Snow sifted gently into the streets of Brightopolis. Huge, rounded, primary-coloured saloon cars drifted carefully along the slick tarmac beneath the festive decorations, and overhead the street lights gave an amber gleam to the scene. Here, in the bustling heart of the city, happy shoppers were making last-minute efforts to find that one ideal present that would make Christmas Day perfect for their loved ones. Bright-eyed children danced and ran and played hide-and-seek among the adults, or dashed and slid and tumbled on the long slick of ice they had developed on the pavement outside The Daily Graus building, home to Brightopolis’s only remaining newspaper – and, indeed, the familiar red-and-white delivery vans were beginning to roll out of the basement carrying the final Christmas Eve edition to newsagents all over the city: “Tidings of comfort and joy” shouted from the placards on their sides.

Tightly bundled in an overcoat topped by a gaily coloured scarf and a bobble hat that was falling over his eyes, one rosy-cheeked little boy hurtled down the slide, only to career out of control, tumbling off the kerb and into the path of one of the delivery vans.

Alucelom! In a flash, a tall man in an outfit of red and ermine scooped him up from under the wheels of one of the vans before the driver even had a chance to brake. Setting him back on his feet on the pavement, the man looked down at the boy and said,

“Careful, there, little one.”

“Thank you. And, I’m sorry, Mr Sussex,” he lisped, hiding his face behind his mittens.

“Always there to prevent the news happening, Clark,” a voice sneered. He turned and found Lena Louis standing glaring at him. “Perhaps if you were a little less hands-on you’d make a better reporter. But you’ll never be as good as me – you care too much.” At that moment, a window scraped open above their heads and their editor, Scrumpy Black, leaned out.
“Are you two gonna shoot the breeze all day down there,” he bellowed. “Get up here. I want to talk to you.” Lena Louis strode into the building, leaving mild-mannered Clark Sussex standing in the snow. He turned back to the boy.

“Have a nice Christmas, Merry,” he said, as the boy sprinted back into the game, Clark’s “ho, ho, ho,” in hot pursuit. “It’s my business to help people.” He smiled ruefully, drew his cape around him against the cold, and stood and watched the children play for a while. Then, with a sigh, shouldered his way through the imposing front doors of The Daily Graus.

“Redundant?” he repeated. Mild-mannered Clark Sussex sat, red cap in hand, with a look of bewilderment on his face. “How can you make me redundant?”

“It doesn’t make economic sense to keep you on.” The reason the editor was known as ‘Scrumpy’ was as plain as the nose on his face. He had been editor of the Graus for even longer than Clark had been a reporter, and the news of his drinking and his nose always preceded him. He bit the end off another cigar, lit a match, and wafted the flame under the cigar’s green tip. “The new management say we don’t need reporters. They say we can pick up national stories from the wire, and anything local called in by the public can be written up by one of the subs.”
“But reporting isn’t all I do…”

“The market research and toy orders that come in via children’s letters to you have been outsourced to off-world colony call-centres – they call children on their mobiles and say they can save the time and bother of writing to you if they just dictate their wish-lists or even txt them if they want to. The wish list is correlated with their home addresses, then a focused marketing effort is targeted on the known salaried adults at that address. The conversion rate is very high, and has long surpassed your efforts in cost-effectiveness.”

The upright figure in the scarlet-and-ermine costume hung his head.

“Plus,” his editor said, “when letters like these started arriving, we thought they would fade away, but instead every year there are ten times as many as before. Frankly, Clark, the management think you’re a liability!”

Mild-mannered Clark Sussex took the bundle of letters, extracted one at random, and read it aloud.

Dear Santa Graus

Please don’t bring me any more toys. I have more than enough already, and Daddy says that it would be far better if you helped the Poor Starving Children in Africa than bring me more toys that I don’t need.

