so well, he’d had it really under his thumb these few centuries. That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you. The Great War, the Last Battle. Heaven versus Hell, three rounds, one Fall, no submission. And that’d be that. No more world. That’s what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.
Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.
But there was no getting out of it. You couldn’t be a demon and have free will.
. . . I will not let you go (let him go) …
Well, at least it wouldn’t be this year. He’d have time to do things. Unload long-term stocks, for a start.
He wondered what would happen if he just stopped the car here, on this dark and damp and empty road, and took the basket and swung it round and round and let go and …
Something dreadful, that’s what.
He’d been an angel once. He hadn’t meant to Fall. He’d just hung around with the wrong people.
The Bentley plunged on through the darkness, its fuel gauge pointing to zero. It had pointed to zero for more than sixty years now. It wasn’t all bad, being a demon. You didn’t have to buy petrol, for one thing. The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.
On the back seat the thing in the basket began to cry; the air-raid siren wail of the newly born. High. Wordless. And old.
IT WAS QUITE A NICE HOSPITAL, thought Mr. Young. It would have been quiet, too, if it wasn’t for the nuns.
He quite liked nuns. Not that he was a, you know, left-footer or anything like that. No, when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, no-nonsense C. of E., and he wouldn’t have dreamed of avoiding going to any other. All the others had the wrong smell—floor polish for the Low, somewhat suspicious incense for the High. Deep in the leather armchair of his soul, Mr. Young knew that God got embarrassed at that sort of thing.
But he liked seeing nuns around, in the same way that he liked seeing the Salvation Army. It made you feel that it was all all right, that people somewhere were keeping the world on its axis.
This was his first experience of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, however.3 Deirdre had run across them while being involved in one of her causes, possibly the one involving lots of unpleasant South Americans fighting other unpleasant South Americans and the priests egging them on instead of getting on with proper priestly concerns, like organizing the church cleaning rota.
The point was, nuns should be quiet. They were the right shape for it, like those pointy things you got in those chambers Mr. Young was vaguely aware your hi-fi got tested in. They shouldn’t be, well, chattering all the time.
He filled his pipe with tobacco—well, they called it tobacco, it wasn’t what he thought of as tobacco, it wasn’t the tobacco you used to get—and wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something. He shifted his position awkwardly, and glanced at his watch.
One thing, though: At least the nuns had put their foot down about him being present at the birth. Deirdre had been all for it. She’d been reading things again. One kid already and suddenly she’s declaring that this confinement was going to be the most joyous and sharing experience two human beings could have. That’s what came of letting her order her own newspapers. Mr. Young distrusted papers whose inner pages had names like “Lifestyle” or “Options.”
Well, he hadn’t got anything against joyous sharing experiences. Joyous sharing experiences were fine by him. The world probably needed more joyous sharing experiences. But he had made it abundantly clear that this was one joyous sharing experience Deirdre could have by herself.