Rudolph! (8 page)

IV

A
t first nothing happened, and then, after five minutes, the cursor
blinked and the line fed. I stared at the cursor for a long moment, wondering what had just happened—or not happened, as the case might be—and then I remembered I hadn't bothered to put any error checking in my code.

The code had worked. My query had executed. Purgatory was there, as expected, but my stealth request had come back empty. As in
no data found
.

It would take a Silicon Valley hotshot IT department a couple of hours to break up my DDOS attack, and adjusting that time for supernatural agency meant I had about ten more minutes before the spectral swords of purgatory's defense system eviscerated my hack. Time enough to try at least one more query, and so I tried ‘Kris Kringle.'

Same result: a line feed and no data set returned. I got desperate and opened up a couple more windows so I could try every possible combination in the time I had left: ‘Father Christmas,' ‘Nicolas of Myra,' ‘Sint Klaes,' ‘St. Nicolas.'

They all came back empty.

I hesitated a second, wracking my brain for one last query, and then realizing I overstayed my welcome, I started to unload my code. But it was taking too long, and suddenly paranoid, I reached around to the back of the computer and yanked out the power cord. The screen went dark, and I sat there in the near-darkness, wondering what I had missed. But I knew my code had been good, which could only mean one thing: Santa Claus wasn't in purgatory.

"Keep it simple." The voice spoke directly into my left ear. I jerked upright in the chair, banging my knees against the underside of the heavy desk. My heart pounding, I glanced around, but there was no one in the room with me. The only sound other than the harried echo of my heart in my ears was the distant tick-tock of the old upright clock in the corner of the room.

"Rudolph?" I said. Just in case he was hiding—I don't know—behind the drapes or something. "Comet?" Of all the reindeer, Comet was the most prone to practical jokes, though even this sort of game seemed a little out there for him. Especially now.

A ghost light flickered across the monitor, and I squeaked in fright. And then immediately berated myself for doing so. It was just a phantasmal effect that some monitors had—a flicker of color through the pixels as the screen started to cool down. There was nothing there. There was no one else in the room. I was just spooking myself.

"Keep it simple," I whispered to myself. The oldest rule in the book. Good old William of Ockham. Maybe it was his ghost reaching out to tell me to stop spooking myself and actually apply some brain power to what I did and did not know.

"Okay," I said, nodding. "What do you know, smart guy?"

My code was good, as was my theory. So that meant the problem was on the other end, which meant 1) the data structure in purgatory had changed over the last year and I had been querying the wrong fields, or 2) Santa hadn't reached purgatory yet and no record had been entered into the vast data warehouse of heaven for him yet, or 3) he wasn't there.

Okay, rebuttals.

1. Doubtful. Nothing in IT is ever changed. If it is changed, it takes at least five years and many millions of billable hours to even rename a field much less change the existing data structure.
   
2. A lack of speedy data entry suggested that the dead could be in, what? limbo for some time before actually reaching purgatory. Okay, entirely possible, but I was willing to bet Santa Claus wasn't one of those who got turned away at the door. Yeah, old man, come back in a few hours. We're not quite ready to process you yet.
   
3. Where else would he go if he wasn't going to heaven?
   

Well, now there's a thought.
Which thou shalt not would you like to begin with?
I didn't remember my Commandments all that well, but I was pretty sure that neglecting one precluded you from going to heaven. It was one of the incentives to
not
break them.

I heard a sound like someone dragging a line of sleigh bells across a metal tabletop, and a smell reminiscent of melting chestnuts assaulted my nose. I glanced around Mrs. C's office. The room seemed a little darker.

My tongue was thick in my mouth. "Santa?" I croaked.

Near the doorway, a gentle snowfall sparkled. It melted before it touched the heavy carpet. My heart was making that loud noise again, and I tried to mentally shush it as I slipped off the chair and approached the small snow flurry. I heard the sound of sleigh bells again as the tiny snowstorm drifted toward me. I reached up to catch a snowflake, and my hand touched something cold. The tiny flake lay frozen on my fingertip, a perfect star shape. I withdrew my hand, and the flake melted, turning to a dot of water that ran down the pad of my finger.

