At the top of the next rise he could see the eastbound lanes, and that the rest of the ground was dry enough to drive over. He turned and went back, but found he had somehow lost his way, and that he was a quarter mile at least from the service park where he had left his car. He began walking back to it along the shoulder of the Interstate, but the traffic passing only a few feet to his right at ninety miles an hour frightened him. He moved away from it, and the ground became really swampy, the mud sticking to his shoes and insects buzzing up with each step he took; so that he went back to the shoulder of the highway, still afraid.

  The War Beneath the Tree

  Christmas Eve

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Commander Robin,” the Spaceman said. “You’d better go to bed, or Santa won’t come.”

  Robin’s mother said, “That’s right, Robin. Time to say good night.”

  The little boy in blue pajamas nodded, but made no move to rise.

  “Kiss me,” said Bear. Bear walked his funny, waddly walk around the tree and threw his arms about Robin. “We have to go to bed. I’ll come too.” It was what he said every night.

  Robin’s mother shook her head in amused despair. “Listen to them,” she said. “Look at him, Bertha. He’s like a little prince surrounded by his court. How is he going to feel when he’s grown and can’t have transistorized sycophants to spoil him all the time?”

  Bertha the robot maid nodded her own almost human head as she put the poker back in its stand. “That’s right, Ms. Jackson. That’s right for sure.”

  The Dancing Doll took Robin by the hand, making an arabesque penché of it. Now Robin rose. His guardsmen formed up and presented arms.

  “On the other hand,” Robin’s mother said, “they’re children only such a short time.”

  Bertha nodded again. “They’re only young once, Ms. Jackson. That’s for sure. All right if I tell these little cute toys to help me straighten up after he’s asleep?”

  The Captain of the Guardsmen saluted with his silver saber, the Largest Guardsman beat the tattoo on his drum, and the rest of the guardsmen formed a double file.

  “He sleeps with Bear,” Robin’s mother said.

  “I can spare Bear. There’s plenty of others.”

  The Spaceman touched the buckle of his antigravity belt and soared to a height of four feet like a graceful, broad-shoulded balloon. With the Dancing Doll on his left and Bear on his right, Robin toddled off behind the guardsmen. Robin’s mother ground out her last cigarette of the evening, winked at Bertha, and said, “I suppose I’d better turn in too. You needn’t help me undress, just pick up my things in the morning.”

  “Yes’um. Too bad Mr. Jackson ain’t here, it bein’ Christmas Eve and you expectin’ an’ all.”

  “He’ll be back from Brazil in a week—I’ve told you already. And Bertha, your speech habits are getting worse and worse. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be a French maid for a while?”

  “Maize none, Ms. Jackson. I have too much trouble talkin’ to the men that comes to the door when I’m French.”

  “When Mr. Jackson gets his next promotion, we’re going to have a chauffeur,” Robin’s mother said. “He’s going to be Italian, and he’s going to stay Italian.”

  Bertha watched her waddle out of the room. “All right, you lazy toys! You empty them ashtrays into the fire an’ get everythin’ put away. I’m goin’ to turn myself off, but the next time I come on, this room better be straight or there’s goin’ to be some broken toys around here.”

  She watched long enough to see the Gingham Dog dump the largest ashtray on the crackling logs, the Spaceman float up to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, and the Dancing Doll begin to sweep the hearth. “Put yourselfs in your box,” she told the guardsmen, and turned off.

  · · · ·

  In the smallest bedroom, Bear lay in Robin’s arm. “Be quiet,” said Robin.

  “I am quiet,” said Bear.

  “Every time I am almost gone to sleep, you squiggle.”

  “I don’t,” said Bear.

  “You do.”

  “Sometimes you have trouble going to sleep too, Robin,” said Bear.

  “I’m having trouble tonight,” Robin countered meaningfully.

  Bear slipped from under his arm. “I want to see if it’s snowing again.” He climbed from the bed to an open drawer, and from the open drawer to the top of the dresser. It was snowing.

  Robin said, “Bear, you have a circuit loose.” It was what his mother sometimes said to Bertha.

