Good Omens

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Gui

He grunted. There was a formality that had to be observed in all this.

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell took a long, deep drink of Guin­ness, and he popped the question.

Madame Tracy giggled. "Honestly, you old silly," she said, and she blushed a deep red. "How many do you think?"

He popped it again.

"Two," said Madame Tracy.

"Ah, weel. That's all reet then," said Witchfinder Sergeant Shad­well (retired).

– – -

It was Sunday afternoon.

High over England a 747 droned westwards. In the first‑class cabin a boy called Warlock put down his comic and stared out of the window.

It had been a very strange couple of days. He still wasn't certain why his father had been called to the Middle East. He was pretty sure that his father didn't know, either. It was probably something cultural. All that had happened was a lot of fu

They'd looked very unhappy about that.

And now he was going back to the States. There had been some sort of problem with tickets or flights or airport destination‑boards or something. It was weird; he was pretty sure his father had meant to go back to England. Warlock liked England. It was a nice country to be an American in.

The plane was at that point passing right above the Lower Tadfield bedroom of Greasy Johnson, who was aimlessly leafing through a photog­raphy magazine that he'd bought merely because it had a rather good picture of a tropical fish on the cover.

A few pages below Greasy's listless finger was a spread on Ameri­can football, and how it was really catching on in Europe. Which was odd ‑‑because when the magazine had been printed, those pages had been about photography in desert conditions.

It was about to change his life.

And Warlock flew on to America. He deserved something (after all, you never forget the first friends you ever had, even if you were all a few hours old at the time) and the power that was controlling the fate of all mankind at that precise time was thinking: Well, he's going to America, isn't he? Don't see how you could have anythin' better than going to America

They've got thirty‑nine flavors of ice cream there. Maybe even more.

– – -

There were a million exciting things a boy and his dog could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. Adam could think of four or five hundred of them without even trying. Thrilling things, stirring things, planets to be conquered, lions to be tamed, lost South American worlds teeming with dinosaurs to be discovered and befriended.

He sat in the garden, and scratched in the dirt with a pebble, look­ing despondent.

His father had found Adam asleep on his return from the air base­-sleeping, to all intents and purposes, as if he had been in bed all evening. Even snoring once in a while, for verisimilitude.

At breakfast the next morning, however, it was made clear that this had not been enough. Mr. Young disliked gallivanting about of a Saturday evening on a wild‑goose chase. And if, by some unimaginable fluke, Adam was not responsible for the night's disturbances‑whatever they had been, since nobody had seemed very clear on the details, only that there had been disturbances of some sort‑then he was undoubtedly guilty of some­thing. This was Mr. Young's attitude, and it had served him well for the last eleven years.

Adam sat dispiritedly in the garden. The August sun hung high in an August blue and cloudless sky, and behind the hedge a thrush sang, but it seemed to Adam that this was simply making it all much worse.

Dog sat at Adam's feet. He had tried to help, chiefly by exhuming a bone he had buried four days earlier and dragging it to Adam's feet, but all Adam had done was stare at it gloomily, and eventually Dog had taken it away and inhumed it once more. He had done all he could.

"Adam?"

Adam turned. Three faces stared over the garden fence.

"Hi," said Adam, disconsolately.

"There's a circus come to Norton," said Pepper. "Wensley was down there, and he saw them. They're just setting up."

"They've got tents, and elephants and jugglers and pratic'ly wild animals and stuff and‑and everything!" said Wensleydale.

"We thought maybe we'd all go down there an' watch them setting up," said Brian.

For an instant Adam's mind swam with visions of circuses. Cir­cuses were boring, once they were set up. You could see better stuff on television any day. But the setting up . . . Of course they'd all go down there, and they'd help them put up the tents, and wash the elephants, and the circus people would be so impressed with Adam's natural rapport with animals such that, that night, Adam (and Dog, the World's Most Famous Performing Mongrel) would lead the elephants into the circus ring and . . .

It was no good.

He shook his head sadly. "Can't go anywhere," he said. "They said so."

There was a pause.

"Adam," said Pepper, a trifle uneasily, "what did happen last night?"

Adam shrugged. "Just stuff. Doesn't matter," he said. " 'Salways the same. All you do is try to help, and people would think you'd mur­dered someone or something."

There was another pause, while the Them stared at their fallen leader.

"When d'you think they'll let you out, then?" asked Pepper.

"Not for years an' years. Years an' years an' years. I'll be an old man by the time they let me out," said Adam.

"How about tomorrow?" asked Wensleydale.

Adam brightened. "Oh, tomorrow'll be all right," he pronounced. "They'll have forgotten about it by then. You'll see. They always do." He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose‑trellissed Elba. "You all go," he told them, with a brief, hollow laugh. "Don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. I'll see you all tomorrow."

The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with ele­phants. They left.

The sun continued to shine. The thrush continued to sing. Dog gave up on his master, and began to stalk a butterfly in the grass by the garden hedge. This was a serious, solid, impassable hedge, of thick and well‑trimmed privet, and Adam knew it of old. Beyond it stretched open fields, and wonderful muddy ditches, and unripe fruit, and irate but slow-­of‑foot owners of fruit trees, and circuses, and streams to dam, and walls and trees just made for climbing . . .

But there was no way through the hedge.

Adam looked thoughtful.

"Dog," said Adam, sternly, "get away from that hedge, because if you went through it, then I'd have to chase you to catch you, and I'd have to go out of the garden, and I'm not allowed to do that. But I'd have to . . . if you went an' ran away."