Good Omens (21 page)

In vain did he point out its 823cc engine, its three-speed gearbox, its incredible safety devices like the balloons which inflated on dangerous occasions such as when you were doing 45 mph on a straight dry road but were about to crash because a huge safety balloon had just obscured the view. He'd also wax slightly lyrical about the Korean-made radio, which picked up Radio Pyongyang incredibly well, and the simulated electronic voice which warned you about not wearing a seatbelt even when you were; it had been programmed by someone who not only didn't understand English, but didn't understand Japanese either. It was state of the art, he said.

The art in this case was probably pottery.

His friends nodded and agreed and privately decided that if ever it came to buying a Wasabi or walking, they'd invest in a pair of shoes; it came to the same thing anyway, since one reason for the Wasabi's incredible m.p.g. was that fact that it spent a lot of time waiting in garages while crankshafts and things were in the post from the world's only surviving Wasabi agent in Nigirizushi, Japan.

In that vague, zen-like trance in which most people drive, Newt found himself wondering exactly how you used the pin. Did you say, “I've got a pin, and I'm not afraid to use it”?
Have Pin, Will Travel … The Pinslinger … The Man with the Golden Pin … The Pins of Navarone …

It might have interested Newt to know that, of the thirty-nine thousand women tested with the pin during the centuries of witch-hunting, twenty-nine thousand said “ouch,” nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine didn't feel anything because of the use of the aforesaid retractable pins, and one witch declared that it had miraculously cleared up the arthritis in her leg.

Her name was Agnes Nutter.

She was the Witchfinder Army's great failure.

ONE OF THE EARLY ENTRIES in
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies
concerned Agnes Nutter's own death.

The English, by and large, being a crass and indolent race, were not as keen on burning women as other countries in Europe. In Germany the bonfires were built and burned with regular Teutonic thoroughness. Even the pious Scots, locked throughout history in a long-drawn-out battle with their arch-enemies the Scots, managed a few burnings to while away the long winter evenings. But the English never seemed to have the heart for it.

One reason for this may have to do with the manner of Agnes Nutter's death, which more or less marked the end of the serious witch-hunting craze in England. A howling mob, reduced to utter fury by her habit of going around being intelligent and curing people, arrived at her house one April evening to find her sitting with her coat on, waiting for them.

“Ye're tardie,” she said to them. “I shoulde have beene aflame ten minutes since.”

Then she got up and hobbled slowly through the suddenly silent crowd, out of the cottage, and to the bonfire that had been hastily thrown together on the village green. Legend says that she climbed awkwardly onto the pyre and thrust her arms around the stake behind her.

“Tye yt well,” she said to the astonished witchfinder. And then, as the villagers sidled toward the pyre, she raised her handsome head in the firelight and said, “Gather ye ryte close, goode people. Come close untyl the fire near scorch ye, for I charge ye that alle must see how thee last true wytch in England dies. For wytch I am, for soe I am judgéd, yette I knoe not what my true Cryme may be. And therefore let myne deathe be a messuage to the worlde. Gather ye ryte close, I saye, and
marke well the fate of alle who meddle with suche as theye do notte understande
.”

And, apparently, she smiled and looked up at the sky over the village and added, “That goes for you as welle, yowe daft old foole.”

And after that strange blasphemy she said no more. She let them gag her, and stood imperiously as the torches were put to the dry wood.

The crowd grew nearer, one or two of its members a little uncertain as to whether they'd done the right thing, now they came to think about it.

Thirty seconds later an explosion took out the village green, scythed the valley clean of every living thing, and was seen as far away as Halifax.

There was much subsequent debate as to whether this had been sent by God or by Satan, but a note later found in Agnes Nutter's cottage indicated that any divine or devilish intervention had been materially helped by the contents of Agnes's petticoats, wherein she had with some foresight concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails.

What Agnes also left behind, on the kitchen table beside a note canceling the milk, was a box and a book. There were specific instructions as to what should be done with the box, and equally specific instructions about what should be done with the book; it was to be sent to Agnes's son, John Device.

The people who found it—who were from the next village, and had been woken up by the explosion—considered ignoring the instructions and just burning the cottage, and then looked around at the twinkling fires and nail-studded wreckage and decided not to. Besides, Agnes's note included painfully precise predictions about what would happen to people who did not carry out her orders.

The man who put the torch to Agnes Nutter was a Witchfinder Major. They found his hat in a tree two miles away.

His name, stitched inside on a fairly large piece of tape, was Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, one of England's most assiduous witchfinders, and it might have afforded him some satisfaction to know that his last surviving descendant was now, even if unawares, heading toward Agnes Nutter's last surviving descendant. He might have felt that some ancient revenge was at last going to be discharged.

If he'd known what was actually going to happen when that descendant met her he would have turned in his grave, except that he had never got one.

FIRSTLY, HOWEVER, Newt had to do something about the flying saucer.

It landed in the road ahead of him just as he was trying to find the Lower Tadfield turning and had the map spread over the steering wheel. He had to brake hard.

It looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen.

As he stared over the top of his map, a door in the saucer slid aside with a satisfying whoosh, revealing a gleaming walkway which extended automatically down to the road. Brilliant blue light shone out, outlining three alien shapes. They walked down the ramp. At least, two of them walked. The one that looked like a pepper pot just skidded down it, and fell over at the bottom.

The other two ignored its frantic beeping and walked over to the car quite slowly, in the worldwide approved manner of policemen already compiling the charge sheet in their heads. The tallest one, a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil, rapped on Newt's window. He wound it down. The thing was wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades.

