FREE STORIES 2012(104)

But they weren’t here, yet, and the other Peace Keepers were too far away to fire at him. The cliff face was craggy and naturally had much better hand- and footholds than the wall around the zipway. And he could move fast. Very fast.

He climbed the cliff face quickly, thanking whoever had designed him for superhuman speed, coordination and balance. The God of normal humans might have made them in His image and semblance. Jarl’s creators had improved on the design.

He was at the cliff top before the Peace Keepers’ reinforcements arrived and started sweeping the cliff face with brilliant lights. They found nothing.

Jarl found nothing as well, when he got to where he’d parked his flyer. He’d hoped to find nothing. He hoped they were well and away.

As for him, he turned and, tiredly, started to make his way towards Hoffnungshaus. If he got there in the next twenty-four-hours, perhaps Bartolomeu and Xander would avoid extreme punishment.





He couldn’t leave for a week after that. Not only was he too sore from the truly spectacular whipping he’d got as punishment, but he wasn’t left unwatched a single night. And he was not just watched by Bartolomeu and Xander, but by a sentinel, outside this door.

But after a week on his best behavior, vigilance relaxed. Hoffnungshaus did not have the resources to devote that much to their most troublesome charge. And besides, Jarl might escape, but he always came back and of his free will. While they held his friends, he would not disappear for good.

And so a week later, Jarl escaped and made it back atop the zipway wall, where he’d been when the sirens first sounded.

When he opened the panel, there was something in there, besides the circuits. At first he thought snow had got in there and not melted, but that was stupid. It would, of course, have melted. Touched, the whiteness revealed itself for a slip of paper. By the light of the holograms he read it. “Dear Jarl, I want you to know you are on our thoughts and in our prayers. On Christmas night, you were our savior angel. I don’t think we can rescue you—even if we found the location of your creche, it would be very well guarded. But we want you to know the mules you rescued that night are your age, quite normal as to intelligence, and will have a chance at a normal life because of you.” It ended with a very odd phrase in quotes, something Jarl had a vague memory of hearing sung in an old holo, “Angels we have heard on high.”

He let the paper go in the wind, of course. He could not take it back to Hoffnungshaus, but in a way it would always be with him.

Jarl’s fingers worked furiously, blindly, tying and connecting the circuits in a way they’d never been meant to go, and then tapping a mad dance on the buttons, reprogramming the hologram.

By the time he climbed down from the wall and beat a hasty retreat through the fields to Hoffnungshaus, making sure to lay a false path so no one would think this was him—even if they believed a single person could make the calculations to change the holos—he knew that from down in the zipway people flying towards Friedstadt would see an angel all in white fly away to disappear into the dark snowy night.

Jarl half dreamed that Jane and Carl would be out again, on one of their missions of mercy, and would see it, and know he was well and had got their message.

Angels he had met right here.





Away in a Manger

by Wen Spencer





It was so cold in the tower when Jack woke, his breath turned to smoke as he breathed out. From the windows of the overlook, dawn's pale light revealed no telling glitter of frost on the asphalt below. Nor was there any on the patches of green among the tall buildings that they'd deemed pasture and hay field. The wind carried the scent of autumn leaves but nothing of grass sheared by the cold.

"So we have at least one more day?" Renard yawned, showing off his mouth full of sharp teeth and then stretched lazily.

"How could you tell?"

"Your tail."

Jack glanced at his backside and saw that the white stub of his tail was indeed wagging. "Traitor."

The cat laughed as he strutted toward the nearest window and thumbed the latch. "Honestly you're as easy to read as a book with big bold font and little bitty words. That little tail is shouting 'yay, yay, let's make hay.'"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to catch my breakfast."

"Don't let the cold in." Jack trotted to the opening. "And make sure you don't catch anything that can talk."

"If it can talk, I'll thank it kindly for its brave sacrifice."

Jack huffed out a cloud that wisped away on the bitter cold wind. He hated the idea of eating anything you could argue morality with, but the simple truth was that they were losing the luxury every moment as the world turned colder. Last winter they barely survived. "Go on, let me shut the window. The cold is going to get to the bird."