Snowball’s Chance

by

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, 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 at 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.

This put Davy on his lonesome next to the stranger, who leaned on the bar and glanced at him sideways with an expression of amusement. Davy’s forehead wrinkled as he stared in the direction of Katie the barwoman, who was just now coming back up the cellar steps with an empty coal powder cartridge in one hand. “My round?” asked the stranger, raising an eyebrow.

“Aye. Mine’s a Deuchars if yer buyin’…” Davy, while not always quick on the uptake, was never slow on the barrel: if this underdressed southerner could afford a heated taxi, he could certainly afford to buy Davy some beer. Katie nodded and rinsed her hands under the sink–however well sealed they left the factory, coal cartridges always leaked like printer toner had once done–and picked up two glasses.

“New roond aboot here?” Davy asked after a moment.

The stranger smiled: “Just passing through–I visit Edinburgh every few years.”

“Aye.” Davy could relate to that.

“And yourself?”

“Ah’m frae Pilton.” Which was true enough; that was where he’d bought the house with Morag all those years ago, back when folks actually wanted to buy houses in Edinburgh. Back before the pack ice closed the Firth fro six months in every year, back before the rising sea level drowned Leith and Ingliston, and turned Arthur’s Seat into a frigid coastal headland looming grey and stark above the the permafrost. “Whereaboots d’ye come frae?”

The stranger’s smile widened as Katie parked a half-litre on the bar top before him and bent down to pull the next: “I think you know where I’m from, my friend.”

Davy snorted. “Aye, so ye’re a man of wealth an’ taste, is that right?”

“Just so.” A moment later, Katie planted the second glass in front of Davy, gave him a brittle smile, and retreated to the opposite end of the bar without pausing to extract credit from the stranger, who nodded and raised his jar: “To your good fortune.”

“Heh.” Davy chugged back a third of his glass. It was unusually bitter, with a slight sulphurous edge to it: “That’s a new barrel.”

“Only the best for my friends.”

Davy sneaked an irritated glance at the stranger. “Right. Ah ken ye want tae talk, ye dinnae need tae take the pish.”

“I’m sorry.” The stranger held his gaze, looking slightly perplexed. “It’s just that I’ve spent too long in America recently. Most of them believe in me. A bit of good old-fashioned scepticism is refreshing once in a while.”

Davy snorted. “Dae Ah look like a god-botherer tae ye? Yer amang civilized folk here, nae free-kirk numpties’d show their noses in a pub.”

“So I see.” The stranger relaxed slightly. “Seen Morag and the boys lately, have you?”

Now a strange thing happened, because as the cold fury took him, and a monstrous roaring filled his ears, and he reached for the stranger’s throat, he seemed to hear Morag’s voice shouting, Davy, don’t! And to his surprise, a moment of timely sanity came crashing down on him, a sense that Devil or no, if he laid hands on this fucker he really would be damned, somehow. It might just have been the hypothalamic implant that the sheriff had added to the list of his parole requirements working its arcane magic on his brain chemistry, but it certainly felt like a drenching, cold-sweat sense of immanence, and not in a good way. So as the raging impulse to glass the cunt died away, Davy found himself contemplating his own raised fists in perplexity, the crude blue tattoos of LOVE and HATE standing out on his knuckles like doorposts framing the prison gateway of his life.

“Who telt ye aboot them,” he demanded hoarsely.

“Cigarette?” The stranger, who had sat perfectly still while Davy wound up to punch his ticket, raised the chiselled eyebrow again.

“Ya bas.” But Davy’s hand went to his pocket automatically, and he found himself passing a filter-tip to the stranger rather than ramming a red-hot ember in his eye.

“Thank you.” The stranger took the unlit cigarette, put it straight between his lips, and inhaled deeply. “Nobody needed to tell me about them,” he continued, slowly dribbling smoke from both nostrils.

Davy slumped defensively on his bar stool. “When ye wis askin’ aboot Morag and the bairns, Ah figured ye wis fuckin’ wi’ ma heid.” But knowing that there was a perfectly reasonable supernatural explanation somehow made it all right. Ye cannae blame Auld Nick for pushin’ yer buttons. Davy reached out for his glass again: “’Scuse me. Ah didnae think ye existed.”

“Feel free to take your time.” The stranger smiled faintly. “I find atheists refreshing, but it does take a little longer than usual to get down to business.”

“Aye, weel, concedin’ for the moment that ye are the deil, Ah dinnae ken whit ye want wi’ the likes o’ me.” Davy cradled his beer protectively.

