved end of the baton caught on the lid of a vat. Nik groaned. With a desparate tug, he tore through the lid of the vat and brought the baton up against the face of a human who had gotten too close. The human reeled and stepped back into the mass of humans. He swung his baton again, staring glumly at the baton moving, it seemed, through molasses as the humans simply stepped back out of the way. He turned to check on the vat. He couldn’t quite see the contents of the container, but at least whatever strange chemical compound Tooth had been experimenting with was intact.
Murphy yipped happily.
Nik felt something pattering on his shoulder. Small white flakes were dropping out of the vat. They were like tiny pebbles.
Or like tiny teeth.
A human, gaunt, pale and sickly, bit at Nik's shoulder, fancying as he did so that he was biting down on a juicy steak or an animal's flesh. Instead, he made contact with the teeth, and swallowed. He fell to the ground and spasmed.
"The teeth?"
The Tooth Fairy blinked back to his side. She was the worse for wear. The pink in her clothes had been mostly replaced by black bile and crimson blood. The rabbit, grimy and dirty from his emergency crash course in kick-boxing appeared also.
"The teeth... one of them came in contact with a tooth and it just fell to the ground."
The Tooth Fairy blanched.
The Rabbit cleared his throat. "Well, yes. They would. Tooth here has been sitting alone for six thousand years, probably just thinking about teeth. You know how she was always on about teeth being the way you could tell how little kids were still innocent? Well, the teeth probably believe her now. So when a big mean human comes along, the tooth reacts by forcing them back into their innocent state."
"Huh?"
"Throw more teeth at them, it’ll do us all some good." the Rabbit encouraged him.
Nik grabbed a handful of teeth. They buzzed a little in his hands. He threw them in a wide arc. Each one bolted towards a human, striking them in the chest, the face, the arms... each one burrowed within the human with a tiny little burst of white light, and each human sunk to the ground, their hungry, vicious countenance replaced by the sweet repose of a resting infant. At last, the courtyard was filled with emaciated six foot tall bodies, all gurgling contentedly and sucking their thumbs.
Tooth spoke at last. "I thought... I was afraid it wouldn't work. I didn't dream it would work like this. That's why I was so sure we'd need to restrain them, and test it, and ... I've grown silly while I was away, haven't I?"
"Well," said the Rabbit. "Your insanity helped saved the day."
"Yours too," said Nik, tousling his ears.
"We need to take them back home," said Tooth. "But the palace doesn't fly."
"My ship ought to. Unless you blew up the engines, Rabbit." Nik let out a jolly laugh. Rabbit didn't meet his eye.
"What do we do? Just load them up?"
"Actually, there's enough room to hold presents for all the children of the world in the back," said Nik. "They should have plenty of room. Tooth could even move some stasis pods up there to make it more comfortable."
Tooth sighed. "So, we just hop on spaceship and drive back to Earth, huh?"
"No," said Nik. "Three friends, a spaceship, and no deadline? We could take a detour. A working holiday.”
THE END.
He was grateful that he had made a promise to himself to tell Mrs. Claus he loved her every time he saw her, and that he had honored that promise. He was grateful that he only drank alcohol once a year (he regretted that it had to be sherry, but he realised if an entire species of human was going to give away enough alcohol to fill a small ocean it wasn’t going to be something they enjoyed drinking themselves). He was also grateful he was in what was obviously a Room, and not a featureless void in the middle of space.
It had to be a Room. It was conspicuous in its Room-ish qualities. There was a wall that wore Pictures, which spoke plainly of a desire to be appreciated, or at least noticed. There was a rug in the middle of the floor, suggesting that the ankle-deep carpets hadn't been enough. He was lying on a mattress. No, he wasn't. He was lying in a Bed. A Bed with a big fluffy blanket that does nothing to regulate temperature, pillows that were fluffy but did nothing for neck support, and a mattress that was so polite it scarcely dared come into contact or make any show of substance for fear of inappropriate touching. Only one person was left in existence who could possibly decorate a room like this without irony or self-consciousness.
She was sitting in the corner, humming a pleasant tune to herself.
"Good morning, Tooth."
"Good morning, Nikolas. Did you sleep well?"
"I did. How long was I asleep?"
"Just a few hours. Your body has been through a lot, though. You should probably take it easy."
“What happened to me?"
“You were caught in a wormhole and thrown into a random point in space and time, which just happened to be my living room, five minutes before you entered the wormhole.”
“Really?”
”Yes, really.” She paused. “You’re very lucky.”
