Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

– And yet your Excellencies ultimately saw merit-

– Not all of us, Counselor. I remain unconvinced that Fermat’s Last Theorem, or its local proof, is the linchpin for Mother Church’s existence on Earth. As to Velma Fish: make your case.

– Very well, Excellency. Disjunction, of course, being a purely physical levorotation through the dense manifold, devoid of noetic efficacy at-

– Spare us. I’ll recite a brief list of things we have not disjoined for. The Mesozoic catastrophe. The Holocaust. The New Manila meme-plague. So who is Velma Fish?

– Insignificant in the scheme, Excellency. To be candid, she is randomly chosen.

– This is not illuminating, Counselor. Why insignificant? And why-I choke on it-fifty-three years?

– Because we have never tried it, Excellency. Our God-given powers are largely untested. An innocuous experiment here and there might promote man’s spiritual betterment in ways we never contemplated.

– If we dictated the actions of man, Counselor, we would have a more direct interest in his betterment. But that interest must remain, primarily, his. We merely set the stage for him, through Nature, through physical law and, perhaps, its judicious abrogation.

– Really, Excellency, one needn’t-

– Enough. Denied, with prejudice. Next and last please.

And His Excellency made a peremptory reach for the cool suit, which, when donned, would slow his lepton-based metabolism even further, allowing him to access without disruption the highly-if-precariously-ordered lattice of Yahweh Himself, to Whom he would convey this docket.

– Presentation Teresa of Calcutta, Excellency.

– Ah, welcome, Saint Teresa. Oh, it’s official up here, dear-your postmortem miracles coded and booked. A sunset eclipse over Ahmadabad that knocks, their, socks, off.

She looked in the mirror a hundred times. The girl kept looking back. The girl looked just like Velma had, once upon a time.

Seventy-year-old Velma was inside her seventeen-year-old self, and there was no other way to put it.

She was hungry-couldn’t remember such an appetite. A three-egg omelet would be just the thing. But the refrigerator was empty. She pulled herself together and set out for the corner grocery.

“Good morning,” she said to the clerk, and jumped at her own piping voice, no longer lax with age.

She got the eggs, and then, as though from habit, found herself in the feminine hygiene section. She selected a box of tampons and some sanitary napkins-who knew; she might be needing them.

As she let herself back into her apartment, nosy Mrs. Knowles popped her head out across the hall. Their eyes met. Mrs. Knowles raised her eyebrows and started to say something. Velma just gave a little wave and went on in, as though she were, say, a long-lost grand-niece-she’d need a story of some sort. She couldn’t be a grandchild, because Mrs. Knowles knew full well Velma was childless, never married.

Never even a boyfriend, unless you counted a fling with a girl-crazy GI, home from the war after V-J Day. A boy named Charlie.

Charlie Riggs-that was the boy’s name. She’d completely forgotten.

She ate every bite of the omelet. Then she picked up and opened the box of tampons, fiddling with one of the new-fangled things, chuckling to herself: maybe she’d forgotten how. But then some things, as they say, were like riding a bike.

– Well met, Brother Bertillon. We don’t see many of you.

Bertillon mopped his angelic brow. He’d just arrived; the heat was already too much.

– Complaining, Your Eminence, or boasting?

– Hm. Touché. To what do we owe this honor?

– If you would have a look at this. And don’t tell me you can’t do it.

– Hm. Hm. Fifty-three years. Not one for the usual channels. Not even us, historically-this would be a first. Might I ask why fifty-three? Why not sixty? Or all seventy-six?

Bertillon summoned a nonchalant earnestness, the kind most often invoked on Earth by the recipients of speeding citations.

– Age seventeen seems a suitable time to begin reapplying the lessons of life, does it not, Your Eminence?

His Eminence’s practiced gaze searched Bertillon’s for ambiguities, and found none.

– It might be arranged. Provided we have some… context.

– Come, Your Eminence. You merely require a pretext. And I am here to provide it.

– You would place your imprimatur on this?

– I would.

– I love it. The court is dense with intrigue, then?

– Alas, Your Eminence, the intriguing place is here. As even I concede.

– Do you. Your genius in certain prior matters has not gone unremarked here, Brother Bertillon. This place could be interesting indeed for a sympathetic Throne of your caliber.

– Thank you, but I lay claim only to empathy. My sympathies are not enlisted by this-chaos. Just look at this. How do you bear it, I wonder.

– Simple thermodynamics, Brother. And surely we’d find a niche to suit you: something on the… temperate side. But no matter. We are happy to help you lift the hem of Nature’s garment, or rend it. And what’s in it for you?

– My convictions. Between the hidebound heavens and these anarchic precincts, we lack a middle ground, a place for serendipity. In this, I answer to my conscience.

– Bravo, Brother. If there is one thing your colleagues fail to grasp, it is that we are all of us everywhere acting in good faith, are we not? We do have our differences. But they are strictly a function of…

– Temperature?

– Precisely. Let’s see what we can do.

Velma waited for the bus uptown. She felt funny about withdrawing her Social Security from the usual branch, even just the ATM.

Besides, she felt like exploring.

Next to her on the bench sat another young girl. Her hair was black, like Velma’s, but the whole front half of it was dyed a deep ultraviolet, as though her brain were glowing. She had an earring in her eyebrow.

When the girl returned her gaze, Velma realized she’d been staring.

“I was admiring your blouse,” said Velma.

“This?” the girl said. It was a simple black cotton shirt.

“Yes,” said Velma. “Where’s it from?”

“Hell, I dunno,” the girl said. “Clothestime, I think.” She studied Velma openly, taking in the tacky floral-print top, the hot green and pink and yellow of it; the ancient housewife slacks of nubbly mutant rayon; the Dr. Scholl’s sandals. “For God’s sake, there’s nothing special about my shirt,” the girl said.

“Except the person wearing it,” said Velma. “Never forget that, dear.”

Two hours later, Velma emerged from Clothestime with a couple of bulging bags. She didn’t normally frequent the big malls, but now she strode past the Body Shop and the Jamba Juice, keeping pace with the ubiquitous kids, from whom she was indistinguishable.

The wind dropped a flyer at her feet. She picked it up:

COOLHOUSE

Thursday nights at Emerald City

… after hours…

DJ Spin Gen-F

99 Buzz Dr. Skill

Odd. She kept it, and headed home to model her new look.

“I want you to locate this man,” Velma said. She gave the detective, a Mr. Dietz, a piece of paper with the name “Charlie Riggs” and some sketchy biographical information-dates in the 1940s.

She was seventeen again-with the craziest itch to connect.

“Place of birth?” said Dietz.

“Well, he had a New England accent,” said Velma.

“What’s he to you?” said Dietz. “Grandpa?”

“An old boyfriend.”

Dietz reassessed her up and down, his mouth an inverted U of impressed surmise. “Good for you, Charlie. Wherever you are,” he finally said.