第三章: 十一年前 Eleven Years Ago_好兆头

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.

Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B. C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B. C.

These suggestions are also incorrect.

Archbishop James Usher (1580--1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testaments in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B. C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B. C., at exactly 9:00 A. M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, [ie., everybody.] to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

This proves two things:

The astrological prediction for Libra in the "Your Stars Today" column of the Tadfield Advertiser, on the day this history begins, read as follows:

LIBRA. 24 September --23 October.

Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.

You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fire. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night.

This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.

They always are. That's the whole point.

It should have been, but that's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

But don't let the fog (with rain later, temperatures dropping to around forty-five degrees) give anyone a false sense of security. Just because it's a mild night doesn't mean that dark forces aren't abroad. They're abroad all the time. They're everywhere.

Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded "Born to Lurk," these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

Finally, after another twenty minutes, one of them said: "Bugger this for a lark. He should of been here hours ago."

The speaker's name was Hastur. He was a Duke of Hell.

Many phenomena -- wars, plagues, sudden audits -- have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for Exhibit A.

In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigh odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.

Where they go wrong, of course, is in assuming that the wretched road is evil simply because of the incredible carnage and frustration it engenders every day.

Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

It had earned him a commendation.

Crowley had dark hair and good cheekbones and he was wearing snakeskin shoes, or at least presumably he was wearing shoes, and he could do really weird things with his tongue. And, whenever he forgot himself, he had a tendency to hiss.

It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy field shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly significant meters. When Crowley had watched the first thirty-mile-long tailback he'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done.

The car he was driving was a 1926 black Bentley, one owner from new, and that owner had been Crowley. He'd looked after it.

He also didn't blink much.

He glanced at his watch, which was designed for the kind of rich deep-sea diver who likes to know what the time is in twenty-one world capitals while he's down there. [It was custom-made for Crowley. Getting just one chip custom-made is incredibly expensive but he could afford it. This watch gave the time in twenty world capitals and in a capital city in Another Place, where it was always one time, and that was Too Late]

The reason he was late was that he was enjoying the twentieth century immensely. It was much better than the seventeenth, and a lot better than the fourteenth. One of the nice things about Time, Crowley always said, was that it was steadily taking him further away from the fourteenth century, the most bloody boring hundred years on God's, excuse his French, Earth. The twentieth century was anything but boring. In fact, a flashing blue light in his rearview mirror had been telling Crowley, for the last fifty seconds, that he was being followed by two men who would like to make it even more interesting for him.

"What's that he's drivin'?" said Ligur.

The flashing light dimmed into the distance as the police car rolled to a halt, much to the amazement of its occupants. But it would be nothing to the amazement they'd experience when they opened the hood and found out what the engine had turned into.

The Bentley thundered up the exit ramp, took the corner on two wheels, and plunged down a leafy road. The blue light followed.

Crowley sighed, took one hand from the wheel, and, half turning, made a complicated gesture over his shoulder.

In the graveyard, Hastur, the tall demon, passed a dogend back to Ligur, the shorter one and the more accomplished lurker.

"I can see a light," he said. "Here he comes now, the flash bastard."

"It's a car. A horseless carriage," explained Hastur. "I expect they didn't have them last time you was here. Not for what you might call general use."

"They had a man at the front with a red flag," said Ligur.

"What's this Crowley like?" said Ligur.

"They've come on a bit since then, I reckon."

"All hail Satan," Ligur echoed.

Ligur pondered this. Like most demons, he had a very limited grasp of technology, and so he was just about to say something like, I bet it needs a lot of wire, when the Bentley rolled to a halt at the cemetery gate.

"And he wears sunglasses," sneered Hastur, "even when he dunt need to." He raised his voice. "All hail Satan," he said.

Hastur spat. "He's been up here too long," he said. "Right from the Start. Gone native, if you ask me. Drives a car with a telephone in it."

"Hi," said Crowley, giving them a little wave. "Sorry I'm late, but you know how it is on the A40 at Denham, and then I tried to cut up towards Chorley Wood and then --"

"Yeah. Deeds," said Crowley, with the slightly guilty look of one who is attending church for the first time in years and has forgotten which bits you stand up for.

"Now we art all here," said Hastur meaningfully, "we must recount the Deeds of the Day."

Hastur cleared his throat.

"I have tempted a priest," he said. "As he walked down the street and saw the pretty girls in the sun, I put Doubt into his mind. He would have been a saint, but within a decade we shall have him."

"Nice one," said Crowley, helpfully.

"And exactly what has that done to secure souls for our master?" said Hastur.

"Look, it wasn't easy," said Crowley.

"I have corrupted a politician," said Ligur. "I let him think a tiny bribe would not hurt. Within a year we shall have him."

"You'll like this," he said.

"Yes?" said Hastur. "And then what?"

There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.

"I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime," he said.

His smile became even wider and more conspiratorial.

They both looked expectantly at Crowley, who gave them a big smile.

"That's all?" said Ligur.

"Look, people --"

Crowley pulled himself together.

What could he tell them? That twenty thousand people got bloody furious? That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city? And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people? In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves For the rest of the day. The pass-along effects were incalculable. Thousands and thousands of souls all got a faint patina of tarnish, and you hardly had to lift a finger.

