Home for Christmas
Second Lieutenant Aethax was screaming. His scout vessel screamed back with every warning and alarm on board as it tumbled through the atmosphere under gravity’s unrelenting grip. Aethax’s scaled hands flew over the controls, but nothing seemed stabilize the whirling ship, whatever he tried. His survey mission had been textbook smooth until his proximity sensors flickered with a possible contact to his aft. Before he could investigate the intermittent signature, the object, or whatever it was, had streaked past him, warping local spacetime and sending him spinning through the air of this alien planet like a reed in a maelstrom.
The spacetime anomaly had thrown off his autopilot’s calibration, and he’d be dead before it could reinitialize. Aethax took a breath as his brain scrambled to prioritize the tasks that might save his life. Sensor feedback on air density to calculate wind resistance. Rotational rates about each axis. Vector maneuvering thrusters. Activate thrust. Check rotation. Revector. Increase thrust. Roll and trim stabilized. Activate landing thrusters. Check lateral– The shock ripped through the cockpit and threw Aethax against his restraints with a force more savage than anything he’d felt in the simulator. A symphony of rending metal sounded somewhere under the cockpit, the structural support of his command chair sheared in half somewhere under Aethax, and his emerald green head smashed into the console.
Suddenly he was standing in the survey corps’ briefing room of his command ship, the vessel upon which he’d spent most of his life. “There are twenty-seven worlds in the Skengian Empire,” his commander exhorted, “and untold riches and glory await the scout that brings us the twenty-eighth. I believe that officer is in this room today. You know the minimum requirements: moderate climate, breathable atmosphere, and so on. The coordinates for your sectors are in the mission details on your individual data pads and uploaded to your ships. Are there questions?”
An ensign to Aethax’s left stood at attention. The commander acknowledged him with a point. “The standing orders say we give priority to planets that are broadly inhabited but pre- or early-industrial,” the ensign began. “Why prefer a planet that already has advanced life?”
Aethax gave a hiss of annoyance, a clear breach of protocol, but he couldn’t help it. As the youngest officer in the survey corps, having completed his training five terms early, the gaps in his colleagues’ knowledge often irritated him. Fortunately the commander did not offer chastisement. “Second Lieutenant Aethax,” he said, “would you care to enlighten your inferior officer?”
Aethax stood. “Our surveys are necessarily brief,” he explained. “We’re unlikely to record occasional upheavals that would be detrimental to our habitation. Near-industrial technology requires millennia of stable conditions to develop, guaranteeing favorable conditions, while natives at that level of advancement will still be easily conquered by the Empire.”
“Is that clear, Ensign?” the senior officer pressed.
“Yes, Commander.”
Aethax’s scouting assignment was nearly fifty light years from his command ship, the farthest he’d traveled in his life. His scaly skin rippled with excitement when he reviewed the spectral analysis of the star he’d been assigned. All the scout corps’ targets underwent long range observation across the electromagnetic spectrum and passed numerous filters to be nominated for a manned scouting mission, but this system had the most favorable indicators the young officer had ever seen. Dimming analysis also suggested at least two planets likely in the habitable zone. He must have found favor in the eyes of high command even to have the chance at claiming such a prize for the empire.
Aethax slowly became aware of a whistling sound filling the cockpit around him. His head throbbed. He blinked his eyes, but the darkness surrounding him was impenetrable. His heart pounded as fear seized him. Had his head injury blinded him? He ran his hands over the familiar console until his clawed fingers brushed the control for interior light. An amber glow grew slowly about him, narrowing his pupils to slits after so long in darkness. Aethax clicked his tongue in relief. Not only did he retain his sight, but his vessel still had emergency power. Thus freed from his most immediate anxieties, Aethax felt assailed by another sensation, apart from the pounding ache in his head, one he’d only felt before during survival training: cold. His flat ears resolved the whistling noise in the background into the sound of wind slicing past the edges of a jagged hole he now saw, craning his neck painfully to the right, in the lower hull of his ship. Despite this dire situation, his cold blood thrilled with excitement, his very existence telling him what his instruments could now only confirm. The temperature was cold but survivable. And he could breathe.
