Good Omens

moving his head.
    The Them stared at the sword rocking to a standstill on the concrete path.
    â€œâ€˜Little boys,”’ muttered Pepper, disgustedly. Sooner or later everyone has to decide which gang they belong to.
    â€œBut, but,” said Brian, “she sort of got sucked up the sword—”
    The air between Adam and Death began to vibrate, as in a heatwave.
    Wensleydale raised his head and looked Famine in the sunken eye. He held up something that, with a bit of imagination, could be considered to be a pair of scales made of more string and twigs. Then he whirled it around his head.
    Famine stuck out a protective arm.
    There was another flash, and then the jingle of a pair of silver scales bouncing on the ground.
    â€œDon’t … touch … them,” said Adam.
    Pollution had already started to run, or at least to flow quickly, but Brian snatched the circle of grass stalks from his own head and flung it. It shouldn’t have handled like one, but a force took it out of his hands and it whirred like a discus.
    This time the explosion was a red flame inside a billow of black smoke, and it smelled of oil.
    With a rolling, tinny little sound a blackened silver crown bowled out of the smoke and then spun round with a noise like a settling penny.
    At least they needed no warning about touching it. It glistened in a way that metal should not.
    â€œWhere’d they go?” said Wensley.
    WHERE THEY BELONG, said Death, still holding Adam’s gaze. WHERE THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. BACK IN THE MINDS OF MAN.
    He grinned at Adam.
    There was a tearing sound. Death’s robe split and his wings unfolded. Angel’s wings. But not of feathers. They were wings of night, wings that were shapes cut through the matter of creation into the darkness underneath, in which a few distant lights glimmered, lights that may have been stars or may have been something entirely else.
    BUT I, he said, AM NOT LIKE THEM. I AM AZRAEL, CREATED TO BE CREATION’S SHADOW. YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME. THAT WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD.
    The heat of their stare faded. Adam scratched his nose.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” he said. “There might be a way.” He grinned back.
    â€œAnyway, it’s going to stop now,” he said. “All this stuff with the machines. You’ve got to do what I say just for now, and I say it’s got to stop.”
    Death shrugged. IT IS STOPPING ALREADY, he said. WITHOUT THEM, he indicated the pathetic remnants of the other three Horsepersons, IT CANNOT PROCEED. NORMAL ENTROPY TRIUMPHS. Death raised a bony hand in what might have been a salute.
    THEY’LL BE BACK, he said. THEY’RE NEVER FAR AWAY.
    The wings flapped, just once, like a thunderclap, and the angel of Death vanished.
    â€œRight, then,” said Adam, to the empty air. “All right. It’s not going to happen. All the stuff they started—it must stop now .”
    NEWT STARED desperately at the equipment racks.
    â€œYou’d think there’d be a manual or something,” he said.
    â€œWe could see if Agnes has anything to say,” volunteered Anathema.
    â€œOh, yes,” said Newt bitterly. “That makes sense, does it? Sabotaging twentieth-century electronics with the aid of a seventeenth-century workshop manual? What did Agnes Nutter know of the transistor?”
    â€œWell, my grandfather interpreted prediction 3328 rather neatly in 1948 and made some very shrewd investments,” said Anathema. “She didn’t know what it was going to be called, of course, and she wasn’t very sound about electricity in general, but—”
    â€œI was speaking rhetorically.”
    â€œYou don’t have to make it work, anyway. You have to stop it working. You don’t need knowledge for that, you need ignorance.”
    Newt groaned.
    â€œAll right,” he said wearily. “Let’s try it. Give me a prediction.”
    Anathema pulled out a card at random.
    â€œâ€˜He is Not that Which He Says he Is,’” she read. “It’s number 1002. Very simple. Any ideas?”
    â€œWell, look,” said Newt, wretchedly, “this isn’t really the time to say it but,”—he swallowed—“actually I’m not very good with electronics. Not very good at all.”
    â€œYou said you were a computer engineer, I seem to remember.”
    â€œThat was an exaggeration. I mean, just about as much of an exaggeration