"Already?"

"Yes," said Hastur, grinning.

Hastur reached down behind a tombstone.

Crowley stared at the basket.

He'd been particularly pleased with Manchester.

But you couldn't tell that to demons like Hastur and Ligur. Fourteenth-century minds, the lot of them. Spending years picking away at one soul. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With five billion people in the world you couldn't pick the buggers off one by one any more; you had to spread your effort. But demons like Ligur and Hastur wouldn't understand. They'd never have thought up Welsh-language television, for example. Or valueadded tax. Or Manchester.

"Oh," he said. "No."

"This is," he said.

"Yes."

"Oh, it is, it is," said Hastur. "Your scene. Your starring role. Take it. Times are changing."

"The Powers that Be seem to be satisfied," he said. "Times are changing. So what's up?"

"And, er, it's up to me to --?"

"Why me?" said Crowley desperately. "You know me, Hastur, this isn't, you know, my scene…"

"Yes." Hastur was enjoying this.

"That's right," said Ligur. Someone's right arm, anyway, he thought. There were plenty of right arms around; no sense in wasting a good one.

"Sign. Here," he said, leaving a terrible pause between the words.

Crowley nodded mournfully, and drew a complex, wiggly sigh on the paper. It glowed redly in the gloom, just for a moment, and then faded.

"Yeah," said Ligur, grinning. "They're coming to an end, for a start."

Hastur produced a clipboard from the grubby recesses of his mack.

"Whatever it is, they'd better think of it quickly," said Hastur. "No. Not A. J. Crowley. Your real name."

"Whatever will they think of next?" mused Ligur.

Crowley fumbled vaguely in an inside pocket and produced a pen. It was sleek and matte black. It looked as though it could exceed the speed limit.

"It can write under water," Crowley muttered.

"S'nice pen," said Ligur.

"Why me?"

"What am I supposed to do with it?" he said.

"You are obviously highly favored," said Hastur maliciously. "I imagine Ligur here would give his right arm for a chance like this."

"Our moment of eternal triumph awaits!"

"And you will be a tool of that glorious destiny!"

"You will receive instructions." Hastur scowled. "Why so worried, Crowley? The moment we have been working for all these centuries is at hands."

"Yeah. Right," said Crowley. He did not look, now, like the lithe figure that had sprung so lithely from the Bentley a few minutes ago. He had a hunted expression.

"Er. Okay," he said. "I'll, er, be off then. Shall I? Get it over with. Not that I want to get it over with," he added hurriedly, aware of the things that could happen if Hastur turned in an unfavorable report. "But you know me. Keen."

"Eternal. Yeah," said Crowley.

"So I'll be popping along," Crowley babbled. "See you guys ar -- see you. Er. Great. Fine. Ciao."

"Tool. Yeah," muttered Crowley. He picked up the basket as if it might explode. Which, in a manner of speaking, it would shortly do.

The senior demons did not speak.

As the Bentley skidded off into the darkness Ligur said, "Wossat mean?"

"It's Italian," said Hastur. "I think it means 'food'."

"No," said Hastur.

"Right," said Ligur. It'd be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.

Crowley, somewhere west of Amersham, hurtled through the night, snatched a tape at random and tried to wrestle it out of its brittle plastic box while staying on the road. The glare of a headlight proclaimed it to be Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Soothing music, that's what he needed.

"Funny thing to say, then." Ligur stared at the retreating taillights. "You trust him?" he said.

He rammed it into the Blaupunkt.

And suddenly, Freddie Mercury was speaking to him: BECAUSE YOU'VE EARNED IT, CROWLEY

"Ohshitohshitohshit. Why now? Why me?" he muttered, as the familiar strains of Queen washed over him.

Crowley blessed under his breath. Using electronics as a means of communication had been his idea and Below had, for once, taken it up and, as usual, got it dead wrong. He'd hoped they could be persuaded to subscribe to Cellnet, but instead they just cut in to whatever it happened to be that he was listening to at the time and twisted it.

Crowley gulped.

GOOD. I see a little silhouetto of a man scaramouche scaramouche will you do the fandango…

THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING, CROWLEY AND IF IT GOES WRONG, THEN THOSE INVOLVED WILL SUFFER GREATLY. EVEN YOU, CROWLEY ESPECIALLY YOU.

HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS, CROWLEY

"Thank you, lord."

THIS IS THE BIG ONE, CROWLEY

"Thank you very much, lord," he said.

"I'll be there in five minutes, lord, no problem."

"Understood, lord."

"Leave it to me, lord."

"I know, I know."

THIS IS IMPORTANT, CROWLEY

And suddenly he knew. He hated that. They could just as easily have told him, they didn't suddenly have to drop chilly knowledge straight into his brain. He had to drive to a certain hospital.

WE HAVE GREAT FAITH IN YOU, CROWLEY

Crowley thumped the wheel. Everything had been going so well, he'd had it really under his thumb these few centuries. That's how it goes, you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you. The Great War, the Last Battle. Heaven versus Hell, three rounds, one Fall, no submission. And that'd be that. No more world. That's what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn't know which was worse.