  Bear did not reply.

  “Oh, Bear,” Robin said sleepily, a moment later. “I know why you’re antsy. It’s your birthday tomorrow, and you think I didn’t get you anything.”

  “Did you?” Bear asked.

  “I will,” Robin said. “Mother will take me to the store.” In half a minute his breathing became the regular, heavy sighing of a sleeping child.

  Bear sat on the edge of the dresser and looked at him. Then he said under his breath, “I can sing Christmas carols.” It had been the first thing he had ever said to Robin, one year ago. He spread his arms. All is calm. All is bright. It made him think of the lights on the tree and the bright fire in the living room. The Spaceman was there, but because he was the only toy who could fly, none of the others liked the Spaceman much. The Dancing Doll was there too. The Dancing Doll was clever, but, well… He could not think of the word.

  He jumped down into the drawer on top of a pile of Robin’s undershirts, then out of the drawer, softly to the dark, carpeted floor.

  “Limited,” he said to himself. “The Dancing Doll is limited.” He thought again of the fire, then of the old toys, the Blocks Robin had had before he and the Dancing Doll and the rest had come—the Wooden Man who rode a yellow bicycle, the Singing Top.

  · · · ·

  In the living room, the Dancing Doll was positioning the guardsmen, while the Spaceman stood on the mantel and supervised. “We can get three or four behind the bookcase,” he called.

  “Where they won’t be able to see a thing,” Bear growled.

  The Dancing Doll pirouetted and dropped a sparkling curtsy. “We were afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said.

  “Put one behind each leg of the coffee table,” Bear told her. “I had to wait until he was asleep. Now listen to me, all of you. When I call, ‘Charge!’ we must all run at them together. That’s very important. If we can, we’ll have a practice beforehand.”

  The Largest Guardsman said, “I’ll beat my drum.”

  “You’ll beat the enemy, or you’ll go into the fire with the rest of us,” Bear said.

  · · · ·

  Robin was sliding on the ice. His feet went out from under him and right up into the air so he fell down with a tremendous BUMP that shook him all over. He lifted his head, and he was not on the frozen pond in the park at all. He was in his own bed, with the moon shining in at the window, and it was Christmas Eve… no, Christmas Night now… and Santa was coming, maybe had already come. Robin listened for reindeer on the roof and did not hear reindeer steps. Then he listened for Santa eating the cookies his mother had left on the stone shelf by the fireplace. There was no munching or crunching. Then he threw back the covers and slipped down over the edge of his bed until his feet touched the floor. The good smells of tree and fire had come into his room. He followed them out of it ever so quietly, into the hall.

  Santa was in the living room, bent over beside the tree! Robin’s eyes opened until they were as big and as round as his pajama buttons. Then Santa straightened up, and he was not Santa at all, but Robin’s mother in a new red bathrobe. Robin’s mother was nearly as fat as Santa, and Robin had to put his fingers in his mouth to keep from laughing at the way she puffed, and pushed at her knees with her hands until she stood straight.

  But Santa had come! There were toys—new toys!—everywhere under the tree.

  Robin’s mother went to the cookies on the stone shelf and ate half of one. Then she drank half the glass of milk. Then she turned to go back into her bedroom, and Robin retreated into the darkness of his own room until she was past. When he peeked cautiously around the door frame again, the toys—the new toys—were beginning to move.

  They shifted and shook themselves and looked about. Perhaps it was because it was Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was only because the light of the fire had activated their circuits. But a Clown brushed himself off and stretched, and a Raggedy Girl smoothed her raggedy apron (with the heart embroidered on it), and a Monkey gave a big jump and chinned himself on the next-to-lowest limb of the Christmas tree. Robin saw them. And Bear, behind the hassock of Robin’s father’s chair, saw them too. Cowboys and Native Americans were lifting the lid of a box, and a Knight opened a cardboard door (made to look like wood) in the side of another box (made to look like stone), letting a Dragon peer over his shoulder.