Yours in the spirit of Christmas

Merry Down

PS. It’s not a silly name. I was named after my Daddy, and he says he was named after someone in Lord of the Rings, whatever that is. He says he’ll read it to me one day. But reading is so not-now. Ah! He’s not looking. Please, yes, help the PSCiA, but also, if you’ve got any time left, can you make Pippin Dunkerton notice me. He is so tomorrow!

“I can see why the management might think this is not in their best interests, but you, Scrumpy, I’ve known you since before your nose looked like that, and this just isn’t you at all.”

“Clark, I have no control here.” Scrumpy puffed on his cigar. “If I don’t do what the management wants, I’ll be out of work too, and, unlike you, mister confirmed bachelor, I have a family to support and a pension to work towards, so I can’t afford to lose this job. Times change, Clark, and if we don’t change with them, we risk being left behind. I’m sorry, my friend, I really am, but there is nothing I can do.”

“And Lena…?”

“Ms Louis took the news as badly as you have. But she refused redundancy, resigned on the spot and walked out – what the blazes?” The room filled with unearthly light as a spotlight beam from the square outside hit the window. Clark slid up the sash and they leaned out. A blast of cold air filled the room and the muted hubbub they had heard through the double-glazing became a full throated roar laced by sirens. As they took in the size of the crowd in the square below it seemed that the people were looking up at them. Police were clearing the area in front of the building in order to allow a mobile turntable into position. More spotlights around the square came to life, all focusing on one point – the top of The Daily Graus building, directly above their heads.

The door behind them crashed open and Jimmy ‘Half’ Nelson stood on the threshold, leaning on the jamb, his wooden leg akimbo, breathing heavily. Despite all its economies, the paper had never made their aging messenger boy redundant, and still he delivered vital news in a timely fashion to concerned individuals. His one remaining arm swung round and adjusted his eye patch.

“Lena Louis is on the roof, threatening to jump,” he gasped.

Alucelom! Scrumpy turned back to the window, but Clark was no longer beside him. Behind him, the door banged, and the chill blast from the window scattered the papers from the desk onto the floor and sprinkled them with snow.

He leaned out of the window again, and looked up in time to see a figure tumble into the spotlit flakes, then perhaps a red flash but another spotlight dazzled him – and when the confusion of lights and flashing cleared there was no falling woman, and, indeed, no-one visible up there at all. He closed the window and turned back to the wreckage of the room. His cigar had gone out.

It was the cold and the wind combined with the shock. Lena had only meant to make a show of committing suicide, then use the publicity to get a better job. But she had fainted, and fallen, and that would have been the end of a brilliant career, had it not been for a streak of red that had scooped her out of the air and carried her off. She gradually became aware of a pair of strong arms holding her, her head on his shoulder, and a cold wind buffeting her. She opened her eyes, dreamily, and indeed it was the man of her dreams. She closed her eyes again and savoured the thought of him holding her so close – although the red, ermine-trimmed cap was a little out of character. Her eyes snapped open.

“Clark Sussex, put me down this instant,” she cried, and wriggled so violently she fell from his arms. And fell. And fell… and saw the ground, far below, rushing up to meet her. And fainted again.

2

“Welcome to Crypto, darling…” -- mild-mannered Clark Sussex puffed as he deposited his wife carefully, having carried her over the threshold from the retro-drive spaceship onto the tarmac of his home world – “-- although I never expected to see it again myself.”

“Clark, I’m so excited! But I’m cold too. It’s snowing!”

“I told you Crypto was six months out of sync, so our summer honeymoon would be a winter one here.”

“Clark, I know that. But did you have to wear your costume? You look so out of place. Everyone is wearing grey. Even the snow is grey…”

Abandoning their bags to the hotel’s bellboy, they took a taxi directly into the centre of the city.

