Balancing
      a short story by Adam Roberts 

      : 1 :
      Allen met the Devil on the way into work. 'Come along,' said the Devil. 'I 
      have a proposition.' But meeting, meeting. Strange to have the same word 
      for meeting and re-meeting; don't you think we ought to have a word for 
      'to meet again'? Allen felt the déjà vu strongly, as soon as the tang of 
      the Devil's presence registered on his consciousness: the sheer 
      familiarity. Old shoes creasing like cloth round his feet, not new leather 
      squeaking and rubbing his heel. Already-breathed air.
      So, here at the beginning, is the important part.
      One minute Allen was standing next to this long-faced, pale man dressed 
      all in brown, as the lobby buzzed around him. He barely had time to 
      register the presence -- indeed, was studiously avoiding meeting his eye, 
      looking past him at the closing lift door. Bums and strangers did 
      sometimes make their way past security to loiter in the lobby and try to 
      coax money from the well-off workers hurrying to get to work on time. 
      Allen had even wondered if security colluded in this; if, perhaps, 
      enterprising mendicants paid a small fee to encourage the security guards 
      to look the other way in the knowledge that they would make it back and 
      more from the affluent pressed-for-time folk within. The lift door hushed 
      shut.
      And the next minute, with no sense of intervening time, Allen was on the 
      roof. It was no illusion. The stainless-steel panels (the architect's name 
      was Frank L Tipler, and he was an award-winner -- you may have heard of 
      him) sloped gently to the architectural ha-ha of the guttering, and beyond 
      was nothing but air and the view of crammed stone and steel of London 
      Town. A push of air was moving over Allen's face, touching a line of chill 
      inside his shirt-collar. He turned about with the slow deliberation of a 
      drunk, not fully believing his senses. He turned through a hundred-eighty, 
      but saw only the roof stretching upwards to its central ridge, and the 
      chimney-pot bunching of lightning conductors and television aerials. Then 
      a certain alarm took hold as he realised he was on the roof, and he turned 
      again, this time through a complete three-sixty. Turned a little too 
      rapidly in the recklessness of his fore-shock, slipped, and started 
      skittering on one knee down the slope.
      'Woah,' said the Devil. He reached over with a hand whose strength of grip 
      was not advertised in its slimness, and grasped Allen's shoulder. 'Watch 
      yourself, Mr slippy.'
      Allen felt himself hauled upright again. Here was the gentleman in brown: 
      a face completely hairless, even to the point of lacking eyebrows and 
      eyelashes; skin pale without quite bleaching into albino. He was wearing a 
      tight-fitting cap of what looked like brown cashmere, an almost hippy 
      piece of headgear. But his suit was very formal, bespoke and 
      precision-tailored. His large-lidded eyes had a sleepy, half-open look, 
      and his very long nose drew a firm line down to his small, pursed mouth, 
      like a fleshy exclamation mark. A dimple tucked into his narrow chin.
      'What?' asked Allen, loudly. 'What?'
      It was ungainly, tell you the truth. He didn't come over very well.
      'Please,' said the Devil, leading him back up the roof towards a skylight 
      and pressing down on Allen's shoulder until he was seated on the lip of 
      it. 'There's no need for you to muck about. Which is to say, 
      know-what-I-mean? -- don't please.' Delicately, the Devil lowered himself 
      to sit next to Allen on the lower ridge of the skylight. He even let out a 
      small grunt of satisfaction, as if he had been on his feet for far too 
      long.
      'Who are you?' Allen asked.
      'Devil.'
      'How,' said Allen, looking around, 'how did you bring me up here?'
      'Now,' said the Devil, his eyes puckering with the edge of irritation. 'I 
      really don't have time for all that. You know who I am. You even recognise 
      me.'
      Allen stared hard at the man, and then looked away. This was ridiculous. 
      What was he doing on the roof? The roof of all places? I mean, as he was 
      prone to saying, pur-lease. Roof! Chilly, ice-coloured clouds were rushing 
      across the sky, as if hurrying to leave London. Below him the morning rush 
      in the city was dying down. From where he was sitting he could see right 
      up Tallow Chandler Street, where the last grey-suited figure was jogging 
      clumsily, chasing the vanishing 8.30 clock-in. A pair of tourists, 
      immensely fat, were standing placidly on the pavement watching this person 
      go past.
      'Are you Death?' asked Allen. The whole encounter had a curiously vivid 
      quality. Could he have fallen down in the lobby in some sort of fit? Was 
      this a reverie preluding his own death? He tried to picture ambulance-men 
      clustering round his body, the hubbub downstairs. But that image refused 
      to come alive in his mind.
