Good Omens

dashboard. “You can’t do ninety miles an hour in Central London!”
    Crowley peered at the dial. “Why not?” he said.
    â€œYou’ll get us killed!” Aziraphale hesitated. “Inconveniently discorporated,” he corrected, lamely, relaxing a little. “Anyway, you might kill other people.”
    Crowley shrugged. The angel had never really come to grips with the twentieth century, and didn’t realize that it is perfectly possible to do ninety miles an hour down Oxford Street. You just arranged matters so that no one was in the way. And since everyone knew that it was impossible to do ninety miles an hour down Oxford Street, no one noticed.
    At least cars were better than horses. The internal combustion engine had been a godse—a blessi—a windfall for Crowley. The only horses he could be seen riding on business, in the old days, were big black jobs with eyes like flame and hooves that struck sparks. That was de rigueur for a demon. Usually, Crowley fell off. He wasn’t much good with animals.
    Somewhere around Chiswick, Aziraphale scrabbled vaguely in the scree of tapes in the glove compartment.
    â€œWhat’s a Velvet Underground?” he said.
    â€œYou wouldn’t like it,” said Crowley.
    â€œOh,” said the angel dismissively. “Be-bop.”
    â€œDo you know, Aziraphale, that probably if a million human beings were asked to describe modern music, they wouldn’t use the term ‘be-bop’?” said Crowley.
    â€œAh, this is more like it. Tchaikovsky,” said Aziraphale, opening a case and slotting its cassette into the Blaupunkt.
    â€œYou won’t enjoy it,” sighed Crowley. “It’s been in the car for more than a fortnight.”
    A heavy bass beat began to thump through the Bentley as they sped past Heathrow.
    Aziraphale’s brow furrowed.
    â€œI don’t recognize this,” he said. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s Tchaikovsky’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’” said Crowley, closing his eyes as they went through Slough.
    To while away the time as they crossed the sleeping Chilterns, they also listened to William Byrd’s “We Are the Champions” and Beethoven’s “I Want To Break Free.” Neither were as good as Vaughan Williams’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls.”
IT IS SAID THAT THE DEVIL HAS ALL THE BEST TUNES.
    This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers.
    THE OXFORDSHIRE plain stretched out to the west, with a scattering of lights to mark the slumbering villages where honest yeomen were settling down to sleep after a long day’s editorial direction, financial consulting, or software engineering.
    Up here on the hill a few glowworms were lighting up.
    The surveyor’s theodolite is one of the more direful symbols of the twentieth century. Set up anywhere in open countryside, it says: there will come Road Widening, yea, and two-thousand-home estates in keeping with the Essential Character of the Village. Executive Developments will be manifest.
    But not even the most conscientious surveyor surveys at midnight, and yet here the thing was, tripod legs deep in the turf. Not many theodolites have a hazel twig strapped to the top, either, or crystal pendulums hanging from them and Celtic runes carved into the legs.
    The soft breeze flapped the cloak of the slim figure who was adjusting the knobs of the thing. It was quite a heavy cloak, sensibly waterproof, with a warm lining.
    Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
    The young woman’s name was Anathema Device. She was not astonishingly beautiful. All her features, considered individually, were extremely pretty, but the entirety of her face gave the impression that it had been put together hurriedly from stock without reference to any plan. Probably the most suitable word is “attractive,” although people who knew what it meant and could spell it might add “vivacious,” although there is something very Fifties about “vivacious,” so perhaps they wouldn’t.
    Young women should not go alone on dark nights, even in Oxfordshire. But any prowling maniac would have had more than his work cut out if he had accosted Anathema Device. She was a witch, after all. And precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective