Good Omens

“Then someone else must be interfering.”

“There isn’t anyone else! There’s just us, right? Good and Evil. One side or the other.”

He thumped the steering wheel.

“You’ll be amazed at the kind of things they can do to you, down there,” he said.

“I imagine they’re very similar to the sort of things they can do to one up there,” said Aziraphale.

“Come off it. Your lot get ineffable mercy,” said Crowley sourly.

“Yes? Did you ever visit Gomorrah?”

“Sure,” said the demon. “There was this great little tavern where you could get these terrific fermented date.. palm cocktails with nutmeg and crushed lemongrass.. ”

“I meant afterwards.”

“Oh.”

Aziraphale said: “Something must have happened in the hospital.”

“It couldn’t have! It was full of our people!”

“Whose people?” said Aziraphale coldly.

“My people,” corrected Crowley. “Well, not my people. Mmm, you know. Satanists.”

He tried to say it dismissively. Apart from, of course, the fact that the world was an amazing interesting place which they both wanted to enjoy for as long as possible, there were few things that the two of them agreed on, but they did see eye to eye about some of those people who, for one reason or another, were inclined to worship the Prince of Darkness. Crowley always found them embarrassing. You couldn’t actually be rude to them, but you couldn’t help feeling about them the same way that, say, a Vietnam veteran would feel about someone who wears combat gear to Neighborhood Watch meetings.

Besides, they were always so depressingly enthusiastic. Take all that stuff with the inverted crosses and pentagrams and cockerels. It mystified most demons. It wasn’t the least bit necessary. All you needed to become a Satanist was an effort of will. You could be one all your life without ever knowing what a pentagram was, without ever seeing a dead cockerel other than as Chicken Marengo.

Besides, some of the old.. style Satanists tended, in fact, to be quite nice people. They mouthed the words and went through the motions, just like the people they thought of as their opposite numbers, and then went home and lived lives of mild unassuming mediocrity for the rest of the week with never an unusually evil thought in their heads.

And as for the rest of it …

There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn’t just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They’d come up with some stomach.. churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully.. functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart.. stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

“Huh,” said Aziraphale. “Satanists.”

“I don’t see how they could have messed it up,” said Crowley. “I mean, two babies. It’s not exactly taxing, is it …?” He stopped. Through the mists of memory he pictured a small nun, who had struck him at the time as being remarkably loose.. headed even for a Satanist. And there had been someone else. Crowley vaguely recalled a pipe, and a cardigan with the kind of zigzag pattern that went out of style in 1938. A man with “expectant father” written all over him.

There must have been a third baby.

He told Aziraphale.

“Not a lot to go on,” said the angel.

“We know the child must be alive,” said Crowley, “so.. ”

“How do we know?”

“If it had turned up Down There again, do you think I’d still be sitting here?”

“Good point.”

“So all we’ve got to do is find it,” said Crowley. “Go through the hospital records.” The Bentley’s engine coughed into life and the car leapt forward, forcing Aziraphale back into the seat.

“And then what?” he said.

“And then we find the child.”

“And then what?” The angel shut his eyes as the car crabbed around a corner.

“Don’t know.”

“Good grief.”

“I suppose.. get off the road you clown.. your people wouldn’t consider.. .. and the scooter you rode in onl.. giving me asylum?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.. Watch out for that pedestrian!”

“It’s on the street, it knows the risks it’s taking!” said Crowley, easing the accelerating car between a parked car and a taxi and leaving a space which would have barely accepted even the best credit card.

“Watch the roadl Watch the road! Where is this hospital, anyway?”

“Somewhere south of Oxford!”

Aziraphale grabbed the dashboard. “You can’t do ninety miles an hour in Central London!”

Crowley peered at the dial. “Why not?” he said.

“You’ll get us killed!” Aziraphale hesitated. “Inconveniently discorporated,” he corrected, lamely, relaxing a little. “Anyway, you might kill other people.”

Crowley shrugged. The angel had never really come to grips with the twentieth century, and didn’t realize that it is perfectly possible to do ninety miles an hour down Oxford Street. You just arranged matters so that no one was in the way. And since everyone knew that it was impossible to do ninety miles an hour down Oxford Street, no one noticed.

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 ‘bebop’?’ said Crowley.

“Ah, this is more like it. Tchaikovsky,” said Aziraphale, opening a case and slotting its cassette into the Blaupunkt.