Good Omens (23 page)

“Oh?” Newt looked politely blank.

“President Kennedy was assassinated,” said Anathema helpfully. “But Dallas didn't exist then, you see. Whereas King's Lynn was quite important.”

“Oh.”

“She was generally very good if her descendants were involved.”

“Oh?”

“And she wouldn't know anything about the internal combustion engine. To her they were just funny chariots. Even my mother thought it referred to an Emperor's carriage overturning. You see, it's not enough to know what the future
is
. You have to know what it
means
. Agnes was like someone looking at a huge picture down a tiny little tube. She wrote down what seemed like good advice based on what she understood of the tiny little glimpses.

“Sometimes you can be lucky,” Anathema went on. “My great-grandfather worked out about the stock market crash of 1929, for example, two days before it actually happened. Made a fortune. You could say we're professional descendants.”

She looked sharply at Newt. “You see, what no one ever realized until about two hundred years ago is that
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies
was Agnes's idea of a family heirloom. Many of the prophecies relate to her descendants and their well-being. She was sort of trying to look after us after she'd gone. That's the reason for the King's Lynn prophecy, we think. My father was visiting there at the time, so from Agnes's point of view, while he was unlikely to be struck by stray rounds from Dallas, there was a good chance he might be hit by a brick.”

“What a nice person,” said Newt. “You could almost overlook her blowing up an entire village.”

Anathema ignored this. “Anyway, that's about it,” she said. “Ever since then we've made it our job to interpret them. After all, it averages out at about one prophecy a month—more now, in fact, as we get closer to the end of the world.”

“And when is that going to be?” said Newt.

Anathema looked meaningfully at the clock.

He gave a horrible little laugh that he hoped sounded suave and worldly. After the events so far today, he wasn't feeling very sane. And he could smell Anathema's perfume, which made him uncomfortable.

“Think yourself lucky I don't need a stopwatch,” said Anathema. “We've got, oh, about five or six hours.”

Newt turned this over in his mind. Thus far in his life he'd never had the urge to drink alcohol, but something told him there had to be a first time.

“Do witches keep drink in the house?” he ventured.

“Oh, yes.” She smiled the sort of smile Agnes Nutter probably smiled when unpacking the contents of her lingerie drawer. “Green bubbly stuff with strange Things squirming on the congealing surface.
You
should know that.”

“Fine. Got any ice?”

It turned out to be gin. There was ice. Anathema, who had picked up witchcraft as she went along, disapproved of liquor in general but approved of it in her specific case.

“Did I tell you about the Tibetan coming out of a hole in the road?” Newt said, relaxing a bit.

“Oh, I know about them,” she said, shuffling the papers on the table. “The two of them came out of the front lawn yesterday. The poor things were quite bewildered, so I gave them a cup of tea and then they borrowed a spade and went down again. I don't think they quite know what they're supposed to be doing.”

Newt felt slightly aggrieved. “How did
you
know they were
Tibetan
?” he said.

“If it comes to that, how did you know? Did he go ‘Ommm' when you hit him?”

“Well, he—he looked Tibetan,” said Newt. “Saffron robes, bald head … you know … Tibetan.”

“One of mine spoke quite good English. It seems that one minute he was repairing radios in Lhasa, next minute he was in a tunnel. He doesn't know how he's going to get home.”

“If you'd sent him up the road, he could probably have got a lift on a flying saucer,” said Newt gloomily.

“Three aliens? One of them a little tin robot?”

“They landed on your lawn too, did they?”

“It's about the only place they didn't land, according to the radio. They keep coming down all over the world delivering a short trite message of cosmic peace, and when people say ‘Yes, well?' they give them a blank look and take off again. Signs and portents, just like Agnes said.”

“You're going to tell me she predicted all this too, I suppose?”

Agnes leafed through a battered card index in front of her.

“I kept meaning to put it all on computer,” she said. “Word searches and so forth. You know? It'd make it a lot simpler. The prophecies are arranged in any old order but there are clues, handwriting and so.”

