（外文电子版资料）Allen Steele - Zwarte Piets Tale.pdfVIP

Zwarte Piets Tale by Allen M. Steele Science Fiction A DF Books NERDs Release Copyright ©1998 by Allen M. Steele First published in Analog, December 1998 NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. People often speak of Christmas as being a season of miracles. Indeed, it sometimes seems thats all you hear about during the holiday season; download the daily newsfeed, and youre sure to find at least one doe-eyed story about a lost child reunited with his parents, a stray pet finding his way home, a maglev train that barely avoids colliding with another, a house burning down without anyone being killed. These things can happen at any time, and often do, but when they occur at Christmas, a special significance is attached to them, as if an arbitrary date on the Gregorian calendar somehow has a magical portent. That sort of thing may go smooth on Earth, but anyone on Mars who believes in miracles is the sort of person you dont want to be with during a habitat blowout or a dust storm alert. Belief in miracles implies belief in divine intervention, or luck at the very least; that kind of attitude has killed more people out here than anything else. Luck wont help you when a cell of your dome undergoes explosive decompression,