"Brothers and sisters, thank you, thank you, wasn't that beautiful? And remember, you can hear that song and others just as edifyin' on Jesus Is My Buddy, just phone 1‑800‑CASH and pledge your donation now."
He became more serious.
"Brothers and sisters, I've got a message for you all, an urgent message from our Lord, for you all, man and woman and little babes, friends, let me tell you about the Apocalypse. It's all there in your bible, in the Revelation our Lord gave Saint John on Patmos, and in the Book of Daniel. The Lord always gives it to you straight, friends‑your future. So what's goin' to happen?
"War. Plague. Famine. Death. Rivers urv blurd. Great earthquakes. Nukyeler missiles. Horrible times are cumin', brothers and sisters. And there's only one way to avoid 'em.
"Before the Destruction comes‑before the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride out‑before the nukerler missiles rain down on the unbelievers‑there will come The Rapture.
"What's the Rapture? I hear you cry.
"When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believers will be swept up in the air‑it don't mind what you're doin', you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin' your car, or just sittin' at home readin' your Bible. Suddenly you'll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you'll be up in the air, lookin' down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin'. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin', and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin', or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever‑"
He stopped, suddenly.
"Well, nice try," he said, in a completely different voice, "only it won't be like that at all. Not really.
"I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff well, if you could see them all in Heaven‑serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.
"And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning . . . Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn't be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It's propaganda. Pure and simple. We've got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they're going to kill everyone and let God sort it out‑right?
"Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I've just a quick questionwhere am I?"
Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple.
"It's the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin' through me!" he erupted, and interrupted himself, "Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I'm an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn't it? So sorry, can't stay . . . "
There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren't phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the gray‑faced cameramen.
"Gosh, " he said, "am I on television?"
– – -
Crowley was doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour down Oxford Street.
He reached into the glove compartment for his spare pair of sunglasses, and found only cassettes. Irritably he grabbed one at random and pushed it into the slot.
He wanted Bach, but he would settle for The Travelling Wilburys.
All we need is, Radio Gaga, sang Freddie Mercury.
All I need is out, thought Crowley.
He swung around the Marble Arch Roundabout the wrong way, doing ninety. Lightning made the London skies flicker like a malfunctioning fluorescent tube.
A livid sky on London, Crowley thought, And I knew the end was near. Who had written that? Chesterton, wasn't it? The only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth.
The Bentley headed out of London while Crowley sat back in the driver's seat and thumbed through the singed copy of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter.
Near the end of the book he found a folded sheet of paper covered in Aziraphale's neat copperplate handwriting. He unfolded it (while the Bentley's gearstick shifted itself down to third and the car accelerated around a fruit lorry, which had unexpectedly backed out of aside street), and then he read it again.
Then he read it one more time, with a slow sinking feeling at the base of his stomach.
The car changed direction suddenly. It was now heading for the village of Tadfield, in Oxfordshire. He could be there in an hour if he hurried.
Anyway, there wasn't really anywhere else to go.
The cassette finished, activating the car radio.
". . . Gardeners' Question Time coming to you from Tadfield Gardening Club. We were last here in 1953, a very nice summer, and as the team will remember it's a rich Oxfordshire loam in the East of the parish, rising to chalk in the West; the kind of place of say, don't matter what you plant here, it'll come up beautiful Isn't that right, Fred?"
"Yep, " said Professor Fred Windbright, Royal Botanical Gardens, "Couldn't of put it better meself "
"Right‑First question for the team, and this comes from Mr. R. P. Tyler, chairman of the local Residents Association, I do believe."
"Ahem. That's right. Well, I'm a keen rose grower, but my prizewinning Molly McGuire lost a couple of blossoms yesterday in a rain of what were apparently fish. What does the team recommend for this other than place netting over the garden? 1 mean, I've written to the council . . ."
"Not a common problem, I'd say. Harry?"
"Mr. Tyler, let me ask you a question‑were these fresh fish, or preserved?"
"Fresh, 1 believe."
"Well, you've got no problems, my friend. 1 hear you've also been having rains of blood in these parts‑and 1 wish we had these up in the Dales, where my garden is. Save me a fortune in fertilizers. Now, what you do is, you dig them in to your . . ." CROWLEY?
Crowley said nothing.
CROWLEY THE WAR HAS BEGUN, CROWLEY WE NOTE WITH INTEREST THAT YOU AVOIDED THE FORCES WE EMPOWERED TO COLLECT YOU.
"Mm," Crowley agreed.
CROWLEY . . . WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. BUT EVEN IF WE LOSE, AT LEAST AS FAR AS YOU ARE CONCERNED, IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. FOR AS LONG AS THERE IS ONE DEMON LEFT IN HELL, CROWLEY, YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD BEEN CREATED MORTAL.
Crowley was silent.
MORTALS CAN HOPE FOR DEATH, OR FOR REDEMPTION. YOU CAN HOPE FOR NOTHING.
ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL.
"Yeah?"
JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE.
"Ngk," said Crowley.
". . . now as keen gardeners know, it goes without sayin' that he's a cunnin' little devil, your Tibetan. Tunnelin' straight through your begonias like it was nobody's business. A cup of tea'll shift him, with rancid yak butter for preference you should be able to get some at any good Bard . . ."
Wheee. Whizz. Pop. Static drowned out the rest of the program.
Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared.
And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.
And then he turned a corner, which was meant to take him onto the slip road to the M25, from which he'd swing off onto the M40 up to Oxfordshire.
But something had happened to the M25. Something that hurt your eyes, if you looked directly a
t it.
From what had been the M25 London Orbital Motorway came a low chanting, a noise formed of many strands: car horns, and engines, and sirens, and the bleep of cellular telephones, and the screaming of small children trapped by back‑seat seat‑belts for ever. "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds," came the chanting, over and over again, in the secret tongue of the Black priesthood of ancient Mu.
The dreaded sigil Odegra, thought Crowley, as he swung the car around, heading for the North Circular. I did that‑that's my fault. It could have been just another motorway. A good job, I'll grant you, but was it really worthwhile? It's all out of control. Heaven and Hell aren't running things any more, it's like the whole planet is a Third World country that's finally got the Bomb . . .
Then he began to smile. He snapped his fingers. A pair of dark glasses materialized out of his eyes. The ash vanished from his suit and his skin.
What the hell. If you had to go, why not go with style?
Whistling softly, he drove.
* * * * *
They came down the outside lane of the motorway like destroying angels, which was fair enough.
They weren't going that fast, all things considered. The four of them were holding a steady 105 mph, as if they were confident that the show could not start before they got there. It couldn't. They had all the time in the world, such as it was.
Just behind them came four other riders: Big Ted, Greaser, Pigbog, and Skuzz.
They were elated. They were real Hell's Angels now, and they rode the silence.
Around them, they knew, was the roar of the thunderstorm, the thunder of traffic, the whipping of the wind and the rain. But in the wake of the Horsemen there was silence, pure and dead. Almost pure, anyway. Certainly dead.
It was broken by Pigbog, shouting to Big Ted.
"What you going to be, then?" he asked, hoarsely.
"What?"
"I said, what you‑"
"I heard what you said. It's not what you said. Everyone heard what you said. What did you mean, tha's what I wanter know?"
Pigbog wished he'd paid more attention to the Book of Revelation.
If he'd known he was going to be in it, he'd have read it more carefully. "What I mean is, they're the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?"
"Bikers," said Greaser.
"Right. Four Bikers of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Death, and, and the other one. P'lution."
"Yeah? So?"
"So they said it was all right if we came with them, right?"
"So?"
"So we're the other Four Horse‑, um, Bikers of the Apocalypse. So which ones are we?"
There was a pause. The lights of passing cars shot past them in the opposite lane, lightning after‑imaged the clouds, and the silence was close to absolute.
"Can I be War as well?" asked Big Ted.
"Course you can't be War. How can you be War? She's War. You've got to be something else."
Big Ted screwed up his face with the effort of thought. "G.B.H.," he said, eventually. "I'm Grievous Bodily Harm. That's me. There. Wott're you going to be?"
"Can I be Rubbish?" asked Skuzz. "Or Embarrassing Personal Problems?"
"Can't be Rubbish," said Grievous Bodily Harm. "He's got that one sewn up, Pollution. You can be the other, though."
They rode on in the silence and the dark, the rear red lights of the Four a few hundred yards in front of them.
Grievous Bodily Harm, Embarrassing Personal Problems, Pigbog and Greaser.
"I wonter be Cruelty to Animals," said Greaser. Pigbog wondered if he was for or against it. Not that it really mattered.
And then it was Pigbog's turn.
"I, uh . . . I think I'll be them answer phones. They're pretty bad," he said.
"You can't be ansaphones. What kind of a Biker of the Repocalypse is ansaphones? That's stupid, that is."
"S'not!" said Pigbog, nettled. "It's like War, and Famine, and that. It's a problem of life, isn't it? Answer phones. I hate bloody answer phones."
"I hate ansaphones, too," said Cruelty to Animals.
"You can shut up," said G.B.H.
"Can I change mine?" asked Embarrassing Personal Problems, who had been thinking intently since he last spoke. "I want to be Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Thumped Them."
"All right, you can change. But you can't be ansaphones, Pigbog. Pick something else."
Pigbog pondered. He wished he'd never broached the subject. It was like the careers interviews he had had as a schoolboy. He deliberated.
"Really cool people," he said at last. "I hate them."
"Really cool people?" said Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping.
