Attack of the Cupids (4 page)

Quite a lot of minds said straight away that they didn't want any Guardians or Enemies, thank you. Too much like hard work. So both Guardian and Enemy got taken off and locked up in the very deepest darkest dungeons that the mind had, along with all the other ideas that the mind didn't want to think about.
Then
both Guardian and Enemy would have to escape – there was usually a way – and hide themselves in corners, watching for a chance to speak, and when they came out they had to disguise themselves as something other than they really were so they didn't just get thrown in jail again.

Sally's mind was fundamentally more organized than this. She knew Windleberry, and she knew Muddlespot. Fair enough. If they thought they had something to say, she made them stand up and say it. And then Sally got to say what she was going to do.
This was how Good and Evil and Free Will all managed to be in the same place together at the same time.

Windleberry strode to the whiteboard and grasped the board rubber as if it were a lance of fire. He frowned upon the things Muddlespot had drawn there. He put up his hand to wipe the slate clean. Then he thought, Use the Lie of The Enemy against him. Yay verily, let it be.

‘There was a Mother who had Three Daughters,' he intoned, rapidly expanding Muddlespot's drawing with neat and quick strokes of his own. ‘To the one she gave Ten Presents. To the second she gave Five Presents. And to the third she gave but One. And she said unto them, “Play with these for the day, while I am at my office. And when I return, tell me what you have done . . .”'

‘Let me give you a clue here,' said Sally. ‘We're not babies any more. This won't be about presents. It'll be about who gets invited, I bet you. How many of her friends can come. That kind of thing.'

Windleberry hesitated, for about a sixteenth of a second.

Once again he was drawing on the board. ‘There was a Girl who was throwing a Party. And she said unto her Mother, “Go out and invite all my friends to
come to my Party.” And Her Mother did go. But her friends began to make excuses. One said “I have just bought a new pony and I must go and see it . . .”'

Windleberry was in his element. Standing up and declaring The Truth came naturally to him. (He had an advantage over Muddlespot here.) He never doubted himself. He never got discouraged. For him, defeat was a learning experience, disaster just a step on the road to victory. He was perfect in everything he did. He could split a mountain with a thunderbolt or tune a snowflake until it was exactly the right shade of blue. He could count the leaves on a tree and the spines on a hedgehog's back. His sermons could make a galaxy swear off the ammonia for the rest of its fifteen billion years of existence. His handwriting was both neat and absolutely clear. He also played the tenor sax.

He had served in a hundred different departments in Heaven and had made his mark in each one. He never questioned his orders. He never complained how difficult it was. When he was given a job, he did it until it was done. If he had a fault, it was that he could sometimes be just a little bit too perfect. This is quite hard to achieve in Heaven. But . . .

Just a moment ago, Mr Kingsley had used the word ‘cupid'. He had done it twice, as if he actually
knew what a cupid was. He didn't know half so well as Windleberry.

Windleberry had been a cupid himself, a long time ago.

Cupids are a peculiar sort of angel. They shoot golden arrows at people and make them fall in love, after which lots of exciting things happen. They have their own special dress code and way of speaking, and they also have a subversive tendency to attach little hearts of pink card to their arrows, bearing messages along the lines of ‘You have been served by . . .'

But only one cupid
ever
has attached a note to his arrow that began: ‘If you are not completely satisfied with our service . . .' and went on to outline, in detail and over fifty pages of tightly written script, the exact and correct procedure for bringing a complaint against Heaven itself.

Fifty pages. It was a wonder the arrow hit its target at all. But then it was Windleberry who fired it.

There had been a bit of trouble about that at the time. Some members of the Celestial Staff Room felt that Heaven was, by definition, Heaven, that all the actions of Heaven were determined by the Great Curriculum, and that there could never possibly be anything for anyone to complain about.

Others had said it just proved that the Great Curriculum was due for an overhaul, since there were parts of it that one or two colleagues – mentioning no names – clearly didn't understand.

And the Department of Love, to which all cupids belong, refused to take responsibility for any of it, because being sensible and responsible and fair-minded and worrying about customer satisfaction etc was absolutely the opposite of what Love was supposed to be about.

The discussion got unusually heated. Pews got ripped up, cassocks got pulled down and the crowd spilled out onto the sports pitches. A record number of yellow cards got shown by the Celestial Referee.

That was a very long time ago. No trace of the cupid remained in the lean figure who spoke in Sally's mind.

But the thing about Heaven is, it does go on for ever.

Some people do remember it all.

It's true, by the way. Heaven is a school. Or something very like one.

It's supposed to be a secret, just in case anyone on Earth thinks that being stuck at the back of a class for all Eternity is
not
their idea of Heaven and they won't bother to apply. But when you look at it, it has to be true.