      'Must say,' said the Devil, muttering. 'I'm rather too pressed for time 
      for games. You're not the only one with appointments to keep.' Then he 
      smiled, very wide.
      Allen glanced at his watch. A shade after half past. The second hand was 
      twitching its way round the track. Shouldn't it have stopped? But the 
      needle-thin hand was still trembling on, pushing inexorably onwards. 
      Towards the time of his meeting with Kaufmann. He had a meeting with 
      Kaufmann, and you know how cranky Kaufmann gets if you turn up late. He 
      turned to the Devil.
      'What is this then?' he asked. 'What is it you want?'
      The Devil sighed shallowly, and made a languid gesture with his hand. 'A 
      much healthier attitude. And, yes, as it happens I am here to make you an 
      offer.'
      'An offer.' The morning air was cold so high up. It being summer, Allen 
      had decided not to wear the overcoat on his way to work. The crush of the 
      tube would have made it uncomfortably warm. But up on the roof, with the 
      fresh young breezes of the day straining through the material of his shirt 
      directly onto his skin, he began to wish he had something to keep him 
      warmer.
      The Devil inclined his head.
      'What sort of offer?' Allen said.
      'An unusual one. One that demonstrates my power. And, I might say, one 
      without obligation to yourself of any kind.'
      'Without obligation?'
      'I know, of course,' said the Devil, smiling the faintest of smiles with 
      the corners of his mouth. 'I recognise the vulgarity of all this 
      salesman-talk. But it precisely describes the circumstance. I shall make 
      my offer. You can then either accept or decline. If you decline, you'll 
      hear nothing more from me. If you decide to accept, however,' and here the 
      Devil brushed imaginary crumbs from the corners of his upturned mouth.
      'I'll lose my soul,' put in Allen, sharply.
      'Dear me no,' said the Devil, as if richly amused. 'Not at all. How 
      medieval. Nothing of the sort.'
      'What then?' asked Allen. 'Something for nothing?' He swallowed. Perhaps 
      he was indeed arguing with the Devil. It was almost exciting. 'I don't 
      believe it.'
      'Whether you believe it or not, that's neither here nor there. But if you 
      accept my offer, then I shall simply give you what you ask for, and then I 
      will be gone. Turn me down, and I'm gone anyway. Either way you'll not be 
      troubled with me further. There are no catches, no tricks, and I require 
      nothing from you.'
      Allen looked again at this man, looked in his face. His skin was, he saw, 
      unusually smooth. Only the edges of the eyes betrayed even the hint of a 
      wrinkle. 'I don't understand,' he said.
      'What's not to understand?' said the Devil. 'Ah, but of course you don't 
      mean that. You mean you don't understand why.'
      'I guess so.'
      'Why is really neither here nor there. Now. Do you want to hear my offer 
      or not?'
      'What if I say, uh, not?' Allen asked, looked around him. He was wondering 
      how he was going to get down from the roof. And what he would say if 
      anybody spotted him up here. What explanation could he offer?
      'If you don't want to hear my proposal, then I shall simply go away,' said 
      the Devil. 'And, in case you're anxious, I will return you to the ground 
      without ill effects. But you will, I promise you, spend the rest of your 
      life wondering what my offer was going to be.'
      Allen looked around again. 'What is this offer, then?' he said. Perhaps 
      playing along with the illusion would bring it to a swifter conclusion. 
      Perhaps he was still asleep, lying in his bed. It would not surprise him. 
      It could be that he was more anxious about meeting Kaufmann than he had 
      realised. Maybe the worry about that meeting had infected his dreams. And 
      yet there was something hard-edged about this experience that seemed to 
      remove it from the world of dreaming. Could he ever remember feeling cold 
      in any dream he had ever had before?
      He was being stupid. Surely the duvet had slipped off him, and the open 
      bedroom-window was letting in a breeze, and that was registering in his 
      dream. He turned to the Devil. 'What is the offer then?' he repeated.
      'I am glad you asked,' said the Devil. He put his fingers together in a 
      church-steeple, smiling thinly. He had a curiously unblinking stare, Allen 
      realised. 'It is simple enough. I offer to weigh in the scales the 
      pleasure you have caused in the world, and also the pain, and to pay you 
      the balance.'
      'I don't understand,' said Allen.