Unfortunately he had no hope of making his ship spaceworthy again, much less capable of holding together under the strain of a planetary launch. Little matter. By now his emergency beacon would… Aethax cursed as he pulled up his vessel’s diagnostic display. His emergency beacon was not broadcasting, likely damaged in the crash. Hissing in frustration, he released the latches on his flight harness and dropped from his command chair to the damaged and skewed deck. He knelt, fumbling in the dim light for the survival kit under his seat where he could find a second emergency beacon, only there was no “under” his seat anymore. The gash in the underside of his vessel ran right through the place where his emergency supplies should have been, leaving nothing in their place but frigid air and a fractured vein of planetary bedrock. He squinted. Not like this, he raged. Not after giving everything to the scout corps, not with the riches of the empire right here within my claws!
The survival kit’s outer case was incredibly robust. Perhaps, he thought, the impact had thrown it clear rather than destroying it. If he backtracked the line of the crash, maybe he could find it intact. His flight suit seemed undamaged, and it was well insulated. Nevertheless, his training demanded he stay in his ship, his only shelter, until morning. He’d assessed the planet’s rotational speed before entering the atmosphere and knew he should have light and greater warmth well before the need for water began to weaken him. For several minutes he busied himself about the vessel’s damaged interior, using anything that wasn’t bolted down to barricade the hole against the keening wind and the possibility of dangerous predators. The longer he worked, however, the more strongly he knew he was only stalling, using a sense of duty and the engrained nature of his training to stifle his desire to leave immediately, to find the beacon and claim his destiny. The hope that it still existed, undamaged, was the only thing giving his life any shred of relevance. Aethax opened his locker, above his head and weirdly angled by the crashed orientation of his ship, and braced himself against the rain of belongings that fell down upon him. Digging through the pile at his feet, he located a hand light and switched it on, then wriggled through the makeshift barricade and the ragged hole it blocked, and took his first steps onto alien soil.
Actually, as he stepped out from under the shelter of his scout ship, he realized the substance beneath his boots couldn’t be soil. It shifted and slipped, and he knelt down to investigate it. It glowed white under his light, and as he brushed it with his hands, some of it melted on the surface of his gloves. He scooped up a handful and held it close to his face, sniffing. It had no discernable odor, and as he held it the pile continued to shrink, water suddenly dripping through his fingers. Strange. He knew of ice, but this was in tiny crystals, more similar to the frost that grew on poorly maintained condenser coils. Why did it blanket the surface of this place? He swung the beam of his light about him. Everywhere the ground reflected white under this frozen covering, but his search also illuminated large, cylindrical shapes, rough and brown and towering into the sky. He slid his light down one to find it stuck firmly in the ground. Some kind of local megaflora, clearly. A few feet above the ground it radiated outward into a network of branches and green, needlelike foliage, all intertwined with its neighbors’ for as far as he could see in that direction. The blanket of ice crystals was thinner underneath. Aethax clacked his teeth in remembrance. Snow, that was the name of the icy covering. It was a weather phenomenon on some temperate worlds, rarely reported. He had never seen it and never expected to. He looked upward, seeing through a long, narrow gap in the overhead canopy a pattern of alien stars dominated by an alien moon, half full and bone white. He shivered. A strange place, but not the strangest in the empire, to be sure. He had work to do.
The trajectory of Aethax’s crash was obvious, a furrow of ripped earth and damaged vegetation pointing back directly the way his vessel had come. Slowly he walked the path, his light sweeping left and right as the cold seeped ever deeper into his bones. Pieces of his ship reflected his light back to him at times, but the bright yellow of the emergency kit never appeared until, at last, he reached his initial point of impact, realizing he had struck the low shoulder of a taller mountain thrust out over a gentler slope below. Shrapnel gleamed everywhere here, and at the bottom of the ridge, even more out of place on this strange world, he could just make out a splash of garish yellow. His pace quickening, Aethax cast his light about, looking for any path downward, however risky. He bounded to a lower rock, then to a flat switchback, ever down, half climbing and half sliding, until he skidded to a stop at the bottom of the ridge only fifteen paces from the survival kit he so desperately sought. As soon as he reached it he voiced a feral growl and kicked what was left of it. The case had snapped in half, and while some of its contents might be salvageable, the emergency beacon was clearly smashed. He was stuck here.
