“There aren’t any Dutch admirals,” said the Brit.

  It wasn’t that Dink let idiotic comments like this make him angry. He didn’t want to hit anybody. He didn’t want to raise his voice. But still, there was this deep defiance that could not be ignored. He had to do something that other people wouldn’t like. Even though he knew it would cause trouble and accomplish nothing at all, he was going to do it, and it was going to start right now.

  “They were able to stifle our Dutch holiday because there are so few of us,” said Dink. “But it’s time for us to insist on expressing our national cultures like any other soldiers in the International Fleet. Christmas is a holy day for Christians, but Santa Claus is a secular figure. Nobody prays to Saint Nicholas.”

  “Little kids do,” said the American, but he was laughing.

  “Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Papa Noel, Sinterklaas, they may have begun with a Christian feast day, but they’re national now, and people with no religion at all still celebrate the holiday. It’s the day of gift-giving, right? December 25th, whether you’re a believing Christian or not. They can keep us from being religious, but they can’t stop us from giving gifts on Santa Claus day.”

  Some of them were laughing. Some were thinking.

  “You’re going to get in such deep doodoo,” said one.

  “É,” said Dink. “But then, that’s where I live all the time anyway.”

  “Don’t even try it.”

  Dink looked up to see who had spoken so angrily.

  Zeck.

  “I think we already know where you stand,” said Dink.

  “In the name of Christ I forbid you to bring Satan into this place.”

  All the smiles disappeared. Everyone fell silent.

  “You know, don’t you, Zeck,” said Dink, “that you just guaranteed that I’ll have support for my little Santa Claus movement.”

  Zeck seemed genuinely frightened. But not of Dink. “Don’t bring this curse down on your own heads.”

  “I don’t believe in curses, I only believe in blessings,” said Dink. “And I sure as hell don’t believe I’ll be cursed because I give presents to people in the name of Santa Claus.”

  Zeck glanced around and seemed to be trying to calm himself. “Religious observances are forbidden for everybody.”

  “And yet you observe your religion all the time,” said Dink. “Every time you don’t fire your weapon in the Battle Room, you’re doing it. So if you oppose our little Santa Claus revolution, eemo, then we want to see you firing that gun and taking people out. Otherwise you’re a flaming hypocrite. A fraud. A pious fake. A liar.” Dink was in his face now. Close enough to make some of the other kids uncomfortable.

  “Back off, Dink,” one of them muttered. Who? Wiggin, of course. Great, a peacemaker. Again, Dink felt defiance swell up inside him.

  “What are you going to do?” said Zeck softly. “Hit me? I’m three years younger than you.”

  “No,” said Dink. “I’m going to bless you.”

  He set his hand in the air just over Zeck’s head. As Dink expected, Zeck stood there without flinching. That was what Zeck was best at: taking it whatever anybody dished out without even trying to get away.

  “I bless you with the spirit of Santa Claus,” said Dink. “I bless you with compassion and generosity. With the irresistible impulse to make other people happy. And you know what else? I bless you with the humility to realize that you aren’t any better than the rest of us in the eyes of God.”

  “You know nothing about God,” said Zeck.

  “I know more than you do,” said Dink. “Because I’m not filled with hate.”

  “Neither am I,” said Zeck.

  “No,” murmured another boy. “You’re filled with kuso.”

  “Toguro,” said another, laughing.

  “I bless you,” said Dink, “with love. Believe me, Zeck, it’ll be such a shock to you, when you finally feel it, that it might just kill you. Then you can go talk to God yourself and find out where you screwed up.”

  Dink turned around and faced the bulk of Rat Army. “I don’t know about you, but I’m playing Santa Claus this year. We don’t own anything up here, so gift giving isn’t exactly easy. Can’t get on the nets and order stuff to be shipped up here, all gift-wrapped. But gifts don’t have to be toys and stuff. What I gave Flip here, the gift that got us in so much trouble, was a poem.”

