Sympathy for the Devil

by Tim Pratt

  You'd think the upper east side of Manhattan was an easy place to find sinners, if only because of the population density, but after 9/11, common decency had spread through New York like a catchy commercial jingle. Not that Merchari minded a challenge, but he was behind quota, and he hated taking the subway. It stank and was hot year-round, and that just made him homesick.

  Still, Second Avenue was high-traffic, with restaurant after restaurant in a city where apartment kitchens were often smaller than the bathrooms. He loitered a while, invisible and insubstantial, letting several groups pass; he was behind quota, but not so desperate as to nab vapid Human Resources bippies and their Marketing Department boyfriends.

  He strolled along, sniffing at the doors of the restaurants as he passed. O'Donnell's Pub held good-natured drunks cheering St. John's to a crushing victory over Syracuse (too elated to appreciate the terrors of Hell). Il Piccolo hosted a wedding reception (wild joy, flaring tempers--it would all end in tears of familial love and sentiment, more than Merchari could stand). Maybe a bit farther south, nearer to Sloan-Kettering? He might get lucky and find a couple of researchers slipped out of their labs for a quick meal.

  Six blocks later, when he was beginning to fear he might make it all the way to the bridge without luck, his patience was rewarded. A likely-looking pair, a man and a woman, were just exiting King's Dumpling House with brown bags of take-out dim sum. He took solid form and sidled up to them. "Pardon me, do you have a match?"

  "Yes, I think so..." The man fumbled in his pockets and offered a matchbook.

  "Thank you," Merchari said. That seminar on the tactical use of politeness had been worth every dram of quicksilver. Merchari reached as if to take the matchbook, then seized the man's wrist.

  "Hey!" The man tried to pull away. He lashed out and knocked off the shadowing hat, revealing Merchari's gold-gleaming eyes and vermilion complexion. "Oh my God."

  "Other side, I'm afraid." Merchari loved this bit, when they realized what he was. Their brains seized up--free will indeed!--and they reverted to the monkeys they'd been based on. Those idiots in the Nightmares Department of the sixth ring thought they had it good, a nice creative job. But real experience--this was entertainment!

  The man's mouth worked in silent shock for a moment. He groped at his neck and came up with a crucifix on a gold chain. "Back! Get back, I say!"

  "Do I look like a vampire?" Merchari snorted small blue flames. "Look, pal, just come along quietly, OK? I'll see that you get a nice assignment in the bioweapons division."

  The man kept tugging. He pounded his other fist on Merchari's wrist. It was all useless, and the wind off the river suddenly blew warmer--the first twinges of the Gate opening. The fellow dropped to his knees and found his voice. "Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum..."

  Ach! Merchari released the man and recoiled, his palm scorched and smoking. "Sir! Sir! That's enough! English will do the trick. No need for the high octane." Latin! That was the risk of the scientific enclaves--you might run into a Jesuit education.

  The man continued his prayer, but the woman, who had remained scientifically calm, tugged on his sleeve. "Dennis, I think it's okay. You hurt him."

  Dennis surged to his feet. "Then go away!"

  "In a moment, in a moment." Merchari regarded the woman. Dennis was off limits because he had prayed, and he believed in what he was saying. But the woman hadn't done the same. Merchari leaned toward her and sniffed. Yep, that definite metallic scent. "You're an atheist, aren't you?"

  "Don't answer him, Christine," the man said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "I can keep him away from you."

  "Only if she believes what you're saying." Merchari returned his attention to the woman. "Well?"

  Christine cocked her head to one side. "Yes, I'm an atheist. Is that a problem? I guess you can't take me if I don't believe in you or your supposed origin."

  "That's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? I'm standing right here."

  "I'd say so, but there was incense burning in the restaurant. And all these people"--she gestured at the moderate crowds passing them on the sidewalk--"don't seem to see you. I'd say hallucinations are a high likelihood."

  "Would you." Merchari leaned in and inhaled her bouquet. A magnificent sample, probably lapsed Catholic. "Ooh, you are quality." Her eyes flashed with irritation. "The important point is that you don't have any prayers to protect you. If it makes it easier, you can pretend the fires are just hallucinations."

