Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

“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.

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, stroking 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.”

“Aye, weel.” Tam raised his glass, just as a stranger appeared in the doorway.

“An’ then there’s some that dinnae feel the cauld.” Davy glanced round to follow the direction of his gaze. The stranger was oddly attired in a lightweight suit and tie, as if he’d stepped out of the middle of the previous century, although his neat goatee beard and the two small brass horns implanted on his forehead were a more contemporary touch. He noticed Davy staring and nodded, politely enough, then broke eye contact and ambled over to the bar. Davy turned back to Tam, who responded to his wink. “Take care noo, Davy. Ye’ve got ma number.” With that, he stood up, put his glass down, and shambled unsteadily towards the toilets.