Good Omens (12 page)

Aziraphale relaxed. “You know, Crowley,” he said, beaming, “I've always said that, deep down inside, you' ï¼»re really quite a—”

“All right, all right,” Crowley snapped. “Tell the whole blessed world, why don't you?”

AFTER A WHILE, loose alliances began to emerge. Most of the financial departments found they had interests in common, settled their differences, and ganged up on Forward Planning.

When the first police car arrived, sixteen bullets from a variety of directions had hit it in the radiator before it had got halfway up the drive. Two more took out its radio antenna, but they were too late, too late.

MARY HODGES WAS just putting down the phone when Crowley opened her office door.

“It must be terrorists,” she snapped. “Or poachers.” She peered at the pair of them. “You are the police, aren't you?” she said.

Crowley saw her eyes begin to widen.

Like all demons, he had a good memory for faces, even after eleven years, the loss of a wimple, and the addition of some rather severe makeup. He snapped his fingers. She settled back in her chair, her face becoming a blank and amiable mask.

“There was no need for that,” said Aziraphale.

“Good”—Crowley glanced at his watch—“morning, ma'am,” he said, in a sing-song voice. “We're just a couple of supernatural entities and we were just wondering if you might help us with the whereabouts of the notorious Son of Satan.” He smiled coldly at the angel. “I'll wake her up again, shall I? And you can say it.”

“Well. Since you put it like that … ” said the angel slowly.

“Sometimes the old ways are best,” said Crowley. He turned to the impassive woman.

“Were you a nun here eleven years ago?” he said.

“Yes,” said Mary.

“There!” said Crowley to Aziraphale. “See? I knew I wasn't wrong.”

“Luck of the devil,” muttered the angel.

“Your name then was Sister Talkative. Or something.”

“Loquacious,” said Mary Hodges in a hollow voice.

“And do you recall an incident involving the switching of newborn babies?” said Crowley.

Mary Hodges hesitated. When she did speak, it was as though memories that had been scabbed over were being disturbed for the first time in years.

“Yes,” she said.

“Is there any possibility that the switch could have gone wrong in some way?”

“I do not know.”

Crowley thought for a bit. “You must have had records,” he said. “There are always records. Everyone has records these days.” He glanced proudly at Aziraphale. “It was one of my better ideas.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary Hodges.

“And where are they?” said Aziraphale sweetly.

“There was a fire just after the birth.”

Crowley groaned and threw his hands in the air. “That was Hastur, probably,” he said. “It's his style. Can you believe those guys? I bet he thought he was being really clever.”

“Do you recall any details about the other child?” said Aziraphale.

“Yes.”

“Please tell me.”

“He had lovely little toesie-wosies.”

“Oh.”

“And he was very sweet,” said Mary Hodges wistfully.

There was the sound of a siren outside, abruptly broken off as a bullet hit it. Aziraphale nudged Crowley.

“Get a move on,” he said. “We're going to be knee-deep in police at any moment and I will of course be morally obliged to assist them in their enquiries.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps she can remember if there were any other women giving birth that night, and—”

There was the sound of running feet downstairs.

“Stop them,” said Crowley. “We need more time!”

“Any more miracles and we'll really start getting noticed by Up There,” said Aziraphale. “If you really want Gabriel or someone wondering why forty policemen have gone to sleep—”

“Okay,” said Crowley. “That's it. That's it. It was worth a try. Let's get out of here.”

“In thirty seconds you will wake up,” said Aziraphale, to the entranced ex-nun. “And you will have had a lovely dream about whatever you like best, and—”

“Yes, yes, fine,” sighed Crowley. “Now can we go?”

NO ONE NOTICED THEM leaving. The police were too busy herding in forty adrenaline-drunk, fighting-mad management trainees. Three police vans had gouged tracks in the lawn, and Aziraphale made Crowley back up for the first of the ambulances, but then the Bentley swished into the night. Behind them the summerhouse and gazebo were already ablaze.

“We've really left that poor woman in a dreadful situation,” said the angel.

“You think?” said Crowley, trying to hit a hedgehog and missing. “Bookings will double, you mark my words. If she plays her cards right, sorts out the waivers, ties up all the legal bits. Initiative training with real guns? They'll form queues.”

“Why are you always so cynical?”

“I said. Because it's my
job
.”

They drove in silence for a while. Then Aziraphale said, “You'd think he'd show up, wouldn't you? You'd think we could detect him in some way.”

“He won't show up. Not to us. Protective camouflage. He won't even know it, but his powers will keep him hidden from prying occult forces.”

“Occult forces?”

“You and me,” explained Crowley.

“I'm
not occult,” said Aziraphale. “Angels aren't occult. We're ethereal.”

“Whatever,” snapped Crowley, too worried to argue.

“Is there some other way of locating him?”

Crowley shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “How much experience do you think I've got in these matters? Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don't let you go around again until you get
it
right.”

The angel stared out at the rushing hedgerows.

“It all seems so peaceful,” he said. “How do you think it will happen?”

“Well, thermonuclear extinction has always been very popular. Although I must say the big boys are being quite polite to each other at the moment.”

“Asteroid strike?” said Aziraphale. “Quite the fashion these days, I understand. Strike into the Indian Ocean, great big cloud of dust and vapor, goodbye all higher life forms.”

“Wow,” said Crowley, taking care to exceed the speed limit. Every little bit helped.

“Doesn't bear thinking about it, does it,” said Aziraphale gloomily.