“Cryptopolis is the capital of the entire world,” Clark said, slipping into tourist guide mode. “Crypto’s civilisation is much more ancient than yours, and much more highly – ”

“Clark, you can be such a bore. You told me all this at the Fortress of Solitude after you saved me. By the way, have I said ‘thank you, Mr Sussex’ today? My, but I expected people from such an advanced society to be a bit more cheerful! Does everyone have to be so dour? Hey,” she said, nudging an elderly woman laden with shopping bags on the pavement next to her, “cheer up, it may never happen!” The woman glanced up at her, surprised, and raised her chin to respond, but her foot slipped from the kerbstone and she sprawled into the road, her groceries scattering, in the path of an oncoming lorry.

Alucelom! Clark was still bending over the woman, trying to help her up, when the truck juddered to a halt only inches from his projecting behind. When he realised what had happened, he was so shaken he had to sit on the bumper of the truck while Lena helped the woman gather up her shopping.
Later, in the hotel room, Lena tried to comfort him.

“It makes sense that your superpowers wouldn’t work. After all, here, you’re just the same as everyone else.” Her eyes filled with mischief. “I wonder if that means I could be a superwoman here… ‘Kimota!’ No? Well, what about, ‘Narnoc!’ …no, that doesn’t work either, even though I have read the book.”

“Lena, don’t be silly – my powers are technological, and I forgot that I don’t have that technological back-up here. But did you see that woman’s eyes as she fell? She didn’t want to try to save herself. There was no joy in her worth living for. When I left, everyone was joyous all year round. On your planet, I tried to spread that joy and its true meaning, starting at Christmas. It was a long and lonely struggle, but it was beginning to have an effect. Here, it’s all gone. Could it be that there is only so much joy in the universe, and in order for it to be spread on elsewhere it must be sucked from Crypto? No, it can’t be. I must find out the truth.” And he stood up and strode from the room.

“Boy,” said Lena to the closing door, “some honeymoon this turned out to be.”

When he returned, he was in an even blacker mood.

“Everyone says the same. Because they used to be happy, they never needed much money, so when men arrived on the retro-ships with offers of high wages if we would only talk to their children on the phone, they didn’t get many takers to begin with. But some did take on the jobs, and, to learn the language properly, they had to watch popular imported entertainments called ‘soap operas’. Soon everyone was watching the soaps, so everyone wanted a job, but even then there were more jobs than everyone could do. Now, they are all locked into tedious call-centre jobs badgering people on your planet to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have in the hopes of getting higher wages themselves so they can afford the new better television sets to keep up with the soaps, and their native joy is gone, and, worst of all, they don’t even have time to watch the soaps anymore.” He slumped on the bed. “What have we done? And more to the point, what can I do about it?”

Lena had been dozing, but she was suddenly furious.

“Clark, you can care too much about other people! What about me? We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon. I know I used to be a self-centred hard-faced bitch career woman, but the day The Graus dumped me, I fell like humpty dumpty – I had nothing else to support me, and I would have been smashed and long gone if it hadn’t been for your goodness. Until then I had only dared to love an unattainably distant superelf. When you saved me, you changed me – you made me realise that caring about other people is what life is about, and I realised I cared about you, not your superhero alter ego, and it was wonderful to discover that you cared for me too, and things are much easier for both of us now we are sharing them.

“What you haven’t realised is that you don’t just have me to help you. All those people you helped down the years, all those kids who learned to say, ‘Thank you, Mr Sussex’ and mean it, all the people whose lives you have saved, they all have mobile phones, and they all have the Sussex serenity, the peace of mind that you taught them that comes from not wanting more and more stuff. All we’ve got to do is get them to talk to the people of Crypto when they cold call, and persuade them there is a better way, and that they have lost it. If we can get them to imagine it was Christmas every day, then the battle is won, because they are in the perfect position to carry on spreading the word throughout the world.”

“But, Lena, they don’t have Christmas on Crypto. There was never any need for it.”

“Well that’s easily remedied! Get your little red cap, Clark. We’re going out.”

