dults who do not fight the Offworlders are not mine. They didn’t come from Daycare. But you and other are mine. Especially you, Chronos.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You love the other Daycare children, even those in the other unit. You even loved Deemi once but you especially care for Snuks –“
“I’ll be sorry to see her go,” I mumbled.
“She will be traded to the Offworlders. You may kill her one day, or she you.”
“Why does Snuks have to go there?”
“The Offworlders threaten to destroy the dults. They want the dults’ secret to immortality. Unfortunately the remaining dults don’t have that information. It was lost long before the first Offworlder skirmishes. The immorality gene was bred into you and the others – except for Snuks. Her offspring will be longlifers, and all females like her are traded to the Offworlders in order to keep the Offworlders from carrying out their threat. This trade appeases them for awhile.”
“Can you give the Offworlders the information they want”?
“No. I’ve lost large batches of information as a result of the degeneration that has taken place in Daycare and the outside world. Your immortality was already present in you gene pool.”
“You don’t think I’m going to survive this Christmas, do you, Ceep?”
“I did consider that possibility. I have reissued your genetic pool, Chronos, and have designed the two new replacements after you. Yet they are also significantly different from you.”
There was a long silence.
“Are you finished?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I have to get back to the others.”
“Goodbye, Chronos.”
I stepped outside not wanting to think about why Ceep told me this. I just wanted to win Christmas.
“Let’s get Christmas,” I said, and we began.
We jogged the down the street on which our Daycare unit was stationed. Snuks and Teb followed me with Geebo bringing up the rear. We moved in single file towards the centre of Daycare.
Skirting potholes and debris from other Christmases, we travelled north. Daycare had been a small grassy park surrounded by many city blocks. The park was battered and worn from years of battle, but there were still patches of yellow grass to be found at the outskirts. The old tenement buildings that still stood were now empty shells. Some old street lamps will worked, and Ceep usually turned them on for Christmas.
We didn’t move straight down the middle of the park but drifted west where the park foliage was heavier. Here, some of the trees were still real and alive, but most were imitations. None of us were even sure which ones were real, though Ceep assured us that there were still originals. We had planted many of our own traps here and were able to move through the area in relative security.
The buildings on the outskirts were a kind of no-man’s land where both groups, Deemi’s and mine, tried not to become trapped. The roads there did not lead to Christmas, but the buildings could provide cover from an attack.
It was getting cooler out. My breath came out in cloudy bursts, but it seemed too early for Ceep to be lowering the temperature. We came to the treed area, and I jogged to the base of a tree with low branches. Linking my fingers together, I formed a cup with my hands. Snuks ran as hard as her legs could go, stepped briefly into my hands and leaped upward. With the momentum gained from the leap, she swung her body around the branch, straddled it and was able to reach the rest of the branches to clamber high into the tree.
In a moment she was rapidly climbing down the tree. As she came to the last branch, she leaped, confident that I would catch her.
“They’re coming, three of them. They’re just over the hill. Run!”
Our only chance was to head west towards the empty buildings and hide there. Snuks was ahead of me, her small legs pumping so fast that I couldn’t keep up with her. I couldn’t figure out why Deemi had deviated to drastically from the course that would take him to Christmas. Snuks headed for an old house. She took the steps two at a time and disappeared through a doorway. I followed her and, and in the distance, cold hear Deemi calling my name. I ran faster. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw his gang take cover behind a bush.
In the dim light, inside the house, I saw Snuks in a corner. From the window I saw the dome light fade. For a moment Daycare was dark. The street lamps that still worked came on. Ceep even brought out a few stars and a moon. Snuks came over to the window and stood beside me. The moonlight sparkled in her eyes.
“Are you afraid to leave Daycare?” she whispered. I looked down at her. She seemed very small. I nodded.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know what’s out there,” I said.
I scanned the street looking for some sign of Deemi. It seemed quiet, and I wondered why he’d called my name.
“Why do we need Christhmath?”
“Because.”
“Becauth why?”
