Attack of the Cupids (20 page)

And for some reason, she also felt very sticky.

Words seemed to float before her, written on a page she held. They said:
Deny everything
.

Somewhere a voice was speaking, as if from a dream. She could not quite hear the words that it was saying. But she knew what they must be.

It's all your fault, isn't it? You started all of this.

Deny everything.
She couldn't possibly do that. She didn't know how.

It is all your fault, isn't it?
the voice insisted.
It was you.

Yes, she whispered in her mind. Yes, it is. Guilty.

‘Guilty!' squeaked Muddlespot.

There was a huge, shocked silence.

‘What're yer doin'?'
hissed the cupid beside him.

Muddlespot could not answer. He could not think. He could only look up, and around, at all that huge chamber and the presences within it, centred upon him where he stood quivering in the witness stand.

(Well, not exactly
on
him. Even now the attention, though keenly focused, remained averted from the point of greatest interest.)

There were the vast, living statues, soaring all the
way up to the row of six eyes that peered down like eagles from a cliff-side nest.

There was the woman standing on the platform, with an angel at her side. Both seemed suddenly to have woken up and started to pay him attention.

There was the
huge
angel in the galleries, dark-robed, dark-winged and with eyes that sent blasts of chill through Muddlespot's spine. Muddlespot had felt his presence looming there the moment he had scuttled into the courtroom. He felt it now, bearing down upon him, suddenly intent, like a hunter who has seen something twitch among the grasses. Muddlespot was trying to look everywhere but up. Even so he knew that angel was there.

‘The Witness is not required to enter a plea . . .'
came a voice from high among the heads of the columns.

‘But on a point of order, your Graces,' said the great angel.

He said it in a voice of such cold calm that it got even the living statues' attention.

‘The Statement of the Witness would seem to require clarification. Are we to understand that his Department now accepts responsibility for the answers given to, I believe, 2304(a) through to 6823(d) iii,
including the questions on Adultery, Illegal Marriage, War and Destruction . . .?'

All eyes were on (or near) Muddlespot. His mouth was open, his limbs were locked in terror. He had barely heard what was being said.

To make it worse, in his efforts to avoid looking up at the dark angel, he had glanced to his right and found that there was one set of eyes in the courtroom that were definitely
not
averted. They belonged to a grey-skinned fiend from Pandemonium, seated on the lower benches, who was leaning forward and staring at him. Its gaze seemed to peel back his layers of flesh-coloured paint, as if it suspected something that no one else did.

Somewhere far away a voice seemed to be checking over the list. War, yes. Destruction, yes. Illegal Marriage, pretty much. Adultery – well, no, but that's a detail . . .

The voice sounded like Sally.

‘Yes!' Muddlespot squeaked. ‘Yes we do. It was our fault. We admit it. Everything!'

‘
Wot the
 . . .! ? !' hissed the cupid beside him.

Deny everything
, whispered the papers that he clutched to his chest.

Too late.

‘But . . .' said the smaller angel who stood beside
the woman on the platform. ‘But – if we understand the witness correctly – then I submit, Your Graces, that my client has after all no case to answer?' He sounded as though he could hardly believe it himself.

There was a long and heavy silence.

‘It would seem not,'
said the Voice From On High.

The cupid swore, once, and flew out through the exit like a bumblebee on turbo.

‘
And
that my clients have a claim for redress for wrongful detention, false witness, defamation of character, personal distress, official misconduct and misdirection in each and every one of forty-one hearings over three thousand years?' said the angel on the platform, gathering speed as it emerged from its state of surprise.

‘Don't push your luck,'
said the Voice From On High.

The silence returned.

‘This testimony bears on many cases,'
said the Voice From On High.
‘There are Implications to Consider. The Court will Adjourn.'

Uproar! Voices from everywhere! Angels that were Counsels, Clerks and Ushers, Callers and Trumpeters and Scriveners and Scruplers all appeared in a shining
throng and began arguing furiously with each other about what it all meant. The doors burst open and in rushed a whole host of other Guardians who had spent the last three thousand years waiting for their own humans' cases to be heard, and they all cheered the Guardian on the witness stand and slapped it on the back and tossed it in the air to cries of ‘
Hip, Hip Hoorah!
' and ‘
For he's a Jolly Good Angel
 . . .' and so on. The sudden turmoil tumbled Muddlespot from his place. He was knocked this way, pushed that, lost his footing and found himself crammed up against a table made of rose petals, on which rested an arrow exactly like the one he held in his hand except that its head was gold. The part of his brain that had not completely lost the plot (about 10% of it) remembered that it was here for some reason to do with collecting arrows. Signals fired urgently to his jaw (which was the only part of him capable of gathering anything because his arms, feet and tail were all variously committed at the time). He snatched it in his teeth and squirmed away through the crowd.

Behind him, the woman on the platform looked around. There was a question in her eyes, but no one spoke to her.

Slowly she took a step from her place. Then
another. Then she walked down the stairs and quietly out through the doors: out into Heaven at last, after three thousand years. Behind her on the platform the marks of her feet remained, worn into the stone over the centuries of shifting her weight from one to the other while she waited for her judgement to pass.