  Dennis started in with the Pater Noster again. Merchari jolted from his appreciation of the woman. "Sir, you're done. Your exemption has been proven. But your prayers can't help an unbeliever." Merchari extended his hand. "Come along, girlie. You're fair game."

  "Because I don't have prayers."

  "That's right. Don't you logical types study the classics anymore? If you'd followed Pascal's Wager, you'd at least hedge your bets. Too late now."

  The warm wind rose again, and a few tattered pages of an abandoned New York Times skittered down the sidewalk and clung to Christine's calves. She kicked at them in vexation until the wind reclaimed them. "Which is Pascal's Wager again?"

  "Tell her, Catholic boy. They must have covered that at Fordham."

  "Manhattan College, actually." Dennis still hovered protectively near the woman, but had calmed a bit. "You remember it from Grening's class, don't you, Chris? The one about how it won't hurt to believe in God if there isn't one, but not believing will get you sent to hell, so you may as well play it safe and believe."

  "Oh yeah, that one." Christine flicked her fingers dismissively. "A false dichotomy. For it to make any sense, one must already believe the premise that there's a deity who desires human faith, as opposed to, say, the sacrifice of animals. You might as easily suggest I hedge my bets by offering hecatombs to Zeus and Athena."

  Hmmmm.

  The woman ran fingers through her short, blonde curls. "Look, I'll take it as a given that you're real, that you're a demon, and that you're here to take me to Hell. So let's get back to the point. Do any holy words work? Like, if a Buddhist recited a koan, would that keep you off?"

  Merchari narrowed his eyes. They didn't usually converse. Usually they were too busy gibbering or running. "What's with the questions?"

  "Just the natural curiosity of a scientist." The woman shrugged. "If you're going to drag me off to Hell, the least you can do is show me the full error of my ways. Should I have listened to the nuns, or would any religion do?"

  Ah, a theological discussion. It had been a while. "I don't know. Someone recited from the Koran once--that worked. I know the... prayer your friend said works when recited in Chinese, although Latin is more effective."

  "Interesting."

  Dennis took her arm again. "Christine, what are you doing?"

  "It's okay, Dennis. Just relax."

  "That's right, Dennis," Merchari said. The man started at hearing his name from demonic lips. "Let me just conclude my business."

  Christine eased a step closer. "You got a name, demon?"

  "That doesn't work."

  "Huh?"

  "The name thing. It doesn't work."

  "I'm not a fricking wizard, I'm a biochemist." Christine huffed her annoyance. Merchari smiled inwardly. They always got testy when they were losing. Christine continued: "If I don't believe in you, I certainly don't believe in that mystical crap. I just want to know what to call you."

  Oh. "Merchari." He performed a courtly bow.

  "Thank you. You know, Merchari, I think you're wrong about something."

  "Oh? What's that?" Still searching for loopholes! She was almost brave enough to get an exemption on valor alone.

  "That bit about me having no holy words." She raised her head and looked him square in the eyes. "Force equals mass times acceleration," and she drove her fist into his face.

  Shards of pain splayed behind his eyes and Merchari cried out. How had she done that? She'd hit him! And it had hurt! He staggered back
wards and touched a hand to his nose. Silver fluid flowed down his face. "How--? You shouldn't be able to touch me!"

  Christine cradled her fist in her other hand, gritting her teeth. "Mercury for blood. Holy crap, that hurt."

  "Good. But how--?"

  "Simple physical law." She spat a few more choice imprecations and grimaced down at her red and swelling knuckles. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," she muttered.

  This was going to be a little harder than Merchari had assumed, but one human female couldn't possibly take on a minion of Hell. She was a prime specimen, a grade-A atheist with spunk, and his reputation would be made if he bagged her. He would have his pick of assignments.

  Merchari leapt at her, arms wide, ready to grab.

  Instead of ducking, running, or clinging to Dennis, she calmly whirled to one side. Her arm darted out, and her hand seized his wrist, deftly avoiding the spur-talon. "An object in motion will tend to stay in motion--" And she pulled, accelerating him past her and throwing him to the ground.

  He lay sprawled, dazed and in pain. She leaned over him.

  "--unless acted upon by an external force," she finished.

  All right, no more playing around. Merchari leaped up, and hovered ten feet in the air. He unfurled his wings with a leathery snap, shredding his trenchcoat, and cranked up the heat on his fiery nimbus like a kid with a magnifying glass on an ant. It was a display that never failed to send the bravest human cowering.

