Good Omens

The Four halted a few meters away.

IT HAS BEEN DONE, said Death. He leaned forward a little and stared eyelessly at Adam. It was hard to tell if he was surprised.

“Yes, well,” said Adam. “The thing is, I don’t want it done. I never asked for it to be done.”

Death looked at the other three, and then back to Adam.

Behind them a jeep skewed to a halt. They ignored it.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, he said. SURELY YOUR VERY EXISTENCE REQUIRES THE ENDING OF THE WORLD. IT IS WRITTEN.

“I dunt see why anyone has to go an’ write things like that,” said Adam calmly. “The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven’t found out all about it yet, so I don’t want anyone messing it about or endin’ it before I’ve had a chance to find out about it. So you can all just go away.”

(“That’s the one, Mr. Shadwell,” said Aziraphale, his words trailing into uncertainty even as he uttered them, “the one with T.. shirt … ”)

Death stared at Adam.

“You … are part … of us,” said War, between teeth like beautiful bullets.

“It is done. We make … the … world … anew,” said Pollution, his voice as insidious as something leaking out of a corroded drum into a water table.

“You … lead … us,” said Famine.

And Adam hesitated. Voices inside him still cried out that this was true, and that the world was his as well, and all he had to do was turn and lead them out across a bewildered planet. They were his kind of people.

In tiers above, the hosts of the sky waited for the Word.

(“Ye canna want me to shoot him! He’s but a bairn!”

“Er,” said Aziraphale. “Er. Yes. Perhaps we’d just better wait a bit, what do you think?”

“Until he grows up, do you mean?” said Crowley.)

Dog began to growl.

Adam looked at the Them. They were his kind of people, too.

You just had to decide who your friends really were.

He turned back to the Four.

“Get them,” said Adam, quietly.

The slouch and slur was gone from his voice. It had strange harmonics. No one human could disobey a voice like that.

War laughed, and looked expectantly at the Them.

“Little boys,” she said, “playing with your toys. Think of all the toys I can offer you … think of all the games. I can make you fall in love with me, little boys. Little boys with your little guns.”

She laughed again, but the machine.. gun stutter died away as Pepper stepped forward and raised a trembling arm.

It wasn’t much of a sword, but it was about the best you could do with two bits of wood and a piece of string. War stared at it.

“I see,” she said. “Mano a mano, eh?” She drew her own blade and brought it up so that it made a noise like a finger being dragged around a wineglass.

There was a flash as they connected.

Death stared into Adam’s eyes.

There was a pathetic jingling noise.

“Don’t touch it!” snapped Adam, without moving his head.

The Them stared at the sword rocking to a standstill on the concrete path.

“ ‘Little boys,’ ” muttered Pepper, disgustedly. Sooner or later everyone has to decide which gang they belong to.

“But, but,” said Brian, “she sort of got sucked up the sword.. ”

The air between Adam and Death began to vibrate, as in a heatwave.

Wensleydale raised his head and looked Famine in the sunken eye. He held up something that, with a bit of imagination, could be considered to be a pair of scales made of more string and twigs. Then he whirled it around his head.

Famine stuck out a protective arm.

There was another flash, and then the jingle of a pair of silver scales bouncing on the ground.

“Don’t … touch … them,” said Adam.

Pollution had already started to run, or at least to flow quickly, but Brian snatched the circle of grass stalks from his own head and flung it. It shouldn’t have handled like one, but a force took it out of his hands and it whirred like a discus.

This time the explosion was a red flame inside a billow of black smoke, and it smelled of oil.

With a rolling, tinny little sound a blackened silver crown bowled out of the smoke and then spun round with a noise like a settling penny.

At least they needed no warning about touching it. It glistened in a way that metal should not.

“Where’d they go?” said Wensley.

WHERE THEY BELONG, said Death, still holding Adam’s gaze. WHERE THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. BACK IN THE MINDS OF MAN.

He grinned at Adam.

There was a tearing sound. Death’s robe split and his wings unfolded. Angel’s wings. But not of feathers. They were wings of night, wings that were shapes cut through the matter of creation into the darkness underneath, in which a few distant lights glimmered, lights that may have been stars or may have been something entirely else.

BUT I, he said, AM NOT LIKE THEM. I AM AZRAEL, CREATED TO BE CREATION’S SHADOW. YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME. THAT WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD.

The heat of their stare faded. Adam scratched his nose.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “There might be a way.” He grinned back.

“Anyway, it’s going to stop now,” he said. “All this stuff with the machines. You’ve got to do what I say just for now, and I say it’s got to stop.”

Death shrugged. IT IS STOPPING ALREADY, he said. WITHOUT THEM, he indicated the pathetic remnants of the other three Horsepersons, IT CANNOT PROCEED. NORMAL ENTROPY TRIUMPHS. Death raised a bony hand in what might have been a salute.

THEY’LL BE BACK, he said. THEY’RE NEVER FAR AWAY.

The wings flapped, just once, like a thunderclap, and the angel of Death vanished.

“Right, then,” said Adam, to the empty air. “All right. It’s not going to happen. All the stuff they started.. it must stop now. ”

* * * * *

ewt stared desperately at the equipment racks.

“You’d think there’d be a manual or something,” he said.

“We could see if Agnes has anything to say,” volunteered Anathema.

“Oh, yes,” said Newt bitterly. “That makes sense, does it? Sabotaging twentieth.. century electronics with the aid of a seventeenth.. century workshop manual? What did Agnes Nutter know of the transistor?”

“Well, my grandfather interpreted prediction 3328 rather neatly in 1948 and made some very shrewd investments,” said Anathema. “She didn’t know what it was going to be called, of course, and she wasn’t very sound about electricity in general, but.. ”

“I was speaking rhetorically.”

“You don’t have to make it work, anyway. You have to stop it working. You don’t need knowledge for that, you need ignorance.”