AUTHOR'S NOTE: Whoops, took a bit longer to post this than I thought. Think of it as a late Christmas present, or something.
Also, be careful you don't fall in the plot hole. Oh well; this isn't supposed to be remotely serious anyway. But damn, was it fun to write…
I'd have a reviewer's corner, but there's only like two more chapters of this thing, and the reviews I've been getting are readers essentially spotting themselves with laughter. Which is EXACTLY what I want, so keep up the mirth, folks.
PART III: THE SECOND OF THREE SPIRITS, AND I DON'T MEAN GIN
Kat awoke in her bedroom. No doubt about that, but it, and the adjoining sitting room, into which she shuffled Rei-like in her slippers, had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green stuff that it looked like a greenhouse. The leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, and such a mighty blaze roared in the chimney that it would classify as a Class II atrocity under the Ares Conventions. Heaped upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, great joints of meat, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, pudding, red-hots, apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, and great bowls of punch. Mmmm. Makes you hungry, neh?
Sitting easy upon this couch there sat a warrior dressed all in Jade Falcon green, but brighter and richer than the standard uniform of the Green Chickens. He bore a glowing flashlight, in a shape not unlike the horn of cornucopia, and pointed it to shed its light on Kat, as she came peering around the door.
"Come in, quiaff? I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me, quiaff? You have never seen the like of me before!"
"Yes I have," Kat said flatly.
"You have?" the spirit asked.
"Sure. You're Aidan Pryde, and if I hadn't already figured out this was some sort of sorcery by all the food, you being here would be a big clue. After all, weren't you killed on Tukayyid?"
Pryde shrugged. "Depends. According to Thurston, yes. According to J.A. Baker, then no. Either way, it does not matter, quiaff?"
Kat aped Pryde's shrug. "I suppose. What's with all the food? I thought you Clanners were pretty spartan."
"Aff, but I am making up in the afterlife what I lacked in life. Want some cake?"
"No, that's okay. Take me where you will and get it over with. I went out earlier on compulsion, and I supposed I learned my lession. If you're here to teach me more than how to gain weight and get drunk, then let's get to it."
"Aff. Touch my uniform." Kat did as she was told, and held it fast. "Not so tightly, quiaff? I bruise like a grape."
The room and its contents vanished instantly, and they stood in the frozen streets of Tharkad upon a snowy Christmas morning. Kat and the Ghost passed on, invisible, straight to the domicile of Kat's brother, Victor. "What the hell—" Kat began indignantly.
"Hush," Pryde ordered, and Kat shut up. They drifted as if nothing through the front door of Victor's quiet home just inside the Triad walls, where Kat had exiled her brother. Inside, a young, quite beautiful Japanese woman, dressed poorly in a twice-turned gown, wearing ribbons that were cheap but looked good for a few measly pfennings, laid down a cloth. Peter Steiner-Davion, a giant dressed in a uniform too small for him, plunged a fork into a saucepan of potatoes. He blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the lid in a boil.
"What has ever got your precious brother then?" asked Omi Kurita in her trimmed and very proper English. "And your sister Yvonne! And Kai was not as late last Christmas by half an hour!"
"I'm here, friend Omi!" said a young Asian man, as the door opened.
"He's here, Omi," echoed Peter. "You won't believe how our goose is cooked this year, Kai!"
"So ka, so it is," Omi said, kissing Kai's rosy cheeks and taking off his rude shawl and coat for him.
"We had a deal of work to finish up last night at Free Capella," replied Kai.
"Shigata ga nai," Omi replied. "Never mind so long as you are here. Sit yourself before the fire and get warm."
"Here comes Victor," cried Peter. "Hide, Kai, hide!" So Kai hid himself for some damn reason, and in came Victor Steiner-Davion, now wearing the white comforter that Yvonne had wrapped herself in, and his threadbare uniform done up and brushed to look seasonable, and Yvonne riding on his back, the better to cover the monumental plot hole the author now found himself in.
"Hey, where's Kai?" asked Victor, looking around. "I saw him come in. Don't tell me he's suddenly developed Phantom 'Mech or something else munchy—"
"He is not coming," said Omi.
"Not coming!" exclaimed Victor, with a sudden lowering of his spirits, for he had been carrying Yvonne home all the way from church, and had hoped to see his friend again. "He's not coming on Christmas?"
Kai hated to see him disappointed, even in a lame ass joke, so he came out from behind the closet door, while Peter hustled off Yvonne to show her the Jello in the freezer.
"And how is Yvonne?" asked Omi, as Victor and Kai slapped each other on the back and called each other foul names, as men are wont to do upon meeting.
"Fine," said Victor, "and feeling better. She was so sick yesterday that I feared for her walking home through the snow." Victor's voice trembled at this. Yvonne sniffled and tried to look interested as Peter showed her the pudding, but it was obvious she was in great distress. Victor, turning up his cuffs—as if they were capable of being made more shabby—compounded some hot mixture in a jug with bathtub gin and lemons, stirring it with a spoon and then putting it on the stove to cook the impurities out of it. He threw the charred remains of the spoon in the trash as Peter went to fetch the goose, with which he soon returned in high spirits.
Omi made the gravy, pouring in a generous amount of sake (in the gravy, not herself); Peter mashed the potatoes like a Daishi among infantry; Kai sweetened up the applesauce and dusted the hot plates; Victor took Yvonne beside him as they set the table. At last they sat down, the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by breathless pause as Omi, looking slowly all along the katana, prepared to plunge it into the breast of the goose; one murmur of delight arose all around the table, and even Yvonne, looking like the fourth day of a three day pass, beat on the table with the handle of her knife, feebly crying out for Omi to quit imploring the name of the moon and just stab the damn thing already.