But there was no getting out of it. You couldn't be a demon and have free will.

Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn't get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.

I will not let you go (let him go)…

Well, at least it wouldn't be this year. He'd have time to do things. Unload long-term stocks, for a start.

Something dreadful, that's what.

He wondered what would happen if he just stopped the car here, on this dark and damp and empty road, and took the basket and swung it round and round and let go and…

The Bentley plunged on through the darkness, its fuel gauge pointing to zero. It had pointed to zero for more than sixty years now. It wasn't all bad, being a demon. You didn't have to buy petrol, for one thing. The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.

He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.

It was quite a nice hospital, thought Mr. Young. It would have been quiet, too, if it wasn't for the nuns.

On the back seat the thing in the basket began to cry; the air-raid siren wail of the newly born. High. Wordless. And old.

He quite liked nuns. Not that he was a, you know, left-footer or anything like that. No, when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, nononsense C. of E., and he wouldn't have dreamed of avoiding going to any other. All the others had the wrong smell -- floor polish for the Low, somewhat suspicious incense for the High. Deep in the leather armchair of his soul, Mr. Young knew that God got embarrassed at that sort of thing.

But he liked seeing nuns around, in the same way that he liked seeing the Salvation Army. It made you feel that it was all all right, that people somewhere were keeping the world on its axis.

This was his first experience of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, however. [Saint Beryl Articulatus of Cracow, reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century. According to legend, Beryl was a young woman who was betrothed against her will to a pagan, Prince Casimir. On their wedding night she prayed to the Lord to intercede, vaguely expecting a miraculous beard to appear, and she had in fact already laid in a small ivory-handled razor, suitable for ladies, against this very eventuality; instead the Lord granted Beryl the miraculous ability to chatter continually about whatever was on her mind, however inconsequential, without pause for breath or food.

The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl is under a vow to emulate Saint Beryl at all times, except on Tuesday afternoons, for half an hour, when the nuns are permitted to shut up, and, if they wish, to play table tennis.]

According to one version of the legend, Beryl was strangled by Prince Casimir three weeks after the wedding, with their marriage still unconsummated. She died a virgin and a martyr, chattering to the end.

Deirdre had run across them while being involved in one of her causes, possibly the one involving lots of unpleasant South Americans fighting other unpleasant South Americans and the priests egging them on instead of getting on with proper priestly concerns, like organizing the church cleaning rota.

According to another version of the legend, Casimir bought himself a set of earplugs, and she died in bed, with him, at the age of sixty-two.

The point was, nuns should be quiet. They were the right shape for it, like those pointy things you got in those chambers Mr. Young was vaguely aware your hi-fi got tested in. They shouldn't be, well, chattering all the time.

He filled his pipe with tobacco -- well, they called it tobacco, it wasn't what he thought of as tobacco, it wasn't the tobacco you used to get -- and wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something. He shifted his position awkwardly, and glanced at his watch.

One thing, though: At least the nuns had put their foot down about him being present at the birth. Deirdre had been all for it. She'd been reading things again. One kid already and suddenly she's declaring that this confinement was going to be the most joyous and sharing experience two human beings could have. That's what came of letting her order her own newspapers. Mr. Young distrusted papers whose inner pages had names like "Lifestyle" or "Options."

Well, he hadn't got anything against joyous sharing experiences. Joyous sharing experiences were fine by him. The world probably needed more joyous sharing experiences. But he had made it abundantly clear that this was one joyous sharing experience Deirdre could have by herself.

He finished thumbing the so-called tobacco into the pipe and glared at the little sign on the wall of the waiting room that said that, for his own comfort, he would not smoke. For his own comfort, he decided, he'd go and stand in the porch. If there was a discreet shrubbery for his own comfort out there, so much the better.

He shivered, and cupped his hands to light his pipe.

He wandered down the empty corridors and found a doorway that led out onto a rain-swept courtyard full of righteous dustbins.

And the nuns had agreed. They saw no reason for the father to be involved in the proceedings. When you thought about it, Mr. Young mused, they probably saw no reason why the father should be involved anywhere.

A large black car skidded to a halt by the dustbins. A young man in dark glasses leaped out into the drizzle holding what looked like a carrycot and snaked toward the entrance.

It happened to them at a certain age, wives. Twenty-five blameless years, then suddenly they were going off and doing these robotic exercises in pink socks with the feet cut out and they started blaming you for never having had to work for a living. It was hormones, or something.

"Would we care to share a joyous cigar experience?" he said.

"I think we were, er, getting on with it," said Mr. Young.

"We're in Room Three," said Mr. Young. He patted his pockets, and found the battered packet which, in accord with tradition, he had brought with him.

"Has it started yet?" said the man.

The man gave him the blank look of someone to whom lights are the least of his worries, and waved a hand vaguely toward the Bentley. The lights went out.

"Yes," he said. "They made me go out," he added thankfully.

He was mildly surprised to see that the man did not appear to be wet. And that the carrycot appeared to be occupied.

We, Mr. Young noted. Obviously a doctor with views about co-parenting.

"What room is she in?" said the man hurriedly.

"Already? Any idea how long we've got?"

Mr. Young felt vaguely proud to be so instantly recognizable as a parent.

