Good Omens

The hell-hound paused. Deep in its diabolical canine brain it knew that something was wrong, but it was nothing if not obedient and its great sudden love of its Master overcame all misgivings. Who was it to say what size it should be, anyway?

It trotted down the slope to meet its destiny.

Strange, though. It had always wanted to jump up at people but, now, it realized that against all expectation it wanted to wag its tail at the same time.

“YOU SAID IT WAS HIM!” moaned Aziraphale, abstractedly picking the final lump of cream cake from his lapel. He licked his fingers clean.

“It was him,” said Crowley. “I mean, I should know, shouldn’t I?”

“Then someone else must be interfering.”

“There isn’t anyone else! There’s just us, right? Good and Evil. One side or the other.”

He thumped the steering wheel.

“You’ll be amazed at the kind of things they can do to you, down there,” he said.

“I imagine they’re very similar to the sort of things they can do to one up there,” said Aziraphale.

“Come off it. Your lot get ineffable mercy,” said Crowley sourly.

“Yes? Did you ever visit Gomorrah?”

“Sure,” said the demon. “There was this great little tavern where you could get these terrific fermented date-palm cocktails with nutmeg and crushed lemongrass—”

“I meant afterwards.”

“Oh.”

Aziraphale said: “Something must have happened in the hospital.”

“It couldn’t have! It was full of our people!”

“Whose people?” said Aziraphale coldly.

“My people,” corrected Crowley. “Well, not my people. Mmm, you know. Satanists.”

He tried to say it dismissively. Apart from, of course, the fact that the world was an amazing interesting place which they both wanted to enjoy for as long as possible, there were few things that the two of them agreed on, but they did see eye to eye about some of those people who, for one reason or another, were inclined to worship the Prince of Darkness. Crowley always found them embarrassing. You couldn’t actually be rude to them, but you couldn’t help feeling about them the same way that, say, a Vietnam veteran would feel about someone who wears combat gear to Neighborhood Watch meetings.

Besides, they were always so depressingly enthusiastic. Take all that stuff with the inverted crosses and pentagrams and cockerels. It mystified most demons. It wasn’t the least bit necessary. All you needed to become a Satanist was an effort of will. You could be one all your life without ever knowing what a pentagram was, without ever seeing a dead cockerel other than as Chicken Marengo.

Besides, some of the old-style Satanists tended, in fact, to be quite nice people. They mouthed the words and went through the motions, just like the people they thought of as their opposite numbers, and then went home and lived lives of mild unassuming mediocrity for the rest of the week with never an unusually evil thought in their heads.

And as for the rest of it …

There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn’t just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

“Huh,” said Aziraphale. “Satanists.”

“I don’t see how they could have messed it up,” said Crowley. “I mean, two babies. It’s not exactly taxing, is it … ?” He stopped. Through the mists of memory he pictured a small nun, who had struck him at the time as being remarkably loose-headed

even for a Satanist. And there had been someone else. Crowley vaguely recalled a pipe, and a cardigan with the kind of zigzag pattern that went out of style in 1938. A man with “expectant father” written all over him.

There must have been a third baby.

He told Aziraphale.

“Not a lot to go on,” said the angel.