Good Omens

“They should be done away with this minute.”

“Serve them right for not bubblin’,” said Adam.

Anathema nodded. She was still trying to put her finger on what was so odd about Adam, and then she realized what it was.

He had no aura.

She was quite an expert on auras. She could see them, if she stared hard enough. They were a little glow of light around people’s heads, and according to a book she’d read the color told you things about their health and general well-being. Everyone had one. In mean-minded, closed-in people they were a faint, trembling outline, whereas expansive and creative people might have one extending several inches from the body.

She’d never heard of anyone without one, but she couldn’t see one around Adam at all. Yet he seemed cheerful, enthusiastic, and as well-balanced as a gyroscope.

Maybe I’m just tired, she thought.

Anyway, she was pleased and gratified to find such a rewarding student, and even loaned him some copies of New Aquarian Digest, a small magazine edited by a friend of hers.

It changed his life. At least, it changed his life for that day.

To his parents’ astonishment he went to bed early, and then lay under the blankets until after midnight with a torch, the magazines, and a bag of lemon drops. The occasional “Brilliant!” emerged from his ferocious-chewing mouth.

When the batteries ran out he emerged into the darkened room and lay back with his head pillowed in his hands, apparently watching the squadron of X-wing™ fighters that hung from the ceiling. They moved gently in the night breeze.

But Adam wasn’t really watching them. He was staring instead into the brightly lit panorama of his own imagination, which was whirling like a fairground.

This wasn’t Wensleydale’s aunt and a wineglass. This sort of occulting was a lot more interesting.

Besides, he liked Anathema. Of course, she was very old, but when Adam liked someone he wanted to make them happy.

He wondered how he could make Anathema happy.

It used to be thought that the events that changed the world

were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in

the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

Somewhere in Adam’s sleeping head, a butterfly had emerged.

It might, or might not, have helped Anathema get a clear view of things if she’d been allowed to spot the very obvious reason why she couldn’t see Adam’s aura.

It was for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can’t see England.

&nb

sp; Alarms went off.

Of course, there’s nothing special about alarms going off in the control room of a nuclear power station. They do it all the time. It’s because there are so many dials and meters and things that something important might not get noticed if it doesn’t at least beep.

And the job of Shift Charge Engineer calls for a solid, capable, unflappable kind of man, the kind you can depend upon not to make a beeline for the car-park in an emergency. The kind of man, in fact, who gives the impression of smoking a pipe even when he’s not.

It was 3:00 A.M. in the control room of Turning Point power station, normally a nice quiet time when there is nothing much to do but fill in the log and listen to the distant roar of the turbines.

Until now.

Horace Gander looked at the flashing red lights. Then he looked at some dials. Then he looked at the faces of his fellow workers. Then he raised his eyes to the big dial at the far end of the room. Four hundred and twenty practically dependable and very nearly cheap megawatts were leaving the station. According to the other dials, nothing was producing them.

He didn’t say “That’s weird.” He wouldn’t have said “That’s weird” if a flock of sheep had cycled past playing violins. It wasn’t the sort of thing a responsible engineer said.

What he did say was: “Alf, you’d better ring the station manager.”