Mr. Young took his pipe out of his mouth. "You've left your lights on," he said helpfully.

"That's handy," said Mr. Young. "Infra-red, is it?"

But the man had gone.

The wife of the American Cultural Attaché, Mrs. Harriet bowling, is giving birth in Delivery Room Four. She is having a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby B.

Mr. Young carefully replaced the packet and looked reflectively at his pipe. Always in a rush, these doctors. Working all the hours God sent.

The text will be slowed down to allow the sleight of hand to be followed.

There's a trick they do with one pea and three cups which is very hard to follow, and something like it, for greater stakes than a handful of loose change, is about to take place.

Mrs. Deirdre Young is giving birth in Delivery Room Three. She is having a golden-haired male baby we will call Baby A.

Sister Mary Loquacious has been a devout Satanist since birth. She went to Sabbat School as a child and won black stars for handwriting and liver. When she was told to join the Chattering Order she went obediently, having a natural talent in that direction and, in any case, knowing that she would be among friends. She would be quite bright, if she was ever put in a position to find out, but long ago found that being a scatterbrain, as she'd put it, gave you an easier journey through life. Currently she is being handed a golden-haired male baby we will call 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.

"Is that him?" said Sister Mary, staring at the baby. "Only I'd expected funny eyes. Red, or green. Or teensy-weensy little hoofikins. Or a widdle tail." She turned him around as she spoke. No horns either. The Devil's child looked ominously normal.

Watch carefully. Round and round they go…

"Fancy me holding the Antichrist," said Sister Mary. "And bathing the Antichrist. And counting his little toesy-wosies…"

"Yes, that's him," said Crowley.

She was now addressing the child directly, lost in some world of her own. Crowley waved a hand in front of her wimple. "Hallo? Hallo? Sister Mary?"

"No," said Crowley firmly. "And now I should get up to the delivery rooms, if I were you."

"Will he remember me when he grows up, do you think?" said Sister Mary wistfully, sidling slowly down the corridor.

"Sorry, sir. He is a little sweetheart, though. Does he look like his daddy? I bet he does. Does he look like his daddywaddykins…"

"Pray that he doesn't," said Crowley, and fled.

Sister Mary headed through the nighttime hospital with 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 safely in her arms. She found a bassinet and laid him down in it.

"Just glide along, there's a good nun. Have you seen the husband anywhere? He's not in the waiting room."

"Master Crowley said --"

"I've only seen Master Crowley, and he told me --"

A matronly head appeared around a door. It said, "Sister Mary, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be on duty in Room Four?"

"I'm sure he did," said Sister Grace Voluble firmly. "I suppose I'd better go and look for the wretched man. Come in and keep an eye on her, will you? She's a bit woozy but the baby's fine." Sister Grace paused. "Why are you winking? Is there something wrong with your eye?"

"Of course, of course. In good time. But we can't have the father wandering around, can we?" said Sister Grace. "No telling what he might see. So just wait here and mind the baby, there's a dear."

"You know!" Sister Mary hissed archly. "The babies. The exchange --"

Mrs. Young was more than woozy. She was fast asleep, with the look of determined self-satisfaction of someone who knows that other people are going to have to do the running around for once. Baby A was asleep beside her, weighed and nametagged. Sister Mary, who had been brought up to be helpful, removed the nametag, copied it out, and Attachéd the duplicate to the baby in her care.

He gurgled. She gave him a tickle.

She sailed off down the polished corridor. Sister Mary, wheeling her bassinet, entered the delivery room.

Now, thought Sister Mary, I could do with a nice cup of tea.

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights. And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. Besides, Sister Mary was a nurse and nurses, whatever their creed, are primarily nurses, which had a lot to do with wearing your watch upside down, keeping calm in emergencies, and dying for a cup of tea. She hoped someone would come soon; she'd done the important bit, now she wanted her tea.

The babies looked similar, both being small, blotchy, and looking sort of, though not really, like Winston Churchill.

Sister Mary had expected the American Cultural Attaché to look like Blake Carrington or J. R. Ewing. Mr. Young didn't look like any American she'd ever seen on television, except possibly for the avuncular sheriff in the better class of murder mystery. [With a little old lady as the sleuth, and no car chases unless they're done very slowly.] He was something of a disappointment. She didn't think much of his cardigan, either.

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

She swallowed her disappointment. "Oooh, yes," she said. "Congratulations. Your lady wife's asleep, poor pet."

There was a knock at the door. She opened it.

"Has it happened yet?" asked Mr. Young. "I'm the father. The husband. Whatever. Both."

Mr. Young looked over her shoulder. "Twins?" he said. He reached for his pipe. He stopped reaching for his pipe. He reached for it again. "Twins? No one said anything about twins."

Mr. Young peered down.

"Oh, not" said Sister Mary hurriedly. "This one's yours. The other one's… er… someone else's. Just looking after him till Sister Grace gets back. No," she reiterated, pointing to 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, "this one's definitely yours. From the top of his head to the tips of his hoofywoofies -- which he hasn't got," she added hastily.

There was a pause. They stared at the sleeping baby.

"Ah, yes," he said doubtfully. "He looks like my side of the family. All, er, present and correct, is he?"