There's a Head. The Head of Everything, in fact, though he doesn't often come out of his study.

There's also the Governors. Exactly who gets to be a Governor, and what they do when they are one, is a bit of a mystery. Just like a school.

There are all those big, powerful archangels and seraphs and things, who've been around for thousands
and thousands of years. They're the teachers. OK, so they've got six pairs of wings each and several thousand eyes and flaming swords, but
all the same
they're just like teachers. They go into meetings together and then they come out and stride around carrying scrolls and looking important. You don't get to be cheeky to their faces. And be careful what you do when they've passed on down the corridor too. Some of those eyes are on the backs of their heads. Just like teachers have.

There are all the human souls who come in through the gates. Hundreds of thousands arrive every day, wide-eyed, wandering around looking lost and just asking to have their lunch money beaten out of them, if that sort of thing ever happened in Heaven (it doesn't). These are the pupils, of course.

There are rules, which in Heaven are called ‘Laws' or ‘Commandments'. There are libraries. There are choirs. There are also clubs, debating societies, arts and drama etc. There are even some sports pitches. But above all, there are classes.

Ah yes, the classes. That's because . . .

Humans have this idea that at the end of their lives they're going to wake up perfect and knowing everything. It's just not like that. There are
so
many things they still have to learn. Ask any angel you like,
it'll tell you it's true. That's what the classes are for.

And what Eternity is for. Isn't that a comforting thought?

OK, so Heaven has a few things most schools don't have, like Thrones and Crystal Seas and a bunch of uniformed Celestial Inspection Angels (who will come in later) and also a Department of Geography that spends half its time planning to end the world. So as schools go, it's pretty unusual. Plus, it lasts for ever and is big enough to house everyone who has ever lived.

Or about half of them, anyway.

It's also the school that everyone wants to get into. Because, whatever you think about sitting in the back of a class for all Eternity, there isn't a lot of choice. Once you've seen the Other Place, you do want to go to Heaven. You really, really do.

The way you get in is you sit an exam. It's long and complicated, and it takes the whole of your life to complete. You get handed your results at the end of it. There's a pass mark. If you've made it, great. If not, bad luck. Very Bad Luck. It was nice knowing you.

And there's an Appeals Board. If you haven't got in and you think you should have done, you can go to Appeal, just like when you're trying to get into a school that's over-subscribed. Heaven takes its appeals very
seriously. It spends a lot of time on each one. Time is something Heaven has lots of.

This means that if you do go to Appeal, you'd better be prepared for a wait. There are folks in the queue ahead of you who've been waiting for . . .

‘Three
thousand
years?' cried Mishamh.

‘There's a bit of a backlog,' admitted Doomsday. ‘One rather difficult case has been holding things up. When they've sorted it out everything should move more quickly.'

‘
One
case that's been going on for three
thousand
years?'

They flew together through the great Gallery of Penitence. The dark angel was like a thundercloud and his assistant like a white dove caught in a sunbeam beside him. The floor of the Gallery was thronged with souls: standing, sitting, patiently shifting from foot to foot, squatting in tents or playing endless games of cards or dice (which are generally frowned on in Heaven but are allowed in the Appeals Queue as a way of saying ‘Sorry about the Delay'). The Gallery of Penitence ended in the Stair of Sincerity, which has ten thousand steps, each the size of a football pitch. The crowd filled every inch of them. It carpeted the
floor of the Hall of Lamentation, which is the length of a comet's tail, and it zigzagged around the vast, eight-sided Lobby of the Law until it ended finally at the great dark door over which was written in letters the colour of sunset:

The doors were of black pearl and the handles were carved from the sound of a great brass gong. Hung upon one of the handles was another sign.

The souls nearest the door looked up as Doomsday approached. They looked a bit tired and worn, as well they might after having to wait in silence for three thousand years. They bowed respectfully to Doomsday and he bowed back. He had passed them many times before. Ignoring the door handles (which would let
off gong-noises if anyone touched them, of course) he placed his palm on the door of black pearl and pushed. It swung silently inwards, revealing a short passage that opened at the far end into a huge space. On one side of the passage was a small opening. Doomsday ducked through it and led Mishamh up a long flight of narrow stairs, to emerge at last on a high gallery that swept all the way around a huge room like the upper circle in an opera house that had been built for giants.

Directly opposite Mishamh, against the far wall, were three mountain-high statues that rose from floor to ceiling. One was of white marble, one was of red sandstone, one was of grey granite. Their faces were huge and passionless, like the Sphinx of Egypt. Their carved wings were folded around their shoulders and down their sides. Their chests were muscular and bare. And on their foreheads were carved the words M
ERCY
, J
USTICE
and (more worryingly) V
ENGEANCE
.