      'That is the second time you have said that,' said the Devil. 'Only this 
      time I suppose you mean it more particularly. Well, you are an intelligent 
      man, and it is not hard. Try to determine the amount of pleasure you have 
      caused; the happiness, the delight, the bliss. Every pleasurable sensation 
      you have ever prompted in every person you have ever met. Now try to work 
      out how much pain: how much disappointment, misery, suffering, again in 
      every person your life has touched. Which quantity is the larger? Subtract 
      the smaller from the larger and are you left with a residue. Of pain? Or 
      of pleasure? Accept my offer and you will find out, because you will 
      experience, actually experience in yourself, precisely that difference, 
      precisely that amount of pleasure. Or of pain. Perhaps you have lived a 
      good life and have caused little pain but a great deal of pleasure. Well, 
      then, accept my offer and you will be given the combined pleasurable 
      sensations from all the people you have ever pleasured. Not merely one 
      person's bliss, but perhaps hundreds, or thousands -- less only the 
      amounts of pain you have caused. All the people you have ever helped, all 
      the lovers you have given good sensations to; all of it at once, 
      experienced by you simultaneously. I could be offering you the most 
      intensely blissful experience available to a human being.'
      'Or,' said Allen, 'the most painful.'
      'That, of course, depends upon you, upon the life you have led. But if 
      that is what you suspect, then I would advise you not to accept my offer.'
      Allen sucked in his lower lip, contemplating.
      'The pleasure I have caused,' he said. 'How do you work that out?'
      'The pleasure and the pain. And it is something very easy for a person in 
      my position to determine, believe me. Explaining to you precisely how 
      would be rather hard.'
      'When you say the pleasure I have caused,' said Allen, still pondering. 
      'Do you mean to people I have actually met? Friends, lovers, that sort of 
      thing?'
      Again the Devil made his dismissive gesture with one hand. 'Human being 
      relations are not, alas, so easily reducible to a tight group of personal 
      contacts. The sum is derived from all the people touched by your life, 
      whether you have met them or not. But, as I am sure you appreciate, that 
      only increases the pool of pleasure -- or pain -- from which I am giving 
      you the chance to draw. Let us say your accountancy firm has helped out a 
      company on the other side of the Atlantic, perhaps saved it from 
      bankruptcy. Well, then, all the feelings of gratitude and security 
      experienced by those workers, even though you have never met them 
      personally, would be added to your account: divided, I suppose, between 
      the various of you who worked on the account.'
      'Divided how?' asked Allen, his accountant's instincts intrigued.
      'Divided by a complex spiritual algorithm that would be of little interest 
      to you. But you understand the principle upon which my offer is based?'
      'When would I, uh, experience this pay-off you are talking about?'
      'How many questions you ask,' exclaimed the Devil in a level tone of 
      voice. 'Of course you would experience it as soon as you agree. But I am 
      not asking you to agree straight away. Shall we say three days? That has a 
      certain chime to it, doesn't it? Three days from now is Sunday.'
      'Saturday,' said Allen, automatically.
      'Oh, Saturday, yes. Three days from now is Saturday. Well, I shall come 
      back at this same time this coming Saturday, and you can tell me then 
      whether you have accepted my proposal or not.' The Devil stood up, so 
      abruptly as to pop straight upright like a jump-cut in a film.
      'Wait,' said Allen, clambering up beside him. 'Before you go. How about 
      telling me why? What do you get out of this?'
      The Devil drew the pad of his middle finger over the line where his 
      eyebrow should have been. It was a delicate, almost feminine gesture.
      'Why me?' Allen asked. 'Why am I the one to get the offer?'
      'What,' said the Devil, 'what a terribly human sort of question to ask.'
      And, as abruptly as before, Allen was in his office, standing in front of 
      his desk; and Natalie was poking her head round his door in that twitchy 
      bird-manner of hers, and telling him that Kaufmann was paging him.

      : 2 :
      A full day's work had bleached the incident of vividness, until the 
      evening trip home on the tube, in its smelly, crowded, heated immediacy, 
      gave his memory of the morning on the roof a quaintly chilly, fantastical 
      edge. It had been, he thought, a dream of peculiar intensity, and at an 
      odd moment. Presumably he had made his usual way to his office in a sort 
      of sleep-walking daze (he had asked Natalie, but she could not swear to 
      have seen him coming in. Maybe, she offered helpfully, he had slipped in 
      behind her back when she was pouring fresh grinds in the coffee machine?). 
