Admiral Claus looked at the bank of monitors on his desk. All over the galaxy, little red transwarp craft were rocketing to their destinations, weighed down with cargo.
“How we keep it manageable is, if a culture hasn’t heard of us, we don’t go there,” he said to the young Federation Tribune reporter. “And, just in case, we try our best to stay ahead of the curve. This year we added six new worlds. The Federation – or is it the Klingons? - probably won’t discover them for another decade, but our research tells us that they’re ready.”
The reporter cursed himself for not even trying to sneak in a holo-imaging camera. It was against the rules, of course, and if he’d been caught with it he would have been immediately banished, but the simple fact was that no one – NO ONE – was going to believe what he was seeing.
The rotund old Admiral in the red uniform smiled knowingly. “As I’m sure you’re aware, we don’t often let the media this far into the complex.” Then he chuckled, and his tummy jiggled like a bowl full of jelly. “Still, I decided that we could trust you. After all, you’ve always been more nice than naughty.”
The young reporter blushed and stared down at the PADD he was taking notes on. “A lot of people will be disappointed to find out that it’s technology that helps you do this and not . . . you know . . . magic, or something.”
The Admiral laughed again. “In my experience, magic is usually nothing more than technology that somebody else doesn’t understand. After all, people have been speculating for centuries as to how we are able to get to every known corner of creation with free presents for every child. A lot of folks still have visions of me, by myself, in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, taking hand-carved wooden toys house to house. A romantic picture, to be sure, but a little unrealistic.
“Why, we had replicators back in the twentieth century. Cloaking, almost a hundred years before that. We had to. Even up here on Earth’s North Pole, we couldn’t maintain sufficient security and output even that long without it. And as for me, my role is more administrative now than anything. Still, you give somebody the suit, let them grow a little facial hair, and nobody knows the difference. Except Mrs. Claus, of course,” he said with a wink.
“I’m curious, though,” said the young man. “How do you –“
“Excuse me a minute,” the Admiral said. He tapped a screen on his right, studied it for a moment, and then leaned into a desktop microphone in front of him.
“Elvis,” he barked. “Are you going to be able to get through that ion storm in the Denaurius belt?”
=/\=No problem, big guy,=/\= came the silky voice of the pilot. =/\=I’ll get these goodies through without getting them all shook up. You just have that peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich waitin’ fer me, y’hear?=/\=
The Admiral laughed heartily. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. Claus, out.”
The reporter pondered what he’d just heard for a long moment.
“Elvis?” he asked finally.
Santa chuckled again. “It was rough, getting him to give up the silver jump suits, but he’s turned out to be one of our best guys. Why, without him, we’d have never opened up the Romulan Empire.”
“So you literally go everywhere?”
“Absolutely. The Ferengi Alliance was a tough nut to crack. Any thought of gifts, given for free, was repugnant to them. We had to be very stealthy for a long time, but there was considerable grass-roots response. In the end, I like to think we paved the way for Grand Negus Rom’s reforms. Lessee . . . We were going to the Gamma quadrant before the wormhole was discovered. You every try to think of a proper gift for a changeling? The Borg were easy, compared to them. Why, we deliver toys and treats to places the Federation’s never heard of! I’d tell you where, but then . . .” He smiled, but there was a different look in his eye.
~Gulp.~ “This all raises the inevitable question . . . How do you do it? I can’t even begin to imagine how big your research facility must be. And, starting from where you did, with a handful of elves on ancient Earth, how you’ve managed to stay ahead of the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, all these technologically advanced societies . . . Quite frankly, it’s a little unbelievable.”
The old Admiral spread his arms wide, taking in the command center. “Many have said so, and yet . . . here we are.”
He studied his young guest for a time, and then seemed to come to a decision. He rose from his seat and gently placed an arm around the young man’s shoulders. “You know, back in my village, when I was a boy, I was shown a little bush that grew near the riverbank. My Uncle was sort of a village Shaman, and he told me that the elves in the forest took care of the bush, and had showed it to him years before.
“The bush grew a special fruit; a little berry, that when you bit into it, you received knowledge beyond imagination. Now, I know that you might think that it was some kind of psychotropic compound, but it wasn’t that at all. It actually opened a subspace trans-time rift, through which information from the future could be gathered. There was only one of these bushes, and it was very jealously guarded by the elves.
“The problem was, if anybody ever used the knowledge for selfish gain, the elves would uproot the bush and replant it in another place, making it impossible for that person to find again. My uncle had decided that the flaw in the elves’ plan was that they always gave the new location to a grown-up. He was taking it upon himself to show it this time to a child; me. He warned me that the elves would only allow me access to the bush as long as I used the knowledge I gained for the benefit of others.
“In the hundreds of years since, I’ve always tried to remember that. The elves grew to trust me so much that, when my good works attracted the attention of others, they helped me establish this place, and also helped me with my work. Obviously, the continued consumption of the berries has also extended my life, far past that of normal humans.
“And as our work has progressed out into the galaxy, I have seen the good we intend to do being reproduced in the most far-flung places. Whatever power it was that produced the bush, they must be happy with what we’ve done with it, because we’ve been blessed at every turn.
“Today, that bush grows in a back corner of our hydroponics bay. Now, you can write all this down if you like. All that I ask is that you consider the larger implications when you do.”
“Oh, I’ll write the story . . .” A wry smile creased the young reporter’s face. “And I won’t complain when they don’t believe a word of it.”
The old Admiral and the young reporter shared a laugh. “By the way,” the young man said, “what do you call the fruit of the bush?”
“Why . . . Rodden-berries, of course.”
They chatted a while longer, and at last the two, now friends, bade each other farewell. As the young man walked toward his shuttlecraft, the old Admiral called out to him.
“Before I forget,” he said, “I know it hasn’t been that long since I was visiting you, and I wanted to tell you something . . .”
“Go on,” said the young man.
“Well . . . You know that sled I gave you four years ago?”
“I remember.”
“I know how badly you wanted that snowboard . . .” The old Admiral had a pained look on his face. “You understand, don’t you?”
The young man remembered the disappointment when he saw the sled under the tree. He also remembered how his older brother had purchased a snowboard with his own money, and then two weeks later took a fall that broke his leg.
“Yeah, I understand,” he said with a smile.
The old man smiled back. “See ya, Bobby,” he said.