"Oh, yes," said Sister Mary. "He's a very normal child," she added. "Very, very normal."

"About ten years," said Mr. Young, mildly puzzled. "The job moved, you see, and I had to move with it."

"You don't have much of an accent," said Sister Mary. "Have you been over here long?"

"It must be a very exciting job, I've always thought," said Sister Mary. Mr. Young looked gratified. Not everyone appreciated the more stimulating aspects of cost accountancy.

Ah. He was on firmer ground here. Deirdre was very keen on that sort of thing.

"Taller buildings, for one thing," said Sister Mary, desperately.

"I'm sorry?"

"I expect they're the tribute," she said. "I read where these foreign potentates give her all sorts of things."

"I suppose so," said Mr. Young, who'd never really thought about it. Luton, as far as he could remember, was pretty much like Tadfield. The same sort of hedges between your house and the railway station. The same sort of people.

This was an aspect of Buckingham Palace society that had never occurred to Sister Mary, although the pachyderm fitted right in.

"I'm a big fan of the Royal Family, you know."

"Lots," he said, with feeling. "Deirdre makes jam for them, you know. And I normally have to help with the White Elephant."

Mr. Young stared at her. The only one he could think of was the Alliance and Leicester offices.

"I expect it was very different where you were before," Sister Mary went on.

"And I expect you go to a lot of garden parties," said the nun.

"That's nice," said Sister Mary. "I thought you people weren't too keen on them, what with revoluting and throwing all those tea-sets into the river."

"Oh, so am I," said Mr. Young, leaping gratefully onto this new ice floe in the bewildering stream of consciousness. Yes, you knew where you were with the Royals. The proper ones, of course, who pulled their weight in the hand-waving and bridge-opening department. Not the ones who went to discos all night long and were sick all over the paparazzi. [It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.]

"Would there be any possibility of me possibly being able to have a cup of tea, perhaps?" he ventured.

She chattered on, encouraged by the Order's instruction that members should always say what was on their minds. Mr. Young was out of his depth, and too tired now to worry about it very much. The religious life probably made people a little odd. He wished Mrs. Young would wake up. Then one of the words in Sister Mary's wittering struck a hopeful chord in his mind.

"Oh my," said Sister Mary, her hand flying to her mouth, "whatever am I thinking of?"

Mr. Young made no comment.

"I'll see to it right away," she said. "Are you sure you don't want coffee, though? There's one of those vendible machines on the next floor."

"My word, you really have gone native, haven't you," said Sister Mary gaily, as she bustled out.

"Tea, please," said Mr. Young.

He sighed.

Mr. Young, left alone with one sleeping wife and two sleeping babies, sagged onto a chair. Yes, it must be all that getting up early and kneeling and so on. Good people, of course, but not entirely compost mentis. He'd seen a Ken Russell film once. There had been nuns in it. There didn't seem to be any of that sort of thing going on, but no smoke without fire and so on…

It was then that Baby A awoke, and settled down to a really good wail.

Mr. Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.

"Welcome to the world," he said wearily. "You get used to it after a while."

The baby shut its mouth and glared at him as if he were a recalcitrant general.

Sister Mary chose that moment to come in with the tea. Satanist or not, she'd also found a plate and arranged some iced biscuits on it. They were the sort you only ever get at the bottom of certain teatime assortments. Mr. Young's was the same pink as a surgical appliance, and had a snowman picked out on it in white icing.

She looked at Sister Mary, realized that Mr. Young had never seen the inside of a pentagram, and confined herself to pointing at Baby A and winking.

Mr. Young had just opened his mouth to explain that, yes, so did he, and so did people even in Luton, when another nun rushed in, breathless.

"I don't expect you normally have these," she said. "They're what you call cookies. We call them biscults."

The nun wheeled the baby out.

Sister Mary nodded and winked back.

As methods of human communication go, a wink is quite versatile. You can say a lot with a wink. For example, the new nun's wink said:

Where the Hell have you been? Baby B has been born, we're ready to make the switch, and here's you in the wrong room with 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, drinking tea. Do you realize I've nearly been shot?

And, as far as she was concerned, Sister Mary's answering wink meant:

Well done, Sister Mary switched over the babies all by herself. Now indicate to me the superfluous child and I shall remove it and let you get on with your tea with his Royal Excellency the American Culture.

And therefore her own wink had meant:

Here's 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, and I can't talk now because there's this outsider here.

Whereas Sister Mary, on the other hand, had thought that the orderly's wink was more on the lines of:

There you go, dearie; that's Baby B, now take him away and leave me to chat to his Excellency. I've always wanted to ask him why they have those tall buildings with all the mirrors on them.

Mrs. Young stirred.

"Have you picked a name for him yet?" said Sister Mary archly.

The subtleties of all this were quite lost on Mr. Young, who was extremely embarrassed at all this clandestine affection and was thinking: That Mr. Russell, he knew what he was talking about, and no mistake.

Sister Mary's error might have been noticed by the other nun had not she herself been severely rattled by the Secret Service men in Mrs. Dowling's room, who kept looking at her with growing unease. This was because they had been trained to react in a certain way to people in long flowing robes and long flowing headdresses, and were currently suffering from a conflict of signals. Humans suffering from a conflict of signals aren't the best people to be holding guns, especially when they've just witnessed a natural childbirth, which definitely looked an un-American way of bringing new citizens into the world. Also, they'd heard that there were missals in the building.

