Good Omens

recesses of his mack.
    "Sign. Here," he said, leaving a terrible pause between the words.
    Crowley fumbled vaguely in an inside pocket and produced a pen. It was sleek and matte black. It looked as though it could exceed the speed limit.
    "S'nice pen," said Ligur.
    "It can write under water," Crowley muttered.
    "Whatever will they think of next?" mused Ligur.
    "Whatever it is, they'd better think of it quickly," said Hastur. "No. Not A. J. Crowley. Your real name."
    Crowley nodded mournfully, and drew a complex, wiggly sigh on the paper. It glowed redly in the gloom, just for a moment, and then faded.
    "What am I supposed to do with it?" he said.
    "You will receive instructions." Hastur scowled. "Why so worried, Crowley? The moment we have been working for all these centuries is at hands"
    "Yeah. Right," said Crowley. He did not look, now, like the lithe figure that had sprung so lithely from the Bentley a few minutes ago. He had a hunted expression.
    "Our moment of eternal triumph awaits!"
    "Eternal. Yeah," said Crowley.
    "And you will be a tool of that glorious destiny!"
    "Tool. Yeah," muttered Crowley. He picked up the basket as if it might explode. Which, in a manner of speaking, it would shortly do.
    "Er. Okay," he said. "I'll, er, be off then. Shall I? Get it over with. Not that I want to get it over with," he added hurriedly, aware of the things that could happen if Hastur turned in an unfavorable report. "But you know me. Keen."
    The senior demons did not speak.
    "So I'll be popping along," Crowley babbled. "See you guys ar.. see you. Er. Great. Fine. Ciao."
    As the Bentley skidded off into the darkness Ligur said, "Wossat mean?"
    "It's Italian," said Hastur. "I think it means 'food'."
    "Funny thing to say, then." Ligur stared at the retreating taillights. "You trust him?" he said.
    "No," said Hastur.
    "Right," said Ligur. It'd be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.
    * * *

        Crowley, somewhere west of Amersham, hurtled through the night, snatched a tape at random and tried to wrestle it out of its brittle plastic box while staying on the road. The glare of a headlight proclaimed it to be Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Soothing music, that's what he needed.
    He rammed it into the Blaupunkt.
    "Ohshitohshitohshit. Why now? Why me?" he muttered, as the familiar strains of Queen washed over him.
    And suddenly, Freddie Mercury was speaking to him:
    BECAUSE YOU'VE EARNED IT, CROWLEY
    Crowley blessed under his breath. Using electronics as a means of communication had been his idea and Below had, for once, taken it up and, as usual, got it dead wrong. He'd hoped they could be persuaded to subscribe to Cellnet, but instead they just cut in to whatever it happened to be that he was listening to at the time and twisted it.
    Crowley gulped.
    "Thank you very much, lord," he said.
    WE HAVE GREAT FAITH IN YOU, CROWLEY
    "Thank you, lord."
    THIS IS IMPORTANT, CROWLEY
    "I know, I know."
    THIS IS THE BIG ONE, CROWLEY
    "Leave it to me, lord."
    THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING, CROWLEY AND IF IT GOES WRONG, THEN THOSE INVOLVED WILL SUFFER GREATLY. EVEN YOU, CROWLEY ESPECIALLY YOU.
    "Understood, lord."
    HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS, CROWLEY
    And suddenly he knew. He hated that. They could just as easily have told him, they didn't suddenly have to drop chilly knowledge straight into his brain. He had to drive to a certain hospital.
    "I'll be there in five minutes, lord, no problem."
    GOOD. I see a little silhouetto of a man scaramouche scaramouche will you do the fandango ...
    Crowley thumped the wheel. Everything had been going 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