by Neil Gaiman
At least cars were better than horses. The internal combustion engine had been a godse—a blessi—a windfall for Crowley. The only horses he could be seen riding on business, in the old days, were big black jobs with eyes like flame and hooves that struck sparks. That was de rigueur for a demon. Usually, Crowley fell off. He wasn’t much good with animals.
Somewhere around Chiswick, Aziraphale scrabbled vaguely in the scree of tapes in the glove compartment.
“What’s a Velvet Underground?” he said.
“You wouldn’t like it,” said Crowley.
“Oh,” said the angel dismissively. “Be-bop.”
“Do you know, Aziraphale, that probably if a million human beings were asked to describe modern music, they wouldn’t use the term ‘be-bop’?” said Crowley.
“Ah, this is more like it. Tchaikovsky,” said Aziraphale, opening a case and slotting its cassette into the Blaupunkt.
“You won’t enjoy it,” sighed Crowley. “It’s been in the car for more than a fortnight.”
A heavy bass beat began to thump through the Bentley as they sped past Heathrow.
Aziraphale’s brow furrowed.
“I don’t recognize this,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s Tchaikovsky’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’” said Crowley, closing his eyes as they went through Slough.
To while away the time as they crossed the sleeping Chilterns, they also listened to William Byrd’s “We Are the Champions” and Beethoven’s “I Want To Break Free.” Neither were as good as Vaughan Williams’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls.”
IT IS SAID THAT THE DEVIL HAS ALL THE BEST TUNES.
This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers.
THE OXFORDSHIRE plain stretched out to the west, with a scattering of lights to mark the slumbering villages where honest yeomen were settling down to sleep after a long day’s editorial direction, financial consulting, or software engineering.
Up here on the hill a few glowworms were lighting up.
The surveyor’s theodolite is one of the more direful symbols of the twentieth century. Set up anywhere in open countryside, it says: there will come Road Widening, yea, and two-thousand-home estates in keeping with the Essential Character of the Village. Executive Developments will be manifest.
But not even the most conscientious surveyor surveys at midnight, and yet here the thing was, tripod legs deep in the turf. Not many theodolites have a hazel twig strapped to the top, either, or crystal pendulums hanging from them and Celtic runes carved into the legs.
The soft breeze flapped the cloak of the slim figure who was adjusting the knobs of the thing. It was quite a heavy cloak, sensibly waterproof, with a warm lining.
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
The young woman’s name was Anathema Device. She was not astonishingly beautiful. All her features, considered individually, were extremely pretty, but the entirety of her face gave the impression that it had been put together hurriedly from stock without reference to any plan. Probably the most suitable word is “attractive,” although people who knew what it meant and could spell it might add “vivacious,” although there is something very Fifties about “vivacious,” so perhaps they wouldn’t.
Young women should not go alone on dark nights, even in Oxfordshire. But any prowling maniac would have had more than his work cut out if he had accosted Anathema Device. She was a witch, after all. And precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife which she kept in her belt.
She sighted through the glass and made another adjustment.
She muttered under her breath.
Surveyors often mutter under their breath. They mutter things like “Soon have a relief road through here faster than you can say Jack Robinson,” or “That’s three point five meters, give or take a gnat’s whisker.”
This was an entirely different kind of muttering.
“Darksome night / And shining Moon,” muttered Anathema, “East by South / By West by southwest … west-southwest … got you … ”
She picked up a folded Ordnance Survey map and held it in the torchlight. Then she produced a transparent ruler and a pencil and carefully drew a line across the map. It intersected another pencil line.
She smiled, not because anything was particularly amusing, but because a tricky job had been done well.
Then she collapsed the strange theodolite, strapped it onto the back of a sit-up-and-beg black bicycle leaning against the hedge, made sure The Book was in the basket, and wheeled everything out to the misty lane.
It was a very ancient bike, with a frame apparently made of drainpipes. It had been built long before the invention of the three-speed gear, and possibly only just after the invention of the wheel.
But it was nearly all downhill to the village. Hair streaming in the wind, cloak ballooning behind her like a sheet anchor, she let the two-wheeled juggernaut accelerate ponderously through the warm air. At least there wasn’t any traffic at this time of night.
THE BENTLEY’S ENGINE went pink, pink as it cooled. Crowley’s temper, on the other hand, was heating up.
“You said you saw it signposted,” he said.
“Well, we flashed by so quickly. Anyway, I thought you’d been here before.”
“Eleven years ago!”
Crowley hurled the map onto the back seat and started the engine again.
“Perhaps we should ask someone,” said Aziraphale.
“Oh, yes,” said Crowley. “We’ll stop and ask the first person we see walking along a—a track in the middle of the night, shall we?”
He jerked the car into gear and roared out into the beech-hung lane.
“There’s something odd about this area,” said Aziraphale. “Can’t you feel it?”
“What?”
“Slow down a moment.”
The Bentley slowed again.
“Odd,” muttered the angel, “I keep getting these flashes of, of … ”
He raised his hands to his temples.
