Chapter Three
After Liza finished helping her grandfather with the Santabot, she got in the hovercraft and headed to North Pole, which was the name of the only town on Far North.
She sank back in her seat and glided over the snow, feeling unsettled as the hovercraft zipped down the Arctic Highway. Tall, black-coated, dying pine trees lined the road and hurt her heart, so she deliberately stared straight ahead. They all looked as if they’d been dipped in tar.
The hovercraft passed the sign for Marla’s Maple Experience, which now had a “closed for business” sign nailed over it. In years past, Marla’s had been a thriving business. She’d sold maple syrup year round, shipping it off-world via the transport ship that came to their little world once a month, and March through April she’d led tours and let tourists make their own maple syrup on her wood-fired evaporator.
That had all ended when her trees had died.
Like all the other colonists’ businesses, including Liza’s, Marla’s Maple Experience had been started by Marla’s ancestors, a hundred and fifty years ago when the colony had first been founded by people fleeing a dying Terra 1. Back then it had been called “Earth”.
The colony had been founded by taking out an enormous loan from the Galactic Federal Bank. The loan had covered the cost of terraforming the small planetoid and making it not only habitable but capable of sustaining plant and animal life. There was a machine called the Weather Control Station, the size of a Terran city block, which maintained the atmosphere and controlled the weather. The descendants of the original settlers were still paying that loan off – or at least they had been until they’d declared bankruptcy earlier that year.
The fungus had appeared three years ago, and spread like wildfire. Everyone in the colony had chipped in to have it tested, sending samples to different off-world laboratories and testing them again and again. They’d tried quarantining their diseased trees, burning them instantly when they found the first trace of the fungus.
But the laboratories were baffled and had never come up with an answer about the origin of the fungus or, even more importantly, a cure.
Perhaps if they’d been able to afford to send the samples out of the solar system…but the cost would have been so high, that alone would have bankrupted them.
“Sriii!” A shrill cry from the back seat made Liza jump.
She twisted around and scowled. One of the Srilaa had snuck into the hovercraft and was now clambering into the front seat to sit next to her. It was wearing a green felt hat and green felt tunic and green felt boots, all trimmed in white fur. That was all for show – the Srilaa were hardy little creatures that came from a snow-covered planet.
It looked up at her with its tiny, furry, scrunched-up face and held out its hand. She peered at it more closely. It had thick dark eyelashes on its huge round eyes, which meant it was female.
“You’re supposed to be back at the bed and breakfast, greeting the customers,” she said, shaking her head reprovingly.
“La La sriii.”
That roughly translated to “La La is hungry.” The Galactic Translator that hung over Liza’s ear did not translate Srilaa, because their language was too simplistic.
Everyone on Far North pretty much knew what they were saying anyway. The Srilaa were always either hungry, happy, angry, or needed to poop.
“Well, why didn’t you just bug Pawpaw or Mawmaw, then? They’re a couple of suckers,” Liza grumbled, but she fished in her purse and pulled out a couple of plastic-wrapped peppermints.
La La grabbed them from her hand and stuffed them in her mouth without bothering to unwrap them.
“Rude,” Liza informed her as the hovercraft came to a stop and landed in a vast, three-quarters empty parking lot on Main Street.
Downtown North Pole was always Christmassy, with its carved wooden storefronts that looked like gingerbread houses, and the twinkling fairy lights strung between old-fashioned, cast-iron lamp posts, but at this time of year the colonists went happily, festively overboard. Despite the failing fortunes of Far North, this year was no exception.
The storekeepers dressed in red velvet trimmed with white fur, like Liza and her family, or wore fluttering mechanical angel wings and tinsel halos. Store windows displayed delicate blown glass ornaments, hand-sewn dolls and teddy bears, brightly painted wooden trains and Starliners, and enough peppermint bark, red-and-white striped candy canes, and chocolate Santas to make La La burble excitedly in her shrill little voice. The sound of a brass band floated through the crisp air, seeming to carry with it the smell of roasting chestnuts.
In years past, Main Street would have been packed with tens of thousands of tourists. Now there were only a few hundred people circulating through the downtown area.
The sight still managed to raise a smile on Liza’s face, however. There were aliens of every species mingling with the humans on the street. Most non-human species were fascinated by Christmas. Liza loved to watch them. Right now, inside Benny’s Christmas Emporium, eight-foot-tall, blue-skinned Tarmideans, antennae waving excitedly, were shopping for Christmas ornaments and Santa hats. They were bumping elbows with a swarm of delicately winged pink Lavaa, an insectoid race from the Andromeda galaxy.
As she headed to the grocery store, with La La following at her heels, she saw that at least the post office was still was doing a bustling business. In fact, many of the people in town, now unemployed, were working their final Christmas season at the North Pole post office.
They were answering letters from children all over the galaxy, and mailing packages and Christmas cards from people who wanted that all-important, authentic “North Pole” postmark on their packages.
The postal drones visited six times a day during this time of the year, and traveled to postal sorting planetoids throughout the galaxy to distribute the presents and Christmas cards.
She stuck her head in the door and waved at the postmistress. “Merry Christmas, Barbara!” she called. Barbara, a stocky woman with black hair shot through with white, waved back, with a smile that spoke of forced cheer. Look happy for the tourists. Keep the business coming, and don’t ruin everyone’s final Christmas on Far North.
Barbara’s husband, Paul, the mayor, was behind the counter helping out, as were their three children, Max, Louis and Susie.
With a sigh, Liza headed towards the grocery store.
