Sympathy for the Devil

by Tim Pratt

  When he was five, a boy named Simon Ellis had poured paint on his head while another boy name James somebody-or-other had held him down and a girl named Sharon Harsharpe had laughed. They were numbers five through seven, respectively.

  Who else?

  There was the man on television with the annoying snicker who read the news. He went on the list. And what about the woman in the flat next door with the little yappy dog that shat in the hall? He put her and the dog down on nine. Ten was the hardest. He scratched his head and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, then dashed back and wrote My Great-Uncle Mervyn down in the tenth place. The old man was rumoured to be quite affluent, and there was a possibility (albeit rather slim) that he could leave Peter some money.

  With the satisfaction of an evening's work well done, he went off to bed.

  Monday at Clamages was routine; Peter was a senior sales assistant in the books department, a job that actually entailed very little. He clutched his list tightly in his hand, deep in his pocket, rejoicing in the feeling of power that it gave him. He spent a most enjoyable lunch hour in the canteen with young Gwendolyn (who did not know that he had seen her and Archie enter the stockroom together) and even smiled at the smooth young man from the accounting department when he passed him in the corridor.

  He proudly displayed his list to Kemble that evening.

  The little salesman's face fell.

  "I'm afraid this isn't ten people, Mr. Pinter," he explained. "You've counted the woman in the next-door flat and her dog as one person. That brings it to eleven, which would be an extra"--his pocket calculator was rapidly deployed--"an extra seventy pounds. How about if we forget the dog?"

  Peter shook his head. "The dog's as bad as the woman. Or worse."

  "Then I'm afraid we have a slight problem. Unless--"

  "What?"

  "Unless you'd like to take advantage of our wholesale rate. But of course sir wouldn't be--"

  There are words that do things to people; words that make people's faces flush with joy, excitement, or passion. Environmental can be one; occult is another. Wholesale was Peter's. He leaned back in his chair. "Tell me about it," he said with the practised assurance of an experienced shopper.

  "Well, sir," said Kemble, allowing himself a little chuckle, "we can, uh, get them for you wholesale, seventeen pounds fifty each, for every quarry after the first fifty, or a tenner each for every one over two hundred."

  "I suppose you'd go down to a fiver if I wanted a thousand people knocked off?"

  "Oh no, sir," Kemble looked shocked. "If you're talking those sorts of figures, we can do them for a quid each."

  "One pound?"

  "That's right, sir. There's not a big profit margin on it, but the high turnover and productivity more than justifies it."

  Kemble got up. "Same time tomorrow, sir?"

  Peter nodded.

  One thousand pounds. One thousand people. Peter Pinter didn't even know a thousand people. Even so--there were the Houses of Parliament. He didn't like politicians; they squabbled and argued and carried on so.

  And for that matter--

  An idea, shocking in its audacity. Bold. Daring. Still, the idea was there and it wouldn't go away. A distant cousin of his had married the younger brother of an earl or a baron or something--

  On the way home from work that afternoon, he stopped off at a little shop that he had passed a thousand times without entering. It had a large sign in the window--guaranteeing to trace your lineage for you and even draw up a coat of arms if you happened to have mislaid your own--and an impressive heraldic map.

  They were very helpful and phoned him up just after seven to give him their news.

  If approximately fourteen million, seventy-two thousand, eight hundred and eleven people died, he, Peter Pinter, would be King of England.

  He didn't have fourteen million, seventy-two thousand, eight hundred and eleven pounds: but he suspected that when you were talking in those figures, Mr. Kemble would have one of his special discounts.

  Mr. Kemble did.

  He didn't even raise an eyebrow.

  "Actually," he explained, "it works out quite cheaply; you see, we wouldn't have to do them all individually. Small-scale nuclear weapons, some judicious bombing, gassing, plague, dropping radios in swimming pools, and then mopping up the stragglers. Say four thousand pounds."

  "Four thou--? That's incredible!"