“What? What?” said Crowley.
Aziraphale stared at him.
“Love,” he said. “Someone really loves this place.”
“Pardon?”
“There seems to be this great sense of love. I can’t put it any better than that. Especially not to you.”
“Do you mean like—” Crowley began.
There was a whirr, a scream, and a clunk. The car stopped.
Aziraphale blinked, lowered his hands, and gingerly opened the door.
“You’ve hit someone,” he said.
“No I haven’t,” said Crowley. “Someone’s hit me.”
They got out. Behind the Bentley a bicycle lay in the road, its front wheel bent into a creditable Mobius shape, its back wheel clicking ominously to a standstill.
“Let there be light,” said Aziraphale. A pale blue glow filled the lane.
From the ditch beside them someone said, “How the hell did you do that?”
The light vanished.
“Do what?” said Aziraphale guiltily.
“Uh.” Now the voice sounded muzzy. “I think I hit my head on something … ”
Crowley glared at a long metallic streak on the Bentley’s glossy paintwork and a dimple in the bumper. The dimple popped back into shape. The paint healed.
“Up you get, young lady,” said the angel, hauling Anathema out of the bracken. “No bones broken.” It was a statement, not a hope; there had been a minor fracture, but Aziraphale couldn’t resist an opportunity to do good.
“You didn’t have any lights,” she began.
“Nor did you,” said Crowley guiltily. “Fair’s fair.”
“Doing a spot of astronomy, were we?” said Aziraphale, setting the bike upright. Various things clattered out of its front basket. He pointed to the battered theodolite
.
“No,” said Anathema, “I mean, yes. And look what you’ve done to poor old Phaeton.”
“I’m sorry?” said Aziraphale.
“My bicycle. It’s bent all to—”
“Amazingly resilient, these old machines,” said the angel brightly, handing it to her. The front wheel gleamed in the moonlight, as perfectly round as one of the Circles of Hell.
She stared at it.
“Well, since that’s all sorted out,” said Crowley, “perhaps it’d be best if we just all got on our, er. Er. You wouldn’t happen to know the way to Lower Tadfield, would you?”
Anathema was still staring at her bicycle. She was almost certain that it hadn’t had a little saddlebag with a puncture repair kit when she set out.
“It’s just down the hill,” she said. “This is my bike, isn’t it?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Aziraphale, wondering if he’d overdone things.
“Only I’m sure Phaeton never had a pump.”
The angel looked guilty again.
“But there’s a place for one,” he said, helplessly. “Two little hooks.”
“Just down the hill, you said?” said Crowley, nudging the angel.
“I think perhaps I must have knocked my head,” said the girl.
“We’d offer to give you a lift, of course,” said Crowley quickly, “but there’s nowhere for the bike.”
“Except the luggage rack,” said Aziraphale.
“The Bentley hasn’t— Oh. Huh.”
The angel scrambled the spilled contents of the bike’s basket into the back seat and helped the stunned girl in after them.
“One does not,” he said to Crowley, “pass by on the other side.”
“Your one might not. This one does. We have got other things to do, you know.” Crowley glared at the new luggage rack. It had tartan straps.
The bicycle lifted itself up and tied itself firmly in place. Then Crowley got in.
“Where do you live, my dear?” Aziraphale oozed.
“My bike didn’t have lights, either. Well, it did, but they’re the sort you put those double batteries in and they went moldy and I took them off,” said Anathema. She glared at Crowley. “I have a bread knife, you know,” she said. “Somewhere.”
Aziraphale looked shocked at the implication.
“Madam, I assure you—”
Crowley switched on the lights. He didn’t need them to see by, but they made the other humans on the road less nervous.
Then he put the car into gear and drove sedately down the hill. The road came out from under the trees and, after a few hundred yards, reached the outskirts of a middle-sized village.
It had a familiar feel to it. It had been eleven years, but this place definitely rang a distant bell.
“Is there a hospital around here?” he said. “Run by nuns?”
Anathema shrugged. “Don’t think so,” she said. “The only large place is Tadfield Manor. I don’t know what goes on there.”
“Divine planning,” muttered Crowley under his breath.
“And gears,” said Anathema. “My bike didn’t have gears. I’m sure my bike didn’t have gears.”
Crowley leaned across to the angel.
“Oh lord, heal this bike,” he whispered sarcastically.
“I’m sorry, I just got carried away,” hissed Aziraphale.
“Tartan straps?”
“Tartan is stylish.”
Crowley growled. On those occasions when the angel managed to get his mind into the twentieth century, it always gravitated to 1950.
“You can drop me off here,” said Anathema, from the back seat.
“Our pleasure,” beamed the angel. As soon as the car had stopped he had the back door open and was bowing like an aged retainer welcoming the young massa back to the old plantation.
Anathema gathered her things together and stepped out as haughtily as possible.
She was quite sure neither of the two men had gone around to the back of the car, but the bike was unstrapped and leaning against the gate.
There was definitely something very weird about them, she decided.