"Hmm?" said Mr. Young. "Oh. No, not really. If it was a girl it would have been Lucinda after my mother. Or Germaine. That was Deirdre's choice."

Other children learned to read on basic primers with colored pictures of apples, balls, cockroaches, and so forth. Not the Device family. Anathema had learned to read from The Book.

Anathema Device -- her mother, who was not a great student of religious matters, happened to read the word one day and thought it was a lovely name for a girl -- was eight and a half years old, and she was reading The Book, under the bedclothes, with a torch.

It didn't have any apples and balls in it. It did have a rather good eighteenth-century woodcut of Agnes Nutter being burned at the stake and looking rather cheerful about it.

"Wormwood's a nice name," said the nun, remembering her classics. "Or Damien. Damien's very popular."

The first sentence she had ever read out loud was:

The second word was accurate.

The first word she could recognize was nice. Very few people at the age of eight and a half know that nice also means "scrupulously exact," but Anathema was one of them.

"I tell ye thif, and I charge ye with my wordes. Four shalle ryde, and Four shalle alfo ryde, and Three sharl ryde the Skye as twixt, and Wonne shal ryde in flames; and theyr shall be no stopping themme: not fish, nor rayne, nor rode, neither Deville nor Angel. And ye shalle be theyr alfo, Anathema."

(There were books which caring parents who read the right Sunday papers could purchase with their children's names printed in as the heroine or hero. This was meant to interest the child in the book. In Anathema's case, it wasn't only her in The Book -- and it had been spot on so far -- but her parents, and her grandparents, and everyone, back to the seventeenth century. She was too young and too self-centered at this point to attach any importance to the fact that there was no mention made of her children, or indeed, any events in her future further away than eleven years' time. When you're eight and a half, eleven years is a lifetime, and of course, if you believed The Book, it would be.)

She was precocious, and self-possessed. The only thing about Anathema her teachers ever had the nerve to upbraid her for was her spelling, which was not so much appalling as 300 years too late.

Anathema liked to read about herself.

She was a bright child, with a pale face, and black eyes and hair. As a rule she tended to make people feel uncomfortable, a family trait she had inherited, along with being more psychic than was good for her, from her great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

Evil in general does not sleep, and therefore doesn't see why anyone else should. But Crowley liked sleep, it was one of the pleasures of the world. Especially after a heavy meal. He'd slept right through most of the nineteenth century, for example. Not because he needed to, simply because he enjoyed it. [Although he did have to get up in 1832 to go to the lavatory.]

The nuns took Baby A and swapped it with Baby B under the noses of the Attachés wife and the Secret Service men, by the cunning expedient of wheeling one baby away ("to be weighed, love, got to do that, it's the law") and wheeling another baby back, a little later.

It didn't help that he had been talking on the other line to his investment counselor. At one point he'd been forced to put her on hold for twenty minutes.

The Cultural Attaché himself, Thaddeus J. Dowling, had been called back to Washington in a hurry a few days earlier, but he had been on the phone to Mrs. Dowling throughout the birth experience, helping her with her breathing.

But that was okay.

He'd got one of the Secret Service men to videotape it for him.

Having a baby is the single most joyous co-experience that two human beings can share, and he wasn't going to miss a second of it.

The Bentley roared through the night, heading east.

One of the pleasures of the world. Well, he'd better start really enjoying them now, while there was still time.

Of course, he was all in favor of Armageddon in general terms. If anyone had asked him why he'd been spending centuries tinkering in the affairs of mankind he'd have said, "Oh, in order to bring about Armageddon and the triumph of Hell." But it was one thing to work to bring it about, and quite another for it to actually happen.

Because he rather liked people. It was a major failing in a demon.

Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when he'd felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look, we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there's nothing we can do to them that they don't do themselves and they do things we've never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They've got what we lack. They've got imagination. And electricity, of course.

Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldn't have any alternative. But he'd hoped it would be a long way off.

One of them had written it, hadn't he… "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

That Hieronymous Bosch. What a weirdo.

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he'd said -- this was somewhere around 1020, when they'd first reached their little Arrangement -- the whole point was that when a human was good or bad it was because they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley and, of course, himself, were set in their ways right from the start. People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

Crowley had got a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. He had been in Spain then, mainly hanging around cantinas in the nicer parts, and hadn't even known about it until the commendation arrived. He'd gone to have a look, and had come back and got drunk for a week.

Being a demon, of course, was supposed to mean you had no free will. But you couldn't hang around humans for very long without learning a thing or two.

No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

Crowley had thought about this for some time and, around about 1023, had said, Hang on, that only works, right, if you start everyone off equal, okay? You can't start someone off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as someone born in a castle.

Crowley had said, That's lunatic.

Ah, Aziraphale had said, that's the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have.

Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.

Crowley reached down and picked up the car phone.

Mr. Young had not been too keen on Damien, or Wormwood. Or any of Sister Mary Loquacious' other suggestions, which had covered half of Hell, and most of the Golden Years of Hollywood.

