Eleven years ago 2 страница

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.

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. "

Sister Mary had expected the American Cultural Attach& #233; 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. He was something of a disappointment. She didn't think much of his cardigan, either.

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

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. "

" 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& #8209; which he hasn't got, " she added hastily.

Mr. Young peered down.

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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.

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

" 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

" I'm sorry? "

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

" 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& #8209; waving and bridge& #8209; opening department. Not the ones who went to discos all night long and were sick all over the paparazzi.

" That's nice, " said Sister Mary. " I thought you people weren't too keen on them, what with revoluting and throwing all those tea& #8209; sets into the river. "

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.

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

" 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. "

" Tea, please, " said Mr. Young.

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

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. . .

He sighed.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sister Mary nodded and winked back.

The nun wheeled the baby out.

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:

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:

Well done, Sister Mary& #8209; 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:

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,

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& #8209; American way of bringing new citizens into the world. Also, they'd heard that there were missals in the building.

Mrs. Young stirred.

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

" 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. "

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

* * * * *

A nathema Device & #8209; 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& #8209; was eight and a half years old, and she was reading The Book, under the bedclothes, with a torch.

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.

It didn't have any apples and balls in it. It did have a rather good eighteenth& #8209; century woodcut of Agnes Nutter being burned at the stake and looking rather cheerful about it.

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.

The second word was accurate.

The first sentence she had ever read out loud was:

" 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. "

Anathema liked to read about herself.

(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& #8209; and it had been spot on so far & #8209; but her parents, and her grandparents, and everyone, back to the seventeenth century. She was too young and too self& #8209; 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 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& #8209; great& #8209; great& #8209; great& #8209; great grandmother.

She was precocious, and self& #8209; 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.

– – -

The nuns took Baby A and swapped it with Baby B under the noses of the Attach& #233; s 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.

The Cultural Attach& #233; 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.

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.

But that was okay.

Having a baby is the single most joyous co& #8209; experience that two human beings can share, and he wasn't going to miss a second of it.

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

– – -

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.

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

The Bentley roared through the night, heading east.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

That Hieronymous Bosch. What a weirdo.

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& #8209; will thing, of course. It was a bugger.

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to him once. The whole point, he'd said& #8209; this was somewhere around 1020, when they'd first reached their little Arrangement& #8209; 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.

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 & #8209; castle.

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

Crowley had said, That's lunatic.

No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

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.

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.

– – -

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. "

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

Sister Mary beamed. " That's right. The old names are always the best, if you ask me. "

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

" Saul's nice, " said Sister Mary, making the best of it.

" I don't want something too old& #8209; fashioned, " said Mr. Young.

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

" Hmm. " Mr. Young looked doubtful.

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

" Adam? " said Mr. Young.

– – -

It would be nice to think that the Satanist Nuns had the surplus baby& #8209; Baby B& #8209; discreetly adopted. That he grew to be a normal, happy, laughing child, active and exuberant; and after that, grew further to become a normal, fairly contented adult.

And perhaps that's what happened.

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

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

We like your version better, anyway.

He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish.

– – -

In a small house in Dorking, Surrey, a light was on in a bedroom window.

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

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

His current experiment was changing a plug on an ancient Bakelite radio his mother had given him to play with. He sat at what he proudly called his " work& #8209; top, " a battered old table covered in curls of wire, batteries, little light bulbs, and a homemade crystal set that had never worked.

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

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

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

He had high hopes for it this time; he had followed all the instructions on plug& #8209; 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 Attach& #233; d the correct color& #8209; coded wires to the correct pins; he'd checked that it was the right amperage fuse; he'd screwed it all back together. So far, no problems.

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

Every light in the house went out.

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

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

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

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

– – -

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

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

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

– – -

It had not been a dark and stormy night.

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

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

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

He could safely leave the rest to Crowley.

Hastur went home.

– – -

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

On the whole, neither he nor Crowley would have chosen each other's company, but they were both men, or at least men& #8209; shaped creatures, of the world, and the Arrangement had worked to their advantage all this time. Besides, you grew accustomed to the only other face that had been around more or less consistently for six millennia.

The Arrangement was very simple, so simple in fact that it didn't really deserve the capital letter, which it had got for simply being in existence for so long. It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies. It meant a tacit non& #8209; 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& #8209; informed adversary.

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

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

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

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

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

The ducks in St. James' Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St. James' Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men& #8209; one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something somber with a scarf& #8209; and it'll look up expectantly. The Russian cultural Attach& #233; s 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.

Aziraphale tossed a crust to a scruffy& #8209; looking drake, which caught it and sank immediately.

The angel turned to Crowley.

" Really, my dear, " he murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

Aziraphale tossed the last scrap of bread at the ducks, who went off to pester the Bulgarian naval Attach& #233; and a furtive& #8209; looking man in a Cambridge tie, and carefully disposed of the paper bag in a wastepaper bin.

He turned and faced Crowley.

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

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

" Why not, pray? "

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

Aziraphale looked taken aback.

" Well, I should think& #8209; " he began.

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

Aziraphale shut his eyes. " All too easily, " he groaned.

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

" Ineffable, " Aziraphale murmured.

" Like eggs without salt, you said. Which reminds me. No salt, no eggs. No gravlax with dill sauce. No fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crossword. No small antique shops. No bookshops, either. No interesting old editions. No" & #8209; Crowley scraped the bottom of Aziraphale's barrel of interests& #8209; " Regency silver snuffboxes. . . "

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

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

" You know we don't play harps. "

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

They stared at one another.