Suddenly a piece of the kit started to buzz rhythmically, and Aethax, his training overcoming his despair, picked it up to scan the readout on its screen. The scanner swept across the electromagnetic spectrum looking for patterns or anomalies, and it now alerted Aethax to a warp in local spacetime identical to the phenomenon that had crashed his ship. The odds this signature could be naturally occurring showed as only one in over seventy-million. Not only was he stuck here, but he was stuck here with an entity he couldn’t hope to fathom, much less confront. It was also, he realized, his only possible hope of finding a device on this primitive planet that he might commandeer and improvise into a means of communicating to his home fleet. He noted the direction, then tucked the scanner into the pocket of his suit and set out.
He had not walked far when he struck an open path through the trees, rutted as by regular traffic by some wheeled or tracked vehicles. Habitation. The value of this planet continued to grow even as his means of ever sharing that information with the empire seemed to slip farther and farther from his grasp. The pain in his head had receded to a dull ache, but he felt occasional bursts of dizziness and confusion, and when recalling anything since the crash it presented through a veil of dissociation that seemed more factual than emotional; he likely had mild brain swelling from his injury. Undeterred, he followed the path, and after a short time his light fell on a branching trail that led to a structure not far from the main passage. He checked his scanner. The anomaly had moved only slightly, still mainly in the direction of the primary path, but the structure presented the possibility of foraging for supplies. With some reluctance Aethax turned from the road, adjusting his light to its dimmest setting, and crept toward the structure.
On closer inspection, it seemed to be a residential dwelling and to have lapsed into a state of disrepair. It was comprised of rigid organic material, likely harvested from the surrounding plant life, and its main door stood ajar, its latching mechanism damaged. The frame was tall, its top higher than Aethax could reach, and he pushed it open, the hinges squealing with startling volume in the silence of the night. After a pause to ensure no nearby sentinel had been alerted, he stepped across the threshold. Something rustled in a far corner, prompting him to shine his light there, but the spot of illumination fell only on a pile of detritus, whatever small creature that inhabited it probably burrowing deeper in to hide itself. Continuing his search, Aethax quickly concluded that no food or water would be forthcoming, but the abandoned structure still contained a few pieces of moldering furniture. Like the door, these remnants were large, indicating inhabitants of a great stature, perhaps twenty percent larger than typical for his own people. In one corner of the dwelling sat a rectangular trunk built of the same material as the house, edged in black metal bands, and Aethax opened it to rummage through its contents. He discovered some primitive collections of written information bound in what he guessed were animal hides, a few objects of soft, organic fiber in strange likeness and with no obvious purpose, and these he set aside. At last, though, he pulled out a heavy cloak and hood. This he could use. It was too long for him, but in another corner of the house, on a high counter, he located a bladed tool, old and rusty but adequate to cut the cloak down to an appropriate height for himself. Finding nothing else of use, he donned the cloak, pocketed the blade, and left the dwelling to return to the road. He checked his scanner once more to find that, again, the spacetime anomaly had moved but slightly.
Aethax’s mind began to wander as he trudged the snowy road. His aerial survey had been interrupted before he could draw any conclusions, and he'd seen only that one structure while moving on foot. Was this planet as ideal as he’d initially thought, or had some catastrophe destroyed its inhabitants? If that were the case, it must have been fairly recent as the local flora had not yet reclaimed the dwelling, and the organic materials remained intact. The cloak he wore felt rough where the hood touched his bald head, though this didn’t overly trouble his scaly skin. He couldn’t help but wonder who had made it and who it had been made for. Certainly they couldn’t have dreamed it would one day be used to provide warmth to a military scout from another planet, another species. So enthralled was Aethax in his reverie that he didn’t react to the noises from up the road until it was nearly too late. The path he walked adjoined a larger road not far ahead, and a rhythmic thumping and clattering reached his ears from that way, as well as a high, percussive sound. He had just enough time to extinguish his light and hide it under his cloak before countless sensations assailed his injured brain from the intersection of the trails. A musky, organic scent filled his nostrils, dim, flickering light played into his eyes, a great shadow loomed up from his right, a voice called out, a large animal gave a startling snort. Aethax shrank back from the shock.