“Ah’m naebody.” He shivered in the sudden draught as one of the students–leaving–pushed through the curtain, admitting a flurry of late-May snowflakes.

“So? You may be nobody, but your lucky number just came up.” The stranger smiled devilishly. “Did you never think you’d win the Lottery?”

“Aye, weel, if hauf the stories they tell about ye are true, Ah’d rather it wis the ticket, ye ken? Or are ye gonnae say ye’ve been stitched up by the kirk?”

“Something like that.” The Devil nodded sagely. “Look, you’re not stupid, so I’m not going to bullshit you. What it is, is I’m not the only one of me working this circuit. I’ve got a quota to meet, but there aren’t enough politicians and captains of industry to go around, and anyway, they’re boring. All they ever want is money, power, or good, hot, kinky sex without any comebacks from their constituents. Poor folks are so much more creative in their desperation, don’t you think? And so much more likely to believe in the Rules, too.”

“The Rules?” Davy found himself staring at his companion in perplexity. “Nae the Law, right?”

“Do as thou wilt shall be all of the Law,” quoth the Devil, then he paused as if he’d tasted something unpleasant.

“Ye wis sayin’?”

“Love is the Law, Love under Will,” the Devil added dyspeptically.

“That’s a’?” Davy stared at him.

“My employer requires me to quote chapter and verse when challenged.” As he said “employer”, the expression on the Devil’s face made Davy shudder. “And she monitors these conversations for compliance.”

“But whit aboot the rest o’ it, aye? If ye’re the deil, whit aboot the Ten Commandments?”

“Oh, those are just Rules,” said the Devil, smiling. “I’m really proud of them.”

“Ye made them a’ up?” Davy said accusingly. “Just tae fuck wi’ us?”

“Well, yes, of course I did! And all the other Rules. They work really well, don’t you think?”

Davy made a fist and stared at the back of it. LOVE. “Ye cunt. Ah still dinnae believe in ye.”

The Devil shrugged. “Nobody’s asking you to believe in me. You don’t, and I’m still here, aren’t I? If it makes things easier, think of me as the garbage collection subroutine of the strong anthropic principle. And they”–he stabbed a finger in the direction of the overhead LEDs–”work by magic, for all you know.”

Davy picked up his glass and drained it philosophically. The hell of it was, the Devil was right: now he thought about it, he had no idea how the lights worked, except that electricity had something to do with it. “Ah’ll have anither. Ye’re buyin’.”“No I’m not.” The Devil snapped his fingers and two full glasses appeared on the bar, steaming slightly. Davy picked up the nearest one. It was hot to the touch, even though the beer inside it was at cellar temperature, and it smelled slightly sulphurous. “Anyway, I owe you.”

“Whit for?” Davy sniffed the beer suspiciously: “This smells pish.” He pushed it away. “Whit is it ye owe me for?”

“For taking that mortgage and the job on the street-cleaning team and for pissing it all down the drain and fucking off a thousand citizens in little ways. For giving me Jaimie and wee Davy, and for wrecking your life and cutting Morag off from her parents and raising a pair of neds instead of two fine upstanding citizens. You’re not a scholar and you’re not a gentleman, but you’re a truly professional hater. And as for what you did to Morag–”

Davy made another fist: HATE. “Say wan mair word aboot Morag…” he warned.

The Devil chuckled quietly. “No, you managed to do all that by yourself.” He shrugged. “I’d have offered help if you needed it, but you seemed to be doing okay without me. Like I said, you’re a professional.” He cleared his throat. “Which brings me to the little matter of why I’m talking to you tonight.”

“Ah’m no for sale.” Davy crossed his arms defensively. “Who d’ye think Ah am?”

The Devil shook his head, still smiling. “I’m not here to make you an offer for your soul, that’s not how things work. Anyway, you gave it to me of your own free will years ago.” Davy looked into his eyes. The smile didn’t reach them. “Trouble is, there are consequences when that happens. My employer’s an optimist: she’s not an Augustinian entity, you’ll be pleased to learn, she doesn’t believe in original sin. So things between you and the Ultimate are…let’s say they’re out of balance. It’s like a credit card bill. The longer you ignore it, the worse it gets. You cut me a karmic loan from the First Bank of Davy MacDonald, and the Law requires me to repay it with interest.”

“Huh?” Davy stared at the Devil. “Ye whit?”