  “Charge!” Bear called. “Charge!” He came around the side of the hassock on all fours like a real bear, running stiffly but very fast, and he hit the Clown at his wide waistline and knocked him down, then picked him up and threw him halfway to the fire.

  The Spaceman had swooped down on the Monkey; they wrestled, teetering, on top of a polystyrene tricycle.

  The Dancing Doll had charged fastest of all, faster even than Bear himself, in a breathtaking series of jetés, but the Raggedy Girl had lifted her feet from the floor, and now she was running with her toward the fire. As Bear struck the Clown a second time, he saw two Native Americans carrying a guardsman—the Captain of the Guardsmen—toward the fire too. The Captain’s saber had gone through one of the Native Americans and it must have disabled some circuit because the Native American walked badly; but in a moment more the Captain was burning, his red uniform burning, his hands thrown up like flames themselves, his black eyes glazing and cracking, bright metal running from him like sweat to harden among the ashes under the logs.

  The Clown tried to wrestle with Bear, but Bear threw him down. The Dragon’s teeth were sunk in Bear’s left heel, but he kicked himself free. The Calico Cat was burning, burning. The Gingham Dog tried to pull her out, but the Monkey pushed him in. For a moment, Bear thought of the cellar stairs and the deep, dark cellar, where there were boxes and bundles and a hundred forgotten corners. If he ran and hid, the new toys might never find him, might never even try to find him. Years from now Robin would discover him, covered with dust.

  The Dancing Doll’s scream was high and sweet, and Bear turned to face the Knight’s upraised sword.

  · · · ·

  When Robin’s mother got up on Christmas Morning, Robin was awake already, sitting under the tree with the Cowboys, watching the Native Americans do their rain dance. The Monkey was perched on his shoulder, the Raggedy Girl (programmed, the store had assured Robin’s mother, to begin Robin’s sex education) in his lap, and the Knight and the Dragon were at his feet. “Do you like the toys Santa brought you, Robin?” Robin’s mother asked.

  “One of the Native Amer’cans doesn’t work.”

  “Never mind, dear, we’ll take him back. Robin, I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  Bertha the robot maid came in with Corn Flakes and milk and vitamins, and café au lait for Robin’s mother. “Where is those old toys?” she asked. “They done a picky-poor job of cleanin’ up this room.”

  “Robin, your toys are just toys, of course—”

  Robin nodded absently. A Red Calf was coming out of the chute, with a Cowboy on a Roping Horse after him.

  “Where is those old toys, Ms. Jackson?” Bertha asked again.

  “They’re programmed to self-destruct, I understand,” Robin’s mother said. “But, Robin, you know how the new toys all came, the Knight and Dragon and all your Cowboys, almost by magic? Well, the same thing can happen with people.”

  Robin looked at her with frightened eyes.

  “The same wonderful thing is going to happen here, in our home.”

  La Befana

  Christmas Day

  When Zozz, home from the pit, had licked his fur clean, he howled before John Bannano’s door. John’s wife, Teresa, opened it and let him in. She was a thin, stooped woman of thirty or thirty-five, her black hair shot with gray; she did not smile, but he felt somehow that she was glad to see him. She said, “He’s not home yet. If you want to come in we’ve got a fire.”

  Zozz said, “I’ll wait for him,” and, six-legging politely across the threshold, sat down over the stone Bananas had rolled in for him when they were new friends. Maria and Mark, playing some sort of game with beer-bottle caps on squares scratched on the floor dirt said, “Hi, Uncle Zozz,” and Zozz said, “Hi,” in return. Bananas’ old mother, whom Zozz had brought here from the pads in his rusty powerwagon the day before, looked at him with piercing eyes, then fled into the other room. He could hear Teresa relax, the wheezing outpuffed breath.

  He said, half humorously, “I think she thinks I bumped her on purpose yesterday.”

  “She’s not used to you yet.”

  “I know,” Zozz said.

  “I told her, Mother Bannano, it’s their world, and they’re not used to you.”

  “Sure,” Zozz said. A gust of wind outside brought the cold in to replace the odor of the gog-hutch on the other side of the left wall.