“Whoa, whoa Klaus,” called the voice he’d heard, smooth and resonant. All the noises stopped save the snorting beast, and Aethax saw a wheeled vehicle pulled by a large quadruped. The structure he’d explored and the cloak he wore were clearly designed for bipeds, so he gathered this larger animal to be a beast of burden. The creature on the vehicle stood, showing himself a biped, and for all his training Aethax stood stunned to inaction. He’d heard many stories, read all the reports, but as an imperial citizen hatched on Skedge Prime and raised on a ship of the expansion fleet, he’d never actually seen an alien before. This being was large and imposing, its voice booming. Primitive, surely, no match for the might of the empire, but in a hand to hand conflict it would be a fearsome opponent for Aethax.
“Wer bist du da?” the voice called. “Woher kommst du?”
Aethax only stared ahead, thankful for the shadow of the deep hood, as a higher voice called out from inside the vehicle, “Bleib ruhig, Gun, es ist nur ein Junge.”
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the first voice called. “Französisch?”
Aethax continued to stare up at the speaker, uncomprehending and unmoving.
“Bei Gott, Gun, ich glaube, er ist taub. Wir sollten ihn in die Stadt bringen.” The door to the vehicle swung open, and a smaller alien emerged, bundled warmly in thick clothing and with a mass of curling, pale gold filaments covering its head and shoulders. For all its strangeness, the roundness of its eyes, the smoothness of its skin, the unnerving lack of sibilance in its consonants, to say nothing of the strange growths from its scalp, Aethax felt overwhelmed by the similarities between them. It stood a head taller than him, he realized as it approached, but its proportions were more slight than the big one at the front of the vehicle, and its basic body plan was the same: upright posture, two arms and legs, eyes, mouth. Its nostrils were surrounded by a strange protuberance, but he could identify them nonetheless. Did these beings live much as his own did in the distant past?
“Vorsichtig, Frau,” the big one rumbled from the vehicle.
“Schon gut, Gunther, schon gut.”
The small one held out her hand to Aethax. He knew nothing of the customs or body language of these beings, but among his own people this would be an invitation to take the hand, perhaps to be led somewhere. Grown adults often guided hatchlings in this way; could such a behavior be common to other species? He had little fear of proximity since pathogens jumping between such disparate species was known to be rare. Both the small alien and he wore gloves, so there would be no physical contact, either to create a potential biological reaction or to betray his alien nature. Alien nature, he thought again. He’d been considering these beings to be aliens, but of course by any rational measure he was the alien in this place. Feeling not unlike the hatchling he once was and had pondered a moment ago, he reached out and took the hand.
The creature guided him into the vehicle, then climbed in after him and closed the door. It traded words with the one on the outside, which held long leads attached to the quadruped, for a few moments, but at last the big one sat down again and urged the beast to move. The vehicle lurched forward, then began rocking down the road, jerking with every bump. Aethax found this jarring, but the smaller native didn’t seem to mind, at least from what little he could tell by its silhouette in the near-darkness of the vehicle’s interior. As they traveled Aethax began to identify the sounds he’d heard in the moments before the meeting: the thump of the quadruped’s feet, the clattering of the vehicle’s wheels, and the high, percussive sound emanating from a network of small, silver bells attached to the quadruped’s harness, as though the drivers wished to announce their coming. Aethax also concentrated on the scents of these new beings, ignoring the overpowering odor he now knew to emanate from the quadruped, and found them to be far more subtle and complex, layered under strong notes of smoke and scents representing nourishment to any carbon-based life: sugars and starches, as well as meats. He gathered these beings to be omnivorous and realized their clothing must constantly be close to where they prepared their food. He wondered if their dwelling was smaller than the one he’d entered, perhaps a single room, even. Moreover, he guessed from these scents that their food would nourish him as well, and hunger clawed at his belly. He knew if the strangers offered him something to eat he would take it, despite not daring to expose his scanner to check it first, but they did not, to his disappointment.