  “Oh how sweet,” said the Brit. “A love poem?”

  In answer, Flip recited it. Blushing, of course, because the joke was on him. But also loving it—because the joke was on him.

  Dink could see that a lot of them thought it was cool to have a toon leader write a satirical poem about one of his soldiers. It really was a gift.

  “And just to prove that we aren’t celebrating actual Christmas,” said Dink, “let’s just give each other whatever gifts we think of on any day at all in December. It can be Hanukkah. It can be . . . hell, it can be Sinterklaas Day, can’t it? The day is still young.”

  “If Dink would give us all a gift,” intoned the Jamaican kid, “that would give our hearts a lift.”

  “Oh how sweet,” said the Brit.

  “Crazy Tom thinks everything’s sweet,” said the Canadian, “except for Tom’s own mold-covered feet.”

  Most of them laughed.

  “Was that supposed to be a present?” said Crazy Tom. “Father Christmas is doing a substandard job this year.”

  “It would be pleasant to get a present,” said Wiggin. Everybody laughed a little. Wiggin went on. “It would be better to get a letter.”

  Only a few people chuckled at that. Then they were all quiet.

  “That’s the only gift I want,” said Wiggin softly. “A letter from home. If you can give me that, I’m with you.”

  “I can’t,” said Dink, now just as serious as Wiggin. “They’ve cut us off from everything. The best I can do is this: At home you know your family’s doing Santa stuff. Hanging up stockings, right? You’re American, right?”

  Wiggin nodded.

  “Hang up your stocking this year, Wiggin, and you’ll get something in it.”

  “Coal,” said Crazy Tom, the Brit.

  “I don’t know what it is yet,” said Dink, “but it’ll be there.”

  “It won’t really be from them,” said Wiggin.

  “No, it won’t,” said Dink. “It’ll be from Santa Claus.” He grinned.

  Wiggin shook his head. “Don’t do it, Dink,” he said. “It’s not worth the trouble it’ll cause.”

  “What trouble? It’ll build morale.”

  “We’re here to study war,” said Wiggin.

  Zeck whispered: “Study war no more.”

  “Are you still here, Zeck?” said Dink, then pointedly turned his back on him. “We’re here to build an army, Wiggin. A group of men who work together as one. Not a bunch of kids hammered down by teachers who think they can erase ten thousand years of human history and culture by making a rule.”

  Wiggin looked away and said, sadly, “Do what you want, Dink.”

  “I always do,” answered Dink.

  “The only gift that God respects,” said Zeck, “is a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

  A lot of kids groaned at that, but Dink gave Zeck one last look. “And when were you ever contrite?”

  “Contrition,” said Zeck, “is a gift I give to God, not to you.” Only then did Zeck walk away, back toward his bed, where he’d be hidden behind the curvature of the barracks room.

  * * *

  Rat Army was only a small percentage of the population of Battle School, but word spread quickly. The other armies began picking it up as a joke. Someone would pick up some scrap of leftover food and drop it on someone else’s meal tray, saying, “There you are, from Santa with love.” And everybody at the table would laugh.

  But even as a joke, it was a gift, wasn’t it? Santa Claus was giving gifts all over Battle School within days.

  It was more than just gifts. It was stockings. Nobody could say who started it, but after a while it seemed that the giving of every gift was accompanied by a stocking. Rolled up, hidden inside something else, but always a stocking. Nobody hung the stocking up in hopes of getting it filled, of course. It was the other way around—the stockings were being given as part of the gift.

  And the recipient of the stocking found a way to wear it, whether it fit or not. Dangling from a sleeve. On a foot, but not matched with the other sock. Inside a flash suit. Sticking out of a pocket. Just for a day, the sock was worn, and then it was given back. It was the stocking more than the words now that said, This is from Santa Claus.