And then I heard the voice again, and I knew it was him. "The gates of heaven are closed, Bernie." It was like a winter wind, teasing and tugging at your hair. "They won't let me in." The snowfall glistened.

Suddenly the door burst open, and a young reindeer bounced into the room. He hurtled right through the falling snow, and the storm scattered like a flight of dark birds, nothing more than shadows bouncing off the walls and ceilings. The reindeer was just as surprised as I was, and he bumped into me before he could stop himself. Fortunately, his horns were merely tiny buttons growing out of his skull, and the impact between his head and my stomach was only like getting hit by a Major League fastball instead of a being skewered like a slab of beef.

I landed on my ass and tried to catch my breath. The young reindeer rebounded like he did this sort of thing all the time, and he danced around me. He was covered with tinsel—it looked like it had been taped onto him in wide stripes—and his nose was quivering like a cube of Jell-O as he examined me. A mesh bag filled with ceramic canisters was slung across his withers.

"Gotta go. Gotta go," he squeaked.

"What?" I asked, still trying to ease my cramped stomach.

"Rudolph wants you. It's time to go."

"Go? Go where?"

I didn't know this reindeer. There were others outside the normal team, of course. Up to a hundred or so could comfortably range across the Park, and this youngster looked like he was still growing his first year's velvet on his horns.

"Launch bay," he explained.

I glanced around the room, half-hoping to catch sight of the column of snowfall. "I'm not done," I protested. "I don't . . . I haven't finished my research. I don't have all the information I need. I can't leave."

He grabbed the end of my trousers with his mouth and tugged. "There's no time," he said through clenched teeth.

I pulled back and discovered that even a young reindeer was stronger than me. The muscles in his neck bunched as he tugged me across the floor. "Wait. What do you mean there's no time? Time for what?"

He let go and cocked his head as he recited his instructions: "Find Bernie: ten minutes. Time before they leave: fifteen minutes. Time it takes to reach an altitude of five thousand feet: another five minutes. Commence dive bomb attack: ten minutes after . . ." His tongue wiggled in the corner of his mouth. "Subtract four . . . carry the one . . ." He shook his head. "Nope. You doing more research? That's what there's no time for."

"Hold on. Dive bomb attack?"

The young reindeer did a little jig in the doorway. The ceramic canisters rattled in the bag across his shoulders. "I'm the diversion," he announced proudly.

Rudolph. He was taking the team and heading for the South Pole. With or without me. This reindeer was right. I was out of time.

"You're late," Rudolph announced as I tumbled off the pneumatic carrier that ran between the Residence and the launch bay. He was standing on the dark pad, impatiently tapping a hoof against the control panel that raised and lowered the pad.

The launch bay could very well be turned into a historical museum if Christmas remained canceled. Each generation of the Sled was housed down here. Well, those that were still intact. The Mark V hadn't come back last year, and there was a version of the red sled from the late 1890s that had been lost in the Arctic Ocean. But the rest were here, lined up in chronological order, covered with plastic, and permanently moistened with grease on the off-chance that they would be needed.

The launch bay was the only area underground that the reindeer were allowed to access. In fact, a service tunnel ran straight from the bay to the barn out on the Park, which made it easy for them to come and go when it was time to fly. And they were all here, standing off to the side of the pad, waiting for me.

They were covered in white and gray greasepaint, wearing their assault rigs. There had been some advances since the last time I had seen this gear. The cumbersome targeting visors had been replaced with a variation on the glasses Blizten had been wearing last year, though with a bit more theatrical flair in their wraparound style and dark lenses. We had dropped in on purgatory, bristling with guns and rocket launchers and flame-throwers like hardwired Visigoths out for a weekend of empire burning; now, with this next-generation gear (which looked like it had been designed by H. R. Giger and molded by Samsonite), they could pass as Elvis-impersonating Cold Warriors flying in for a black bag job before picking up their dates for a fancy costume ball.

