* * * * *
They weren't in the Scoop cubicle long, for Ron Obrin, my relief,
reached the top of the elevator just as the girl started to talk into
the Scoop, and he was opening the vestibule door when the pair came
out. Ron was, of course, on the dot of noon.
The father was talking to the girl as Ron checked in at the time clock.
"There, Gini, I promised you, and we tried," I heard him say. She
thanked me, still grave and almost smiling, and he thanked me, and they
left. I was glad to see them go.
"Quiet morning, Ron," I said. That reminded me of Vern, and Vern's
blunder, and suddenly that made me edgy. I went in to the Scoop and
tore off the dupe of the Onlon report.
The first warning I had was the slug, "CHURCH," stamped at the end of
their transmission on signal from the Greeley. It meant the Greeley had
evaluated the transmission and referred it to the editorial level.
And that was wrong, way wrong.
Every trade has its vulgar and, some would say, irreverent catchwords.
Actual churches had become pretty rare as Congris took over more and
more direction of public life. You can depend on advice you get from a
cybernetic system that doesn't stop eating if you stop asking. So as
religion dwindled, in the WPA we came to call the Greeley's editorials
"sermons," and the ratiocinating levels of the Greeley, "Church." It's
rather juvenile, I suppose.
Still the Onlon transmission was slugged "CHURCH." I looked at the
father's Second report, and saw why.
"THE STORY I TOLD TO GAIN ENTRANCE HERE WAS A JOKE," he had said.
"THERE WERE NO TRACKS OF TINY REINDEER IN CENTRAL PARK MEMORIAL
PLAZA ... AT LEAST NONE WHOSE TRACKS I SAW....
"PLEASE ... WHOMEVER THIS MAY CONCERN ... DO NOT BLAME THE REPORTER WHO
LET US IN ... HE IS TRAINED ONLY TO RECOGNIZE COLD TRUTH AND COLD
LIES ... AND HAS NO EXPERIENCE WITH JOKES ... WHICH ARE NEITHER ... I
FULLY UNDERSTAND THAT ... IN OUR SOCIETY ... A JOKE IS A LIE AND A
CRIME ... I THINK THAT IS A TRUE CRIME ... THANK YOU....
"AND IME SORRY...."
Bad, bad, bad for me. Beyond a possible editorial about these "jokes,"
the Church would ignore the matter. But the fact I had passed a lie
would show on my performance audit, and it wouldn't look good; even so,
the treatment I got from Civil Service would be a lot gentler than the
things I was thinking about myself. I doubted that Onlon would even
get more than a reprimand--he apparently meant no harm. He would be
separated from the child, of course.
As for the girl's transmission, it was shocking and stupid. I jammed
the dupe in my belt-pouch, and went out without a word to Ron, to start
the trip to Sara and Vermont.
* * * * *
I was poor company when I got there. Sara tried every trick she knew
to find out what the trouble was, for naturally I told her there was
trouble. But I couldn't yet make myself tell her how I'd been duped, by
a professor and a child.
Finally she dragged me off to the Milbry Community Room to, as she
said, "dissolve my unwept tears in humanity's soothing sea." Knowing
full well it was Crimmuseve didn't help me a bit.
As I feared, the gaiety of Crimmus was rank in the room: a lot of
excited talk, snatches of humming. And even, when the Fotofax bell
sounded, somebody said, "Ring out, wild bells," and a few people
laughed out loud. Though most looked around guiltily.
I got up automatically to get our copies of the _Sun_ as the cubeo
announcer went into the WPA opening format:
"An informed people is a free people. Read your _Sun_ and know the
truth. Stand by now for an official synopsis of the day's happenings
prepared by the World Press Association." That was the standard
formula. But then he departed from standard, and it rattled him. I sat
next to Sara and watched, interested.
"I have been directed," he said, "to call your full attention to the
editorial on the front page of your _Sun_." Good grief, I thought:
Church! Surely not the Onlon thing! The announcer looked around him
rather wildly, then blurted: "I now turn you over to the Orator, for a
direct-voice proclamation of this editorial."
The vocal unit of Church, highest level of the WPA and the actual voice
of Congris! The last time it spoke, 2 years ago, it was the Pan-asian
War--this couldn't be the Onlon thing. The announcer's image faded from
the cubeo prism and was replaced by a soft light, and an organ note
as the local station engineers patched to the nationwide WPA circuit.
Everyone in the room stared into the light, even Sara, waiting for the
voice.
When it came, deep and resonant, I could feel it in my own chest. I
could feel too the tension go out of Sara, and feel the sigh she and
everyone else sighed, at the end of waiting.
The voice said:
"I speak to you about the question asked by a little girl. I answer
her, but my answer is for all children, and women and men, and for all
time...."
I almost shouted aloud, in sheer disbelief. It wasn't war, it wasn't
even Onlon's joke--it was that silly thing from Onlon's daughter!
* * * * *
I grabbed the dupe up out of my belt-pouch, and read along with that
deep, throbbing voice:
"I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa
Claus. Papa says, if you see it in the _Sun_, it's so. Please tell me
the truth: is there a Santa Claus?"
And the voice read off the name the way the girl, with her grave little
voice, would have formally given it: Virginia O'Hanlon. But what could
the Church in all dignity say, to nonsense like that?
"Virginia," said the voice, "your little friends are wrong. They have
been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe
except they see...."
I was stunned. The broadcast is a hoax, I thought; a Flack's trick,
or an incredible act of sabotage on an entire social system. Barely
conscious of Sara sitting raptly beside me, I tried to make sense out
of that deep organ note sounding through the roaring in my ears.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," it was saying. "He exists as
certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.... How dreary
would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! There would be no
child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this
existence. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world
would be extinguished...."
I turned to Sara, tried to speak. She turned to me, eyes shining, and
raised her fingertips to my mouth, then went back to the light, and the
voice. Over the buzz I heard:
"... there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest
man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever
lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can
push aside the curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and
glory beyond.
"Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else
real and abiding.
"No Santa Claus? Thank God, he lives! and lives forever! A thousand
years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now,
he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."
The echoes of the voice seemed to ring even after the light had faded
and left a roomful of people staring at the place where it had been;
then looking up, with widening eyes, into the faces of others.
"I'll be damned," Sara whispered. "I will be damned! or just maybe ...
maybe not, after all...."
As I said, I don't know where it will end. Nobody does.