  The stockings were needed, because what were the gifts? A few were poems, written on paper. Some of them were food scraps. As the days passed, however, more and more of the gifts took the form of favors. Tutoring. Extra practice time in the Battle Room. A bed that was already made when somebody came back from the showers. Showing somebody how to get to a hidden level in one of the video games.

  Even when it wasn’t a tangible gift, there was the stocking to make it real.

  Father was right, thought Zeck. The parents of these children put the lie of Santa in their hearts, and now it bears fruits. Liars, all of them, giving gifts as homage to the Father of Lies. Zeck could hear his father’s voice in his memory: “He will answer their prayers with the ashes of sin in their mouths, with the poison of atheism and unbelief in the plasma of their blood.” These children were not believers—not in Christ, and not in Santa Claus. They knew they served a lie. If only they could see that when you do charity in the name of Satan it turns to sin. The devil cannot do good.

  Zeck tried to go see Colonel Graff, but he was stopped by a Marine in the corridor. “Do you have an appointment with the commandant of Battle School?”

  “No, sir,” said Zeck.

  “Then whatever you have to say, say it to your counselor. Or one of the teachers.”

  The teachers were no help. Few of them would talk to him anymore. They’d say, “Is this about algebra? No? Then tell it to somebody else, Zeck.” The words of Christ had long since worn out their welcome in this place.

  The counselor did listen—or at least sat in a room with him while he talked. But it came to nothing.

  “So what you’re telling me is that the other students are being kind to each other, and you want it stopped.”

  “They’re doing it in the name of Santa Claus.”

  “What, exactly, has anyone done to you—in the name of Santa Claus?”

  “Nothing to me, personally, but—”

  “So you’re complaining because they’re being kind to other people and not to you?”

  “Because it’s in the name of—”

  “Santa Claus, I see. Do you believe in Santa Claus, Zeck?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Believe in Santa Claus. Do you think there’s really a jolly fat guy in a red suit who brings gifts?”

  “No.”

  “So Santa Claus isn’t part of your religion.”

  “That’s exactly my point. It’s part of their religion.”

  “I’ve asked. They say it isn’t religion at all. That Santa Claus is merely a cultural figure shared by many of the cultures of Earth.”

  “It’s part of Christmas,” insisted Zeck.

  “And you don’t believe in Christmas.”

  “Not the way most people celebrate it, no.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “I believe Jesus Christ was born, probably not in December at all anyway, and he grew up to be the Savior of the world.”

  “No Santa Claus.”

  “No.”

  “So Santa Claus isn’t part of Christmas.”

  “Of course he’s part of Christmas,” said Zeck. “For most people.”

  “Just not for you.”

  Zeck nodded.

  “All right, I’ll talk about this to my superiors,” said the counselor. “Do you want to know what I think? I think they’re going to tell me it’s just a fad, and they’re going to let it run itself out.”

  “In other words, they’re going to let them keep doing it as long as they want.”

  “They’re children, Zeck. Not many of them are as tenacious as you. They’ll lose interest in it and it will go away. Have patience. Patience isn’t against your religion, is it?”

  “I refuse to take offense at your sarcasm.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”

  “I can see that you also are a true son to the Father of Lies.” And Zeck got up and left.

  “I’m glad you didn’t take offense,” the counselor called after him.

  There would be no recourse to authority, obviously. Not directly, anyway.

  Instead, Zeck went to several of the Arab students, pointing out that the authorities were allowing a Christian custom to be openly practiced. From the first few, he heard the standard litany: “Islam has renounced rivalry between religions. What they do is their business.”

  But Zeck was finally able to get a rise out of a Pakistani kid in Bee Army. Not that Ahmed said anything positive. In fact, he looked completely uninterested, even hostile. Yet Zeck knew that he had struck a nerve. “They say Santa Claus isn’t religious. He’s national. But in your country, is there any difference? Is Muhammed—”

  Ahmed held up one hand and looked away. “It is not for you to say the prophet’s name.”