"What's the rush?" I asked after I got done gawking.

"Mrs. C," Cupid supplied. "She's gone gray. Whatever Santa had, she's got it too." His grin seemed a little strained.

"You find Santa?" Rudolph asked.

"Uh, no. Not exactly."

He glared at me. "Bernie," he said menacingly. Vixen and Prancer shuffled a few paces away from Rudolph at the tone of his voice.

"He's not in heaven," I blurted out. "There wasn't any trace of him in purgatory." The other reindeer stared at me. Blitzen shook his head, adjusting his librarian nerd glasses with a hoof. "Look, I think we've made a bad assumption." When I was tearing down the back stairs to the basement, inspiration had hit—a clear blast of enlightenment that had forced my feet back up the steps to the library. I held up the book that I had gone back for.

Rudolph peered at the worn cover. "
Inferno
," he read. "We don't have time for obscure literary games, Bernie."

"Dante's
Inferno
." I tapped the cover of the book. "Santa's in hell," I explained. "We broke one of the Commandments. We don't get to go to heaven anymore."

Cupid couldn't stop his gruesome chuckle.

Rudolph stared at the book for a long moment, chewing on his lip. "Fine," he said, tapping an access code into the panel on the console. "We go to hell instead."

"Wait a minute," Donner interjected. "No one said anything about going to hell."

Rudolph lifted his head, and his eyes were gleaming. Like I had seen in the infirmary. "You got a problem with that?"

Donner nodded. "You're damn right I do. Raiding purgatory is one thing, but hell is . . . well, hell is . . . hot."

It was a bit more than that, but we all got what the muscular reindeer was trying to say.

"Bring a wet towel," Rudolph said as he punched the final button on the panel. Somewhere beneath us, distant machinery rumbled. High overhead, the domed surface of the launch area cracked open, and a thin layer of snow drifted down. As it coated Rudolph, he gave off a neon gleam.

"Look, Rudolph," Prancer interjected. "We've gone up against angels. We can handle them. But the minions of hell? I, uh, I don't think that is a good idea."

"Why not?" Rudolph wanted to know. "If you're scared, say it. That's all right."

"It's not a question of being scared. It's a question of suicide," Blitzen interjected. "We're too old to be caught up in some damn fool crusade. Twenty years ago, maybe. But not anymore."

"You're all scared. You're all terrified that you might be killed trying to save Santa."

Blitzen snorted. "And you're not?"

Rudolph shook his head. "No, I'm not."

"You're lying."

"Am not."

Blitzen sighed and looked at the other reindeer. "We've played poker with you for too many years, Rudolph. We know your tell. We know when you are bluffing."

The glow on Rudolph's skin became a little brighter. "I am not bluffing."

"Thanks for ruining it, Blitzen," Cupid pointed out wryly. "I had been pretty happy with the extra cash at Christmas every year."

It was the glow, I realized. That was Rudolph's tell. "How long have you guys known?" I asked.

"Hey, we let him play. It's not our fault he kept coming back." Cupid shrugged. "Look, Rudolph, we understand this macho posturing. We get it. We really do. But you don't have to keep proving yourself. You don't have to kill yourself to show that you're worthy of being one of Santa's reindeer."

I felt something nuzzle under my arm, and I started. The young reindeer who had been sent to fetch me had wandered up, and he had just stuck his head under my arm. I glanced down at his young face and realized there was at least one reindeer here who would follow Rudolph anywhere. Even to hell.

I rubbed the cover of Dante's book with my thumb, feeling the coarse stitching of the binding. The little guy wasn't the only one. I would go too. It was that nagging feeling that had been haunting me ever since Rudolph had interrupted my morning nap. That reminder that there was an unassailable responsibility that came with working for Santa—be it as one of his Little Helpers or as a reindeer—a responsibility you couldn't shirk. Sure, Santa was just a guy we shoved in a red suit every year, but he was a symbol of something bigger. He was what stood between us and the cold nights. And if Santa fell, well, then it was our job to take his place, wasn't it?