Aziraphale bowed again. “So glad to have been of assistance,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Anathema, icily.
“Can we get on?” said Crowley. “Goodnight, miss. Get in, angel.”
Ah. Well, that explained it. She had been perfectly safe after all.
She watched the car disappear toward the center of the village, and wheeled the bike up the path to the cottage. She hadn’t bothered to lock it. She was sure that Agnes would have mentioned it if she was going to be burgled, she was always very good at personal things like that.
She’d rented the cottage furnished, which meant that the actual furniture was the special sort you find in these circumstances and had probably been left out for the dustmen by the local War on Want shop. It didn’t matter. She didn’t expect to be here long.
If Agnes was right, she wouldn’t be anywhere long. Nor would anyone else.
She spread her maps and things out on the ancient table under the kitchen’s solitary light bulb.
What had she learned? Nothing much, she decided. Probably IT was at the north end of the village, but she’d suspected that anyway. If you got too close the signal swamped you; if you were too far away you couldn’t get an accurate fix.
It was infuriating. The answer must be in The Book somewhere. The trouble was that in order to understand the Predictions you had to be able to think like a half-crazed, highly intelligent seventeenth-century witch with a mind like a crossword-puzzle dictionary. Other members of the family had said that Agnes made things obscure to conceal them from the understanding of outsiders; Anathema, who suspected she could occasionally think like Agnes, had privately decided that it was because Agnes was a bloody-minded old bitch with a mean sense of humor.
She’d not even—
She didn’t have The Book.
Anathema stared in horror at the things on the table. The maps. The homemade divinatory theodolite. The thermos that had contained hot Bovril. The torch.
The rectangle of empty air where the Prophecies should have been.
She’d lost it.
But that was ridiculous! One of the things Agnes was always very specific about was what happened to The Book.
She snatched up the torch and ran from the house.
“A FEELING LIKE, OH, like the opposite of the feeling you’re having when you say things like ‘this feels spooky,’” said Aziraphale. “That’s what I mean.”
“I never say things like ‘this feels spooky,’” said Crowley. “I’m all for spooky.”
“A cherished feel,” said Aziraphale desperately.
“Nope. Can’t sense a thing,” said Crowley with forced jolliness. “You’re just oversensitive.”
“It’s my job,” said Aziraphale. “Angels can’t be oversensitive.”
“I expect people round here like living here and you’re just picking it up.”
“Never picked up anything like this in London,” said Aziraphale.
“There you are, then. Proves my point,” said Crowley. “And this is the place. I remember the stone lions on the gateposts.”
The Bentley’s headlights lit up the groves of overgrown rhododendrons that lined the drive. The tires crunched over gravel.
“It’s a bit early in the morning to be calling on nuns,” said Aziraphale doubtfully.
“Nonsense. Nuns are up and about at all hours,” said Crowley. “It’s probably Compline, unless that’s a slimming aid.”
“Oh, cheap, very cheap,” said the angel. “There’s really no need for that sort of thing.”
“Don’t get defensive. I told you, these were some of ours. Black nuns. We needed a hospital close to the air base, you see.”
“You’ve lost me there.”
“You don’t think American diplomats’ wives usually give birth in little religious hospitals in the middle of nowhere, do you? It al
l had to seem to happen naturally. There’s an air base at Lower Tadfield, she went there for the opening, things started to happen, base hospital not ready, our man there said, ‘There’s a place just down the road,’ and there we were. Rather good organization.”
“Except for one or two minor details,” said Aziraphale smugly.
“But it nearly worked,” snapped Crowley, feeling he should stick up for the old firm.
“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction,” said the angel. “It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.”
Crowley considered this. “Nah,” he said, at last. “For my money, it was just average incompetence. Hey—”
He whistled under his breath.
The graveled forecourt in front of the manor was crowded with cars, and they weren’t nun cars. The Bentley was if anything outclassed. A lot of the cars had GT or Turbo in their names and phone aerials on their roofs. They were nearly all less than a year old.
Crowley’s hands itched. Aziraphale healed bicycles and broken bones; he longed to steal a few radios, let down some tires, that sort of thing. He resisted it.
“Well, well,” he said. “In my day nuns were packed four to a Morris Traveller.”
“This can’t be right,” said Aziraphale.
“Perhaps they’ve gone private?” said Crowley.
“Or you’ve got the wrong place.”
“It’s the right place, I tell you. Come on.”
They got out of the car. Thirty seconds later someone shot both of them. With incredible accuracy.
IF THERE WAS ONE THING that Mary Hodges, formerly Loquacious, was good at, it was attempting to obey orders. She liked orders. They made the world a simpler place.
What she wasn’t good at was change. She’d really liked the Chattering Order. She’d made friends for the first time. She’d had a room of her own for the first time. Of course, she knew that it was engaged in things which might, from certain viewpoints, be considered bad, but Mary Hodges had seen quite a lot of life in thirty years and had no illusions about what most of the human race had to do in order to make it from one week to the next. Besides, the food was good and you got to meet interesting people.