The strange, white moon rode high as the beast-drawn vehicle exited the overhanging canopy of vegetation into an expanse too broad for Aethax to see the other side in the dim light. Many structures filled this place, but one near the center dominated his view. Unlike the rest, it was made of stone, but as his escorts neared it he could see the surface was carved with vertical flutes and curves over the arches, every surface a canvas for embellishments that forced a sense of life and grace into the cold stone. The spaces between the arches were filled with colored glass depicting the beings of this world, other animals, scenes of dynamism and drama, all lit through with the glow of firelight from within. At the back of the structure stood a spire thrusting up into the sky, easily three times the height of the next-tallest structure in the settlement. Aethax couldn’t fathom the time, talent, and dedication it must have required for these primitives to build such a marvel with the tools available to them. For a moment he wondered if a more advanced society had once flourished here, perhaps tied to the source of the spacetime anomaly he tracked, but so far he had no other evidence to support that. It seemed more reasonable to suppose this structure had great cultural significance in this society, so it was no surprise to him when the driver of his conveyance moved directly to the front of the building before calling for his beast to stop. Once the noises of the animal and vehicle died down, Aethax could hear another sound emanating from the building’s great front doors which stood open momentarily to permit other entrants. For a few breaths he could only sit, transfixed by the complexity of the sensation. Even from the brief samplings he’d heard, there could be no doubt the sound was produced by the voices of the natives to this world, but they stretched the vowels of their words and filled them with resonance. Over a dozen voices spoke at the same time, but there was no chaos, only an organic, warm structure that confused Aethax even as it stirred his blood. The frequencies, closer to the voice of the small alien he had met than the large one, layered and blended, reinforcing and complementing one another in ways he couldn’t understand but wanted to. His people, with their sibilant and aspirated voices, could never produce such beauty with their voices alone. The sound so enthralled him that he didn’t notice when the smaller being exited the vehicle, then reached inside and touched his knee. He turned toward her, withdrawing in surprise.
“Es tut mir Leid,” the alien said, making a beckoning motion with her hand and stepping back from the vehicle’s door. He disembarked; once he was clear the larger being called something before urging the beast to move forward, carrying him and the vehicle away, around the corner of the large building. The small one led Aethax forward, high-stepping through the snow and toward the doors. He followed for a few steps, at once excited and daunted at the thought of entering the great edifice, catching a glimpse through the entry of the group of aliens at the back of the structure that produced the beautiful sounds. They were small, hatchlings almost certainly, yet effortlessly creating something that had moved Aethax in such a profound way. Suddenly he stopped, pulling his chaperone up short. He had already noted the light spilling from the structure, light he could now see emanated from hundreds of tiny flames arranged all through the interior, but only now did he comprehend its brightness in contrast to the shadows in the vehicle or the dim moonlight outside. In those places the shadow of his deep hood had protected him, but inside the structure and its illumination his green scales and golden eyes would be exposed for all to see. The natives of this world had no name for him, no concept of what he was or could be, and could only react with fear, as all the reports of other alien contact had indicated. A strange dichotomy brewed in his heart. On the one hand, he knew revealing his nature would endanger his life and what was left of his mission, and that objection rose up as his first instinct, but another thought sat immediately under this first one: so far these beings had shown him only kindness and beauty, and he found himself blanching at the thought of witnessing their uglier reactions. He wanted to keep this experience pure, even at the cost of making it incomplete. Either way, he had to think quickly to avoid such a fate. His mind raced, his eyes darted about, his nostrils opened to drink in the scents, all desperate to find something that might save him. There, on the breeze, a subtle whiff. Excrement. In the darkness near the encroaching wall of megaflora, in the same direction the big native had gone with the beast and vehicle, a cluster of tiny, stall-like buildings. Even now a being emerged from one, still fastening up the lower half of its coat. As the small native let go his hand and turned toward him, he simply pointed in that direction. The filament-headed alien made a sound in response, speaking more words he couldn’t understand and bobbing its head up and down, then pointed back toward the large building and spoke more. After that it did something entirely unexpected. It stepped directly into his space and, before he could react, put its arms around him, enveloping him with warmth and scent. It was strange and shocking and, surprisingly, not precisely unpleasant, though Aethax was filled with fear at what would happen next. As quickly as the action had begun, however, it ended, the small native stepping away and turning back on its course. “Wir sehen uns drinnen,” it called. “Fröhliche Weihnachten!” Its voice in these statements was high and lilting, somehow like the sounds of the hatchlings coming from inside. He couldn’t know for sure, but he suspected some feeling of gladness or frivolity lay in that tone.