 

3

When The Daily Graus finally closed down because no-one wanted to read their mindless tittle-tattle any more, mild-mannered Clark Sussex and his beautiful wife, ex-ace reporter Lena Louis arranged for the building to be converted into homes for the less fortunate. There was no grand opening filled with famous people trying to get their names and faces in the papers, because there weren’t any papers any more and no-one really cared. But after it had been open a few weeks, with Christmas only a few days away, Clark and Lena paid a visit to see how things were going. Outside the front door, someone was helping the kids organise a better slippier slide in the snow. When he realised they were there, he turned a familiar face to them.

“Scrumpy! What a nice surprise. I almost didn’t recognise you. Your nose is looking much better!”

“Yes, well, I don’t drink much any more, and I’ve stopped smoking too. Kids,” he sniffed, waving with his thumb over his shoulder. “They weren’t doing this right. Now it works just as well for me as it does them. Do you want to have a go?” A laughing screaming crowd of warmly-clad children slid along the pavement.

“I don’t think so…”

“And it’s a lot safer for them to play since the square became a pedestrian precinct. No more falling in front of cars and lorries here. We have a lot to thank you for, Mr Sussex – and you, too, Mrs Sussex, forgive me.”

But Lena was looking over his shoulder.

“Is that who I think it is?” Coming across the square was a sleigh drawn by eight reindeer, and the lead deer had a red nose. “It’s ’Dolf and the ’Deers! We haven’t seen you since we had to make you redundant. Looking prosperous, too! Are you running a taxi business now?” She gestured at the couple of young men sitting in the sleigh, dressed very much in the costume mild-mannered Clark Sussex used to wear except that theirs were the most gorgeous and perfect shade of pink.

“Mrs Sussex, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” said the lead deer. “This is not a taxi service, it’s an urgent message service. Merry has something to tell you.”

“Hullo, Mr Sussex,” one of the young men said. “Do you remember me? You saved me when I was sliding on the pavement here once.”

“Why, yes! You’re Merry Down, aren’t you.”

“I am, and this is my very dear friend Pippin Dunkerton.” Merry’s face coloured until it became a deeper shade of pink than his costume. He hid his face behind his mittens. “We’re thinking of getting married. It’s all thanks to you, Mr Sussex.” His lisp was suddenly pronounced. Pippin smiled fondly and took Merry’s hand.

“Yes. Thank you, Mr Sussex,” he said, without a trace of a lisp, “but we have bigger news too. We’ve come from the spaceport on Pleasure Island. They have just heard that the retro-drive ships have found another world that needs your special services, and they would like you to go at once as the world is in a dire state. There is a ship leaving as soon as you can join it. We have come to collect you.”

“Don’t they know it’s Christmas?”

“Not on the new world, sir. They need you to show them the way. Please come.”

Mild-mannered Clark Sussex looked at the sleigh that had once carried him and Lena to so many late-night visits.

“Do you remember, Lena, the times we went out in this sleigh, and there were two glasses of brandy and four mince pies waiting for us by the fireplace – and all the thank-you letters from parents who said that, having seen that people who want everything for themselves at any expense end up living in a hole in the ground, they were determined to bring up their own children in our spirit of Christmas.” He sighed. This attitude was so prevalent now that mild-mannered Clark Sussex finally felt his work was done here.

One glorious thing he had learned with Lena’s help was that the supply of joy was as inexhaustible as the supply of children, and he was only really happy when he was helping to reveal the Sussex serenity to new people.

“If this new world needs us, then we must go.” Taking his wife’s hand in his, they stepped into the sleigh and sat back.

Alucelom! And the sleigh and the reindeer and its occupants rose into the air and flew away to the Brightopolis Pleasure Island spaceport and a Christmas where none had gone before.

“What’s the name of this planet, then?”
Merry looked thoughtful.

“Everyone calls their planet something ordinary for them. ‘Ground’ or ‘Forest’ or ‘Home’. These people are no different. In one of their languages, it’s called ‘Terror’; but most of them call it ‘Earth’.

—the end—