Good Omens

beside her, weighed and nametagged. Sister Mary, who had been brought up to be helpful, removed the nametag, copied it out, and attached the duplicate to the baby in her care.
    The babies looked similar, both being small, blotchy, and looking sort of, though not really, like Winston Churchill.
    Now, thought Sister Mary, I could do with a nice cup of tea.
    Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They’d been brought up to it and weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights. And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. Besides, Sister Mary was a nurse and nurses, whatever their creed, are primarily nurses, which had a lot to do with wearing your watch upside down, keeping calm in emergencies, and dying for a cup of tea. She hoped someone would come soon; she’d done the important bit, now she wanted her tea.
    It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
    There was a knock at the door. She opened it.
    â€œHas it happened yet?” asked Mr. Young. “I’m the father. The husband. Whatever. Both.”
    Sister Mary had expected the American Cultural Attaché to look like Blake Carrington or J. R. Ewing. Mr. Young didn’t look like any American she’d ever seen on television, except possibly for the avuncular sheriff in the better class of murder mystery. 4 He was something of a disappointment. She didn’t think much of his cardigan, either.
    She swallowed her disappointment. “Oooh, yes,” she said. “Congratulations. Your lady wife’s asleep, poor pet.”
    Mr. Young looked over her shoulder. “Twins ?” he said. He reached for his pipe. He stopped reaching for his pipe. He reached for it again. “Twins? No one said anything about twins.”
    â€œOh, no!” said Sister Mary hurriedly. “This one’s yours. The other one’s … er … someone else’s. Just looking after him till Sister Grace gets back. No,” she reiterated, pointing to 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, “this one’s definitely yours. From the top of his head to the tips of his hoofywoofies—which he hasn’t got,” she added hastily.
    Mr. Young peered down.
    â€œAh, yes,” he said doubtfully. “He looks like my side of the family. All, er, present and correct, is he?”
    â€œOh, yes,” said Sister Mary. “He’s a very normal child,” she added. “Very, very normal.”
    There was a pause. They stared at the sleeping baby.
    â€œYou don’t have much of an accent,” said Sister Mary. “Have you been over here long?”
    â€œAbout ten years,” said Mr. Young, mildly puzzled. “The job moved, you see, and I had to move with it.”
    â€œIt must be a very exciting job, I’ve always thought,” said Sister Mary. Mr. Young looked gratified. Not everyone appreciated the more stimulating aspects of cost accountancy.
    â€œI expect it was very different where you were before,” Sister Mary went on.
    â€œI suppose so,” said Mr. Young, who’d never really thought about it. Luton, as far as he could remember, was pretty much like Tadfield. The same sort of hedges between your house and the railway station. The same sort of people.
    â€œTaller buildings, for one thing,” said Sister Mary, desperately.
    Mr. Young stared at her. The only one he could think of was the Alliance and Leicester offices.
    â€œAnd I expect you go to a lot of garden parties,” said the nun.
    Ah. He was on firmer ground here. Deirdre was very keen on that sort of thing.
    â€œLots,” he said,