Clicking his tongue with relief, Aethax hurried toward the latrines, choosing the one he’d just seen a native exit as no other had yet entered, so he knew it must be vacant. His heart hammered at his ribs, and he had to fight to steady his breathing. This long diversion had been informative, even interesting, but the time had come to return to his mission. He was trained to an excellent sense of direction, even on an alien world, and he felt confident the natives and their conveyance had drawn him close to the spacetime anomaly he still sought. Now protected from watchful eyes, he reached into his cloak and flight suit and withdrew his scanner, suddenly aware of a strange tension in his chest, an ache not unlike longing. Twitching his head, he set the emotion aside and adjusted the scanner’s settings, reducing its range to improve sensitivity. True to his prediction, the anomaly was near, probably inside one of the dwellings just two rows away. Cracking the latrine door, he peered outside, ensuring the coast was clear, and sprinted toward it, plowing as best he could through the blanket of snow.
Every few steps he checked the screen in his hand, and by the time he reached the target structure he was sure the readings must be emanating from the inside. Now came the time for boldness. Barely slowing, he swapped scanner for blade from inside his suit, then retrieved his hand light and burst through the door.
He hadn’t had clear expectations of what he might see inside. Some kind of portable, advanced technology, perhaps, in a form factor of pack or suit. Maybe even a fully robotic being. Even without a clear prediction, what he did see lay outside his anticipation. A large alien stood near a stone structure at the end of the dwelling, a sort of box to hold cooking fire and direct the smoke. It stood double Aethax’s height, broad in the shoulders and round in the belly, wearing a long, heavy coat and hat trimmed in fur. His lower face was covered in the growing filaments this species possessed, white as the snow outside and flowing down over his torso. The being was stooped over slightly and moving one hand toward its face, one digit extended toward the side of its nose, but it paused when its gaze met the sudden intruder. He straightened. “Well,” he chuckled, “what have we here?”
Aethax clacked his teeth in shock. “You speak my language!?”
“I can speak with all hatchlings in words they understand, and they retain that understanding for a while when they’re grown. Seeing you now, I gather your people make you grow up fast, but you’re really little more than a hatchling yourself, Aethax.”
“How could you know these things, or my name?” the scout demanded. “Are you of a different world?”
“Not as you mean it,” the being answered with a smile, “but I’ve been waiting for something unusual tonight, and you’re the most unusual thing I’ve seen in many a year.”
Aethax moved closer, confused and cautious. “You’ve been waiting for me?”
“Yes. I have a list, you see, and I know all the names on it, but yours appeared this year, a name I didn’t know. It was most peculiar. I rather enjoyed it; it was a mystery, and at my age I don’t get many of those.”
“That’s impossible.”
“All things are possible for those who believe,” the being answered. “And the mystery went deeper still. When I make my list, I always know whether to mark if a hatchling has been naughty or nice this year, but when I came to your name, I didn’t know what to mark. I’m not sure your year is finished yet.”
Only then did Aethax notice a huge sack at the alien’s feet, and it turned toward it and thrust its hand inside, rummaging for a moment. Tensing and brandishing his blade, Aethax shouted, “Stop! Keep your hands in view!”
The odd being chuckled again, its belly shaking with mirth. “You could not harm me if you wished to, Aethax, and I doubt that you truly do.” It stood up, holding a small package in its mittened hand. “I’m meant to give you this. I don’t know what it is, but I know its what you want, and my workers can make anything I ask them for. Take it.” The alien extended its hand toward Aethax.
