Best Fiction by Allen Steele

Author:Allen Steele [Steele, Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

It was the third week of Aries, m.y. 53. Christmas was only a couple of weeks away, and already the taprooms were brewing more beer for the festivities to come. We had just returned from delivering medical supplies to the poor schmucks at Viking, and were watching the bartender as he strung some discarded fiberoptics over the bar.

“I miss mistletoe,” I murmured. I was working on my second beer by then, so I wasn’t conscious of my alliteration. “Mistletoe and Christmas trees.”

“You don’t know mistletoe and Christmas trees,” Doc said.

“Sure do. Had them in my family’s apartment. My mother and father, they used to kiss beneath the . . .”

“You grew up on the Moon. You had vinyl mistletoe and plastic Christmas trees. Bet you’ve never smelled the real thing.”

“No, but it was close enough.”

“Not in the slightest. You’d know the difference.” Doc sipped his beer. “But I get the point. Out in the belt, we’d get together in the wardroom on Christmas Eve and sing carols. You know caroling . . .?”

“Sure. ‘Silent Night,’ ‘The First Day of Christmas,’ ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ . . .”

“ ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,’ that’s my favorite. And then we’d exchange gifts. Sarah gave me a ring with a little piece of gold from an asteroid ore our ship had refined.” He smiled at the memory. “Marriage didn’t last, but I held onto the ring.”

“My favorite was a little rocket from my Dad. I was eight . . . nine, I guess. He made it for me in his lab. About two meters long, with a hollow nose cone. We put a little note with our squid number in the cone, then went EVA and hiked up to the crater rim, set the trajectory, fueled it up and fired it at Earth.” Once again, I remembered that little rocket’s silent launch, and how it lanced straight up into the black sky over Tycho. “Dad told me that it would eventually get there and land somewhere, and maybe someone would find it and send back a letter.”

“Anyone ever fax you?”

“Naw. It probably never got to Earth . . . or if it did, it probably burned up on entry.” I shrugged. “But I like to think that it made the trip, and just landed some place where no one ever found it.”

“But it meant something, didn’t it? Like Sarah’s ring. No Christmas gift is ever insignificant. There’s always a little of your soul in whatever you give someone.” Doc scowled at the lights being strung above the bar. “Here, it’s just an excuse for people to get drunk and stupid, and the next day everyone has to apologize to each other. Sorry for banging on your door. Sorry for keeping you awake last night. Sorry for making a pass at your wife . . .”

“What do you expect? Rudolph the green-nosed reindeer?”

“Red. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Don’t they teach you selenians anything?”

“Oh, yeah. Red-nosed reindeer.” I polished off my second and last, shoved the mug across the bar.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.