Good Omens

from the wall. Shadwell picked it up, examined its point, pushed it into the map, and watched it.
    After about five seconds it shot past his ear.
    He scrabbled for it on the floor, replaced it on the map, and held it there.
    It moved under his hand. He leaned his weight on it.
    A tiny thread of smoke curled out of the map. Shadwell gave a whimper and sucked his fingers as the red-hot pin ricocheted off the opposite wall and smashed a window. It didn’t want to be in Tadfield.
    Ten seconds later Shadwell was rummaging through the WA’s cash box, which yielded a handful of copper, a ten-shilling note, and a small counterfeit coin from the reign of James I. Regardless of personal safety, he rummaged in his own pockets. The results of the trawl, even with his pensioners’ concessionary travel pass taken into consideration, were barely enough to get him out of the house, let alone to Tadfield.
    The only other people he knew who had money were Mr. Rajit and Madame Tracy. As far as the Rajits were concerned, the question of seven weeks’ rent would probably crop up in any financial discussion he instigated at this point, and as for Madame Tracy, who’d only be too willing to lend him a handful of used tenners …
    â€œI’ll be swaggit if I’ll tak the Wages o’ Sin frae the painted jezebel,” he said.
    Which left no one else.
    Save one.
    The southern pansy.
    They’d each been here, just once, spending as little time as possible in the room and, in Aziraphale’s case, trying not to touch any flat surface. The other one, the flash Southern bastard in the sunglasses, was—Shadwell suspected—not someone he ought to offend. In Shadwell’s simple world, anyone in sunglasses who wasn’t actually on a beach was probably a criminal. He suspected that Crowley was from the Mafia, or the underworld, although he would have been surprised how right he nearly was. But the soft one in the camelhair coat was a different matter, and he’d risked trailing him back to his base once, and he could remember the way. He thought Aziraphale was a Russian spy. He could ask him for money. Threaten him a bit.
    It was terribly risky.
    Shadwell pulled himself together. Even now young Newt might be suffering unimaginable tortures at the hands of the daughters o’ night and he, Shadwell, had sent him.
    â€œWe canna leave our people in there,” he said, and put on his thin overcoat and shapeless hat and went out into the street.
    The weather seemed to be blowing up a bit.
    AZIRAPHALE WAS DITHERING. He’d been dithering for some twelve hours. His nerves, he would have said, were all over the place. He walked around the shop, picking up bits of paper and dropping them again, fiddling with pens.
    He ought to tell Crowley.
    No, he didn’t. He wanted to tell Crowley. He ought to tell Heaven.
    He was an angel, after all. You had to do the right thing. It was built in. You see a wile, you thwart. Crowley had put his finger on it, right enough. He ought to have told Heaven right from the start.
    But he’d known him for thousands of years. They got along. They nearly understood one another. He sometimes suspected they had far more in common with one another than with their respective superiors. They both liked the world, for one thing, rather than viewing it simply as the board on which the cosmic game of chess was being played.
    Well, of course, that was it. That was the answer, staring him in the face. It’d be true to the spirit of his pact with Crowley if he tipped Heaven the wink, and then they could quietly do something about the child, although nothing too bad of course because we were all God’s creatures when you got down to it, even people like Crowley and the Antichrist, and the world would be saved and there wouldn’t have to be all that Armageddon business, which would do nobody any good anyway, because everyone knew Heaven would win in the end, and Crowley would be bound to understand.
    Yes. And then everything would be all right.
    There was a knock at the shop door, despite the closed sign. He ignored it.
    Getting in touch with Heaven for two-way communications was far more difficult for Aziraphale than it is for humans, who don’t expect an answer and in nearly all cases would be rather surprised to get one.
    He pushed aside the paper-laden desk and rolled up the threadbare bookshop carpet. There was a small circle chalked on the floorboards