  Christine folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes. "What's the fuel for those flames?"

  "Fuel?" They were just his nimbus, unholy light, part of being a demon. What was she on about?

  "Yeah, fuel. What are you burning?"

  "Um..."

  "Because you need to burn something. The total energy of a closed system remains constant."

  And with a woosh, his aura went out.

  "And those wings are all wrong. In the first place, they're not even built for flying, much less hovering. I mean, honestly--bat's wings?" She craned her neck to get a better look. "You're barely flapping. And they grow straight out of your back, practically vertical. How do you get any leverage?"

  "They do me all right."

  "No, no, no. Can't work. Force equals G-M-m over R-squared."

  Merchari blinked. "What?"

  Christine sighed with exasperation. "The force of gravitational attraction between two bodies is equal to the universal constant G, multiplied by the masses of the two bodies, divided by the square of the distance between them. You're too heavy. Those wings could never provide enough lift."

  And... Merchari suddenly felt his own weight, a crushing force, and he realized the problem with having heavy, dense mercury for blood. He flailed his wings, but he crashed to the ground, cracking the sidewalk with the force of his impact.

  Christine crouched beside him and patted him on the head. "The Earth is large and you're very close to it." She stood and backed away from him. "I'm glad I didn't have to cite the aerodynamic laws; it's been a long time since undergrad physics."

  Dennis waved one of his hands in thought. "You need the angle of attack, and--and the surface area of the wing? And maybe the speed he flaps them?"

  "Ugh, I can never remember; if I was any good at fluid dynamics I'd have been an engineer. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The beginning of the explanation apparently was enough."

  This was intolerable! Merchari rolled to his side and snarled at Dennis. "Keep out of this, you, or I might forget the rules that protect you." He spat a fang onto the pavement and stood to face the woman again. He was going about this wrong. He knew most of these laws, sort of. Hell had a whole section devoted to scientists. "You! Woman! Newtonian laws aren't entirely accurate."

  "They're just fine at these speeds. If you want to accelerate us to a significant percentage of lightspeed, then I'll pull out the complicated equations."

  No, that would never do. She'd just go on about infinite mass and squash him to a singularity. Damn it, she was such a prize. Merchari nibbled on a talon and glowered at her. Maybe he could introduce doubt... "You reduce your own position using physical laws this way. Only faith defeats me. Is your understanding of these laws predicated on mere belief?"

  Christine nodded thoughtfully. "Ultimately. All scientific laws rest on a single belief: that what we perceive is real. And if somehow it isn't, it doesn't matter. Empiricism still holds. The nugget of belief is irrelevant to the usefulness of the results." She walked up to him and poked him in the chest. "That's why they hurt so much. It's not a test of faith, it's a test of reality. Can you change reality?"

  Remarkable manuvering. Such a disappointment. Merchari hung his head, defeated. "No."

  "Well then. The coefficient of friction between two surfaces, multiplied by the parallel component..."

  "No!" Merchari reeled back, cowering. "No more! Please!"

  "...of a force applied at an angle to the surfaces, results in a parallel force applied to the objects, imparting motion."

  Nothing happened. Merchari peeked out from behind his claws. "What was that? It didn't do anything."

  "It's the equation for the useful force of friction. It's what allows you to walk." Christine pointed one imperious finger down the street. "I suggest you use it."

  Like facing the Big Boss himself. Merchari imagined what Christine would look like with horns and a beard. Then he turned and trudged west, toward the subway. And felt a little homesick.

  Snowball's Chance

  Charles Stross

  The louring sky, half-past pregnant with a caul of snow, pressed down on Davy's head like a hangover. He glanced up once, shivered, then pushed through the doorway into the Deid Nurse and the smog of fag fumes within.

  His sometime-conspirator Tam the Tailer was already at the bar. "Awright, Davy?"

