Chapter 6

"I'm not Santa," said Bob doggedly. It was, perhaps, the thirtieth time he'd said it since he landed on the jolly old elf.

"Facts are facts, Santa," said Gobelon Ferreneil, who had been claiming for the last half hour that he was now Bob's right hand man. "You have the powers. Only Santa has the powers. It's been that way for thousands of years."

"The Santa myth is only centuries old, not thousands of years," said Bob, who was grasping at any straw that might cause his life to make sense again.

"You think humans invented Santa?" Gobelon laughed.

"I can't be Santa," insisted Bob. "Santa doesn't exist."

"Where was this attitude when I asked you to take the pledge?" Gobelon folded his arms over his chest.

"What pledge?" asked Bob.

Again the elf used a sort of sing-song voice, saying words that somehow sounded ancient. "Are you willing to deliver Santa's toys to all the girls and boys, preserving their hopes and joys?"

"I only agreed to that because I messed things up," moaned Bob. "Actually, I didn't mess anything up. Actually, it was an accident. But I stepped up after the accident to make things right. I delivered the presents. So I'm done. You have to take me back to Germany. My unit is missing me. They probably think I went AWOL to cozy up to some Fraulein on Christmas Eve. This will probably ruin my career!"

"Bob," said the old elf patiently. "You have a new career."

"You called me Bob!" said Bob, triumphantly. "You called me Bob. I'm not Santa. I'm Bob. You called me Bob, Gobby!"

"Gobby?" The elf's face drew up as if he'd taken a mouthful of alum.

"Your name is unpronounceable," said Bob. "All elf names are unpronounceable."

"Then call me Micky," said the elf. "But don't turn my name to crap. It makes it sound like you're prejudiced against elves."

"Sorry. It wasn't intentional. Surely you can understand why elves are not on my list of favorite people."

"All elves?" Gobelon leaned forward, and raised an eyebrow. It was obvious he was referring to Gwyneth. She had blushed and stuttered for ten minutes after they returned, before fleeing. She had been welcomed back like a hero. Nobody had accused her of anything. But it had been obvious to Bob that, somehow, everybody knew what had transpired in the sleeper on Santa's sleigh.

"Don't change the subject," said Bob. "The point is I'm not Santa. Nobody is Santa. Santa doesn't exist. I know I just suffered some strange dream. I'm probably lying in a bed in a coma somewhere. And that's the point. I can't go back to my real life and wake up from that coma until you people admit that this is, in fact, just a dream. I'm sure that's how this coma business works. I've never been in a coma before, but it has to work something like that."

He realized he was babbling and decided to be silent for a while.

Gobelon picked up the phone on the desk and spoke into it softly. Then he sat in his chair and waited. A few minutes later a female elf came in bearing a tray, upon which sat a mug and a sheaf of papers. She set it on the desk and looked nervously at Bob. She seemed agitated.

"Thank you, Égilin," said Gobelon. She waited, even though his comment was an obvious dismissal.

"Bob, this is Égilin," said Gobelon. "Tawny in your language. Among other things, she's in charge of statistics. I imagine she's very happy to meet you."

The girl studied Bob with frank, almond-shaped eyes. She nodded her head and said, "Pleased to meet you, Santa," softly.

"I'm not-"

"I think I can take it from here, Égilin," said the old elf, cutting Bob off.

It was obvious she didn't want to leave, but she ducked her head to the HMFIC and hurried out. Gobelon picked up the papers.

"The hot chocolate is for you. Cures what ails you."

Bob suddenly realized he hadn't had anything to eat in twenty-four hours. Other than Gwyneth's nipples and pussy. She'd been astonishingly loud in her approval of his mouth between her legs. He hadn't told her, but she tasted of peppermint, down there ... sort of a candy cane kind of taste. Aside from the faint taste of eggnog, which was disturbing, at first.

He picked up the cup and sipped. It was more delicious than any hot chocolate he'd ever had.

"Do you know how many children there are on this planet?" asked Gobelon.

"A bunch," said Bob.

"How many of those children did you just visit, Bob?"

"A whole bunch," said Bob.

"About 35% of the world's population is made up of children fifteen and under," said the elf, flipping through the papers Tawny - Égilin, he corrected himself, silently - had just brought in. "That's roughly a billion."

Bob blinked. "I visited a billion children in twenty-four hours?"

"No, you visited two hundred million, six hundred thousand and seventy-five of them," said Gobelon, casually. "The previous Santa had already gotten to roughly a hundred million. It turns out that when the fail safe kicked in, it seems to have caused a glitch in the collection of statistical data."

"But that's only a little more than 30% of a billion," said Bob. "Did I miss the others?"

"No, Bob, you did not."

"I don't understand," said Bob. "It's not fair if Santa only visits some."

"The Santa that doesn't exist, you mean?" asked the elf, smiling tiredly. Bob took a breath to speak, but Gobelon held up a hand to forestall him. "Sorry. I shouldn't have been flippant."

He handed the sheaf of papers to Bob.

"That's the list of the kids you and your predecessor visited tonight. As I said, the data was corrupted when you landed on Santa and the sleigh came back early. But for the sake of argument, let's say that thirty percent of the world's population of children got a visit from Santa tonight. Those are the children who believe."

"Believe," said Bob. His eyebrows rose. "You mean ... in Santa?"

"Yes," said Gobelon. "Of those, about 87% were on the nice list, and the rest were, of course, naughty."

"Wait," said Bob, looking through pages that listed children's names, where they lived, and what they had gotten when Bob placed a ball of light beneath their tree. "Why did I visit naughty children? I thought they didn't get anything."

"They don't get anything they want," corrected Gobelon.

Bob stopped to examine one page more carefully. He noticed that some names were printed in green, and others in red. On the red lines, under "nature of present" he saw things like socks, underwear, number two pencils and, in one case, a video game console flagged as "missing controller".

Bob looked up. "I don't understand," he said.

Instead of explaining, though, the HMFIC asked another question.

"How old were you when you stopped believing in Santa?"

Bob blinked. He knew exactly how old he had been. It had been on his tenth birthday. Having been born on December twentieth, his birthday celebration was mostly folded into Christmas. He got a cake and one present on his birthday, but then Christmas was extra good for him. It had been that way for him when his mother was still around, and his grandmother kept that tradition when his mother "went away to find a job."

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