      At lunch Allen had even stepped outside to have a look up at the roof, but 
      the angle wasn't right for him to see past the rim. Maybe (he thought 
      later, in the juggling, shifting underground carriage) maybe it was an 
      acid flashback. Except that Allen had never tried acid. Speed a few times, 
      in his clubbing days. But were there such things as speed flashbacks? And 
      if there were, wouldn't they be more frenetic, not a placid conversation 
      with the Devil sitting calmly on a skylight?
      The tube stopped at a station and a celestialnaut got on. A woman in her 
      late fifties, with several layers of clothing and cross-shaped hair-clips. 
      There was a cardboard sign hung about her neck on string: JesusLove 
      LoveJesus.
      She came over and sat next to Allen. 'You've got a lovely smile,' she 
      said, without preliminary.
      'Thank you,' mumbled Allen, embarrassed.
      'You have children?'
      'A child,' said Allen, shuffling in his seat and looking the other way.
      'I can tell. I can tell a father's love shining from his heart. I had four 
      children,' she went on, 'but one of them died. But Jesus still loved him 
      and took him to a wonderful place. And I was a manic depressive until I 
      found Jesus.' She pushed a leaflet into Allen's hands: Celestialnauts: 
      Jesus's Space Travellers Sent Down to Save. It was in Allen's mind to say 
      something to her, but she had turned to the person on her left. 'You've 
      got a lovely smile,' she said.
      I met the devil today, Allen thought to himself. Then he tried the thought 
      again, this time capitalising the protagonist. I met the Devil today. 
      Devil Devil, Devil Devil.

      He got off the tube at his station and climbed the stairs instead of 
      waiting for the lift (a conscious decision to help reduce his increasing 
      loss of tone around his waistline), counting off the steps in threes. 
      Should he tell Moira? About hallucinating a meeting with the Devil? She 
      would worry. Tell him he was working too hard. Maybe bicker at him to go 
      see a doctor. Maybe even a shrink. What would he say? 'I met the Devil 
      this morning.' He could almost picture Moira's face: you're losing it, the 
      stress of work is finally getting through to you. At the top of the 
      underground stairs, panting slightly, he remembered that the Unwins and 
      the Wraggs were coming to dinner.
      The lift had released its cargo just before him, and he had to queue to 
      show his pass to the guard. A large crucifix hung over the lapels of the 
      man's London Underground uniform below a worried-looking black face. At 
      his turn, and as he flashed his pass, Allen asked, on a strange whim: 'Do 
      you believe in the Devil?' The man pretended not to hear, waved him 
      through.
      'I need you to go out again,' said Moira as soon as he came through the 
      front door.
      'Don't I get a chance to shake the dust from my shoes?' he said, dumping 
      his suitcase by the stairs.
      Moira was standing in the doorway that lead to the kitchen, her arms 
      crossed. Her hair was up, which she only did when she was cooking. 'I need 
      ginger. And the only cream we have is not organic.' Chris Unwin, something 
      of a stickler, would eat nothing that had been touched by pesticides.
      'Put it in a jug or something and tell Chris it is organic,' said Allen. 
      'He's not to know. Where's Emma?'
      'She's doing her Elephant tonight,' said Moira. 'You should remember. She 
      was telling you all about it this morning at breakfast. And we still need 
      the ginger.'
      'Organic ginger,' said Allen, beaming. 'Of course. Do I have to go out and 
      pick Emma up?'
      'If you were paying attention at all at breakfast,' said Moira, 'you'd 
      remember that Darcy is going to drop her off when she takes Felicity home. 
      But go and get the ginger now, and the cream, and then you can have a 
      drink.'
      Allen stepped back out and walked briskly along the road towards the 
      cluster of shops. Checked his watch; the same clucking second hand, the 
      same bland golden face, as had recorded the length of his conversation 
      this morning with the Devil. Five to six, now. The grocer closed at six, 
      but there would be time. Organic ginger. Should he get the cream? Then he 
      thought: how would His Satanic Majesty calculate that up on his spiritual 
      calculator? Would cheating Chris Unwin out of his organic cream count as 
      causing pain to the man? How could it, if Chris never knew about it? And 
      even if he realised, even if the taste somehow betrayed Allen's small act, 
      would it really count? How tiny did a grain of pain-causing have to be 
      before it slipped through the sieve of this spiritual adding-up and was 
      forgotten? Did swatting a fly count? And if it counted, from whose point 
      of view, the man or the fly? What would be added to Allen's account -- the 
      small flick, the momentary blip? Or the body-crushing deathly agony of 
      being pressed out of existence? Whose perspective was the relevant one?