Lucky? Thought Nik. Keeble’s eyes flashed before him, filled with mischievous malice. The Rabbit’s eyes also floated in front of him, filled with hard edged introspection.
”I think someone may have stacked my dice.” He tried for a smile, but the effort made him feel weak and shivery.
“Wait here. I’ll go get some tea.”
Nikolas lay in bed, waiting. What would happen? Would she come back? Would the tea be poison? Would she be accompanied by a zombie? Would there be something in her magical laboratory (he was sure she kept one on her, somewhere) go 'ping', thus distracting her from the task of fetching him liquid substance? He reached a pale, gaunt hand under his mattress, trying to brush up against his baton. He found nothing.
Presently, Tooth returned with Tea. It was brown and a little bit grainy towards the end, but free of poisons and quite delicious. Tooth watched him expectantly.
"So?"
"So... what?"
"So, what's happened in the universe? I've been so busy, I've hardly looked outside in... oh, I don't know, it must have been months since I left!"
"It's been at least three thousand years, Tooth." Nik smiled sadly.
"No, that's not true," she protested. "I hung a calendar! I've marked off every day, too." Tooth wheeled and pointed an accusing finger at the calendar. The stale, moistureless air had preserved it well, but it was still brown around the edges - and grey in the middle.
"Well, I'll be." she said. "Three thousand years?" she mouthed.
"At least. Now that I think of it, we were watching the missile for quite some time, too."
"The missile?" she shrieked. There was a lot of intonation in Tooth's voice, born from a millennia of time spent alone in a madwoman's palace shaped with admittedly beautiful acoustics. The shock poured forth from her mouth, rebounded as a shade of surprise before fading away as an eloquent peal of indignation.
"Yes," said Nik. "Rabbit blew up Earth."
"You mean the Easter Bunny."
"Oh, is that what he was?"
"Santa, what's gotten into you?"
"I don't remember. I just barely remember being Santa now. It never occurred to me that he was the Easter Bunny."
"Well, he's probably not any more." She tapped a finger to a pursed lip. "This bears investigating, Santa."
"Nikolas."
"Santa." she flounced out of the room.
Tooth's palace might have been described in a real estate's handbook as "a love affair with marble, filled with bright, spacious rooms and a quaint festive appeal". Deconstructed, the phrase "love affair" can mean a romantic and sentimental attachment, or a "Lady Chatterley", with lots of grunting and moaning and, in this case, an excessive amount of marble caking every spare surface. The marble was finished in marble, and varnished with marble. The bright spacious rooms referred to the luminescent state a cube with a marble interior can take on when you dispense with preconceived notions about "Furniture" and having a use for each room. The quaint festive appeal referred solely to the insanity of the owner, the builder and any prospective buyers.
That is, Tooth's palace was big, and shiny, and real estate magazines are very good for propping up furniture. If you live in a marble palace, and enjoy living in it, you're probably reading a much classier form of literature, but all of it is good for buffing the shine on your marble.
They stopped in a garden. A row of quaint marble trees escorted them down a marble path, which stopped at a (marble) pool which was ensconced in little marble flagstones (with, as one might expect, a sort of festive appeal).
Tooth drew out a wand. It was a wand because sticks do not glisten, are not generally covered in ribbons with sequins on them, and it had a star on the end. It wobbled.
"Show me the magical rabbit's most recent habitat, please." she smiled brightly. "And be quick about it."
The pool mulled this over, but seemed willing to co-operate.
There was a patch of blank space.
"Oh my," she observed. "It seems to be missing." She tapped the pool with the wand. It didn't ripple, but instead rotated around a few degrees. Sitting in the black void of space was a red speck. Nik realised now that it had been built to look like his sleigh back on earth - just a few hundred times larger. Where he might once have been expected to sit was now the bridge, complete with a huge glass dome providing 270-degree vision. Nik whistled. "That would be my space ship".
"Are those zombies?" Tooth asked.
"Not unless they've learned to fly,"
She didn't respond verbally, but the pond focussed on the hull of the ship. The leathery-green pallor it had acquired confirmed that the zombies were still present.
"How did they survive?" yelled Nik. "Did the rabbit die for nothing?"
"Attention - I didn't die, Nik."
"Who was that?" asked Tooth.
"It sounds like the Rabbit, but I thought he was still on the planet,"
"Attention - you can phase through keyholes and survive drops through chimneys to the bottom of the planet. Are you really that surprised?"
"Where are you, Rabbit?"
The pond rippled.
The Rabbit and Keeble jostled each other for position.