  The salesman looked pleased with himself. "Our operatives will be glad of the work, sir." He grinned. "We pride ourselves on servicing our wholesale customers."

  The wind blew cold as Peter left the pub, setting the old sign swinging. It didn't look much like a dirty donkey, thought Peter. More like a pale horse.

  Peter was drifting off to sleep that night, mentally rehearsing his coronation speech, when a thought drifted into his head and hung around. It would not go away. Could he--could he possibly be passing up an even larger saving than he already had? Could he be missing out on a bargain?

  Peter climbed out of bed and walked over to the phone. It was almost 3 A.M., but even so--

  His Yellow Pages lay open where he had left it the previous Saturday, and he dialled the number.

  The phone seemed to ring forever. There was a click and a bored voice said, "Burke Hare Ketch. Can I help you?"

  "I hope I'm not phoning too late--" he began.

  "Of course not, sir."

  "I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. Kemble."

  "Can you hold? I'll see if he's available."

  Peter waited for a couple of minutes, listening to the ghostly crackles and whispers that always echo down empty phone lines.

  "Are you there, caller?"

  "Yes, I'm here."

  "Putting you through." There was a buzz, then "Kemble speaking."

  "Ah, Mr. Kemble. Hello. Sorry if I got you out of bed or anything. This is, um, Peter Pinter."

  "Yes, Mr. Pinter?"

  "Well, I'm sorry it's so late, only I was wondering--How much would it cost to kill everybody? Everybody in the world?"

  "Everybody? All the people?"

  "Yes. How much? I mean, for an order like that, you'd have to have some kind of a big discount. How much would it be? For everyone?"

  "Nothing at all, Mr. Pinter."

  "You mean you wouldn't do it?"

  "I mean we'd do it for nothing, Mr. Pinter. We only have to be asked, you see. We always have to be asked."

  Peter was puzzled. "But--when would you start?"

  "Start? Right away. Now. We've been ready for a long time. But we had to be asked, Mr. Pinter. Good night. It has been a pleasure doing business with you."

  The line went dead.

  Peter felt strange. Everything seemed very distant. He wanted to sit down. What on earth had the man meant? "We always have to be asked." It was definitely strange. Nobody does anything for nothing in this world; he had a good mind to phone Kemble back and call the whole thing off. Perhaps he had overreacted, perhaps there was a perfectly innocent reason why Archie and Gwendolyn had entered the stockroom together. He would talk to her, that's what he'd do. He'd talk to Gwennie first thing tomorrow morning--

  That was when the noises started.

  Odd cries from across the street. A catfight? Foxes probably. He hoped someone would throw a shoe at them. Then, from the corridor outside his flat, he heard a muffled clumping, as if someone were dragging something very heavy along the floor. It stopped. Someone knocked on his door, twice, very softly.

  Outside his window the cries were getting louder. Peter sat in his chair, knowing that somehow, somewhere, he had missed something. Something important. The knocking redoubled. He was thankful that he always locked and chained his door at night.

  They'd been ready for a long time, but they had to be asked--

  Details

  China Mieville

  When the boy upstairs got hold of a pellet gun and fired snips of potato at passing cars, I took a turn. I was part of everything. I wasn't a
n outsider. But I wouldn't join in when my friends went to the yellow house to scribble on the bricks and listen at the windows. One girl teased me about it, but everyone else told her to shut up. They defended me, even though they didn't understand why I wouldn't come.

  I don't remember a time before I visited the yellow house for my mother.

  On Wednesday mornings at about nine o'clock I would open the front door of the decrepit building with a key from the bunch my mother had given me. Inside was a hall and two doors, one broken and leading to splintering stairs. I would unlock the other and enter the dark flat. The corridor was unlit and smelled of old, wet air. I never walked even two steps down that hallway. Rot and shadows merged, and it looked as if the passage disappeared a few yards from me. The door to Mrs. Miller's room was right in front of me. I would lean forward and knock.

