Good Omens
* * *
One of the advantages of the Wasabi, as Newt was always keen to point out, was that when it was badly damaged it was very hard to tell. Newt had to keep driving Dick Turpin onto the shoulder to avoid fallen branches.
“You’ve made me drop all the cards on the floor!”
The car thumped back onto the road; a small voice from somewhere under the glove compartment said, “Oil plessure arert.”
“I’ll never be able to sort them out now,” she moaned.
“You don’t have to,” said Newt manically, “Just pick one. Any one. It won’t matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if Agnes is right, and we’re doing all this because she’s predicted it, then any card picked right now has got to be relevant. That’s logic.”
“It’s nonsense.”
“Yeah? Look, you’re even here because she predicted it. And have you thought what we’re going to say to the colonel? If we get to see him, which of course we won’t.”
“If we’re reasonable.. ”
“Listen, I know these kinds of places. They have huge guards made out of teak guarding the gates, Anathema, and they have white helmets and real guns, you understand, which fire real bullets made of real lead which can go right into you and bounce around and come out of the same hole before you can even say ‘Excuse me, we have reason to believe that World War Three is due any moment and they’re going to do the show right here,’ and then they have serious men in suits with bulging jackets who take you into a little room without windows and ask you questions like are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a pinko subversive organization such as any British political party? And—”
“We’re nearly there.”
“Look, it’s got gates and wire fences and everything! And probably the kind of dogs that eat people!”
“I think you’re getting rather overexcited,” said Anathema quietly, picking the last of the file cards up from the floor of the car.
“Overexcited? No! I’m getting very calmly worried that someone might shoot me!”
“I’m sure Agnes would have mentioned it if we were going to be shot. She’s very good at that sort of thing.” She began absentmindedly to shuffle the file cards.
“You know,” she said, carefully cutting the cards and riffling the two piles together, “I read somewhere that there’s a sect that believes that computers are the tools of the Devil. They say that Armageddon will come about because of the Antichrist being good with computers. Apparently it’s mentioned somewhere in Revelations. I think I must have read about it in a newspaper recently …”
“Daily Mail.’Letter From America.’ Um, August the third,” said Newt. “Just after the story about the woman in Worms, Nebraska, who taught her duck to play the accordion.”
“Mm,” said Anathema, spreading the cards face down on her lap.
So computers are tools of the Devil? thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn’t him.
The car jerked to a halt.
The air base looked battered. Several large trees had fallen down near the entrance, and some men with a digger were trying to shift them. The guard on duty was watching them disinterestedly, but he half turned and looked coldly at the car.
“All right,” said Newt. “Pick a card.”
3001. Behinde the Eagle’s
Neste a grate Ash hath fallen.
“Is that all?”
“Yes. We always thought it was something to do with the Russian Revolution. Keep going along this road and turn left.”
The turning led to a narrow lane, with the base’s perimeter fence on the left.. hand side.
“And now pull in here. There’s often cars here, and no one takes any notice,” said Anathema.
“What is this place?”
“It’s the local Lovers’ Lane.”
“Is that why it appears to be paved with rubber?”
They walked along the hedge.. shaded lane for a hundred yards until they reached the ash tree. Agnes had been right. It was quite grate. It had fallen right across the fence.
A guard was sitting on it, smoking a cigarette. He was black. Newt always felt guilty in the presence of black Americans, in case they blamed him for two hundred years of slave trading.
The man stood up when they approached, and then sagged into an easier stance.
“Oh, hi, Anathema,” he said.
“Hi, George. Terrible storm, wasn’t it.”
“Sure was.”
They walked on. He watched them out of sight.
“You know him?” said Newt, with forced nonchalance.
“Oh, sure. Sometimes a few of them come down to the pub. Pleasant enough in a well.. scrubbed way.”
“Would he shoot us if we just walked in?” said Newt.
“He might well point a gun at us in a menacing way,” Anathema
“That’s good enough for me. What do you suggest we do, then?”
“Well, Agnes must have known something. So I suppose we just wait. It’s not too bad now the wind’s gone down.”
“Oh.” Newt looked at the clouds piling up on the horizon. “Good old Agnes,” he said.
* * *
Adam pedalled steadily along the road, Dog running along behind and occasionally trying to bite his back tire out of sheer excitement.
There was a clacking noise and Pepper swung out of her drive. You could always tell Pepper’s bike. She thought it was improved by a piece of cardboard cunningly held against the wheel by a clothes peg. Cats had learned to take evasive action when she was two streets away.
“I reckon we can cut along Drovers Lane and then up through Roundhead Woods,” said Pepper.
“’S all muddy,” said Adam.
“That’s right,” said Pepper nervously. “It gets all muddy up there. We ort to go along by the chalk pit. ‘S always dry because of the chalk. An’ then up by the sewage farm.”
Brian and Wensleydale pulled in behind them. Wensleydale’s bicycle was black, and shiny, and sensible. Brian’s might have been white, once, but its color was lost beneath a thick layer of mud.
“It’s stupid calling it a milit’ry base,” said Pepper. “I went up there when they had that open day and they had no guns or missiles or anythin’. Just knobs and dials and brass bands playin’.”
“Yes,” said Adam.
“Not much milit’ry about knobs and dials,” said Pepper.
“I dunno, reely,” said Adam. “It’s amazin’ what you can do with knobs and dials.”
“I got a kit for Christmas,” Wensleydale volunteered. “All electric bits. There were a few knobs and dials in it. You could make a radio or a thing that goes beep.”