“She did it all in a card index?” said Newt.

“No. A book. But I've, er, mislaid it. We've always had copies, of course.”

“Lost it, eh?” said Newt, trying to inject some humor into the proceedings. “Bet she didn't foresee that!”

Anathema glowered at him. If looks could kill, Newt would have been on a slab.

Then she went on: “We've built up quite a concordance over the years, though, and my grandfather came up with a useful cross-referencing system … ah. Here we are.”

She pushed a sheet of paper in front of Newt.

3988. Whene menne of crocus come frome the Earth and green manne frome thee Sky, yette ken not why, and Pluto's barres quitte the lightning castels, and sunken landes riseth, and Leviathan runneth free, and Brazil is vert, then Three cometh together and Four arise, upon iron horses ride; I tell you the ende draweth nigh. [. . . Crocus = saffron (cf.2003) . . . Aliens … ?? . . . paratroops? . . . nuclear power stations (see cuttings Nos. 798–806) Atlantis, cuttings 812–819 . . . leviathan = whale (cf.1981)? South America is green? ? 3 = 4? Railways? (‘iron road,' cf.2675)]

“I didn't get all of this one in advance,” Anathema admitted. “I filled it in after listening to the news.”

“You must be incredibly good at crosswords in your family,” said Newt.

“I think Agnes is getting a bit out of her depth here, anyway. The bits about leviathan and South America and threes and fours could mean anything.” She sighed. “The problem is newspapers. You never know if Agnes is referring to some tiny little incident that you might miss. Do you know how long it takes to go through
every
daily paper
thoroughly
every morning?”

“Three hours and ten minutes,” said Newt automatically.

“I EXPECT WE'LL GET a medal or something,” said Adam optimistically. “Rescuing a man from a blazing wreck.”

“It wasn't blazing,” said Pepper. “It wasn't even very wrecked when we put it back rightside up.”

“It
could
of been,” Adam pointed out. “I don't see why we shouldn't have a medal just because some old car doesn't know when to catch fire.”

They stood looking down at the hole. Anathema had called the police, who had put it down to subsidence and put some cones around it; it was dark, and went down a long way.

“Could be good fun, going to Tibet,” said Brian. “We could learn marital arts and stuff. I saw this old film where there's this valley in Tibet and everyone there lives for hundreds of years. It's called Shangri-La.”

“My aunt's bungalow's called Shangri-La,” said Wensleydale.

Adam snorted.

“Not very clever, naming a valley after some ole bungalow,” he said. “Might as well call it Dunroamin', or, or The Laurels.”

“'S lot better than Shambles, anyway,” said Wensleydale mildly.

“Shambala,” corrected Adam.

“I expect it's the same place. Prob'ly got both names,” said Pepper, with unusual diplomacy. “Like our house. We changed the name from The Lodge to Norton View when we moved in, but we still get letters addressed to Theo C. Cupier, The Lodge. Perhaps they've named it Shambala now but people still call it The Laurels.”

Adam flicked a pebble into the hole. He was becoming bored with Tibetans.

“What shall we do now?” said Pepper. “They're dipping sheep over at Norton Bottom Farm. We could go and help.”

Adam threw a larger stone into the hole, and waited for the thump. It didn't come.

“Dunno,” he said distantly. “I reckon we should do something about whales and forests and suchlike.”

“Like what?” said Brian, who enjoyed the diversions available at a good sheep-dipping. He began to empty his pockets of crisp packets and drop them, one by one, into the hole.

“We could go into Tadfield this afternoon and not have a hamburger,” said Pepper. “If all four of us don't have one, that's millions of acres of rainforest they won't have to cut down.”

“They'll be cutting 'em down anyway,” said Wensleydale.

“It's grass materialism again,” said Adam. “Same with the whales. It's amazin', the stuff that's goin' on.” He stared at Dog.

He was feeling very odd.

The little mongrel, noticing the attention, balanced expectantly on its hind legs.