The Devil wasn’t smiling now. “You’re one of the Elect, Davy. One of the Unconditionally Elect. So’s fucking everybody these days, but your name came up in the quality assurance lottery. I’m not allowed to mess with you. If you die and I’m in your debt, seven shades of shit hit the fan. So I owe you a fucking wish.”

The Devil tapped his fingers impatiently on the bar top. He was no longer smiling. “You get one wish. I am required to read you the small print:

“The party of the first part in cognizance of the gift benefice or loan bestowed by the party of the second part is hereby required to tender the fulfillment of 1 (one) verbally or somatically expressed indication of desire by the party of the second part in pursuance of the discharge of the said gift benefice or loan, said fulfillment hereinafter to be termed ‘the wish’. The party of the first part undertakes to bring the totality of existence into accordance with the terms of the wish exclusive of paradox deicide temporal inversion or other wilful suspension contrary to the laws of nature. The party of the second part recognizes understands and accepts that this wish represents full and final discharge of debt incurred by the gift benefice or loan to the party of the first part. Notwithstanding additional grants of rights incurred under the terms of this contract the rights responsibilities duties of the party of the first part to the party of the second part are subject to the Consumer Credit Regulations of 2026…”

Davy shook his head. “Ah dinnae get it. Are ye tellin’ me ye’re givin’ me a wish? In return for, for…bein’ radge a’ ma life?”

The Devil nodded. “Yes.”

Davy winced. “Ah think Ah need another Deuchars–fuck! Haud on, that isnae ma wish!” He stared at the Devil anxiously. “Ye’re serious, aren’t ye?”

The Devil sniffed. “I can’t discharge the obligation with a beer. My Employer isn’t stupid, whatever Her other faults: she’d say I was short-changing you, and she’d be right. It’s got to be a big wish, Davy.”

Davy’s expression brightened. The Devil waved a hand at Katie: “Another Deuchars for my friend here. And a drop of the Craitur.” Things were looking up, Davy decided.

“Can ye make Morag nae have…Ah mean, can ye make things…awright again, nae went bad?” He dry-swallowed, mind skittering like a frightened spider away from what he was asking for. Not to have…whatever. Whatever he’d done. Already.

The Devil contemplated Davy for a long handful of seconds. “No,” he said patiently. “That would create a paradox, you see, because if things hadn’t gone bad for you, I wouldn’t be here giving you this wish, would I? Your life gone wrong is the fuel for this miracle.”

“Oh.” Davy waited in silence while Katie pulled the pint, then retreated back to the far end of the bar. Whaur’s Tam? he wondered vaguely. Fuckin’ deil, wi’ his smairt suit an’ high heid yin manners… He shivered, unaccountably cold. “Am Ah goin’ tae hell?” he asked roughly. “Is that whaur Ah’m goin’?”

“Sorry, but no. We were brought in to run this universe, but we didn’t design it. When you’re dead, that’s it. No hellfire, no damnation: the worst thing that can happen to you is you’re reincarnated, given a second chance to get things right. It’s normally my job to give people like you that chance.”

“An’ if Ah’m no reincarnated?” Davy asked hopefully.

“You get to wake up in the mind of God. Of course, you stop being you when you do that.” The Devil frowned thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, you’ll probably give Her a migraine.”

“Right, right.” Davy nodded. The Devil was giving him a headache. He had a dawning suspicion that this one wasn’t a prod or a pape: he probably supported Livingstone. “Ah’m no that bad then, is that whit ye’re sayin’?”

“Don’t get above yourself.”

The Devil’s frown deepened, oblivious to the stroke of killing rage that flashed behind Davy’s eyes at the words. Dinnae get above yersel’? Who the fuck d’ye think ye are, the sheriff? That was almost exactly what the sheriff had said, leaning over to pronounce sentence. Ye ken Ah’m naebody, dinnae deny it! Davy’s fists tightened, itching to hit somebody. The story of his life: being ripped off then talked down to by self-satisfied cunts. Ah’ll make ye regret it!

The Devil continued after a moment: “You’ve got to really fuck up in a theological manner before she won’t take you, these days. Spreading hatred in the name of God, that kind of thing will do for you. Trademark abuse, she calls it. You’re plenty bad, but you’re not that bad. Don’t kid yourself, you only warrant the special visit because you’re a quality sample. The rest are…unobserved.”

“So Ah’m no evil, Ah’m just plain bad.” Davy grinned virulently as a thought struck him. Let’s dae somethin’ aboot that! Karmic imbalance? Ah’ll show ye a karmic imbalance! “Can ye dae somethin’ aboot the weather? Ah hate the cauld.” He tried to put a whine in his voice. The change in the weather had crippled house prices, shafted him and Morag. It would serve the Devil right if he fell for it.