"Do not touch my master's console!" barked the tiny man.
"Don't interfere with me, Elf." snarled the rabbit, brandishing the wire he'd wrenched out of the computer. It sparked menacingly.
"What are you doing?" Keeble wailed.
"I'm getting the ship's communicator to track Nikolas."
"Who?"
"Your master - Santa."
"My master is Santa?" asked Keeble dreamily. "I met Santa!"
The rabbit grabbed his spanner from the console and smacked Keeble across the back of the head. It left a nasty bruise. Rabbit made a mental note to put him in the medical bay. He made a second mental note to blame his injuries on a stray zombie.
With the wires readjusted and some of his own equipment added in, the ship's communicator was now capable of reaching somewhere other than the bathroom or low orbit. The rabbit pressed a few switches at random and sat back on his haunches and waited.
After some time, he plugged in the console.
"Spaceship to Dreamland?"
"This is Nikolas."
"Glad to make contact with you, Dreamland."
"What's happened? How did you survive?"
"I blinked."
"Oh, of course. You 'blinked'."
"Its one of the perks of being a myth. We can move long distances in the blink of an eye."
"You're a myth? So, because you don't exist, you can do whatever?"
"Have you forgotten?"
"Pretend for a moment that I have."
"Fine. We, being you, me, and I assume Tooth is with you, are creatures of Myth. 10,000 years ago, a witch started buying teeth from small children for her experiments. When she died, the children wanted her back, and she was elevated through story-telling and reputation to a new life as the Tooth Fairy. 8,000 years ago, I was crushed when a burrow I'd been digging for my mate was collapsed. When I woke up, I was on a tropical island with a functioning knowledge of English and confectionery. And I believe a mere few hundred years after that, you died a fairly peaceful death in Myra. A year later, you were sent back to us to continue giving out all the gifts you so loved to give in life."
“Oh, rabbit,” said Tooth. “You were always so good at bringing people up to date.”
"So I'm dead?"
"You were. You aren't now. And its highly unlikely you'll die again."
"Am I a ghost?"
"No. You're something new. You're a creature created and sustained by the belief of other humans."
"But there aren't any humans left, are there?"
"I don't know. Perhaps these humans... remember us, enough to sustain us.
Tooth used the break in conversation to voice her opinion. "If they can remember us, maybe we can save them."
"No."
"Why not?" she sounded indignant. "There's still some vestige of innocence in every human. Some goodness. There has to be!"
"These aren't humans. Not really. Maybe there was innocence in the first humans to enter the limited warp field, but since then they've reproduced. Most of these humans had never seen Earth. And they don't speak English. They just have a sort of vague genetic memory, I suppose."
"Is it safe for you to rejoin us?"
"I can't blink to you."
"Why not?"
"When I blinked, they followed me. I think these zombie-humans have been saturated in the warp field for so long they can latch on to any tomfoolery I can cook up. It was all I could do to force them back out on to the hull of the ship."
"Can you move the ship?"
"Maybe. The Elf-"
"Who?" asked Tooth, but no-one answered.
"-has rigged up some kind of containment field outside the ship to hold the zombie-humans in place and give them enough air to breathe."
"Why?"
"He disagrees with my theories."
"What shall we do?"
"I'm going to fly the ship into the sun. Its the only way to get rid of these creatures. They're a danger to all of us."
"Never!" shrieked Tooth.
"Its the only way, Tooth! Let me do this thing. I'm happy to die if it means these creatures perish."
Tooth gave a wild screech and waved her wand. It seemed to have changed ever so slightly, as though behind the plastic star and gaudy pink ribbons there was a far more sinister entity at work, an entity that remembered midnight skies and black moons and the dark rites and the real reason a witch collects a children's tooth. Nikolas stared transfixed by the power that arced from the wand to the pool.
They Will Come To Me, She Said. They Will Come To Me And I Will Set Them Free.
And the universe quivered in acknowledgment.
"What are you doing, Tooth?" demanded Nik, angrily. "What's going on?"
Tooth straightened her glasses. Nik hadn't looked at Tooth properly until this moment. She appeared to be a middle-aged woman with an infantile wardrobe, but now there was more. Her skin was leathery, not so much wrinkled as thoroughly plowed. Her hair was pulled back in a sensible bun under a conical hat, but the hair itself was grey going on to silver, and seemed electrified, constantly straining against the imprisoning hair tie. And underneath the pink dress and the gossamer wings, she wore black, knee-high stiletto heels. Nik tried to make sense of it. This was Tooth. She was the tooth fairy. It was written on every surface of her body, like a blank canvas. Only, not a blank canvas...
