He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, squinted down at the plug, and put down the screwdriver.
He had high hopes for it this time; he had followed all the instructions on plug-changing on page five of the Boy’s Own Book Of Practical Electronics, Including A Hundred and One Safe and Educational Things to Do With Electricity. He had attached the correct color-coded wires to the correct pins; he’d checked that it was the right amperage fuse; he’d screwed it all back together. So far, no problems.
He plugged it in to the socket. Then he switched the socket on.
Every light in the house went out.
Newton beamed with pride. He was getting better. Last time he’d done it he’d blacked out the whole of Dorking, and a man from the Electric had come over and had a word with his mum.
He had a burning and totally unrequited passion for things electrical. They had a computer at school, and half a dozen studious children stayed on after school doing things with punched cards. When the teacher in charge of the computer had finally acceded to Newton’s pleas to be allowed to join them, Newton had only ever got to feed one little card into the machine. It had chewed it up and choked fatally on it.
Newton was certain that the future was in computers, and when the future arrived he’d be ready, in the forefront of the new technology.
The future had its own ideas on this. It was all in The Book.
ADAM, THOUGHT MR. YOUNG. He tried saying it, to see how it sounded. “Adam.” Hmm …
He stared down at the golden curls of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness.
“You know,” he concluded, after a while, “I think he actually looks like an Adam.”
IT HAD NOT BEEN A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.
The dark and stormy night occurred two days later, about four hours after both Mrs. Dowling and Mrs. Young and their respective babies had left the building. It was a particularly dark and stormy night, and just after midnight, as the storm reached its height, a bolt of lightning struck the Convent of the Chattering Order, setting fire to the roof of the vestry.
No one was badly hurt by the fire, but it went on for some hours, doing a fair amount of damage in the process.
The instigator of the fire lurked on a nearby hilltop and watched the blaze. He was tall, thin, and a Duke of Hell. It was the last thing that needed to be done before his return to the nether regions, and he had done it.
He could safely leave the rest to Crowley.
Hastur went home.
TECHNICALLY AZIRAPHALE was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days.
On the whole, neither he nor Crowley would have chosen each other’s company, but they were both men, or at least men-shaped creatures, of the world, and the Arrangement had worked to their advantage all this time. Besides, you grew accustomed to the only other face that had been around more or less consistently for six millennia.
The Arrangement was very simple, so simple in fact that it didn’t really deserve the capital letter, which it had got for simply being in existence for so long. It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies. It meant a tacit non-interference in certain of each other’s activities. It made certain that while neither really won, also neither really lost, and both were able to demonstrate to their masters the great strides they were making against a cunning and well-informed adversary.
It meant that Crowley had been allowed to develop Manchester, while Aziraphale had a free hand in the whole of Shropshire. Crowley took Glasgow, Aziraphale had Edinburgh (neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes,7 but both reported it as a success).
And then, of course, it had seemed even natural that they should, as it were, hold the fort for one another whenever common sense dictated. Both were of angel stock, after all. If one was going to Hull for a quick temptation, it made sense to nip across the city and carry out a