All this was far too strange, but a certain baseline of curiosity underpinned every good scout, and Aethax could not help himself. He crossed the intervening distance, ever wary, setting his light on a small table and toggling it to lantern mode. Quickly he took the package in his now free hand, then backed up a pace, his blade held forward. Squinting with suspicion as the big creature watched, finally he sliced through the ribbon and paper covering the package, a hatchling-like anticipation seizing his heart as he wondered what might be inside. At last he lifted off the lid, then stopped short, uncomprehending at what he saw. Resting at the bottom of the box sat a Skedgian emergency beacon, pristine and shiny. He began to reach for it, then paused. All the aliens inside the grand building seemed to be making their sounds in unison now, and they carried to him across the settlement, touching his heart with their beauty. For a moment he imagined them transformed into screams of terror by a barrage of Skedgian artillery. He pictured the beautiful structure reduced to shattered rubble, burying the broken bodies of the aliens who had picked him up and offered him, a stranger on the road, shelter and transport. “Do they do that every night?” he found himself asking.
“Not all,” the being replied. “This is a special night for them.”
“Why?”
“Tonight is the night, each year, that they set aside for a special remembrance of the greatest gift their people ever received. They gather together to commemorate it with awe and gratitude.”
“You do not join them?”
The corners of the alien’s mouth curled upward behind his snow-white face covering. “I have a special role. I give gifts of my own as a symbol of that one, great gift. I spread joy to all believing hearts, everywhere on the planet on this night.”
Aethax looked the being up and down. “That’s impossible. You don’t have the technology for such a thing. No one does.”
“I don’t need your ships and devices,” the alien answered, his voice soft but stern. “I have faith.” For a few moments only the sounds from the great gathering filled the dwelling, then they ceased for a moment, and the being spoke again. “So tell me, young Aethax, what gift have you been given this year?”
“It is…a choice.”
“Between?”
“Between glory and riches for myself, or life and freedom for millions I don’t even know…and certain death for me, be it slow or quick.”
The great gift-giver sucked in a breath. “Most live their lives without facing such a choice. I know this moment became necessary, but I’m sorry to have brought you to it. In more ways than one, I expect.”
Aethax remembered the warping spacetime that sent his ship careening into this wondrous planet in the first place, fascinated that this strange primitive without craft or vessel could move so quickly, using nothing more than this thing it called “faith.” Aethax loved his own people. But they had twenty-seven worlds, and these beings had only one, one that would be razed to the ground if he turned on that beacon. He feared for his own fate, but he knew one thing with even greater certainty: There would be no joy in his glory and riches if they were haunted by the memories of these natives, the knowledge of their joyful celebrations turned to screams and rubble. Keening softly with sadness, he placed the beacon on the floor rand raised his foot, bringing his booted heel down upon the delicate device and smashing it to pieces.
“You lay down your life for them?” the big alien asked.
“It seems I do.”
It nodded its head once. “I have an alternative to that. My home is far and cold, but there is safety there, and contentment. Will you come with me?” It extended its hand.
Whether by that deep curiosity or a simple lack of alternatives, Aethax took it, then the tall creature touched the first finger of his other hand to the side of his nose, and with a strange twinkling they both stood on the roof, where sat an open-topped vehicle attached to eight quadrupeds, far smaller than the one that had pulled the first vehicle and with great, curving horns sprouting from their heads.
“Aethax,” the big being said, “meet Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. No time for long formalities now; there’s much work to do, and the night wears on.”
As Aethax climbed into the conveyance, he couldn’t help but ask, “How could you risk handing me that gift without knowing me or what I might do? If I’d chosen differently, I would have condemned your whole world.”
The being tossed its sack into the back of the vehicle before climbing in on the other side as it let out a great laugh from deep in its belly. “Not at all, Aethax,” it explained as it picked up the reins. “As I said, your year wasn’t finished yet. If you’d tried to do something that naughty, straight-away the thing would have transformed into a lump of coal.” He snapped the reins. “Yo!”
With power that dwarfed the acceleration of his little scout ship, Aethax was shoved against the bench and carried into the night sky. They circled the town once, listening to the beautiful music lofting up from the church, then Old St. Nick shouted, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” before the aliens zoomed over the treetops toward the horizon.