Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Page 4

  “I had fancied something more, well, traditional,” explained Mr. Young. “We’ve always gone in for good simple names in our family.”

  Sister Mary beamed. “That’s right. The old names are always the best, if you ask me.”

  “A decent English name, like people had in the Bible,” said Mr. Young. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John,” he said, speculatively. Sister Mary winced. “Only they’ve never struck me as very good Bible names, really,” Mr. Young added. “They sound more like cowboys and footballers.”

  “Saul’s nice,” said Sister Mary, making the best of it.

  “I don’t want something too old-fashioned,” said Mr. Young.

  “Or Cain. Very modern sound, Cain, really,” Sister Mary tried.

  “Hmm.” Mr. Young looked doubtful.

  “Or there’s always … well, there’s always Adam,” said Sister Mary. That should be safe enough, she thought.

  “Adam?” said Mr. Young.

  IT WOULD BE NICE to think that the Satanist Nuns had the surplus baby—Baby B—discreetly adopted. That he grew to be a normal, happy, laughing child, active and exuberant; and after that, grew further to become a normal, fairly contented adult.

  And perhaps that’s what happened.

  Let your mind dwell on his junior school prize for spelling; his unremarkable although quite pleasant time at university; his job in the payroll department of the Tadfield and Norton Building Society; his lovely wife. Possibly you would like to imagine some children, and a hobby—restoring vintage motorcycles, perhaps, or breeding tropical fish.

  You don’t want to know what could have happened to Baby B.

  We like your version better, anyway.

  He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish.

  IN A SMALL HOUSE in Dorking, Surrey, a light was on in a bedroom window.

  Newton Pulsifer was twelve, and thin, and bespectacled, and he should have been in bed hours ago.

  His mother, though, was convinced of her child’s genius, and let him stay up past his bedtime to do his “experiments.”

  His current experiment was changing a plug on an ancient Bakelite radio his mother had given him to play with. He sat at what he proudly called his “work-top,” a battered old table covered in curls of wire, batteries, little light bulbs, and a homemade crystal set that had never worked. He hadn’t managed to get the Bakelite radio working yet either, but then again, he never seemed able to get that far.

  Three slightly crooked model airplanes hung on cotton cords from his bedroom ceiling. Even a casual observer could have seen that they were made by someone who was both painstaking and very careful, and also no good at making model airplanes. He was hopelessly proud of all of them, even the Spitfire, where he’d made rather a mess of the wings.

  He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, squinted down at the plug, and put down the screwdriver.

  He had high hopes for it this time; he had followed all the instructions on plug-changing on page five of the Boy’s Own Book Of Practical Electronics, Including A Hundred and One Safe and Educational Things to Do With Electricity. He had attached the correct color-coded wires to the correct pins; he’d checked that it was the right amperage fuse; he’d screwed it all back together. So far, no problems.

  He plugged it in to the socket. Then he switched the socket on.

  Every light in the house went out.

  Newton beamed with pride. He was getting better. Last time he’d done it he’d blacked out the whole of Dorking, and a man from the Electric had come over and had a word with his mum.

  He had a burning and totally unrequited passion for things electrical. They had a computer at school, and half a dozen studious children stayed on after school doing things with punched cards. When the teacher in charge of the computer had finally acceded to Newton’s pleas to be allowed to join them, Newton had only ever got to feed one little card into the machine. It had chewed it up and choked fatally on it.

  Newton was certain that the future was in computers, and when the future arrived he’d be ready, in the forefront of the new technology.

  The future had its own ideas on this. It was all in The Book.

  ADAM, THOUGHT MR. YOUNG. He tried saying it, to see how it sounded. “Adam.” Hmm …

  He stared down at the golden curls of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness.

  “You know,” he concluded, after a while, “I think he actually looks like an Adam.”

  IT HAD NOT BEEN A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.

  The dark and stormy night occurred two days later, about four hours after both Mrs. Dowling and Mrs. Young and their respective babies had left the building. It was a particularly dark and stormy night, and just after midnight, as the storm reached its height, a bolt of lightning struck the Convent of the Chattering Order, setting fire to the roof of the vestry.

  No one was badly hurt by the fire, but it went on for some hours, doing a fair amount of damage in the process.

  The instigator of the fire lurked on a nearby hilltop and watched the blaze. He was tall, thin, and a Duke of Hell. It was the last thing that needed to be done before his return to the nether regions, and he had done it.

  He could safely leave the rest to Crowley.

  Hastur went home.

