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Aziraphale hesitated.
"There is that, yes."
"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"
"Broadly, broadly. Actually I encourage humans to do the actual thwarting. Because of ineffability, you understand."
"Right. Right. So all you've got to do is thwart. Because if I know anything," said Crowley urgently, "it's that the birth is just the start. It's the upbringing that's important. It's the Influences. Otherwise the child will never learn to use its powers." He hesitated. "At least, not necessarily as intended."
"Certainly our side won't mind me thwarting you," said Aziraphale thoughtfully. "They won't mind that at all."
"Right. It'd be a real feather in your wing." Crowley gave the angel an encouraging smile.
"What will happen to the child if it doesn't get a Satanic upbringing, though?" said Aziraphale.
"Probably nothing. It'll never know."
"But genetics‑"
"Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me."
"And without unopposed Satanic influences‑"
"Well, at worst Hell will have to start all over again. And the Earth gets at least another eleven years. That's got to be worth something, hasn't it?"
Now Aziraphale was looking thoughtful again.
"You're saying the child isn't evil of itself?" he said slowly.
"Potentially
evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped," said Crowley. He shrugged. "Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that."
"I suppose it's got to be worth a try," said the angel. Crowley nodded encouragingly.
"Agreed?" said the demon, holding out his hand.
The angel shook it, cautiously.
"It'll certainly be more interesting than saints," he said.
"And it'll be for the child's own good, in the long run," said Crowley. "We'll be godfathers, sort of. Overseeing his religious upbringing, you might say."
Aziraphale beamed.
"You know, I'd never have thought of that," he said. "Godfathers. Well, I'll be damned."
"It's not too bad," said Crowley, "when you get used to it."
– – -
She was known as Scarlett. At that time she was selling arms, although it was begi
Her hair was true auburn, neither ginger nor brown, but deep and burnished copper‑color, and it fell to her waist in tresses that men would kill for, and indeed often had. Her eyes were a startling orange. She looked twenty‑five, and always had.
She had a dusty, brick‑red truck full of assorted weaponry, and an almost unbelievable skill at getting it across any border in the world. She had been on her way to a small West African country, where a minor civil war was in progress, to make a delivery which would, with any luck, turn it into a major civil war. Unfortunately the truck had broken down, far beyond even her ability to repair it.
And she was very good with machinery these days.
She was in the middle of a city[12] at the time. The city in question was the capital of Kumbolaland, an African nation which had been at peace for the last three thousand years. For about thirty years it was SirHumphrey‑Clarksonland, but since the country had absolutely no mineral wealth and the strategic importance of a banana, it was accelerated toward self‑government with almost unseemly haste. Kumbolaland was poor, perhaps, and undoubtedly boring, but peaceful. Its various tribes, who got along with one another quite happily, had long since beaten their swords into ploughshares; a fight had broken out in the city square in 1952 between a drunken ox‑drover and an equally drunken ox‑thief. People were still talking about it.
Scarlett yawned in the heat. She fa
She bought a can of beer, drained it, then gri
The barman gri
Scarlett bought another beer. "So, this Nathan. Any idea when he'll be back?"
"Perhaps next week. Perhaps two weeks' time, dear lady. Ho, that Nathan, he is a scamp, no?"
He leaned forward.
"You travelling alone, miss?" he said.
"Yes."
"Could be dangerous. Some fu
Scarlett raised a perfect eyebrow.
Despite the heat, he shivered.
"Thanks for the warning," Scarlett purred. Her voice sounded like something that lurks in the long grass, visible only by the twitching of its ears, until something young and tender wobbles by.
She tipped her hat to him, and strolled outside.
The hot African sun beat down on her; her truck sat in the street with a cargo of guns and ammunition and land mines. It wasn't going anywhere.
Scarlett stared at the truck.
A vulture was sitting on its roof. It had traveled three hundred miles with Scarlett so far. It was belching quietly.
She looked around the street: a couple of women chatted on a street corner; a bored market vendor sat in front of a heap of colored gourds, fa
"What the hell," she said quietly. "I could do with a holiday anyway."
That was Wednesday.
By Friday the city was a no‑go area.
By the following Tuesday the economy of Kumbolaland was shattered, twenty thousand people were dead (including the barman, shot by the rebels while storming the market barricades), almost a hundred thousand people were injured, all of Scarlett's assorted weapons had fulfilled the function for which they had been created, and the vulture had died of Greasy Degeneration.
Scarlett was already on the last train out of the country. It was time to move on, she felt. She'd been doing arms for too damn long. She wanted a change. Something with openings. She quite fancied herself as a newspaper journalist. A possibility. She fa
Farther down the train a fight broke out. Scarlett gri
12
Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.