“Morning, sir or madam or neuter,” the thing said. “This your planet, is it?”

The other alien, which was stubby and green, had wandered off into the woods by the side of the road. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw it kick a tree, and then run a leaf through some complicated gadget on its belt. It didn't look very pleased.

“Well, yes. I suppose so,” he said.

The toad stared thoughtfully at the skyline.

“Had it long, have we, sir?” it said.

“Er. Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think.”

The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. “Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we, sir?” it said. “Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Could you tell me your planet's albedo, sir?” said the toad, still staring levelly at the horizon as though it was doing something interesting.

“Er. No.”

“Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir.”

“Oh, dear,” said Newt. He was wondering who he could tell about this, and realizing that there was absolutely no one who would believe him.

The toad bent closer. It seemed to be worried about something, insofar as Newt was any judge of the expressions of an alien race he'd never encountered before.

“We'll overlook it on this occasion, sir.”

Newt gabbled. “Oh. Er. I'll see to it—well, when I say
I
, I mean, I think Antarctica or something belongs to every country, or something, and—”

“The fact is, sir, that we have been asked to give you a message.”

“Oh?”

“Message runs ‘We give you a message of universal peace and cosmic harmony an' suchlike.' Message ends,” said the toad.

“Oh.” Newt turned this over in his mind. “Oh. That's very kind.”

“Have you got any idea why we have been asked to bring you this message, sir?” said the toad.

Newt brightened. “Well, er, I suppose,” he flailed, “what with Mankind's, er, harnessing of the atom and—”

“Neither have we, sir.” The toad stood up. “One of them phenomena, I expect. Well, we'd better be going.” It shook its head vaguely, turned around and waddled back to the saucer without another word.

Newt stuck his head out of the window.

“Thank you!”

The small alien walked past the car.

“CO2 level up 0.5 percent,” it rasped, giving him a meaningful look. “You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?”

The two of them righted the third alien, dragged it back up the ramp, and shut the door.

Newt waited for a while, in case there were any spectacular light displays, but it just stood there. Eventually he drove up on the verge and around it. When he looked in his rearview mirror it had gone.

I must be overdoing something, he thought guiltily. But what?

And I can't even tell Shadwell, because he'd probably bawl me out for not counting their nipples.

“ANYWAY,” SAID ADAM, “you've got it all wrong about witches.”

The Them were sitting on a field gate, watching Dog rolling in cowpats. The little mongrel seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

“I've been reading about them,” he said, in a slightly louder voice. “Actually, they've been right all along and it's wrong to persecute 'em with British Inquisitions and stuff.”

“My mother said they were just intelligent women protesting in the only way open to them against the stifling injustices of a male-dominated social hierarchy,” said Pepper.

Pepper's mother lectured at Norton Polytechnic.
³⁰

“Yes, but your mother's always saying things like that,” said Adam, after a while.

Pepper nodded amiably. “And she said, at worst they were just free-thinking worshipers of the progenerative principle.”

“Who's the progenratty principle?” said Wensleydale.

“Dunno. Something to do with maypoles, I think,” said Pepper vaguely.

“Well,
I
thought they worshipped the Devil,” said Brian, but without automatic condemnation. The Them had an open mind on the whole subject of devil worship. The Them had an open mind about
everything
. “Anyway, the Devil'd be better than a stupid maypole.”

“That's where you're wrong,” said Adam. “It's not the Devil. It's another god, or something. With horns.”

“The Devil,” said Brian.

“No,” said Adam patiently. “People just got 'em mixed up. He's just got horns similar. He's called Pan. He's half a goat.”

“Which half?” said Wensleydale.

Adam thought about it.

“The bottom half,” he said at length. “Fancy you not knowin' that. I should of thought everyone knew
that
.”

“Goats haven't got a bottom half,” said Wensleydale. “They've got a front half and a back half. Just like cows.”

They watched Dog some more, drumming their heels on the gate. It was too hot to think.

Then Pepper said, “If he's got goat legs, he shouldn't have horns. They belong to the front half.”

“I didn't make him up, did I?” said Adam, aggrieved. “I was just telling you. It's news to me I made him up. No need to go on at
me
.”

“Anyway,” said Pepper. “This stupid Pot can't go around complaining if people think he's the Devil. Not with having horns on. People are
bound
to say, oh, here comes the Devil.”

Dog started to dig up a rabbit hole.

Adam, who seemed to have a weight on his mind, took a deep breath.

“You don't have to be so
lit'ral
about everything,” he said. “That's the trouble these days. Grass materialism. 'S people like you who go round choppin' down rain forests and makin' holes in the ozone layer. There's a great big hole in the ozone layer 'cos of grass materialism people like you.”

“I can't do anythin' about it,” said Brian automatically. “I'm still paying off on a stupid cucumber frame.”

“It's in the magazine,” said Adam. “It takes millions of acres of rain forest to make one beefburger. And all this ozone is leakin' away because of … ” he hesitated, “people sprayin' the enviroment.”

“And there's whales,” said Wensleydale. “We've got to save 'em.”

Adam looked blank. His plunder of
New Aquarian
's back issues hadn't included anything about whales. Its editors had assumed that the readers were all for saving whales in the same way they assumed that those readers breathed and walked upright.

“There was this program about them,” explained Wensleydale.

“What've we got to save 'em for?” said Adam. He had confused visions of saving up whales until you had enough for a badge.

Wensleydale paused and racked his memory. “Because they can sing. And they've got big brains. There's hardly any of them left. And we don't need to kill them anyway 'cos they only make pet food and stuff.”