Track of a legend - страница 4

“She left the clinic fast enough when it caught on fire, and when she first came back that was as much her sanctuary as her spaceship house is now.”

“You can’t expect her to have enough energy to treat every minor day-to-day incident like an emergency.”

“I think she should go back where she came from.”

“Hush, dear. We voted for the treaty.”

“They ought to have sent them to L-5.”

“Couldn’t, and you know—”

Timothy and I left them talking about his aunt, but I knew I’d probably not heard the end of the glove. That was the problem with sexagenarian parents; they knew all the tricks from the first set of kids, and they had very good memories.

In the kitchen we had hot chocolate, slopping some on the puzzle my big sister had broken back into a thousand pieces before she gave it to me.

“What are you getting for Christmas?” Timothy asked me, his cheeks still pink from being outdoors and his eyes as bright as tinsel fluttering in the warm convection currents of the house.

I shrugged. My parents were firm about keeping the Christmas list up-to-date, and that started every year on December twenty-sixth. I still wanted the fighting kite I’d keyed into the list last March, and the bicycle sail and the knife and the Adventure Station with vitalized figures and voice control. I also wanted the two hundred and eighty other items on my list and knew I’d be lucky if ten were under the tree tomorrow morning and that some of them would be clothes, which I never asked for but always received. “An Adventure Station,” I finally said, more hopeful than certain. It was the one thing I’d talked about a lot, but Dad kept saying it was too much like the Hovercraft Depot set I’d gotten last year.

“Me too,” Timothy said, “and a sled. Which should we play with first?”

A sled! I didn’t have to go to the terminal and ask for a display of my Christmas list to know that a sled was not on it. My old one had worked just fine all last winter, but I’d used it in June to dam up Cotton Creek to make a pond for my race boats, and a flood had swelled the creek waters and carried it off and busted the runners. Too late to be remembering on Christmas Eve, because I didn’t believe in Santa Claus or Kris Kringle. Only in Bigfoot, because I had seen the footprints with my own eyes.

“We should play with the sleds first,” Timothy said, “before the other kids come out and ruin the snow.”

“I’m going to get a knife with a real L-5 crystal handle.”

Timothy shrugged. “My aunt’s going to give me one of hers someday.

She has lots of stuff from when she was a spacer.”

“Yeah, but my knife will be new. Then I’d like to see Bigfoot get away from me!”

“We can bring Bigfoot back on my sled,” Timothy said excitedly. He chugalugged the rest of his chocolate. “Early, right after presents. Meet me at the hill.”

“Why at the hill?” I said suspiciously. But Timothy was already heading for the door and pulling on his boots.

“Best place for sledding.”

“But what about your aunt’s mower?” I said, whispering now.

“Early,” he reminded me as he stepped out into the snow. I followed him, holding the door open. “And bring your sled.”

“What time do you open presents?” I said. But if Timothy answered, I didn’t hear.

The snow was falling in fat flakes, and the wind had come up and the snow was starting to drift over the hedges. Funny how it wasn’t really dark with all that white around, and funny, too, how I wasn’t so glad that it was coming down. What good was it without a sled? I could use the cardboard if I could find it again, which I doubted, for I could tell that if it kept snowing at the rate I was seeing from my doorway, there would be half a meter or more by morning, which also meant the grass cutter would get clogged before it got five meters from Timothy’s crazy aunt’s house. Timothy would let me try his sled if I pulled it up the hill, ‘cause if he didn’t I wouldn’t let him hold my L-5 crystal-handled knife… if I got one.

“Close the door!” my father shouted, and I closed it and went to bed early, knowing I couldn’t sleep but wanting to because morning would come sooner if I did, and when it did I would not have a sled — maybe not even an L-5 crystal-handled knife — only an old Adventure Station that Timothy didn’t want to play until after lunch, and who cared about snow anyhow, even if it did come down so fast and hard that it was catching on my bedroom window like a blanket before my sleepy eyes.