  Davy drew a deep breath, his glasses steaming up the instant he stepped through the heavy blackout curtain, so that the disreputable pub was shrouded in a halo of icy iridescence that concealed its flaws. "Mine's a Deuchars." His nostrils flared as he took in the seedy mixture of aromas that festered in the Deid Nurse's atmosphere--so thick you could cut it with an axe, Morag had said once with a sniff of her lop-sided snot-siphon, back in the day when she'd had aught to say to Davy. "Fuckin' Baltic oot there the night, an' nae kiddin'." He slid his glasses off and wiped them off, then looked around tiredly. "An' deid tae the world in here."

  Tam glanced around as if to be sure the pub population hadn't magically doubled between mouthfuls of seventy bob. "Ah widnae say that." He gestured with his nose--pockmarked by frostbite--at the snug in the corner. Once the storefront for the Old Town's more affluent ladies of the night, it was now unaccountably popular with students of the gaming fraternity, possibly because they had been driven out of all the trendier bars in the neighbourhood for yacking till all hours and not drinking enough (much like the whores before them). Right now a bunch of threadbare LARPers were in residence, arguing over some recondite point of lore. "They're havin' enough fun for a barrel o' monkeys by the sound o' it."

  "An' who can blame them?" Davy hoisted his glass: "Ah just wish they'd keep their shite aff the box." The pub, in an effort to compensate for its lack of a food licence, had installed a huge and dodgy voxel engine that teetered precariously over the bar: it was full of muddy field, six LARPers leaping.

  "Dinnae piss them aff, Davy--they've a' got swords."

  "Ah wis jist kiddin'. Ah didnae catch ma lottery the night, that's a' Ah'm sayin'."

  "If ye win, it'll be a first." Tam stared at his glass. "An' whit wid ye dae then, if yer numbers came up?"

  "Whit, the big yin?" Davy put his glass down, then unzipped his parka's fast-access pouch and pulled out a fag packet and lighter. Condensation immediately beaded the plastic wrapper as he flipped it open. "Ah'd pay aff the hoose, for starters. An' the child support. An' then--" He paused, eyes wandering to the dog-eared NO SMOKING sign behind the bar. "Ah, shit." He flicked his Zippo, st
roking the end of a cigarette with the flame from the burning coal oil. "If Ah wis young again, Ah'd move, ye ken? But Ah'm no, Ah've got roots here." The sign went on to warn of lung cancer (curable) and two-thousand-Euro fines (laughable, even if enforced). Davy inhaled, grateful for the warmth flooding his lungs. "An' there's Morag an' the bairns."

  "Heh." Tam left it at a grunt, for which Davy was grateful. It wasn't that he thought Morag would ever come back to him, but he was sick to the back teeth of people who thought they were his friends telling him that she wouldn't, not unless he did this or did that.

  "Ah could pay for the bairns tae go east. They're young enough." He glanced at the doorway. "It's no right, throwin' snowba's in May."

  "That's global warmin'." Tam shrugged with elaborate irony, then changed the subject. "Where d'ye think they'd go? The Ukraine? New 'Beria?"

  "Somewhaur there's grass and nae glaciers." Pause. "An' real beaches wi' sand an' a'." He frowned and hastily added: "Dinnae get me wrong, Ah ken how likely that is." The collapse of the West Antarctic ice shelf two decades ago had inundated every established coastline; it had also stuck the last nail in the coffin of the Gulf stream, plunging the British Isles into a sub-Arctic deep freeze. Then the Americans had made it worse--at least for Scotland--by putting a giant parasol into orbit to stop the rest of the planet roasting like a chicken on a spit. Davy had learned all about global warming in Geography classes at school--back when it hadn't happened--in the rare intervals when he wasn't dozing in the back row or staring at Yasmin MacConnell's hair. It wasn't until he was already paying a mortgage and the second kid was on his way that what it meant really sank in. Cold. Eternal cold, deep in your bones.

  "Ah'd like tae see a real beach again, some day before Ah die."

  "Ye could save for a train ticket."

  "Away wi' ye! Where'd Ah go tae?" Davy snorted, darkly amused. Flying was for the hyper-rich these days, and anyway, the nearest beaches with sand and sun were in the Caliphate, a long day's TGV ride south through the Channel Tunnel and across the Gibraltar Bridge, in what had once been the Northern Sahara Desert. As a tourist destination, the Caliphate had certain drawbacks, a lack of topless sunbathing beauties being only the first on the list. "It's a' just as bad whauriver ye go. At least here ye can still get pork scratchings."