      He shook his head. It was ridiculous. But, on the other hand, there was 
      the pleasure. Idly scratching a puppy's stomach might be a barely 
      registered distraction to the person doing the scratching, but it might 
      send the puppy into paroxysms of pleasure of the intensest sort. Was all 
      that recorded too?
      Of course, Allen was fairly sure that the Devil had specified human 
      interaction. But, presumably the same principle applied. Maybe a friend 
      had seen Allen in the street, but Allen had simply not noticed him (his 
      eyesight was not good these days without his contacts, and he often didn't 
      put them in because he didn't like the sensation against his eyeball). 
      Maybe that friend had been hurt, offended, upset -- could Allen help that? 
      And yet, would that pain be added to his account? How many forgotten 
      birthdays, how many overheard remarks not intended for the eavesdropper's 
      ears, how many cruel but necessary breakings-up with old girlfriends, or 
      firm talks to junior staff? It was surely not possible to get through life 
      without causing a certain quantity of pain, if only in the necessary 
      briskness of human dealings. Could Allen be blamed for that? Would it 
      still be added to his account?
      But, on the other hand (and with a certain dawning sense of the cunning of 
      the diabolic offer) the pain was only ever relative to the pleasure, 
      wasn't it? Say, criticising a junior -- as Allen remembered doing a year 
      and some ago with Francesca Harrow, or Barrow, or was it Frances (he 
      couldn't quite remember). Large pinkish face. Beer-coloured hair in bangs. 
      Allen had been forced to lecture her over her sloppy interpersonal skills 
      on an assignment with a difficult client -- perhaps that had caused pain 
      in the short term. But in the longer term, it had surely helped her with 
      her career. What if they looked back and thought that the week of 
      discomfort Allen had caused had been in the service of a greater good? 
      Wouldn't that person's many years of being better at their job outweigh 
      the more temporary immediate hurt? Assuming, of course, that the 
      individual recognised that Allen had only been being cruel to be kind. So, 
      again, the question of perspective reasserted itself. What mattered? Maybe 
      the person had held a grudge -- an irrational grudge, perhaps -- for all 
      those years. Would that count as pain to be chalked up against Allen's 
      account? Even if the original incident had been in the individual's best 
      interests?
      Allen was back at his own front door now, with a white plastic bag 
      dangling from his wrist carrying some stem ginger and a tub of organic 
      single cream. He tried to swat the circularly buzzing thoughts out of his 
      mind. It was ridiculous. Some strange fantasy. Too much bookkeeping in his 
      accountancy exams; it had bubbled under and come up again as this bizarre 
      notion that pleasure and pain could be added up like money in twin 
columns.
      And through the door with his keys in hand, Emma was running down the hall 
      to greet him, carrying shreds of grey felt before her like a prize. 'Miss 
      Sanders said I could keep this,' she said, hugging him and showing him her 
      ragged trophy. The way Emma pronounced her teacher's name: Miz Saanders. 
      She folded the felt carefully. 'They were left over from the trunk, and 
      now they're mine.'
      'What will you do with them, sweetheart?' Allen asked. Emma looked 
      serious. 'I'll have to think about it,' she said.

      : 3 :
      On Thursday Allen woke up without a thought of the Devil in his head. The 
      dinner party had taken his thoughts away from all that. He had thought of 
      sharing the incident with the whole group, making a joke of it, but he had 
      decided that to do so would only be to open himself to ridicule. Then he 
      had only drunk the wine, and let his eyes unfocus slightly, and follow the 
      ebb and swell of the conversation wherever it took him. By bedtime he had 
      forgotten the whole ridiculous incident. He woke the next morning feeling 
      muggy, had to rush his shower and run to the tube.
      It was only when he stepped into the lobby that the memory of the previous 
      day returned. He jogged through to the lift, and once inside began 
      coughing. It had seemed so very vivid.
      Vivid.
      Allen found it almost impossible to focus on his work after that. He sat 
      in his office staring out of the window most of the morning. Had he been a 
      bad man? It was so idiotic a thought. You couldn't spend your life 
      wondering about that sort of thing.
      His secretary, Natalie, came through to give him a copy of the Kaufmann 
      report. Natalie with her bad skin and her twitchy manner. How old was 
      Natalie? In her fifties, certainly.
      'Thank you Natalie,' he said. And then, on a whim: 'Natalie, would you 
      like to go for lunch today?'
      'Lunch?' she replied.
      Allen smiled at her. She had been working for him for years. How many 
      years? He couldn't say. But hadn't he been a good boss for her? Been 
      polite, considerate? Or, on the other hand, surely a good boss would know 
      exactly how long she had worked. Maybe he had been a bad boss, neglectful, 
      aloof. Maybe she hated him.