"Well," she said finally, a little hurt, "I don't think there's anything wrong with Errol. Or Cary. Very nice American names, both of them."

"A decent English name, like people had in the Bible," said Mr. Young. "Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John," he said, speculatively. Sister Mary winced.

"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."

"Adam?" said Mr. Young.

"Or there's always… well, there's always Adam," said Sister Mary. That should be safe enough, she thought.

"I don't want something too old-fashioned," said Mr. Young.

"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.

"Hmm." Mr. Young looked doubtful.

"Or Cain. Very modern sound, Cain, really," Sister Mary tried.

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.

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.

And perhaps that's what happened.

We like your version better, anyway.

He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish.

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

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.

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 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.

He hadn't managed to get the Bakelite radio working yet either, but then again, he never seemed able to get that far.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Adam, thought Mr. Young. He tried saying it, to see how it sounded. "Adam." Hmm…

"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 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.

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

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.

He could safely leave the rest to Crowley.

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.

Hastur went home.

Technically Aziraphale was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days.

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, [Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.] but both reported it as a success).

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.

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.

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.

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 Attachés black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck, while the head of M19's soggy Hovis with Marmite is relished by the connoisseurs.

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

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

"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.

"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."

"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."

The angel turned to Crowley.

"Really, my dear," he murmured.

"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.

"Ineffable," Aziraphale murmured.

"You don't want that," said the demon.

"Well, I should think --" he began.

Aziraphale looked taken aback.

He turned and faced Crowley.

"We'll win, of course," he said.

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

"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."

"Why not, pray?"

"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.

"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…"

Aziraphale shrugged again.

"And then Game Over, Insert Coin?" said Crowley.

"You know we don't play harps."

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

"Let's go somewhere warm," he said.

"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."

"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."

"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.

Aziraphale spread his elegantly manicured hands.

They stared at one another.

"And we don't use pitchforks. I was being rhetorical."

"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.

"Such as disobedience to themselves?"

"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."

"What?" he said.

Crowley pointed to the ignition key. It turned.

"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."

"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.

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

"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."

They walked in somber silence for a while.

"Me too," said Crowley.

Aziraphale gave him a sidelong glance. "Oh, come now," he said, "you're a demon, after all."

"You're asking me?" said Crowley glumly.

"Wasn't it yours?"

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

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

Crowley stared at the smoke in the rearview mirror.

"Let's have lunch," he said. "I owe you one from, when was it…"

"Hmm."

"And what sort of phenomena?"

"Can't recall. It was quite a good restaurant, though."

"Did you? We thought they were yours."

"Paris, 1793," said Aziraphale.

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.

"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."

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

The wheel clamps disappeared.

"Come on," he said. "Let's do the Ritz."

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

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 book seller, 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.

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 shaft 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.

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 error's in typesetting.

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

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.

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 withe half an oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong dale inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe.

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

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

[The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four.

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

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

25. And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?

They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:

"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life,"

and read:

27. And the Lord did not ask him again.

26. And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.

It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.]

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. [The other two are The Trapping of the Mouse, and Golde Diggers of 1589.]

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.

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.

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

"It is a licence to printe monney!" said Master Bilton to Master Scaggs. [Who had already had a few thoughts in that direction, and spent the last years of his life in Newgate Prison when he eventually put them into practice.] "The public are crying out for such rubbishe! We must straightway printe a booke of prophecie by some hagge!"

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.

Although neither Master Bilton nor Master Scaggs realized it, the manuscript they had been sent was the sole prophetic work in all of human history to consist entirely of completely correct predictions concerning the following three hundred and forty-odd years, being a precise and accurate description of the events that would culminate in Armageddon. It was on the money in every single detail.

Not even the copy in the tiny Lancashire shop with "Locale Author" on a piece of cardboard next to it.

It didn't sell.

It was published by Bilton and Scaggs in September 1655, in good time for the Christmas trade, [Another master stroke of publishing genius, because Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Parliament had made Christmas illegal in 1654.] and it was the first book printed in England to be remaindered.

The author of the book, one Agnes Nutter, was not surprised by this, but then, it would have taken an awful lot to surprise Agnes Nutter.

Anyway, she had not written it for the sales, or the royalties, or even for the fame. She had written it for the single gratis copy of the book that an author was entitled to.

In fact, only one copy of Agnes Nutter's prophecies remained in the entire world.

No one knows what happened to the legions of unsold copies of her book. Certainly none remain in any museums or private collections. Even Aziraphale does not possess a copy, but would go weak at the knees at the thought of actually getting his exquisitely manicured hands on one.

And now it was three o'clock. The Antichrist had been on Earth for fifteen hours, and one angel and one demon had been drinking solidly for three of them.

It was on a bookshelf about forty miles away from where Crowley and Aziraphale were enjoying a rather good lunch and, metaphorically, it had just begun to tick.

They sat opposite one another in the back room of Aziraphale's dingy old bookshop in Soho.

Most bookshops in Soho have back rooms, and most of the back rooms are filled with rare, or at least very expensive, books. But Aziraphale's books didn't have illustrations. They had old brown covers and crackling pages. Occasionally, if he had no alternative, he'd sell one.