"Nikolas Claus, sometimes Father Christmas,” she announced curtly. “We Have Work To Do."
Her tone brooked no opposition. "What can I do for you, mistress?"
"We must prepare for the arrival of the humans. I have great plans for them. I Will Not Be Denied." she trilled gaily. "Oh my, I haven't done this for quite some time. I miss the clarity, you know?"
Nikolas stared dumbfounded at the woman. She was clearly insane.
"Straighten Up, Young Man."
Keeble stirred in the medical bay. His head ached like a drumskin might after a rehearsal session with a thousand hyperactive pre-school children.
"Stupid fat rabbit," he moaned. "Destroying my head for what? So he can kill what is already dead."
The Rabbit ran by his door. Keeble quailed with fear. A split second later, led on by Keeble's involuntary sobbing, the Rabbit returned to his room.
"Keeblei'msorryihityouintheheadbutheyyoupatchedupoksomaybeyoucanhelpmecrash
thisshipbecauseToothisamadwomanandshe'stryingtodoomthisuniverse..."
"You are crazier than I am."
Rabbit paused for breath.
"Maybe. But Tooth is crazy. She's done something to this ship with magic. And I really need to crash this ship. Because of the zombies."
"No."
Rabbit raised his spanner and shook it.
"RABBIT IN THE MEDICAL BAY WITH THE SPANNER! NOT MY PRETTY HEAD!"
"The only way to live right now, Keeble, is to do the right thing and help me get control of this ship back."
Keeble led the Rabbit to a disused back room. "This is the door to the Engine Room. Do not touch what I tell you not to touch."
Rabbit nodded his assent.
Keeble descended into the bowels of the ship. A massive crystal nested in the hub of a circular room. In concentric circles around it, there were wires and cables, pipes and pistons, gears and shafts, and tiny flints sparking off tiny rock. The ship's engine appeared to be an art piece entitled "Technology Through The Ages", a testament to the increasing fervor and understanding with which the first elves had built it.
"Did you make all this?" asked the Rabbit.
"No," whispered Keeble, a tear forming in the corner of his blackened eye. "I inherited it."
"Well, now we're going to destroy it," hissed the rabbit gleefully. "Help me do it." He clenched his spanner.
"Silly Rabbit. Sticks are for Trips."
"I beg your pardon?" he began, but Keeble had already bowled him to the ground with a spare piece of pipe.
"What are you doing?" the rabbit growled. "We need to stop this thing."
"And we will," said Keeble primly. "But I will simply turn it off so that it does not resist gravity anymore. We will be pulled into the sun. We will not," he said, eyeing Rabbit's spanner, "destroy it like dirty zombies."
The elf leaped from gear to spinning gear, across the cables and to the heart of the crystal. He paused as he drew closer, impressed by the enormity of his task and the magnitude of the crystalline edifice. He turned to face the rabbit, illuminated in unearthly glow. He raised a hand as if to wave. The rabbit waved tersely back.
"Do what you have to do."
"I planned to." The elf touched the crystal with his pinky finger. It seared his skin, but he did not seem to mind. The ship lurched.
"What have you done?"
"What I had to do. Silly Rabbit."
The ship began to shake as its flagging engines were rejuvenated. Rabbit braced himself against the wall, Keeble against the floor. Both felt their skin beginning to flap as the ship punched a hole through the solar system.
Tooth sat across from Nik, folding her legs on the chaise lounges she'd procured. They were not, as far as he could tell, made out of marble, and so he had no idea where they had come from.
"So you see, its simple. When the zombies arrive, we will have had plenty of time to prepare a method of containing them and put my plan into action. Within three generations we should have restored them to their initial genetic condition, and in five, there should be no trace of the warp's effect on their cells. We could even have rudimentary speech and culture reintegrated to the human psyche by then, if we're lucky."
"You really believe this will work?"
She held up a tiny glimmering shard of white. "I've been here, alone, for six thousand years with nothing but my thoughts. And I've been thinking mostly of this. Belief has powered our existence throughout the milennia, and my belief should sustain this."
They sat for a while longer, basking in the glow of the object. Nik felt something brush up against his leg. It was a terrier, with a long shaggy coat.
"Is this yours?"
Tooth looked dumbfounded. "I don't own a dog."
The dog yapped happily and wagged its tail.