  Quite often there were signs that someone else had been there recently. Scuffed dust and bits of litter. Sometimes I was not alone. There were two other children I sometimes saw slipping in or out of the house. There were a handful of adults who visited Mrs. Miller.

  I might find one or another of them in the hallway outside the door to her flat, or even in the flat itself, slouching in the crumbling dark hallway. They would be slumped over or reading some cheap-looking book or swearing loudly as they waited.

  There was a young Asian woman who wore a lot of makeup and smoked obsessively. She ignored me totally. There were two drunks who came sometimes. One would greet me boisterously and incomprehensibly, raising his arms as if he wanted to hug me into his stinking, stinking jumper. I would grin and wave nervously, walk past him. The other seemed alternately melancholic and angry. Occasionally I'd meet him by the door to Mrs. Miller's room, swearing in a strong cockney accent. I remember the first time I saw him, he was standing there, his red face contorted, slurring and moaning loudly.

  "Come on, you old slag," he wailed, "you sodding old slag. Come on, please, you cow."

  His words scared me but his tone was wheedling, and I realized I could hear her voice, Mrs. Miller's voice, from inside the room, answering him back. She did not sound frightened or angry.

  I hung back, not sure what to do, and she kept speaking, and eventually the drunken man shambled miserably away. And then I could continue as usual.

  I asked my mother once if I could have any of Mrs. Miller's food. She laughed very hard and shook her head. In all the Wednesdays of bringing the food over, I never even dipped my finger in to suck it.

  My mum spent an hour every Tuesday night making the stuff up. She dissolved a bit of gelatin or cornflour with some milk, threw in a load of sugar or flavorings, and crushed a clutch of vitamin pills into the mess. She stirred it until it thickened and let it set in a plain white plastic bowl. In the morning it would be a kind of strong-smelling custard that my mother put a dishcloth over and gave me, along with a list of any questions or requests for Mrs. Miller and sometimes a plastic bucket full of white paint.

  So I would stand in front of Mrs. Miller's door, knocking, with a bowl at my feet. I'd hear a shifting and then her voice from close by the door.

  "Hello," she would call, and then say my name a couple of times. "Have you my breakfast? Are you ready?"

  I would creep up close to the door and hold the food ready. I would tell her I was.

  Mrs. Miller would slowly count to three. On three, the door suddenly swung open a snatch, just a foot or two, and I thrust my bowl into the gap. She grabbed it and slammed the door quickly in my face.

  I couldn't see very much inside the room. The door was open for less than a second. My strongest impression was of the whiteness of the walls. Mrs. Miller's sleeves were white, too, and made of plastic. I never got much of a glimpse at her face, but what I saw was unmemorable. A middle-aged woman's eager face.

  If I had a bucket full of paint, we would run through the routine again. Then I would sit cross-legged in front of her door and listen to her eat.

  "How's your mother" she would shout. At that I'd unfold my mother's careful queries. She's okay, I'd say, she's fine. She says she has some questions for you.

  I'd read my mother's strange questions in my careful childish monotone, and Mrs. Miller would pause and make interested sounds, and clear her throat and think out loud. Sometimes she took ages to come to an answer, and sometimes it would be almost immediate.

  "Tell your mother she can't tell if a man's good or bad from that," she'd say; "Tell her to remember the problems she had with your father." Or: "Yes, she can take the heart of it out. Only she has to paint it with the special oil I told her about." "Tell your mother seven. But only four of them concern her and three of them used to be dead."

  "I can't help her with that," she told me once, quietly. "Tell her to go to a doctor, quickly." And my mother did, and she got well again.

  "What do you not want to be when you grow up?" Mrs. Miller asked me one day.

  That morning when I had come to the house the sad cockney vagrant had been banging on the door of her room again, the keys to the flat flailing in his hand.

  "He's begging you, you old tart, please, you owe him, he's so bloody angry," he was shouting, "only it ain't you gets the sharp end, is it? Please, you cow, you sodding cow, I'm on me knees..."