“All the higher life forms scythed away, just like that.”

“Terrible.”

“Nothing but dust and fundamentalists.”

“That was nasty.”

“Sorry. Couldn't resist it.”

They stared at the road.

“Maybe some terrorist—?” Aziraphale began.

“Not one of ours,” said Crowley.

“Or ours,” said Aziraphale. “Although ours are freedom fighters, of course.”

“I'll tell you what,” said Crowley, scorching rubber on the Tadfield bypass. “Cards on the table time. I'll tell you ours if you tell me yours.”

“All right. You first.”

“Oh, no. You first.”

“But you're a demon.”

“Yes, but a demon of my word, I should hope.”

Aziraphale named five political leaders. Crowley named six. Three names appeared on both lists.

“See?” said Crowley. “It's just like I've always said. They're cunning buggers, humans. You can't trust them an inch.”

“But I don't think any of ours have any big plans afoot,” said Aziraphale. “Just minor acts of ter— political protest,” he corrected.

“Ah,” said Crowley bitterly. “You mean none of this cheap, mass-produced murder? Just personal service, every bullet individually fired by skilled craftsmen?”

Aziraphale didn't rise to it. “What are we going to do now?”

“Try and get some sleep.”

“You don't need sleep. I don't need sleep. Evil never sleeps, and Virtue is ever-vigilant.”

“Evil in general, maybe. This specific part of it has got into the habit of getting its head down occasionally.” He stared into the headlights. The time would come soon enough when sleep would be right out of the question. When those Below found out that he, personally, had lost the Antichrist, they'd probably dig out all those reports he'd done on the Spanish Inquisition and try them out on him, one at a time and then all together.

He rummaged in the glove compartment, fumbled a tape at random, and slotted it into the player. A little music would …

. . . Bee-elzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me …

“For me,” murmured Crowley. His expression went blank for a moment. Then he gave a strangled scream and wrenched at the on-off knob.

“Of course, we might be able to get a human to find him,” said Aziraphale thoughtfully.

“What?” said Crowley, distractedly.

“Humans are good at finding other humans. They've been doing it for thousands of years. And the child is human. As well as … you know. He would be hidden from us, but other humans might be able to … oh, sense him, perhaps. Or spot things we wouldn't think of.”

“It wouldn't work. He's the Antichrist! He's got this … sort of automatic defense, hasn't he? Even if he
doesn't
know it. It won't even let people suspect him. Not yet. Not till it's ready. Suspicion will slide off him like, like … whatever it is water slides off of,” he finished lamely.

“Got any better ideas? Got one
single
better idea?” said Aziraphale.

“No.”

“Right, then. It could work. Don't tell me you haven't got any front organizations you could use. I know I have. We could see if they can pick up the trail.”

“What could they do that we couldn't do?”

“Well, for a start, they wouldn't get people to shoot one another, they wouldn't hypnotize respectable women, they—”

“Okay. Okay. But it hasn't got a snowball's chance in Hell. Believe me, I know. But I can't think of anything better.” Crowley turned onto the motorway and headed for London.

“I have a—a certain network of agents,” said Aziraphale, after a while. “Spread across the country. A disciplined force. I could set them searching.”

“I, er, have something similar,” Crowley admitted. “You know how it is, you never know when they might come in handy … ”

“We'd better alert them. Do you think they ought to work together?”

Crowley shook his head.

“I don't think that would be a good idea,” he said. “They're not very sophisticated, politically speaking.”

“Then we'll each contact our own people and see what they can manage.”

“Got to be worth a try, I suppose,” said Crowley. “It's not as if I haven't got lots of other work to do, God knows.”

His forehead creased for a moment, and then he slapped the steering wheel triumphantly.

“Ducks!” he shouted.

“What?”

“That's what water slides off!”

Aziraphale took a deep breath.

“Just drive the car, please,” he said wearily.

They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.

Crowley liked the city in the early morning. Its population consisted almost entirely of people who had proper jobs to do and real reasons for being there, as opposed to the unnecessary millions who trailed in after 8 a.m., and the streets were more or less quiet. There were double yellow no-parking lines in the narrow road outside Aziraphale's bookshop, but they obediently rolled back on themselves when the Bentley pulled in to the curb.

“Well, okay,” he said, as Aziraphale got his coat from the back seat. “We'll keep in touch. Okay?”

“What's this?” said Aziraphale, holding up a brown oblong.

Crowley squinted at it. “A book?” he said. “Not mine.”

Aziraphale turned a few of the yellowed pages. Tiny bibliophilic bells rang in the back of his mind.

“It must have belonged to that young lady,” he said slowly. “We ought to have got her address.”

“Look, I'm in enough trouble as it is, I don't want it to get about that I go around returning people's property to them,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale reached the title page. It was probably a good job Crowley couldn't see his expression.

“I suppose you could always send it to the post office there,” said Crowley, “if you really feel you must. Address it to the mad woman with the bicycle. Never trust a woman who gives funny names to means of transport—”

“Yes, yes, certainly,” said the angel. He fumbled for his keys, dropped them on the pavement, picked them up, dropped them again, and hurried to the shop door.

“We'll be in touch then, shall we?” Crowley called after him.

Aziraphale paused in the act of turning the key.

“What?” he said. “Oh. Oh. Yes. Fine. Jolly good.” And he slammed the door.

“Right,” mumbled Crowley, suddenly feeling very alone.