      'Yes, I just wondered. Just a light lunch.'
      'That's nice,' she said, looking a little worried. 'But I had arranged to 
      meet my boyfriend for lunch today. Of course, if it's important I could 
      always put him off...'
      Natalie had a boyfriend? 'No, no, it's nothing important.' He smiled, and 
      opened the report. Natalie, looking a little startled, went out of his 
      office. Wouldn't a good boss (he thought) have known that she had a 
      boyfriend?
      That evening, as he lay in bed with Moira's arm crooked into his armpit 
      and his hand stroking her arm, he asked her: 'When you were hanging around 
      with your revolutionary friends...'
      'What?' she asked.
      'Well, I don't know.'
      'That was years ago,' she said, mumbly. 'Years and years.'
      'I know, but its just a question of seeing the world. You know, the way 
      you used to see the world.'
      She shifted, and looked up at his face. 'What are you going on about?'
      'It's a question of whether we, you know, the west are guilty, just guilty 
      by virtue of who we are. Guilty by virtue of having the affluent 
      lifestyle. I'm thinking, you know, of all the starving millions. The 
      poverty and the shitty life in the third world. Do you think we should 
      take responsibility for that?'
      'What are you on about?' she said. But she was only half awake and her 
      words were losing coherence.
      Looking down at her creased face, with its puzzled expression, Allen felt 
      the urge to tell her everything about Lou, to finally broach it. Pain? 
      Ignorance is hardly pain. He fought the urge down, and turned on his side. 
      But Lou's face was in his mind now. Her smile. The way she smiled but 
      tried to hide her teeth, as if she were ashamed of them. The little 
      cheloid scar at the coign of her arm where she had spilt hot tea over 
      herself as a girl. The sweetness of the smell of her skin.

      The next day was Friday, and he got to work telling himself he was going 
      to really apply himself to his work. But after half an hour's hurried 
      shuffling of papers he found himself staring out of the window again. He 
      had not seen Louise in over a year; had not really thought about her at 
      all for the last three months. Didn't know where she was. She had said: 
      'Allen, I shall make love to you one more time, and that will be 
      everything finished between us.' He had said: 'Louise, one more time will 
      round everything off.' And he had believed it, thought that it could be 
      that way, a perfect inviolate round that didn't touch his marriage, his 
      friends, his job. Just the bubble of pleasure, and afterwards the 
      occasional sweet memory. But after it had finished he had started 
      obsessing about it, thinking about it, wanting to start it up again. Moira 
      noticed something was wrong, but had nothing to accuse him of because he 
      never saw Lou again. A half dozen agonised phone-calls, rambling 
      ill-written letters, and in reply on a typed postcard in a clean envelope 
      telling him she was moving jobs abroad, and not saying where.
      But in what sense did that count? Whom had he hurt? Only himself. Only 
      himself, really. Maybe Louise had been a bit discomforted by the way he 
      had acted after the affair was over, by his intensity, but hadn't she 
      enjoyed herself too? Didn't her orgasms in the bed, on the stairs, in the 
      bath, didn't they outweigh that? With a jolt he realised that this was 
      what really itched in his mind. The thought of the possible pleasure: all 
      of it, simultaneously, a great rising wave of pure physical ecstasy. All 
      the women he had loved, all the pleasure he had caused, paid back to him 
      in one supreme moment.
      And Moria had not been hurt. How could she have been hurt? She had never 
      known. He was certain she had never known.

      He spent about an hour on the phone to various clients in Texas and 
      Mexico. Two paint firms who had subsidiary relationships with British 
      companies, and some tangled accounting circumstances. Conversations were 
      in English, but there was a photocopied sheet on the desk in front of him, 
      which displayed a few wheel-greasing politenesses in Spanish, to drop in 
      at the end of the conversation with the contact at Guillhelm et Sancho. 
      Obligado. Allen found his mind wandering. His voice was skittering down 
      electrical cables laid in the ocean bed. The men who had done that 
      wearying work, who had laid the cables, struggling through mountainous 
      oceans and freezing weather; who had broken bones and chapped skin off 
      fingers in the wintryness of the work; who had condemned themselves to 
      months in a seaquaking boat, rattling around like flakes of fake snow in a 
      glass globe. Was all their suffering to be added to his account? He was 
      using the fruits of their labour, used it every day. And the worst of it 
      was that he never even gave their sacrifice a second thought, he had in 
      effect erased them from the universe. Taken them, and their work, for 
      granted. Perhaps he was complicit in their misery.
