Good Omens

that you can only understand after the thing has happened,” said Anathema. “Like ‘Do Notte Buye Betamacks.’ That was a prediction for 1972.”
    â€œYou mean she predicted videotape recorders?”
    â€œNo! She just picked up one little fragment of information,” said Anathema. “That’s the point. Most of the time she comes up with such an oblique reference that you can’t work it out until it’s gone past, and then it all slots into place. And she didn’t know what was going to be important or not, so it’s all a bit hit and miss. Her prediction for November 22, 1963, was about a house falling down in King’s Lynn.”
    â€œOh?” Newt looked politely blank.
    â€œPresident Kennedy was assassinated,” said Anathema helpfully. “But Dallas didn’t exist then, you see. Whereas King’s Lynn was quite important.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œShe was generally very good if her descendants were involved.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œAnd she wouldn’t know anything about the internal combustion engine. To her they were just funny chariots. Even my mother thought it referred to an Emperor’s carriage overturning. You see, it’s not enough to know what the future is . You have to know what it means . Agnes was like someone looking at a huge picture down a tiny little tube. She wrote down what seemed like good advice based on what she understood of the tiny little glimpses.
    â€œSometimes you can be lucky,” Anathema went on. “My great-grandfather worked out about the stock market crash of 1929, for example, two days before it actually happened. Made a fortune. You could say we’re professional descendants.”
    She looked sharply at Newt. “You see, what no one ever realized until about two hundred years ago is that The Nice and Accurate Prophecies was Agnes’s idea of a family heirloom. Many of the prophecies relate to her descendants and their well-being. She was sort of trying to look after us after she’d gone. That’s the reason for the King’s Lynn prophecy, we think. My father was visiting there at the time, so from Agnes’s point of view, while he was unlikely to be struck by stray rounds from Dallas, there was a good chance he might be hit by a brick.”
    â€œWhat a nice person,” said Newt. “You could almost overlook her blowing up an entire village.”
    Anathema ignored this. “Anyway, that’s about it,” she said. “Ever since then we’ve made it our job to interpret them. After all, it averages out at about one prophecy a month—more now, in fact, as we get closer to the end of the world.”
    â€œAnd when is that going to be?” said Newt.
    Anathema looked meaningfully at the clock.
    He gave a horrible little laugh that he hoped sounded suave and worldly. After the events so far today, he wasn’t feeling very sane. And he could smell Anathema’s perfume, which made him uncomfortable.
    â€œThink yourself lucky I don’t need a stopwatch,” said Anathema. “We’ve got, oh, about five or six hours.”
    Newt turned this over in his mind. Thus far in his life he’d never had the urge to drink alcohol, but something told him there had to be a first time.
    â€œDo witches keep drink in the house?” he ventured.
    â€œOh, yes.” She smiled the sort of smile Agnes Nutter probably smiled when unpacking the contents of her lingerie drawer. “Green bubbly stuff with strange Things squirming on the congealing surface. You should know that.”
    â€œFine. Got any ice?”
    It turned out to be gin. There was ice. Anathema, who had picked up witchcraft as she went along, disapproved of liquor in general but approved of it in her specific case.
    â€œDid I tell you about the Tibetan coming out of a hole in the road?” Newt said, relaxing a bit.
    â€œOh, I know about them,” she said, shuffling the papers on the table. “The two of them came out of the front lawn yesterday. The poor things were quite bewildered, so I gave them a cup of tea and then they borrowed a spade and went down again. I don’t think they quite know what they’re supposed to be doing.”
    Newt felt slightly aggrieved. “How did you know they were Tibetan ?” he said.
    â€œIf it comes to that, how did you know? Did he go ‘Ommm’ when you hit him?”
    â€œWell, he—he