  “I’m not comparing him to Santa Claus, of course,” said Zeck. Though in fact Zeck had heard his father call Muhammed “Satan’s imitation of a prophet,” which would make Santa and Muhammed pretty well parallel.

  “You have said enough,” said Ahmed. “I’m done with you.”

  Zeck knew that Ahmed had gotten along well enough in Battle School. Their home countries were powerless to insist on religious privileges, so the children in Battle School had been granted exemptions from the obligations of Muslims to pray. But what would he do now that the Christians were getting their Santa Claus? Pakistan had been formed as a Muslim country. There was no distinction between what was national and what was Muslim.

  It apparently took Ahmed two days to organize things, especially because it was impossible to ascertain at any given time which earthside time zone they were in—or directly above—and therefore what times they should pray. They couldn’t even find out what time it was in Mecca and use that schedule.

  So Ahmed and other Muslim students apparently worked it out so that they would pray during times when they were not in class, and would continue to use the exemption for those students who were in an actual battle at a prayer time.

  The result was a demonstration of piety at breakfast. At first it seemed only a half-dozen Muslims were involved, the students prostrating themselves and facing—not Mecca, which would have been impossible—but to portside, which faced the sun.

  But once the praying began, other Muslim students took note and at first a few, then more and more, joined in the praying. Zeck sat at the table, eating without conversation with his supposed comrades in Rat Army. He pretended not to notice or care, but he was delighted. Because Dink grasped the meaning almost at once. The prayer was a Muslim response to Dink’s Santa Claus campaign. There was no way the commandant could ignore this.

  “So maybe it’s a good thing,” Dink murmured to Flip, who was sitting next to him.

  Zeck knew it was not a good thing. Muslims had renounced terrorism many years ago, after the disastrous Sunni-Shiite war, and had even reconciled with Israel and made common economic cause. But everyone knew how much resentment still seethed within the Muslim world, with many Muslims believing they were treated unfairly by the Hegemony. Everyone knew of the imams and ayatollahs who claimed, loudly, that what was needed was not a secular Hegemony, but a Caliph to unify the world in worship of God. “When we live by Sharia, God will protect us from these monsters. When God sends a warning, we are wise to listen. Instead, we do the opposite, and God will not protect us when we are in rebellion against him.”

  It was language Zeck understood. Apart from their religious delusions, they had the courage of their faith. They were not afraid to speak up. And they had numbers enough to force people to listen to them. They would be heard by those who had long since stopped even pretending to listen to Zeck.

  The next prayer time was at the end of lunch. The Muslims had spread the word, and all those who intended to pray lingered in the mess hall. Zeck had already heard that the same thing happened in the commanders’ mess at breakfast, but now most of the Muslim commanders had come into the main mess hall to join their soldiers in prayer.

  Colonel Graff came into the mess hall just before the announced time of prayer.

  “Religious observance in Battle School is forbidden,” he said loudly. “Muslims have been granted an exemption from the requirement of daily prayers. So any Muslim student who insists on a public display of religious rituals will be disciplined, and any commanders or toon leaders who take part will immediately and permanently lose their rank.”

  Graff had already turned to leave when Ahmed called out, “What about Santa Claus?”

  “As far as I know,” said Graff, “there is no religious ritual associated with Santa Claus, and Santa Claus has not been sighted here in Battle School.”

  “Double standard!” shouted Ahmed, and several others echoed him.

  Graff ignored him and left the mess hall.

  The door had not closed when two dozen Marines came through the door and stationed themselves around the room.

  When the time for prayer came, Ahmed and several others immediately prostrated themselves. Marines came to them, forced them to their feet, and handcuffed them. The Marine lieutenant looked around the room. “Anyone else?”

  One more soldier lay down to pray; he was also handcuffed. No one else defied them. Five Muslims were taken from the room. Not roughly, but not all that gently, either.

  Zeck turned his attention back to his food.

  “This makes you happy, doesn’t it?” whispered Dink.