“I can’t change the weather.” The Devil shook his head, looking slightly worried. “Like I said–”

“Can ye fuck wi’ yon sun shield the fuckin’ Yanks stuck in the sky?” Davy leaned forward, glaring at him: “’Cause if no, whit kindae deil are ye?”

“You want me to what?”

Davy took a deep breath. He remembered what it had looked like on TV, twenty years ago: the great silver reflectors unfolding in solar orbit, the jubilant politicians, the graphs showing a 20% fall in sunlight reaching the Earth…the savage April blizzards that didn’t stop for a month, the endless twilight and the sun dim enough to look at. And now the Devil wanted to give him a wish, in payment for fucking things up for a few thousand bastards who had it coming? Davy felt his lips drawing back from his teeth, a feral smile forcing itself to the surface. “Ah want ye to fuck up the sunshade, awright? Get ontae it. Ah want tae be wairm…”

The Devil shook his head. “That’s a new one on me,” he admitted. “But–” He frowned. “You’re sure? No second thoughts? You want to waive your mandatory fourteen-day right of cancellation?”

“Aye. Dae it the noo.” Davy nodded vigorously.

“It’s done.” The Devil smiled faintly.

“Whit?” Davy stared.

“There’s not much to it. A rock about the size of this pub, traveling on a cometary orbit–it’ll take an hour or so to fold, but I already took care of that.” The Devil’s smile widened. “You used your wish.”

“Ah dinnae believe ye,” said Davy, hopping down from his bar stool. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Tam dodging through the blackout curtain and the doorway, tipping him the wink. This had gone on long enough. “Ye’ll have tae prove it. Show me.”

“What?” The Devil looked puzzled. “But I told you, it’ll take about an hour.”

“So ye say. An’ whit then?”

“Well, the parasol collapses, so the amount of sunlight goes up. It gets brighter. The snow melts.”

“Is that right?” Davy grinned. “So how many wishes dae Ah get this time?”

“How many–” The Devil froze. “What makes you think you get any more?” He snarled, his face contorting.

“Like ye said, Ah gave ye a loan, didn’t Ah?” Davy’s grin widened. He gestured toward the door. “After ye?”

“You–” The Devil paused. “You don’t mean…” He swallowed, then continued, quietly. “That wasn’t deliberate, was it?”

“Oh. Aye.” Davy could see it in his mind’s eye: the wilting crops and blazing forests, droughts and heatstroke and mass extinction, the despairing millions across America and Africa, exotic places he’d never seen, never been allowed to go–roasting like pieces of a turkey on a spit, roasting in revenge for twenty years frozen in outer darkness. Hell on Earth. “Four billion fuckers, isnae that enough for another?”

“Son of a bitch!” The Devil reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an antique calculator, began punching buttons. “Forty-eight–no, forty-nine. Shit, this has never happened before! You bastard, don’t you have a conscience?”

Davy thought for a second. “Naw.”

“Fuck!”

It was now or never. “Ah’ll take a note.”

“A credit–shit, okay then. Here.” The Devil handed over his mobile. It was small and very black and shiny, and it buzzed like a swarm of flies. “Listen, I’ve got to go right now, I need to escalate this to senior management. Call head office tomorrow, if I’m not there, one of my staff will talk you through the state of your claim.”

“Haw! Ah’ll be sure tae dae that.”

The Devil stalked towards the curtain and stepped through into the darkness beyond, and was gone. Davy pulled out his moby and speed-dialed a number. “He’s a’ yours noo,” he muttered into the handset, then hung up and turned back to his beer. A couple of minutes later, someone came in and sat down next to him. Davy raised a hand and waved vaguely at Katie: “A Deuchars for Tam here.”

Katie nodded nonchalantly–she seemed to have cheered up since the Devil had stepped out–and picked up a glass.

Tam dropped a couple of small brass horns on the bar top next to Davy. Davy stared at them for a moment then glanced up admiringly. “Neat,” he admitted. “Get anythin’ else aff him?”

“Nah, the cunt wis crap. He didnae even have a moby. Just these.” Tam looked disgusted for a moment. “Ah pulled ma chib an’ waved it aroon’ an’ he totally legged it. Think anybody’ll come lookin’ for us?”

“Nae chance.” Davy raised his glass, then tapped the pocket with the Devil’s mobile phone in it smugly. “Nae a snowball’s chance in hell…”

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