is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
INTRODUCTION
Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet.
Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books, the novel Too Many Magicians, and two short story collections, set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is himself partially modeled on Sherlock Holmes), elements that often appear in the shorter works about the detective. Michael Kurland wrote two additional Lord Darcy novels, currently available from Wildside Press.
Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as “Randall of Hightower” (a pun on “garret”). The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett in conjunction with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips) was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
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An inveterate punster (defining a pun as “the odor given off by a decaying mind”), he was a favorite guest at science fiction conventions and friend to many fans, especially in Southern California.
Garrett suffered an attack of encephalitis in the summer of 1979 and was not able to write after that; he spent the last 8 years of his life in a coma.
In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series. He was also ordained in the Old Catholic Church.
Glen Cook’s private detective character Garrett P.I. is named in honor of Garrett.
BELLY LAUGH (1953)
Me? I’m looking for my outfit. Got cut off in that Holland Tunnel attack. Mind if I sit down with you guys a while? Thanks. Coffee? Damn! This is heaven. Ain’t seen a cup of coffee in a year.
What? You said it! This sure is a hell of a war. Tough on a guy’s feet. Yeah, that’s right. Holland Tunnel skirmish. Where the Ruskies used that new gun. Uhuh. God! It was awful. Guys popping off all around a guy and him not knowing why. No sense to it. No noise. No wound. Just popping off.
That’s the trouble with this war. It won’t settle down to a routine. Always something new. What the hell chance has a guy got to figure things out? And I tell you them Ruskies are coming up with new weapons just as fast as we are. Enough to make your hair stand on end.
Sugar? Christ, yes! Ain’t seen sugar for a year. You see, it’s like this: we were bottled up in the pits around the Tunnel for seven damn days. It was like nothing you ever saw before. Oops—sorry. Didn’t mean to splash you. I was laughing about something that happened there—to a guy. Maybe you guys would get a kick out of it. After all, we got to keep our sense of humor.
You see, there was me and a Kentucky kid named Stillwell in this pit—a pretty big pit with lots of room—and we were all alone. This Stillwell was a nice kid—green and lonesome and it’s pretty sad, really, but there’s a yak in it, and—as I say—we got to keep a sense of humor.
Well, this Stillwell—a really green kid—is unhappy and just plain drooling for his gal back home. He talks about his mother, of course, and his old man, but it’s the girl that’s really on his mind as you guys can plainly understand.
He’s seeing her every place—like spots in front of his eyes—nice spots doing things to him, when this Ruskie babe shows up.
My gun came up without any orders from me just as she poked her puss over the edge of the pit, and—huh? Oh, thank you kindly. It sure tastes good but I don’t want to short you guys. Thank you kindly.
Well, as I was saying, this Ruskie babe pokes her nose over the edge of the pit and Stillwell dives and knocks down my gun. He says, “You son-of-a-bitch!” Just like that. Wild and desperate, like you’d say to a guy if the guy was just kicking over the last jug of water on a desert island.
It would have been long enough for her to kill us if I hadn’t had good reflexes. Even then, all I had time to do was knock the pistol out of her hand and drag her into the pit.
With her play bollixed, she was confused and bewildered. She ain’t a fighter, and she sits back against the wall staring at us dead pan with big expressionless eyes. She’s a plenty pretty babe and I could see exactly what had happened as far as Stillwell was concerned. His spots had come to life in very adequate form so to speak.
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Stillwell goes over and sits down beside her and I’m very much on the alert, because I know where his courage comes from. But I decide it’s all right, because I see the babe is not belligerent, just confused kind of. And friendly.
And willing. Kind of a whipped-little-dog willing, and man oh man! She was sure what Stillwell needed.
They kind of went together like a hand and a glove—natural-like. And it followed—pretty natural—that when Stillwell got up and led her around a wing of the pit, out of sight, she went willing—like that same little dog.
Uhuh. No, you guys. Two’s enough. I wouldn’t rob you. Well, okay, and thanks kindly.
Well, there I was, all alone, but happy for Stillwell, cause I know it’s what the kid needs, and in spots like that what difference does it make? Yank—Ruskie—Mongolian—as long as she’s willing.
Then, you guys, Stillwell comes back out—wall-eyed—real wall-eyed—like being hit but not knocked out and still walking. I know what it is—some kind of shock. I get up and walk over and take a look at the babe where he’d left her—and I bust out laughing. I told you guys there was a yak in this. I laughed like a fool—it was that funny. As much as I had time to, before Stillwell cracked. It was enough to crack him—the little thing that pushes a guy over the edge.
He lets out a yell and screams, “For crisake! For crisake! Nothing but a bucket of bolts! Nothing but a couple of plastic lumps—”
That was when I hit him. I had to. He was for the birds, Stillwell was. An hour later we got relieved and a couple of medicos carried him away strapped to a stretcher—gone like a kite.
They took the robot too, and its clothes, but they forgot the brassiere, so I took it and I been carrying it ever since, but I’ll leave it with you guys if you want—for the coffee. Might make you think about home. After all, like the man says, we got to keep our sense of humor.
Well, so long, you guys—and thanks.
HEIST JOB ON THIZAR (1956)
Anson Drake sat quietly in the Flamebird Room of the Royal Gandyll Hotel, listening to the alien, but soothing strains of the native orchestra and sipping a drink. He knew perfectly well that he had no business displaying himself in public on the planet Thizar; there were influential Thizarians who held no love for a certain Earthman named Anson Drake.
It didn’t particularly bother Drake; life was danger and danger was life to him, and Anson Drake was known on half a hundred planets as a man who could take care of himself.
Even so, he wouldn’t have bothered to come if it had not been for the fact that Viron Belgezad was a pompous braggart.
Belgezad had already suffered at the hands of Anson Drake. Some years before, a narcotics gang had been smashed high, wide, and handsome on Thizar. Three men had died from an overdose of their own thionite drug, and fifty thousand credits of illicit gain had vanished