And, occasionally, serious men in dark suits would come calling and suggest, very politely, that perhaps he'd like to sell the shop itself so that it could be turned into the kind of retail outlet more suited to the area. Sometimes they'd offer cash, in large rolls of grubby fifty-pound notes. Or, sometimes, while they were talking, other men in dark glasses would wander around the shop shaking their heads and saying how inflammable paper was, and what a fire trap he had here.

"What about their brains?" said the angel.

"The point is," said Crowley, "the point is. The point is." He tried to focus on Aziraphale.

"Nononono," said Crowley, shaking a finger. "'S mammal. Your actual mammal. Difference is --" Crowley waded through the swamp of his mind and tried to remember the difference. "Difference is, they --"

The table in front of the two of them was covered with bottles.

Just because you're an angel doesn't mean you have to be a fool.

"Kind of fish," said Aziraphale.

"The point is," he said, and tried to think of a point.

"The point I'm trying to make," he said, brightening, "is the dolphins. That's my point."

"Mate out of water?" volunteered Aziraphale.

He reached for a bottle.

Crowley's brow furrowed. "Don't think so. Pretty sure that's not it. Something about their young. Whatever." He pulled himself together. "The point is. The point is. Their brains."

And Aziraphale would nod and smile and say that he'd think about it. And then they'd go away. And they'd never come back

"Uh?"

"Yeah?"

"Nah."

"Kraken," said Aziraphale, staring moodily into his glass.

Crowley gave him the long cool look of someone who has just had a girder dropped in front of his train of thought.

"Fact."

"They make nests, you know, gorillas," said the angel, pouring another drink and managing to hit the glass on the third go.

"There you are, then," said Crowley, sitting back. "Whole sea bubbling, poor old dolphins so much seafood gumbo, no one giving a damn. Same with gorillas. Whoops, they say, sky gone all red, stars crashing to ground, what they putting in the bananas these days? And then --"

"Big brains. That's my point. Size of. Size of. Size of damn big brains. And then there's the whales. Brain city, take it from me. Whole damn sea full of brains."

"God's truth. Saw a film. Nests."

"Great big bugger," said Aziraphale. "Sleepeth beneath the thunders of the upper deep. Under loads of huge and unnumbered polypol-polipo-bloody great seaweeds, you know. Supposed to rise to the surface right at the end, when the sea boils."

"Nests," insisted Aziraphale.

"That's birds," said Crowley.

Crowley decided not to argue the point.

Crowley thumped his glass on the table. "That's different. They don't have to say yes. That the ineffable bit, right? Your side made it up. You've got to keep testing people. But not to destruction."

"There you are then," he said. "All creatures great and smoke. I mean small. Great and small. Lot of them with brains. And then, bazamm."

"But you're part of it," said Aziraphale. "You tempt people. You're good at it."

"All right. All right. I don't like it any more than you, but I told you. I can't disod-disoy-not do what I'm told. 'M a'nangel."

"There's no theaters in Heaven," said Crowley. "And very few films."

"Don't you try to tempt me," said Aziraphale wretchedly. "I know you, you old serpent."

"Just you think about it," said Crowley relentlessly. "You know what eternity is? You know what eternity is? I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird --"

Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said.

"How?"

Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah," he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird --"

"The same bird every thousand years?"

"Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about," said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to --" He hesitated. "What have they got to do?"

"Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of --" The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."

"It could use a space ship," said the angel.

"What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.

"-- limps --"

"This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years --"

"But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered.

"It doesn't matter!"

"Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies --"

"Bloody ancient bird, then."

"flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak --"

"And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again," said Crowley quickly.

"Me too."

Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.

"-- then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music."

"And not one single sushi restaurant."

"Heaven has no taste."

"You won't have a choice."

"Listen --"

"Sharpen its beak on the mountain," said Crowley. "And then it flies back --"

"My dear boy --"

"-- in the space ship --"

Aziraphale froze.

"I can't cope with this while 'm drunk," he said. "I'm going to sober up."

"Now --"

"Listen," said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then --"

"Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak," mused Aziraphale.

There was a moment of drunken silence.

"And you'll enjoy it," Crowley said relentlessly. "You really will."

A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.

Crowley looked up slyly.

Crowley looked speculatively into his glass, and then filled it again. "What about diabolical ones?" he said.

"No doubt about it."

"Well, it's got to be a diabolical plan, hasn't it? We're doing it. My side."

"No, that's the --" Aziraphale snapped his finger irritably. "The thing. What d'you call it in your colorful idiom? The line at the bottom."

"Well… if you're sure…" said Crowley.

"Ah, but it's all part of the overall divine plan," said Aziraphale. "Your side can't do anything without it being part of the ineffable divine plan," he added, with a trace of smugness.

"The bottom line."

"Yes. It's that."

"Then you can't be certain, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't be certain that thwarting it isn't part of the divine plan too. I mean, you're supposed to thwart the wiles of the Evil One at every turn, aren't you?"

"Pardon?"

"I can't interfere with divine plans," he croaked.

They both winced as the alcohol left their bloodstreams, and sat up a bit more neatly. Aziraphale straightened his tie.