There never was such a goose. Victor said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and smashed potatoes, it was sufficient dinner for the whole group. After the last atom of the goose had been ravenously devoured with all the table manners of Henry VIII and Attila, Omi left the room alone to get the Jello out of the freezer in the back, and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough, they thought aloud. Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall, past the Lohengrin guards, past the 1st and 2nd Royal Guards, past Curiatis, past Tiaret the hulking Elemental standing out front, and stolen the Jello, while they were ripping into the goose's entrails! All sorts of horrors were supposed. But wait! They watched it quiver, they watched it shiver, and at last, Omi entered, flushed but smiling proudly, with the Jello, like a speckled Gauss round, blazing in half a tureen of ignited brandy, and with a sprig of Christmas holly stuck to the top.
Oh, a wonderful Jello, Victor said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success in the kitchen achieved by Omi Kurita since Stackpole finally said the hell with it and let them do the horizontal tango. Omi said that, now that the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of Jello mix. Everybody had something to say about it—namely about putting out the brandy before they set the place on fire—but nobody said or thought it was at all an awfully small amount of Jello for such a large gathering. Any of them would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was done, the cloth cleared, the hearth swept, and the gas thrown on the fire. The compound in the jug was tasted, and after Victor peeled himself off the floor and declared the contents perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and some nut put on the fire. After Kai pulled Peter out of the fireplace, chestnuts were put on instead. Then the group drew around the hearth, in what Victor called a circle (duh!) and at Victor's elbow stood the family display of glassware—two tumblers they had stolen from the Cobalt Coil, a couple of cracked coffee mugs with ribald sayings such as "MECHWARRIORS DO IT IN THE COCKPIT" and "THE REVENANTS GET OURS AT NIGHT," and a Tupperware cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done, and Victor served it out with beaming looks. The Tupperware dissolved, but Victor proposed in any case, "A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!" Which all the family echoed; "God bless us every one," said Yvonne, the last of all.
"Wait just a damn second," Kat asked the Ghost, "each one of us in this room, with the exception of you, Aidan Pryde, has enough money to buy and sell small planets. You're trying to get me to believe that they're poor and broke? I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night, spirit."
"Would you believe the ATM broke?" Pryde asked sheepishly.
"No."
"Would you believe that the check didn't clear?"
"No."
"Would you believe that this is a literary device intended solely to make you look like a royal heel?"
Kat brightened. "Okay, I'll buy that." She whirled back to the proceedings on hearing her own name.
"To Katherine Steiner-Davion," said Yvonne, "the Founder of the Feast here at the Triad!"
"The founder of the feast, the Dragon's butt," cried Omi. "I wish I had her here. I'd give her a piece of my katana to feast upon, and hope she'd have a good appetite for it."
"Whoa, that's harsh," Yvonne coughed.
"It should be Christmas day, neh," said Omi, "on which one drinks the health of such a odious, stingy, hard, cold, icy, unfeeling, glacial, thick as a brick, slut puppy, bitch queen of the universe as Katherine. You know she is, Yvonne! Nobody knows it better than you, you poor dear."
"But it's Christmas," was Yvonne's mild answer.
"I'll drink her health for your sake and the day's," said Omi, "and not for hers. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And may Kat's life be long and interesting!" They drank the toast, but the mere mention of Kat's baleful name was enough to cast a shadow on the events of the day.
"I'm not that bad," Kat said, shifting her feet.
"Do you not visit message boards?" Pryde asked. "Enough of this scene then, quiaff? Let us be off to a party more to my liking, even if they are Wolves…"
It was a great surprise to Kat, as this scene vanished, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Kat to recognize it as her own cousin's, and to find herself in a bright, dry, gleaming 'Mech bay, with the Ghost standing, smiliing, by her side, and looking at Phelan Kell. It is a fair, even handed adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. When Phelan laughed, Ranna Kerensky laughed as heartily as he. And the rest of the assembled Wolves in Exile, being not a bit behind and knowing which side of bread the butter was on, laughed out lustily.
"She said that Christmas was a humbug," exclaimed Phelan. "She believed it too!"
"We should kill her!" Ranna insisted. "She has insulted the Wolf Clan's honor!" She was very pretty, with a dimpled, beautiful face, a mouth that seemed made to be kissed (as no doubt it was), and the sunniest pair of eyes one ever saw in any creature's head. Altogether she was what one would have called provoking but satisfactory, perfectly satisfactory. When she wasn't screaming for the imminent violent death of another living being, anyway.
"She's a comical old bitch," said Phelan, "and that's truth, and she's a lousy conversationalist besides. However, her offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against her. Who suffers by her ill whims? Herself, always."
"And half the Battletech universe," Ranna grumped. "If you will not let us kill, at least you could let us maim." With that, another hearty laugh came from the Wolves.
"So she takes it into her empty head to dislike us, and she will not come and dine with us. What's the consequence? She does not lose much of a dinner, quiaff?"
"Aff, I think she loses a very good dinner," replied Ranna. "But I still think we should maim her."
"Gee, maybe I have been a little harsh, if even the Clanfolk don't like me," Kat mused, her fingers massaging her neck, where she could almost feel a Elemental's fingers. "What say you, Aidan—" But the spirit was gone, as suddenly Kat stood in an open place, and the bell struck three. As the last stroke of the bell ceased to vibrate, she remembered the prediction of old Ryan Steiner, and, lifting up her eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming out of the mist along the ground before her.
"Oh shit," said Kat.