      Adios, senor Sancho.
      He fetched himself a coffee, and the little chemical burst of it hitting 
      his blood pushed him over the lip. Maybe it wasn't so bad. The men who had 
      laid the cable -- how did he know? Maybe they had loved the work. Maybe 
      they had been paid handsomely, had made friends and comrades. Maybe the 
      fact that firms like Allen's required the phone line had brought joy to 
      hundreds of people, and he was due a share in their pleasure. It wasn't so 
      bad.
      Without even realising that he had made the decision, Allen found himself 
      back at his desk calling a commercial registry. 'Yes,' he was saying, the 
      coffee still lifting him, 'I'm trying to find a particular marine affairs 
      expert, Louise Winterton. She did some work for us, and there are some 
      things we'd like to clear up. If you could just check amongst firms 
      specialising in marine work. That's right. If you could call my secretary 
      when you have the contact details.'
      He put the phone down and stared out of the window. One time they had lied 
      to their respective partners, he to his wife, she to her then boyfriend, 
      and had taken the light railway to the airport for a night in Denmark. 
      Allen could no longer remember why they had chosen Denmark. Tulips, Lou 
      had said. That's Holland, Allen had insisted, and they had swapped 
      positions in a hilarious lover's mock-quarrel of oh no it isn't and oh yes 
      it is round and round. Allen had been struck suddenly, as if he had been 
      taken out of the situation and given the chance to see from outside, that 
      he was actually enjoying himself. He could not remember having had so much 
      fun in many years. The two of them had got drunk on the free airplane 
      alcohol, and had booked into a towering buisiness- man hotel in Groningen 
      giggling at the check-in desk like adolescents. They had gone straight 
      upstairs and made love. Outside it was sleeting, grey and grainy like a 
      badly tuned-in TV. But Allen had felt a delicious pleasure in the core of 
      his chest, a happy that was so alien it was almost painful. A bath, food 
      in the hotel restaurant, and back upstairs to make love again. And then, 
      only then, lying naked on the bed curled up like John Lennon with Yoko 
      Ono, had the grit of conscience started to work on him. He should have 
      phoned Moira. He'd told her he had to fly away at short notice, but she'd 
      surely expect him to phone. Then all the thoughts of her at home with the 
      baby, and him away behind her back, had begun to sting. He had got up and 
      walked naked through, carrying the phone in the crook of his elbow into 
      the bathroom; then he had sat on the toilet with the lid down and called 
      London. Yes, yes, boring meetings. Back tomorrow though. Miss you. Love 
      you.
      Obligado. A month's special course on Business Spanish and he still needed 
      a cheat-sheet to speak to their Mexican clients. Allen pushed the piece of 
      paper around the desk with his thumb. Mi corazón se ha dormido.
      Natalie came through. 'Sorry to bother, Allen,' she said. 'But this came 
      through from Harvard Registry.' She put the leathery fax paper on the 
      desk. Lou's business number. Allen stared at it for a moment before 
      realising what it was.
      'Thank you, Natalie.'
      And she went out.

      The Friday crush on the tube was worse than usual. So many people. Hemming 
      him in. How could you avoid hurting some of them? Just one or two? From 
      time to time? Surely the important thing was intention.
      Emma was waiting for him when he came in, hurrying along the hall to greet 
      him, calling out daddy daddy. As he picked her up he thought to himself: 
      I've been a good man, haven't I? A good father? Would Emma, put in the 
      celestial dock, accuse him of causing more pain in the world than 
pleasure?
      'Is your elephant finished now, sweet pea?' he asked her.
      'Daddy!' she rebuked him. 'I told you, next week.'
      'Oh yes,' he said. 'Next week.' He put her down and her tiny feet pattered 
      like drizzle as she ran over the floorboards.
      Moira was sitting in the front room reading a wedge-sized novel, folding 
      the covers back over and cracking the spine. 'Late,' she said, without 
      looking up. There was a glass of wine on the low table in front of her. In 
      the corner the TV was on, and Emma was settling herself down in front of 
      it again. Some minimal white environment, animated penguins sliding back 
      and forth.
      'Don't sit so close, Em, love,' he said. 'You'll hurt your eyes.' Were his 
      daughter's eyes part of the equation too? 'Sorry I'm late, love,' he said, 
      leaning over Moira. Her lips had the tang of red wine.
      'The bottle's open,' she said, going back to her book. 'Kitchen table.'