Nik looked around him. They were sitting on a balcony overlooking the garden with Tooth's scrying pond, and in three directions there were nothing but long featureless corridors which would have echoed loud enough to reach their ears. Yet this dog had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
"Its wearing a name-tag," he read aloud. "Murphy."
"What a funny name for a dog."
The ship screeched to a halt nearly an hour later.
"What did you do?" screamed Rabbit. "What did you do?"
"What needed to be done. Keeble is a genius, you know."
There was a pause.
"If you're a genius, could you stick to proper grammar?"
"Don't be snarky. This ship is too fine a creation to be plowed into the sun to suit a little bunny rabbit's death wish."
"I don't-"
"Hush, you. As I was saying. The master will take care of us."
"Where is your master, though? I'll bet you don't even know. This is all just a shot in the dark, isn't it?" The rabbit gloated.
"No," said the elf calmly. "He's on the planet drinking tea. We're plowing into the atmosphere above the complex where he is waiting."
The rabbit blinked out of the engine room. When Keeble found him, he was standing at the helm of the spaceship, deeply engaged in a staring contest with a zombie on the viewing screen.
"Too late for you, human" he jeered. "You'll burn up on re-entry."
"No, sir. I have seen to that. There is a protective field 20 feet out from this spaceship. They will be safe. Humankind is safe from you, Rabbit."
The rabbit glared at him. "I wish you death, elf."
Keeble jutted his chin forward. "I welcome it."
Death did not respond to his invitation. When Keeble opened a tremulous eye, the helm was empty.
"Thank goodness. Computer, activate the protective field. A distance of twenty feet, if you please. Ensure no human being is harmed in re-entry."
The computer's humdingers clacked their assent.
Tooth drained the last of her tea and stood up, dusting imaginary particles away from her skirt. "Well, we had best check on the ship before we activate the stasis chambers. I wonder how far its come along?"
"Quite a long way, I imagine."
"No, it will take years to reach us. We'll need every one to test my theory."
"Well, you have two minutes."
Tooth followed the line of Nik's pointing finger. A massive red sleigh was closing in on the palace. Murphy barked at the ship. Tooth began to cry.
"We're doomed," she said flatly. "Unless you can hold them off for a thousand years while I work in the labs night and day, they'll simply swarm us and gobble us up."
"Aren't we immortal?"
"Yes. We will live forever in their digestive systems."
The ship landed in the courtyard. The rabbit appeared next to Nik, shaking and holding his fists up in a fighting position.
"You look ridiculous."
"Said the fat man wearing a red suit in a tropical climate" retorted the rabbit.
"How many are there?"
"As many humans as can be created by a group of bored rich humans with no need to eat or sleep over a course of three thousand years with no space constraints."
"A few million?"
"Rounds out at three billion, actually. They breed like..." the rabbit quietened. "They bred. And reproduced. They're certainly hungry now, though," he said brightly. "You should take the first billion. I could take the second billion."
"Third?"
"Tooth. She's still good in a fight."
The zombies poured out on the grass. Murphy barked at them happily. Tooth turned away. Nik could see her hair uncoiling, like a python just waking up. As she did so, the palace seemed to whip itself into a frenzy around her. The seats faded away into nothingness as room after room collapsed, bringing with it a legion of vats, all filled with Nik-knew-not-what.
"If they're going to kill me, they can't have the palace." she declared. "I've collapsed the palace down to just these grounds. Everything I have is here. If they win, they won't gain anything from it. They'll just starve."
"How did she do that?" Nik queried.
"She's still a witch under that hat, Nik." said the Rabbit. "Creating magical lairs and collapsing them is just something she does. She used to have this neat trick with gingerbread. We ate so much of it one time she got herself sick." He seemed to be lost in a daydream. "Those were the days."
Nik felt that if Tooth was busy preparing her scorched earth policy, and rabbit was reliving past glories, there was something he ought to do, too. He reached a mitten into the front of his suit and brought out an ornate gold crucifix. He hadn't really touched it since he'd been a bishop, and he doubted there was anyone else left on earth - make that, in the universe - who would recognise it for what it was. He kissed it and murmured a prayer.
"Lord,
I've been busy. I've sort of ignored why I'm here.
I'm sure you brought me to where I am for a purpose,
but I never thought to find out what it was.
Please, defend me and show me your way. Let me do your will.
I make this prayer in Christ my Lord,
AMEN."
The rabbit fixed a beady little eye on his comrade. "Holy cow, Nik. You're a Christian?"
"I was a bishop before I became Santa," he said. "Why wouldn't I still be?"