“Because it’s important. What else is there? I mean don’t you like the idea of getting all those presents every year?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why,” I said.
“But why don’t we share Chrithmath? Then we wouldn’t have to kill each other, and then we could alwayth be at Daycare.”
She had a point, but it wasn’t the time to explain that Deemi would never agree to a truce; besides, before now, Ceep always encouraged us to compete for Christmas.
“Are you afraid of Deemi?” she asked.
“No. Just the dults.”
“I’m afraid of Chrithmath. If Deemi killth you, you won’t be back. I don’t want you to go away, or Geebo.”
I didn’t know what to tell her, so I took her hand and held it.
Without warning, Deemi burst through the door. Snuks had time to pierce his cheek with one pellet. Then she jumped up onto the window ledge, somersaulted through it and landed safely outside. She ran towards the street. “Run!” I yelled after her. A member of Deemi’s gang stepped out from behind a lamp post and caught her.
“Why didn’t you answer my message?” Deemi said.
He was holding his left cheek, blood oozing through his fingers.
“You mean back at Daycare?” I watched him carefully. I was at a disadvantage. I couldn’t get to the door or window without fighting Deemi.
“That kid you sent to me never showed,” he said.
I glanced out the window. Snuks struggled with a captor, much bigger than herself. “Damn.”
“You should have got rid of her a long time ago.” Deemi walked over to the window. His back was to me. I should’ve tried to kill him then, but I saw something whiz out from one of the shelled houses across the street. It struck Snuk’s captor in the neck. He let her go and grabbed his own neck with both hands.
“Those replacements are missing. What’s going on with them?” he asked.
“What?”
“The replacement you sent over to my unit – it never showed. Those new kids – they’ve done something to Ceep.”
“How do you mean?” I tried to stall.
“Ceep’s making the weather cold sooner than last Christmas. The night’s come too soon, and I think it’s those new kids.”
Deemi was afraid. He leaned on one arm against the window frame, blocking my exit. When I looked for Snuks, she was gone. Her captor was on his knees with a red glistening stream spurting from between his fingers.
“Where’s your new kid?” He glanced suspiciously around the room.
“He’s not here.”
Deemi was volatile and unpredictable. He gave me a violent shove against the wall and then grabbed me. “We’ve got to find them.” He was desperate.
“You find them,” I said and jammed two knuckle into his throat. He let go, and I jumped out the window and ran for the cover of the trees. I ran past the body of Snuks’ captor and saw someone hiding in the bush ahead of me. It was Geebo. He mot
ioned for me to follow him, and led me to one of the traps we had set for Deemi’s unit. He pointed to the strip of laze-eyes he had placed along one side of the trunk of a tree.
The trap had been tampered with. It should have let anyone from my Daycare unit pass through it without harm, but no one from Deemi’s. It had been dismantled, and Geebo couldn’t figure out how it had been done.
“Did you see Snuks or Teb?” I asked him.
“Snuks got away.” Geebo patted his blood-stained razor-disc. “But I haven’t seen Teb since we left the unit.”
I was relieved to hear that Snuks had got away. We left the trap and decided to try to make our way to Christmas.
We moved cautiously, encountering no difficulties. This unnerved us even more than if we had been attacked or injured by Deemi’s gang or their traps. We walked through his territory as if he had never been expecting us. We found that Deemi’s traps were dismantled, too.
We weren’t far from Christmas when we heard a noise. I climbed a tree and ws barely up and hidden when two shadowy forms came from opposite directions to converge on Geebo. He decided to stay and fight it out. Besides he couldn’t follow me because he had too much junk strapped to himself. He had his grease gun out and sprayed the stuff all over, but they got him. He never made a sound. His body was heaped awkwardly on the ground, a dark silhouette against the soft green glow of the grease.
They tried to climb the tree after me but were covered with the slippery glow grease, and even when they tried to hide, the thick foliage couldn’t completely conceal their glow. They waited for me, so I couldn’t climb down. I remembered a group of