  TECHNICALLY AZIRAPHALE was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days.

  On the whole, neither he nor Crowley would have chosen each other’s company, but they were both men, or at least men-shaped creatures, of the world, and the Arrangement had worked to their advantage all this time. Besides, you grew accustomed to the only other face that had been around more or less consistently for six millennia.

  The Arrangement was very simple, so simple in fact that it didn’t really deserve the capital letter, which it had got for simply being in existence for so long. It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies. It meant a tacit non-interference in certain of each other’s activities. It made certain that while neither really won, also neither really lost, and both were able to demonstrate to their masters the great strides they were making against a cunning and well-informed adversary.

  It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire. Crowley took Glasgow, Aziraphale had Edinburgh (neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes,7 but both reported it as a success).

  And then, of course, it had seemed even natural that they should, as it were, hold the fort for one another whenever common sense dictated. Both were of angel stock, after all. If one was going to Hull for a quick temptation, it made sense to nip across the city and carry out a standard brief moment of divine ecstasy. It’d get done anyway, and being sensible about it gave everyone more free time and cut down on expenses.

  Aziraphale felt the occasional pang of guilt about this, but centuries of association with humanity was having the same effect on him as it was on Crowley, except in the other direction.

  Besides, the Authorities didn’t seem to care much who did anything, so long as it got done.

  Currently, what Aziraphale was doing was standing with Crowley by the duck pond in St. James’ Park. They were feeding the ducks.

  The ducks in St. James’ Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St. James’ Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men—one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something somber with a scarf—and it’ll look up expectantly. The Russian cultural attaché’s black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck, while the head of MI9’s soggy Hovis with Marmite is relished by
the connoisseurs.

  Aziraphale tossed a crust to a scruffy-looking drake, which caught it and sank immediately.

  The angel turned to Crowley.

  “Really, my dear,” he murmured.

  “Sorry,” said Crowley. “I was forgetting myself.” The duck bobbed angrily to the surface.

  “Of course, we knew something was going on,” Aziraphale said. “But one somehow imagines this sort of thing happening in America. They go in for that sort of thing over there.”

  “It might yet do, at that,” said Crowley gloomily. He gazed thoughtfully across the park to the Bentley, the back wheel of which was being industriously clamped.

  “Oh, yes. The American diplomat,” said the angel. “Rather showy, one feels. As if Armageddon was some sort of cinematographic show that you wish to sell in as many countries as possible.”

  “Every country,” said Crowley. “The Earth and all the kingdoms thereof.”

  Aziraphale tossed the last scrap of bread at the ducks, who went off to pester the Bulgarian naval attaché and a furtive-looking man in a Cambridge tie, and carefully disposed of the paper bag in a wastepaper bin.

  He turned and faced Crowley.

  “We’ll win, of course,” he said.

  “You don’t want that,” said the demon.

  “Why not, pray?”

  “Listen,” said Crowley desperately, “how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean.”

  Aziraphale looked taken aback.

  “Well, I should think—” he began.

  “Two,” said Crowley. “Elgar and Liszt. That’s all. We’ve got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?”

  Aziraphale shut his eyes. “All too easily,” he groaned.

  “That’s it, then,” said Crowley, with a gleam of triumph. He knew Aziraphale’s weak spot all right. “No more compact discs. No more Albert Hall. No more Proms. No more Glyndbourne. Just celestial harmonies all day long.”

  “Ineffable,” Aziraphale murmured.

  “Like eggs without salt, you said. Which reminds me. No salt, no eggs. No gravlax with dill sauce. No fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crossword. No small antique shops. No bookshops, either. No interesting old editions. No”—Crowley scraped the bottom of Aziraphale’s barrel of interests—“Regency silver snuffboxes … ”

  “But after we win life will be better!” croaked the angel.

  “But it won’t be as interesting. Look, you know I’m right. You’d be as happy with a harp as I’d be with a pitchfork.”

  “You know we don’t play harps.”

  “And we don’t use pitchforks. I was being rhetorical.”

  They stared at one another.

  Aziraphale spread his elegantly manicured hands.

  “My people are more than happy for it to happen, you know. It’s what it’s all about, you see. The great final test. Flaming swords, the Four Horsemen, seas of blood, the whole tedious business.” He shrugged.

  “And then Game Over, Insert Coin?” said Crowley.

  “Sometimes I find your methods of expression a little difficult to follow.”

  “I like the seas as they are. It doesn’t have to happen. You don’t have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.”