“'S people like you that's eating all the whales,” said Adam severely. “I bet you've used up nearly a whole whale already.”

Dog, one last tiny satanic spark of his soul hating himself for it, put his head on one side and whined.

“'S gonna be a fine ole world to grow up in,” Adam said. “No whales, no air, and everyone paddlin' around because of the seas risin'.”

“Then the Atlantisans'd be the only ones well off,” said Pepper cheerfully.

“Huh,” said Adam, not really listening.

Something was happening inside his head. It was aching. Thoughts were arriving there without him having to think them. Something was saying,
You can do something, Adam Young. You can make it all better. You can do anything you want
. And what was saying this to him was … him. Part of him, deep down. Part of him that had been attached to him all these years and not really noticed, like a shadow. It was saying: yes, it's a rotten world. It could have been great. But now it's rotten, and it's time to do something about it. That's what you're here for. To make it all better.

“Because they'd be able to go everywhere,” Pepper went on, giving him a worried look. “The Atlantisans, I mean. Because—”

“I'm fed up with the ole Atlantisans and Tibetans,” snapped Adam.

They stared at him. They'd never seen him like this before.

“It's all very well for
them
,” said Adam. “Everyone's goin' around usin' up all the whales and coal and oil and ozone and rainforests and that, and there'll be none left for us. We should be goin' to Mars and stuff, instead of sittin' around in the dark and wet with the air spillin' away.”

This wasn't the old Adam the Them knew. The Them avoided one another's faces. With Adam in this mood, the world seemed a chillier place.

“Seems to me,” said Brian, pragmatically, “seems to
me
, the best thing you could do about it is stop readin' about it.”

“It's like you said the other day,” said Adam. “You grow up readin' about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus' when you think the world's all full of amazin' things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste hang-in' about for millions of years. 'Snot worth growin' up for, if you ask my opinion.”

The Them exchanged glances.

There
was
a shadow over the whole world. Storm clouds were building up in the north, the sunlight glowing yellow off them as though the sky had been painted by an enthusiastic amateur.

“Seems to me it ought to be rolled up and started all over again,” said Adam.

That hadn't sounded like Adam's voice.

A bitter wind blew through the summer woods.

Adam looked at Dog, who tried to stand on his head. There was a distant mutter of thunder. He reached down and patted the dog absentmindedly.

“Serve everyone right if all the nucular bombs went off and it all started again, only prop'ly organized,” said Adam. “Sometimes I think that's what I'd like to happen. An' then we could sort everythin' out.”

The thunder growled again. Pepper shivered. This wasn't the normal Them mobius bickering, which passed many a slow hour. There was a look in Adam's eye that his friend couldn't quite fathom—not devilment, because that was more or less there all the time, but a sort of blank grayness that was far worse.

“Well, I dunno about
we,”
Pepper tried. “Dunno about the
we
, because, if there's all these bombs goin' off, we all get blown up. Speaking as a mother of unborn generations, I'm against it.”

They looked at her curiously. She shrugged.

“And then giant ants take over the world,” said Wensleydale nervously. “I saw this film. Or you go around with sawn-off shotguns and everyone's got these cars with, you know, knives and guns stuck on—”

“I wouldn't allow any giant ants or anything like that,” said Adam, brightening up horribly. “And you'd all be all right. I'd see to that. It'd be
wicked
, eh, to have all the world to ourselves. Wouldn't it? We could share it out. We could have amazing games. We could have War with real armies an' stuff.”

“But there wouldn't be any
people,”
said Pepper.

“Oh, I could make us some people,” said Adam airily. “Good enough for armies, at any rate. We could all have a quarter of the world each. Like,
you”
—he pointed to Pepper, who recoiled as though Adam's finger were a white-hot poker—”could have Russia because it's red and you've got red hair, right? And Wensley can have America, and Brian can have, can have Africa and Europe, an', an'—”

Even in their state of mounting terror the Them gave this the consideration it deserved.