In the gallery a slow smile spread over the face of the dark angel.

Bells were ringing. Announcements being sung in urgent harmonies by unseen voices in mid-air. Councils were being called. A pulse of excitement swelled outwards from the Appeals Chamber and ran down the million passages of Heaven, shaking the saints from their contemplations and knocking the doves from their perches. Loud shrieks were heard emanating from the Tower of Love.

Far down the corridors of the Department of Geography, Mishamh heard the commotion. He could not think what it meant. He had never heard anything like it in Heaven before. For a moment he was lost for words. This was bad news because he was taking a class at the time.

Before him, sitting in their neat ranks and rows of a
hundred by a hundred, the souls sensed his hesitation. Immediately a soft murmur rose among them. Eyes went to windows. One actually went to the great double doors of the classroom and peered out. Others craned to see.

Mishamh rapped his desk sternly with the board rubber, rousing a small nebula of stardust.

‘I repeat: the distance from the Sun in which life can exist ranges from eighty-eight million miles to one hundred and thirty million miles from the Sun's surface, that is, less than zero-point-zero-two per cent of the distance to the outermost edge of the solar system. Write it down . . .

‘And the atmospheric pressure that humans could possibly stand ranges from a few kilometres above to a few kilometres below Earth's sea level. That is less than zero-point-two per cent of the distance from the centre of the earth to the outermost edge of the Earth's atmosphere.'

He liked to pause at this point, to give souls who had managed to live their entire lives without once considering how small and precarious was the bubble in which the whole of human history was taking place a chance to see what was coming.

‘Therefore, the slightest alteration in conditions
surrounding the planet would lead to the extinction of all . . .'

The doors slammed open. An angel from the Department of Geography stood in the doorway. A ripple ran through the benches. (This class of souls were still in their first century in Heaven and had yet to settle down properly to the serious business of study.)

‘Doomsday's sent for you,' said the angel to Mishamh.

‘But my lesson . . .'

‘I'm to take it,' said the angel. ‘He wants you down at the Appeals Board. Something's happening.'

Behind him, the unusual murmurs swelled in the corridors of Heaven. More souls had tiptoed to the door now, peering out to see what was happening.

‘Cupids!' cried one in sudden alarm. ‘Everyone hide!'

At once ten thousand souls dived under the benches and tables. Most of them had been nicked by a cupid at some point in their careers. None of them now felt the experience worth repeating.

‘Hurry!' said the angel.

The Lobby of the Law was alive with angels, flapping
and hurrying and buzzing about how everything in Heaven had suddenly been turned upon its head. Muddlespot dodged among them, hiding in the press of people, ducking between legs and under wings. He was knocked this way and then that, tossed like a cork in a high sea. He saw an exit – a hall of pillars that receded into the distance. He struggled towards it. He was sent spinning by a rush of gabbling trumpeters, lost sight of it, saw it again – or maybe it was another that looked just like it. He squeezed between a Choirmaster and a Scribe and scuttled forward. He was nearly there . . .

Ouch!
Fierce taloned hands seized him from behind. He was spun round and slammed bodily into a pillar. Dazed, he looked up.

Two red eyes, set in a grey, leathery face and smouldering like globs of molten lava, looked down upon him.

‘Just a minute,' hissed the fiend from Pandemonium. ‘I'd like a little word with you.'

‘I . . .' gasped Muddlespot.

‘Y'see,' it whispered. ‘
I've
got this strange idea you might not be what you seem to be. What's this? Paint? Thought so. So what's
underneath
, then?'

‘I . . . er . . . secret mission?' Muddlespot ventured.

‘So? But you won't mind telling
me
, about it, will you? Three thousand years I've been waiting here – for nothing! You won't mind coming back down the hole a little bit? Then we can get the squeezers out and have a
nice
long talk about it. And you know what? I really hope it's a very, very special mission. Because I'm going to be soooo disappointed if it isn't . . .'

‘I can't!' squeaked Muddlespot. ‘I've got to—'

‘Oh, yes you can. In fact, I think you really
want
to.'

He didn't want to. He very much didn't want to. If there was one thing even more dangerous than being with the Fluffies it was being with someone from his own side after he had upset them. The fiend was way bigger than him. It had him by both arms and was marching him along. His feet scrabbled on the floor of the Lobby, but the Lobby was of marble and polished to a high degree. He slid. The fiend was working him around the edge of the crowd, back towards the court. He could see the great space opening up beyond the doors. He could see the huge hole in the floor. He was going to have to think of something quickly.

In fact, make that Very Quickly.

Like,
now
.

Think, Muddlespot! Think, if you want to stay joined to your arms and legs!! Think, think, think . . .

Oh-help-oh-help-oh-help-oh . . .

‘Sorry!' cried a young angel, receding rapidly down the pillared hall. In his wake he left Muddlespot spinning like a top. The fiend, who had taken the full force of the impact, lay flat and still on the marble floor.