"So you met Jesus, did you?" asked the Rabbit.
"No, not really." he admitted.
"So, you died, you didn't go to heaven, and you're reincarnated. Doesn't that challenge your faith a little?"
"Not really." Nik shifted back on to his right leg. "As I see it, I didn't really die."
"Really?"
"No... After everyone else left me, I sort of got up and started walking. Didn't stop till I got to the North Pole."
"You didn't die?"
"I guess not," he said. "There isn't much of a gap between me finishing up being a bishop and starting being Santa Claus. I don't think I had time to go there."
"You simply nerver died, huh?” muttered the Rabbit. "Well, I'll be."
What happened next was a moment etched in a certain kind of history book as a jolly great bloodbath. The zombies, plopping off the ship like so many barnacles, converged on the three friends and were mowed down by Tooth's wicked incantations, Nik's baton and the Rabbit's furious spanner and occasional "Murphy Throw Maneuver". Eventually, however, the three were separated in the melee, pushed to separate ends of the courtyard, and worn down beyond even the ability to blink as the hours went by. Nikolas, resolute, stood his ground, crucifix flashing in the sun as he swung his baton about his head. He heard a barking noise at his feet. Of all the people, only Murphy seemed to have the freedom to move around the courtyard.
"At least you're here to help me, little friend," said Nik, fending off a human's fist.
The dog barked in agreement and ran directly under Nik's next footfall. Nik tripped and was pressed backwards by a surge of humans.
He raised his baton above his head, fighting the burning sensation in his arms. There was a -clink-, as the curved end of the baton caught on the lid of a vat. Nik groaned. With a desparate tug, he tore through the lid of the vat and brought the baton up against the face of a human who had gotten too close. The human reeled and stepped back into the mass of humans. He swung his baton again, staring glumly at the baton moving, it seemed, through molasses as the humans simply stepped back out of the way. He turned to check on the vat. He couldn’t quite see the contents of the container, but at least whatever strange chemical compound Tooth had been experimenting with was intact.
Murphy yipped happily.
Nik felt something pattering on his shoulder. Small white flakes were dropping out of the vat. They were like tiny pebbles.
Or like tiny teeth.
A human, gaunt, pale and sickly, bit at Nik's shoulder, fancying as he did so that he was biting down on a juicy steak or an animal's flesh. Instead, he made contact with the teeth, and swallowed. He fell to the ground and spasmed.
"The teeth?"
The Tooth Fairy blinked back to his side. She was the worse for wear. The pink in her clothes had been mostly replaced by black bile and crimson blood. The rabbit, grimy and dirty from his emergency crash course in kick-boxing appeared also.
"The teeth... one of them came in contact with a tooth and it just fell to the ground."
The Tooth Fairy blanched.
The Rabbit cleared his throat. "Well, yes. They would. Tooth here has been sitting alone for six thousand years, probably just thinking about teeth. You know how she was always on about teeth being the way you could tell how little kids were still innocent? Well, the teeth probably believe her now. So when a big mean human comes along, the tooth reacts by forcing them back into their innocent state."
"Huh?"
"Throw more teeth at them, it’ll do us all some good." the Rabbit encouraged him.
Nik grabbed a handful of teeth. They buzzed a little in his hands. He threw them in a wide arc. Each one bolted towards a human, striking them in the chest, the face, the arms... each one burrowed within the human with a tiny little burst of white light, and each human sunk to the ground, their hungry, vicious countenance replaced by the sweet repose of a resting infant. At last, the courtyard was filled with emaciated six foot tall bodies, all gurgling contentedly and sucking their thumbs.
Tooth spoke at last. "I thought... I was afraid it wouldn't work. I didn't dream it would work like this. That's why I was so sure we'd need to restrain them, and test it, and ... I've grown silly while I was away, haven't I?"
"Well," said the Rabbit. "Your insanity helped saved the day."
"Yours too," said Nik, tousling his ears.
"We need to take them back home," said Tooth. "But the palace doesn't fly."
"My ship ought to. Unless you blew up the engines, Rabbit." Nik let out a jolly laugh. Rabbit didn't meet his eye.
"What do we do? Just load them up?"
"Actually, there's enough room to hold presents for all the children of the world in the back," said Nik. "They should have plenty of room. Tooth could even move some stasis pods up there to make it more comfortable."
Tooth sighed. "So, we just hop on spaceship and drive back to Earth, huh?"
"No," said Nik. "Three friends, a spaceship, and no deadline? We could take a detour. A working holiday.”
THE END.