      'Thanks,' he said. 'Oh God, that Mexican account will kill me. You can 
      tell them I said so, when you deliver the eulogy at my funeral.'
      'Mmm,' said Moira.
      He went through to the kitchen and filled a wine glass.

      : 4 :
      It was Saturday morning. He was lying with his eyes wide open, watching 
      the patterns made by the backlit curtains against the ceiling. The bedside 
      clock said ten past eight. This was the day; the Devil himself had said 
      so. He thought to himself: I'll know today whether this has any basis in 
      reality. But as he sat up he found himself scoffing. Reality?
      He wondered whether the Devil would appear in the morning or the 
      afternoon. Afternoon seemed more the proper time for the languid, slightly 
      fey gentleman in brown that Allen had imagined meeting. Or not imagined. A 
      lazy afternoon, in the heat and the dust. But the Devil had first appeared 
      to him in the morning. Some Mick Jagger figure of elegance, dressed in 
      sixties' crushed velvet, the Devil Comes in the Morning. Suddenly, with a 
      cold-splash sense of being suddenly fully awake, Allen remembered that 
      Satan had appeared to him before in the early morning, before his day of 
      work, just before eight thirty am. If his three days meant precisely three 
      days, then he would appear at eight thirty this morning. It was already 
      gone quarter past. The thought of the Devil appearing in his bedroom in a 
      few minutes, of Moira being present, put a forceful pressure of panic onto 
      Allen's heart. He didn't want that. It was stupid of course, but he didn't 
      want that. He sat up abruptly.
      'I'm going to go get a paper,' he told Moira. She made some non-specific 
      grunting noise, possibly containing a degree of surprise. Allen never got 
      up to buy a Saturday paper. He had specifically instructed the newsagent 
      not to deliver a paper on Saturday, to keep his weekend free from 
      contamination by the outside world.
      But he was up and out of the bedroom, carrying a bundle of clothes in his 
      arms. He washed rapidly in the bathroom, sponging under his arms and 
      towelling himself roughly, before dressing in jeans and a sweater. 
      Twenty-five minutes past. Would the Devil appear here, in his bathroom, if 
      he simply waited another five minutes? But the thought of summoning him 
      into the house at all was unsettling to Allen. Better to meet him on 
      neutral territory. You don't really believe that nonsense, do you, said 
      his scoffing inner-voice. As if you're really going to meet the Devil.
      Nonetheless, he was down the stairs and letting the door snick gently shut 
      behind him before the half hour. The air was clean, the sky a fresh 
      blue-colour. Cars hummed past.
      As he walked along the road, in the general direction of the shops, he saw 
      a smudge of brown in the middle distance. Should have put in his contacts, 
      perhaps. But as he approached the figure resolved itself in vision into a 
      man in a long brown coat, with a small woollen cap, sitting on a bench at 
      the roadside. Behind him, in the blurred green of the park, birds whirred 
      and scurried through the air. Bluebirds were perched on the railings 
      behind the bench.
      'Good morning,' said Allen, suddenly feeling very nervous.
      The Devil was on his feet in his instantaneous, rather disconcerting 
      fashion. 'And good morning to you,' he said, sweeping his hand in front of 
      him. 'So nice to see that the ordinary politenesses have not completely 
      perished from the earth.'
      Allen stood in front of him. Seeing him again, there was something 
      intensely familiar about his long pale face, his serious sleepy-looking 
      eyes.
      'So,' said the Devil. 'Have you made up your mind?'
      'Yes,' said Allen, his heart suddenly trotting and his head going queerly 
      light. He thought again of the pleasure. Of being the conduit for the 
      greatest of pleasures. 'I have decided,' he said in a clear, small voice, 
      'to accept your offer.'
      'I'm so pleased,' said the Devil.
      He seemed to be smiling. Is that good? thought Allen. Should he be so 
      pleased? Had Allen let himself into a world of pain, was that why the 
      Devil was smiling? Or was he smiling only because his offer had been 
      accepted? It would presumably have been galling to have had his offer 
      simply rebuffed, after going to all this trouble. And the voice still 
      nagged: why had he gone to so much trouble in the first place?
      Allen's mouth was dry. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair. Now 
      it was going to happen. It was going to happen right here, right now. 
      'Should I sit down for this?' he asked, indicating the park bench.
      'Oh yes,' said the Devil carefully. 'I think you should sit down for 
this.'
       
      © Adam Roberts 2001.
      This story is published here for the first time.
      Adam's second novel, On, is published by Victor Gollancz
      on 21 June 2001: trade paperback £10.99