  "My door knows you, man," Mrs. Miller declared from within. "It knows you and so do I, you know it won't open to you. I didn't take out my eyes and I'm not giving in now. Go home."

  I waited nervously as the man gathered himself and staggered away, and then, looking behind me, I knocked on the door and announced myself. It was after I'd given her the food that she asked her question.

  "What do you not want to be when you grow up?"

  If I had been a few years older her inversion of the cliche would have annoyed me. It would have seemed mannered and contrived. But I was only a young child, and I was quite delighted.

  I don't want to be a lawyer, I told her carefully. I spoke out of loyalty to my mother, who periodically received crisp letters that made her cry or smoke fiercely, and swear at lawyers, bloody smartarse lawyers.

  Mrs. Miller was delighted.

  "Good boy!" she snorted. "We know all about lawyers. Bastards, right? With the small print. Never be tricked by the small print! It's right there in front of you, right there in front of you, and you can't even see it and then suddenly it makes you notice it! And I tell you, once you've seen it it's got you!" She laughed excitedly. "Don't let the small print get you. I'll tell you a secret." I waited quietly, and my head slipped nearer the door.

  "The devil's in the details!" She laughed again. "You ask your mother if that's not true. The devil is in the details!"

  I'd wait the twenty minutes or so until Mrs. Miller had finished eating, and then we'd reverse our previous procedure and she'd quickly hand me out an empty bowl. I would return home with the empty container and tell my mother the various answers to her various questions. Usually she would nod and make notes. Occasionally she would cry.

  After I told Mrs. Miller that I did not want to be a lawyer she started asking me to read to her. She made me tell my mother, and told me to bring a newspaper or one of a number of books. My mother nodded at the message and packed me a sandwich the next Wednesday, along with the Mirror. She told me to be polite and do what Mrs. Miller asked, and that she'd see me in the afternoon.

  I wasn't afraid. Mrs. Miller had never treated me badly from behind her door. I was resigned and only a little bit nervous.

  Mrs. Miller made me read stories to her from specific pages that she shouted out. She made me recite them again and again, very carefully. Afterward she would talk to me. Usually she started with a joke about lawyers, and about small print.

  "There's three ways not to see what you don't want to," she told me. "One is the coward's way and too damned painful. The other is to close your eyes forever which is the same as the first, when it comes to it. The third is the hardest and the best: You have to make sure only the things you can afford to see come before you."


  One morning when I arrived the stylish Asian woman was whispering fiercely through the wood of the door, and I could hear Mrs. Miller responding with shouts of amused disapproval. Eventually the young woman swept past me, leaving me cowed by her perfume.

  Mrs. Miller was laughing, and she was talkative when she had eaten.

  "She's heading for trouble, messing with the wrong family! You have to be careful with all of them," she told me. "Every single one of them on that other side of things is a tricksy bastard who'll kill you as soon as look at you, given half a chance.

  "There's the gnarly throat-tripped one... and there's old hasty, who I think had best remain nameless," she said wryly. "All old bastards, all of them. You can't trust them at all, that's what I say. I should know, eh? Shouldn't I?" She laughed. "Trust me, trust me on this: It's too easy to get on the wrong side of them.

  "What's it like out today?" she asked me. I told her that it was cloudy.

  "You want to be careful with that," she said. "All sorts of faces in the clouds, aren't there? Can't help noticing, can you?" She was whispering now. "Do me a favor when you go home to your mum: Don't look up, there's a boy. Don't look up at all."

  When I left her, however, the day had changed. The sky was hot, and quite blue.

  The two drunk men were squabbling in the front hall and I edged past them to her door. They continued bickering in a depressing, garbled murmur throughout my visit.

  "D'you know, I can't even really remember what it was all about, now!" Mrs. Miller said when I had finished reading to her. "I can't remember! That's a terrible thing. But you don't forget the basics. The exact question escapes me, and to be honest I think maybe I was just being nosy or showing off... I can't say I'm proud of it but it could have been that. It could. But whatever the question, it was all about a way of seeing an answer.