  “I tell you it’s hell to have your husband’s mother with you in a place as small as this.”

  “Sure,” Zozz said again.

  Maria announced, “Daddy’s home!” The door rattled open and Bananas came in looking tired and cheerful. Bananas worked in the slaughtering market, and though his cheeks were blue with cold, the cuffs of his trousers were red with blood. He kissed Teresa and tousled the hair of both children, and said, “Hi, Zozzy.”

  Zozz said, “Hi. How does it roll?” And moved over so Bananas could warm his back. Someone groaned, and Bananas asked a little anxiously, “What’s that?”

  Teresa said, “Next door.”

  “Huh?”

  “Next door. Some woman.”

  “Oh. I thought it might be Mom.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In back.”

  Bananas frowned. “There’s no fire in there; she’ll freeze to death.” “I didn’t tell her to go back there. She can wrap a blanket around her.”

  Zozz said, “It’s me—I bother her.” He got up. Bananas said, “Sit down.”

  “I can go. I just came to say hi.”

  “Sit down.” Bananas turned to his wife. “Honey, you shouldn’t leave her in there alone. See if you can’t get her to come out.”

  “Johnny—”

  “Teresa, dammit!”

  “Okay, Johnny.”

  Bananas took off his coat and sat down in front of the fire. Maria and Mark had gone back to their game. In a voice too low to attract their attention Bananas said, “Nice thing, huh?”

  Zozz said, “I think your mother makes her nervous.”

  Bananas said, “Sure.”

  Zozz said, “This isn’t an easy world.”

  “You mean for us. No it ain’t, but you don’t see me moving.”

  Zozz said, “That’s good. I mean, here you’ve got a job anyway. There’s work.”

  “That’s right.”

  Unexpectedly Maria said: “We get enough to eat here, and me and Mark can find wood for the fire. Where we used to be there wasn’t anything to eat.”

  Bananas said, “You remember, honey?”

  “A little.”

  Zozz said, “People are poor here.”

  Bananas was taking off his shoes, scraping the street mud from them and tossing it into the fire. He said, “If you mean us, us people are poor everyplace.” He jerked his head in the direction of the back room. “You ought to hear her tell about our world.”

  “Your mother?”

  Bananas nodded. Maria said, “Daddy, how did Grandmother come here?”

  “Same way we did.”

  Mark said, “You mean she signed a thing?”

  “A labor contract? No, she’s too old. She bought a ticket—you know, like you would buy something in a store.”

  Maria said, “That’s what I mean.”

  “Shut up and play. Don’t bother us.”

  Zozz said, “How’d things go at work?”

  “So-so.” Bananas looked toward the back room again. “She came into some money, but that’s her business—I didn’t want to talk to the kids about it.”

  “Sure.”

  “She says she spent every dollar to get here—you know, they haven’t used dollars even on Earth for fifty, sixty years, but she still says it, how do you like that?” He laughed, and Zozz laughed too. “I asked how she was going to get back, and she said she’s not going back, she’s going to die right here with us. What could I say?”

  “I don’t know.” Zozz waited for Bananas to say something, and when he did not he added, “I mean, she’s your mother.”

  “Yeah.”

  Through the thin wall they heard the sick woman groan again, and someone moving about. Zozz said, “I guess it’s been a long time since you saw her last.”

  “Yeah—twenty-two years Newtonian. Listen, Zozzy…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know something? I wish I had never set eyes on her again.”

  Zozz said nothing, rubbing his hands, hands, hands.

  “That sounds lousy I guess.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “She could have lived good for the rest of her life on what that ticket cost her.” Bananas was silent for a moment. “She used to be a big, fat woman when I was a kid, you know? A great big woman with a loud voice. Look at her now—dried up and bent over; it’s like she wasn’t my mother at all. You know the only thing that’s the same about her? That black dress. That’s the only thing I recognize, the only thing that hasn’t changed. She could be a stranger—she tells stories about me I don’t remember at all.”

  Maria said, “She told us a story today.”