Good Omens

thought. I just wish he’d wash them.

So … tall, dark, but not handsome. She shrugged. Okay. Two out of three isn’t bad.

The figure on the bed began to stir. And Anathema, who in the very nature of things always looked to the future, suppressed her disappointment and said:

“How are we feeling now?”

Newt opened his eyes.

He was lying in a bedroom, and it wasn’t his. He knew this instantly because of the ceiling. His bedroom ceiling still had the model aircraft hanging from bits of cotton. He’d never got around to taking them down.

This ceiling just had cracked plaster. Newt had never been in a woman’s bedroom before, but he sensed that this was one largely by a combination of soft smells. There was a hint of talcum and lily-of-the-valley, and no rank suggestion of old T-shirts that had forgotten what the inside of a tumble-dryer looked like.

He tried to lift his head up, groaned, and let it sink back onto the pillow. Pink, he couldn’t help noticing.

“You banged your head on the steering wheel,” said the voice that had roused him. “Nothing broken, though. What happened?”

Newt opened his eyes again.

“Car all right?” he said.

“Apparently. A little voice inside it keeps repeating ‘Prease to frasten sleat-bert.’”

“See?” said Newt, to an invisible audience. “They knew how to build them in those days. That plastic finish hardly takes a dent.”

He blinked at Anathema.

“I swerved to avoid a Tibetan in the road,” he said. “At least, I think I did. I think I’ve probably gone mad.”

The figure walked around into his line of sight. It had dark hair, and red lips, and green eyes, and it was almost certainly female. Newt tried not to stare. It said, “If you have, no one’s going to notice.” Then she smiled. “Do you know, I’ve never met a witchfinder before?”

“Er—” Newt began. She held up his open wallet.

“I had to look inside,” she said.

Newt felt extremely embarrassed, a not unusual state of affairs. Shadwell had given him an official witchfinder’s warrant card, which among other things charged all beadles, magistrates, bishops, and bailiffs to give him free passage and as much dry kindling as he required. It was incredibly impressive, a masterpiece of calligraphy, and probably quite old. He’d forgotten about it.

“It’s really just a hobby,” he said wretchedly. “I’m really a … a … ” he wasn’t going to say wages clerk, not here, not now, not to a girl like this, “a computer engineer,” he lied. Want to be, want to be; in my heart I’m a computer engineer, it’s only the brain that’s letting me down. “Excuse me, could I know—”

“Anathema Device,” said Anathema. “I’m an occultist, but that’s just a hobby. I’m really a witch. Well done. You’re half an hour late,” she added, handing him a small sheet of cardboard, “so you’d better read this. It’ll save a lot of time.”

NEWT DID IN FACT own a small home computer, despite his boyhood experiences. In fact, he’d owned several. You always knew which ones he owned. They were desktop equivalents of the Wasabi. They were the ones which, for example, dropped to half price just after he’d bought them. Or were launched in a blaze of publicity and disappeared into obscurity within a year. Or only worked at all if you stuck them in a fridge. Or, if by some fluke they were basically good machines, Newt always got the few that were sold with the early, bug-infested version of the operating system. But he persevered, because he believed.

Adam also had a small computer. He used it for playing games, but never for very long. He’d load a game, watch it intently for a few minutes, and then proceed to play it until the High Score counter ran out of zeroes.

When the other Them wondered about this strange skill, Adam professed mild amazement that everyone didn’t play games like this.

“All you have to do is learn how to play it, and then it’s just easy,” he said.

QUITE A LOT OF THE FRONT parlor in Jasmine Cottage was taken up, Newt noticed with a sinking feeling, with piles of newspapers. Clippings were stuck around the walls. Some of them had bits circled in red ink. He was mildly gratified to spot several he had cut out for Shadwell.

Anathema owned very little in the way of furniture. The only thing she’d bothered to bring with her had been her clock, one of the family heirlooms. It wasn’t a full-cased grandfather clock, but a wall clock with a free-swinging pendulum that E. A. Poe would cheerfully have strapped someone under.

Newt kept finding his eye drawn to it.

“It was built by an ancestor of mine,” said Anathema, putting the coffee cups down on the table. “Sir Joshua Device. You may have heard of him? He invented the little rocking thing that made it possible to build accurate clocks cheaply? They named it after him.”

“The Joshua?” said Newt guardedly.