Dark Night in Toyland
by Bob Shaw
“Don’t let it happen today,” Kirkham prayed.
And then that other side of him, that intruder whose caustic, sneering voice had been growing more and more insistent for the past month, cut in with: Yeah, it’s bad enough for a kid to die of cancer at any time—but if it happens on Christmas Day it makes him feel rotten.
Kirkham jumped to his feet and strode violently about the study, ashamed and afraid of the voice even though he was sufficiently Manichaean in outlook to understand why he heard it. The oak-panelled room had once seemed so right for a smalltown Methodist minister whose mission was the preservation of religious belief in the hostile climate of the 21st century. Now it seemed dark and claustrophobic. He went to the window and pulled aside the green velvet drapes. It was ocean-black outside—six o’clock on a Christmas morning. No different to six o’clock on any other morning in winter.
The voice again: Here it is, Christmas—and us out here chasing a star.
Kirkham gnawed the back of his hand and went into the kitchen to brew coffee. Dora was there in her powder-blue dressing gown, making herself busy with cups and spoons. Straight-backed. Brave woman, their friends and neighbours must have been saying, but only Kirkham knew the extent to which she had been defeated by Timmy’s illness.
One night when he had talked to her about faith she had said, with a kind of sad contempt, “Do you have faith that two and two make four? Of course not, John. Because you know two and two make four.” It had been the first and only time she had spoken to him in that manner, but he had a disturbing conviction she had been making a personal statement about life and death.
“I didn’t hear you come down,” he said. “Isn’t it a little early for you?”
Dora shook her head. “I want this day to be as long as possible.”
“It won’t work, Dora.” He knew at once what she was trying to do. Dostoyevsky on the morning he was led out to be executed, resolving to magnify and subdivide every second so as to expand an hour into a lifetime.
“You have to let time go,” he said. “With gladness. It’s the only way to tackle eternity.” He waited, aware he had sounded pompous, hoping she would challenge him and thus admit her need for his help. And thus establish, in his own mind, that he was able to help.
“Milk or cream?” she said.
“Milk.” They sipped their coffees for a moment, separate, the bright clean geometries of the kitchen shimmering between them.
“What are we going to do next Christmas, John?” Dora’s voice was matter-of-fact, as though discussing arrangements for a vacation. “When we’re alone.”
“We have to see what God has in store for us. Perhaps, by then, we’ll understand.”
“Perhaps we understand already. Perhaps the only thing we have to understand is that there is nothing for us to understand.”
“Dora!” Kirkham felt a sombre excitement over the fact that his wife seemed on the brink of acknowledging her disbelief. He knew he would be unable to help her unless it was brought out into the open. The words had to be said, the thoughts translated into mouth movements and air vibrations, even though the eyes of God could see everywhere.
The voice: Great eyesight, God has. I mean, how else could he sit at the centre of the galaxy and fire a cosmic ray across thousands of light years and hit a single cell in a little boy’s spine? That’s real sharpshooting in anybody’s book. Especially the Good Book…
Kirkham’s attention on Dora’s face wavered. Of all places, it had had to be the spine, where the living structures were too complex for successful reproduction by bioclay. The treatment had been applied, of course, using the most advanced compounds, and it had given Timmy a few extra months. For a time it had even seemed that a cure might be achieved (the breakthrough had to come someday) but then the boy had begun to lose the mobility of his left leg—first signs that the bioclay, which was displacing cancer cells as quickly as they were formed, was proving unequal to the task of recreating the original tissues.
“…be awake by this time,” Dora was saying. “Let’s go in.”
Feeling that he had missed an important opportunity, Kirkham nodded and they went into Timmy’s room. In the dim glow of the nightlight they could see that the boy was awake, but he had not touched the Christmas gifts which were stacked at his bedside. Kirkham learned, yet again, how the word heartbreak had originated. He hung back, afraid to trust his voice, while Dora went to the bed and kneeled beside it.
“It’s Christmas morning,” she coaxed. “Look at all the presents you have.”
Timmy’s eyes were steady on her face. “I know, Mum.”
“Don’t you want to open them?”
“Not now—I’m tired.”
“Didn’t you sleep well?”
“It’s not that sort of tiredness.” Timmy looked away from his mother, his small face dignified and lonely. Dora lowered her head.
He knows, Kirkham thought, and was galvanised into action. He hurried across the room and began opening the varicoloured packages.
“Look at this,” he said cheerfully. “From Uncle Leo—an audiograph! Look at the way it turns my voice into colour patterns! And here’s a self-moving chess set…” He went on opening parcels until the bed was covered with gifts and discarded wrappings.
“This is great, Dad.” Timmy smiled. “I’ll play with them later.”
“All right, son.” Kirkham decided to make one more attempt. “Isn’t there anything you specially wanted?”
The boy glanced at his mother, suddenly alert, and Kirkham felt grateful. “There was one thing,” Timmy said.
“What is it?”
“I told Mum last week, but I didn’t think you’d let me have it.”
Kirkham was hurt. “Why shouldn’t…?”
“It’s a Biodoh kit,” Dora put in. “Timmy knows how you feel about that stuff.”
“Oh! Well, you must admit it’s not…”
“But I bought it for him anyway.”
Kirkham began to protest, then he saw that—despite the encumbrance of paralysed legs—Timmy was struggling into an upright position in the bed, face filled with eagerness, and he knew it would be wrong to interfere at that moment. Dora went to a closet and brought a large flat box which had not been gift wrapped. Printed across it in capacitor inks which made the letters flash regularly, like neon signs, was the word BIODOH. Kirkham felt a stirring of revulsion.
“Is it all right, Dad? Can I have it? You won’t be sorry.” Timmy was almost out of bed. His pyjama jacket had crumpled up, exposing the edge of the therapeutic plastron the surgeons had attached to his back.
Kirkham made himself smile. “Of course, it’s all right.”
“Thanks, John.” Dora’s eyes signalled her gratitude as she made Timmy comfortable against his pillows and moved the other presents to a table.
Kirkham nodded. He went to a window, drew back the curtains and looked out. The panes were still enamelled with night’s blackness, reflecting the scene within the bedroom. A child in a warmly lit cot, his mother kneeling by his side. The associations with the first Christmas, which might have comforted Kirkham earlier, seemed blasphemous in the presence of Dora’s gift. He wanted to leave the room, to find peace to think, but there was a risk of spoiling his son’s unexpected happiness. He returned to the bedside and watched Timmy explore the compartments and trays of the Biodoh box.
There was the pink dough which represented surface flesh; reddish slivers which would serve as muscles; coiled blue and yellow strands for nerves; plastic celery stalks for major bones; interlocking white beads for vertebrae. Small eyes arranged in neat watchful pairs. Snap-on nylon hooks for muscle inserts, the silver plugs of nerve connectors. And—most hideous of all to Kirkham’s eyes—the grey putty, debased commercial relative of the bioclay which was at work in Timmy’s spine, which could be fashioned into ganglia. Primitive little brains. The boy’s fingers fluttered over the box, briefly alighting on one treasure and then another.