Snowball’s
Chance
The louring sky,
half-past pregnant with a caul of snow, pressed down on Davy’s head
like the promise of tomorrow’s 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 ax, Morag had said once with a sniff of her
lopsided 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, 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 neighborhood for yacking too much 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 license, had installed a huge and dodgy screen 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 said 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? 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 subarctic 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, someday 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
hyperrich 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 and the two small
brass horns implanted on his forehead were more contemporary
touches. 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 toward 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 for
six months of 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 permafrost. “Whereaboots
d’ye come frae?”
The stranger’s smile
widened as Katie parked a half-liter 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
sulfurous 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 skepticism 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 imma nence, 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 chiseled 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 barstool. “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 draft 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 that 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 sulfurous. “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 willful 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 percent 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 barstool. 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
toward 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 . .
.”