Nativity

"Morning Mrs. M!" I called out as I was crossing the street. Terry's mum looked up, she'd been pushing her wheeled shopping basket up on to the curb, and waved. I hurried over, nearly slipping on a patch of ice, then nearly tripping over a paving stone that the days of freezing and thawing had lifted. "Need a hand, Mrs. M?" I said, skidding to a halt.
"Oh thank-you dear, you can push the trolley. We're just waiting for Terry, now."
"Oh, is he with you?" I had mixed feelings about seeing Terry again; shortly after the exchange student had left he'd asked me if I liked manacles, and I really hadn't liked the suggestive tone the conversation had taken.
"He will be shortly dear, he's just picking some things up for the church."
That startled me a little, neither Terry nor his mum were particularly religious as far as I knew.
"Oh, are you helping out this year then?" I tried for diplomatically neutral, but even to my ears I sounded nosey. Terry's mum kindly answered anyway.
"Well, it wasn't my idea," she said, pointing to the bench at the bus-stop and indicating that she intended to sit down. "Agnes down at the WI has been mithering me for weeks now to do something to give back to the community. I've told her, over and over again, that I do plenty for the community but that it goes unnoticed."
I wasn't sure that bombing crack-dens and forcing talk-radio presenters into nervous breakdowns actually went unnoticed for all they gave back to the community, but I wasn't about to interrupt Terry's mum when she was explaining.
"So when she brought the new vicar in to pester me as well, I felt I'd better step up and do my bit."
She smiled at me, doing her twinkly-white-haired-old-granny-how-lovable routine and not fooling me for an instant. The new vicar probably hadn't had anyone warn him what a bad idea it was to involve Terry's mum with projects, and wouldn't have heard about her relic-collecting trip to Italy that's still causing international incidents every three or four months.
"So what are you helping out with then?" I said, looking around for Terry.
"The nativity scene in front of the church."
I saw Terry. Walking quite quickly, looking very nervous, holding a baby. He checked the road and hurried across, spotting us at the bus-stop. He looked relieved to see his mother, and turned white a sheet when he saw me. He kept on coming though.
"Mum," he said, holding the baby out like it was red-hot.
"Put it in the trolley, dear," said Terry's mum. "Did you get the right gender this time?"
"This time?" I couldn't help myself, the words just escaped from my lips.
"Oh yes, the last two he's picked up have both been girls. Fancy, as if baby Jesus was a girl! I told him, if he gets it wrong this time I'll take him down to the maternity ward and make him pick one out from there instead."
"Mrs. M, isn't this... isn't this, well, kidnapping?"
"No." She stood up and started pushing the trolley away. "Kidnapping would require me sending a ransom note, or never returning the child. I'm just borrowing it, for Christmas, and starring it in a nativity scene. If anything, this is just movie-making."
Terry tugged my arm, so that he and I fell slightly behind his mother.
"She's had me steal reindeers from the zoo, too," he whispered. "And there's three confused old men from the local shelter in the living room."
"Terry, you can't let her steal babies!" I was trying to whisper, but I was getting worked up. He shushed me.
"She isn't really. The baby'll go into the nativity scene this evening, just before the carol service, and then I've got to tip the police off. It'll be back with it's parents before the end of the day, and the new vicar will be doing all the explaining."
I stared, first at Terry, then at his mother.
"Your mother's a wonderful woman," I said heavily. "I'm sure there's a good reason for everything she does, and I'm so glad it rarely involves me."

Import, Export II

It's been a busy few months, what with the tax year ending and have to sort out the rebate we'll be getting this year from the IRS. Thanks to the financial wizardry of my accountant this is the third year we'll have received money back from the government instead of having to pay any to them, but I know it can't last forever. I've got my contingency plans in place, and although my accountant thinks he's going to drop me in it and skip the country to South America, I know better than him. But it's business, and that's all part of the fun.

We had a bit of scare earlier in the week though when a clockwork penguin waddled into the loading yard and stood there, rocking from one webbed foot to the other, buzzing and clicking to itself. I immediately suspected that one of the zoos we'd been shipping 'giraffes' to had sent me a warning message so I sent a kamikaze nun out to check it over for bombs. Neither of them exploded, and a routine EMP failed to disable it (although due to an accident of positioning we did fry all the electronics in a nearby tax office; I sent them a commiseratory bunch of dead daffodils). I have the penguin securely locked in a bomb-proof safe for the moment while I try to figure out what its purpose is.

My secretary is looking no better than last time I wrote, though I have now found out what the issue is -- she's been diagnosed with cancer of jaw. As I've said before, I can't afford to lose her really, so I've made provisions to assist her treatment, but so far it's not looking great. I did manage to catch her in the EMP when we checked the penguin out, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

Business is looking up though: we're processing low-level nuclear waste into luminous paint for childrens' toys and shipping the end product out to China, complete with the faulty Geiger counters that I picked up for a song at a recent 'auction.' Since we're getting paid for everything but the Geiger counters, we're turning a healthy profit there. We're using the same facility to irradiate food intended for nursing homes as well, which is even more profitable now we've worked out that we can cut the slaughter houses out of the loop by using sufficient irradiation! This has co-incidentally caused a drop in our line of boil-in-the-colostomy-bag pre-digested foods, but that's a job for sales and marketing now.

Things are looking up!