"Yeah. You know. The kind you see on telly, with stupid haircuts, only on them it dun't look stupid 'cos it's them. They wear baggy suits, an' you're not allowed to say they're a bunch of wankers. I mean, speaking for me, what I always want to do when I see one of them is push their faces very slowly through a barbed‑wire fence. An' what I think is this." He took a deep breath. He was sure this was the longest speech he had ever made in his life.[43] "What I think is this. If they get up my nose like that, they pro'lly get up everyone else's."
"Yeah," said Cruelty to Animals. "An' they all wear sunglasses even when they dunt need 'em."
"Eatin' runny cheese, and that stupid bloody No Alcohol Lager," said Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping. "I hate that stuff. What's the point of drinking the stuff if it dun't leave you puking? Here, I just thought. Can I change again, so I'm No Alcohol Lager?"
"No you bloody can't," said Grievous Bodily Harm. "You've changed once already."
"Anyway," said Pigbog. "That's why I wonter be Really Cool People."
"All right," said his leader.
"Don't see why I can't be No bloody Alcohol Lager if I want."
"Shut your face."
Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking toward Tadfield.
And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People traveled with them.
– – -
It was a wet and blustery Saturday afternoon, and Madame Tracy was feeling very occult.
She had her flowing dress on, and a saucepan full of sprouts on the stove. The room was lit by candlelight, each candle carefully placed in a wax‑encrusted wine bottle at the four corners of her sitting room.
There were three other people at her sitting. Mrs. Ormerod from Belsize Park, in a dark green hat that might have been a flowerpot in a previous life; Mr. Scroggie, thin and pallid, with bulging colorless eyes; and Julia Petley from Hair Today,[44] the hairdressers' on the High Street, fresh out of school and convinced that she herself had unplumbed occult depths. In order to enhance the occult aspects of herself, Julia had begun to wear far too much handbeaten silver jewelry and green eyeshadow. She felt she looked haunted and gaunt and romantic, and she would have, if she had lost another thirty pounds. She was convinced that she was anorexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.
"Can you link hands?" asked Madame Tracy. "And we must have complete silence. The spirit world is very sensitive to vibration."
"Ask if my Ron is there," said Mrs. Ormerod. She had a jaw like a brick.
"I will, love, but you've got to be quiet while I make contact."
There was silence, broken only by Mr. Scroggie's stomach rumbling. "Pardon, ladies," he mumbled.
Madame Tracy had found, through years of Drawing Aside the Veil and Exploring the Mysteries, that two minutes was the right length of time to sit in silence, waiting for the Spirit World to make contact. More than that and they got restive, less than that and they felt they weren't getting their money's worth.
She did her shopping list in her head.
Eggs. Lettuce. Ounce of cooking cheese. Four tomatoes. Butter. Roll
of toilet paper. Mustn't forget that, we're nearly out. And a really nice piece of liver for Mr. Shadwell, poor old soul, it's a shame . . .
Time.
Madame Tracy threw back her head, let it loll on one shoulder, then slowly lifted it again. Her eyes were almost shut.
"She's going under now, dear," she heard Mrs. Ormerod whisper to Julia Petley. "Nothing to be alarmed about. She's just making herself a Bridge to the Other Side. Her spirit guide will be along soon."
Madame Tracy found herself rather irritated at being upstaged, and she let out a low moan. "Oooooooooh."
Then, in a high‑pitched, quavery voice, "Are you there, my Spirit Guide?"
She waited a little, to build up the suspense. Washing‑up liquid. Two cans of baked beans. Oh, and potatoes.
"How?" she said, in a dark brown voice.
"Is that you, Geronimo?" she asked herself.
"Is um me, how," she replied.
"We have a new member of the circle with us this afternoon," she said.
"How, Miss Petley?" she said, as Geronimo. She had always understood that Red Indian spirit guides were an essential prop, and she rather liked the name. She had explained this to Newt. She didn't know anything about Geronimo, he realized, and he didn't have the heart to tell her.
"Oh," squeaked Julia. "Charmed to make your acquaintance."
"Is my Ron there, Geronimo?" asked Mrs. Ormerod.
"How, squaw Beryl," said Madame Tracy. "Oh there are so many um of the poor lost souls um lined up against um door to my teepee. Perhaps your Ron is amongst them. How."
Madame Tracy had learned her lesson years earlier, and now never brought Ron through until near the end. If she didn't, Beryl Ormerod would occupy the rest of the seance telling the late Ron Ormerod everything that had happened to her since their last little chat. (". . . now Ron, you remember, our Eric's littlest, Sybilla, well you wouldn't recognize her now, she's taken up macrame, and our Letitia, you know, our Karen's oldest, she's become a lesbian but that's all right these days and is doing a dissertation on the films of Sergio Leone as seen from a feminist perspective, and our Stan, you know, our Sandra's twin, I told you about him last time, well, he won the darts tournament, which is nice because we all thought he was a bit of a mother's boy, while the guttering over the shed's come loose, but I spoke to our Cindi's latest, who's a jobbing builder, and he'll be over to see to it on Sunday, and ohh, that reminds me . . .")
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