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…”
“…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.
Snowball’s Chance
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