  Aziraphale shrugged again.

  “That’s ineffable wisdom for you, I’m afraid.” The angel shuddered, and pulled his coat around him. Gray clouds were piling up over the city.

  “Let’s go somewhere warm,” he said.

  “You’re asking me?” said Crowley glumly.

  They walked in somber silence for a while.

  “It’s not that I disagree with you,” said the angel, as they plodded across the grass. “It’s just that I’m not allowed to disobey. You know that.”

  “Me too,” said Crowley.

  Aziraphale gave him a sidelong glance. “Oh, come now,” he said, “you’re a demon, after all.”

  “Yeah. But my people are only in favor of disobedience in general terms. It’s specific disobedience they come down on heavily.”

  “Such as disobedience to themselves?”

  “You’ve got it. You’d be amazed. Or perhaps you wouldn’t be. How long do you think we’ve got?” Crowley waved a hand at the Bentley, which unlocked its doors.

  “The prophecies differ,” said Aziraphale, sliding into the passenger seat. “Certainly until the end of the century, although we may expect certain phenomena before then. Most of the prophets of the past millennium were more concerned with scansion than accuracy.”

  Crowley pointed to the ignition key. It turned.

  “What?” he said.

  “You know,” said the angel helpfully, “‘And thee Worlde Unto An Ende Shall Come, in tumpty-tumpty-tumpty One.’ Or Two, or Three, or whatever. There aren’t many good rhymes for Six, so it’s probably a good year to be in.”

  “And what sort of phenomena?”

  “Two-headed calves, signs in the sky, geese flying backwards, showers of fish. That sort of thing. The presence of the Antichrist affects the natural operation of causality.”

  “Hmm.”

  Crowley put the Bentley in gear. Then he remembered something. He snapped his fingers.

  The wheel clamps disappeared.

  “Let’s have lunch,” he said. “I owe you one from, when was it … ”

  “Paris, 1793,” said Aziraphale.

  “Oh, yes. The Reign of Terror. Was that one of yours, or one of ours?”

  “Wasn’t it yours?”

  “Can’t recall. It was quite a good restaurant, though.”

  As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley’s amazement.

  “I’m pretty certain I didn’t mean to do that,” he said.

  Aziraphale blushed.

  “That was me,” he said. “I had always thought that your people invented them.”

  “Did you? We thought they were yours.”

  Crowley stared at the smoke in the rearview mirror.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s do the Ritz.”

  Crowley had not bothered to book. In his world, table reservations were things that happened to other people.

  AZIRAPHALE COLLECTED BOOKS. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand bookseller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours—he was incredibly good at it.

  He had been collecting for a long time, and, like all collectors, he specialized.

  He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from errors in typesetting.

  These Bibles included the Unrighteous Bible, so called from a printer’s error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?”; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, making it “Thou shalt commit Adultery.” There were the Discharge Bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs.

  It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters.

  The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor’s error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five.

  2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher.

  3. And bye the border of Afher, fro
mme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali.

  4. And bye the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh.

  5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone with half an oz. of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *“Æ@;!*

  6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.8

  Bilton and Scaggs’ second great publishing disaster occurred in 1653. By a stroke of rare good fortune they had obtained one of the famed “Lost Quartos”—the three Shakespeare plays never reissued in folio edition, and now totally lost to scholars and playgoers. Only their names have come down to us. This one was Shakespeare’s earliest play, The Comedie of Robin Hoode, or, The Forest of Sherwoode.9

  Master Bilton had paid almost six guineas for the quarto, and believed he could make nearly twice that much back on the hardcover folio alone.

  Then he lost it.

  Bilton and Scaggs’ third great publishing disaster was never entirely comprehensible to either of them. Everywhere you looked, books of prophecy were selling like crazy. The English edition of Nostradamus’ Centuries had just gone into its third printing, and five Nostradamuses, all claiming to be the only genuine one, were on triumphant signing tours. And Mother Shipton’s Collection of Prophecies was sprinting out of the shops.

  Each of the great London publishers—there were eight of them—had at least one Book of Prophecy on its list. Every single one of the books was wildly inaccurate, but their air of vague and generalized omnipotence made them immensely popular. They sold in the thousands, and in the tens of thousands.

  “It is a licence to printe monney!” said Master Bilton to Master Scaggs.10 “The public are crying out for such rubbishe! We must straightway printe a booke of prophecie by some hagge!”

  The manuscript arrived at their door the next morning; the author’s sense of timing, as always, was exact.