Free The Nutcracker Coup by Janet Kagan

THE NUTCRACKER COUP
    Janet Kagan
    Marianne Tedesco had “The Nutcracker Suite” turned up full blast for inspiration, and as she whittled she now and then raised her knife to conduct Tchaikovsky. That was what she was doing when one of the locals poked his delicate snout around the corner of the door to her office. She nudged the sound down to a whisper in the background and beckoned him in.
    It was Tatep, of course. After almost a year on Rejoicing (that was the literal translation of the world’s name), she still had a bit of trouble recognizing the Rejoicers by snout alone, but the three white quills in Tatep’s ruff had made him the first real “individual” to her. Helluva thing for a junior diplomat not to be able to tell one local from another-but there it was. Marianne was desperately trying to learn the snout shapes that distinguished the Rejoicers to each other.
    “Good morning, Tatep. What can I do for you?”
    “Share?” said Tatep.
    “Of course. Shall I turn the music off?” Marianne knew that The Nutcracker Suite was as alien to him as the rattling and scraping of his music was to her. She was beginning to like pieces here and there of the Rejoicer style but she didn’t know if Tatep felt the same way about Tchaikovsky.
    “Please, leave it on,” he said. “You’ve played it every day this week-am I right? And now I find you waving your knife to the beat. Will you share the reason?”
    She had played it every day this week, she realized. “I’ll try to explain. It’s a little silly, really, and it shouldn’t be taken as characteristic of human. Just as characteristic of Marianne.”
    “Understood.” He climbed the stepstool she’d cobbled together her first month on Rejoicing and settled himself on his haunches comfortably to listen. At rest, the wicked quills adorning his ruff and tail seemed just that: adornments. By local standards, Tatep was a handsome male.
    He was also a quadruped and human chairs weren’t the least bit of use to him. The stepstool let him lounge on its broad upper platform or sit upright on the step below that-in either case, it put a
    Rejoicer eye to eye with Marianne. This had been so successful an innovation in the embassy that they had hired a local artisan to make several for each office. Chornian’s stepstools were a more elaborate affair, but Chornian himself had refused to make one to replace “the very first.” A fine sense of tradition, these Rejoicers.
    That was, of course, the best way to explain the Tchaikovsky. “Have you noticed, Tatep, that the further away from home you go, the more important it becomes to keep traditions?”
    “Yes,” he said. He drew a small piece of sweetwood from his pouch and seemed to consider it thoughtfully. “Ah! I hadn’t thought how very strongly you must need tradition! You’re very far from home indeed. Some thirty light years, is it not?” He bit into the wood, shaving a delicate curl from it with one corner of his razor sharp front tooth. The curl he swallowed, then he said,
    “Please, go on.”
    The control he had always fascinated Marianne-she would have preferred to watch him carve, but she spoke instead. “My family tradition is to celebrate a holiday called Christmas.”
    He swallowed another shaving and repeated, “Christmas.”
    “For some humans Christmas is a religious holiday. For my family, it was more of...a turning of the seasons. Now, Esperanza and I couldn’t agree on a date-her homeworld’s calendar runs differently than mine-but we both agree on a need to celebrate Christmas once a year. So, since it’s a solstice festival, I asked Muhammed what was the shortest day of the year on Rejoicing. He says that’s Tamemb
    Nap Ohd.”
    Tatep bristled his ruff forward, confirming Muhammed’s date.
    “So I have decided to celebrate Christmas Eve on Tamemb Nap Ohd and to celebrate Christmas Day on Tememb Nap Chorr.”
    “Christmas is a revival, then? An awakening?”

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    “Yes,