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“What do you mean, you know what it means?”
“I saw it on my way down here. And don’t snap like that. My head aches. I mean I saw it. They’ve got it written down outside that air base of yours. It’s got nothing to do with peas. It’s ‘Peace Is Our Profession.’ It’s the kind of thing they put up on boards outside air bases. You know: SAC 8657745th Wing, The Screaming Blue Demons, Peace Is Our Profession. That sort of thing.” Newt clutched his head. The euphoria was definitely fading. “If Agnes is right, then there’s probably some madman in there right now winding up all the missiles and cranking open the launch windows. Or whatever they are.”
“No, there isn’t,” said Anathema firmly.
“Oh, yes? I’ve seen films! Name me one good reason why you can be so sure.”
“There aren’t any bombs there. Or missiles. Everyone round here knows that.”
“But it’s an air base! It’s got runways!”
“That’s just for transport planes and things. All they’ve got up there is communications gear. Radios and stuff. Nothing explosive at all.”
Newt stared at her.
LOOK AT CROWLEY, doing 110 mph on the M40 heading toward Oxfordshire. Even the most resolutely casual observer would notice a number of strange things about him. The clenched teeth, for example, or the dull red glow coming from behind his sunglasses. And the car. The car was a definite hint.
Crowley had started the journey in his Bentley, and he was damned if he wasn’t going to finish it in the Bentley as well. Not that even the kind of car buff who owns his own pair of motoring goggles would have been able to tell it was a vintage Bentley. Not any more. They wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was a Bentley. They would only offer fifty-fifty that it had ever even been a car.
There was no paint left on it, for a start. It might still have been black, where it wasn’t a rusty, smudged reddish-brown, but this was a dull charcoal black. It traveled in its own ball of flame, like a space capsule making a particularly difficult re-entry.
There was a thin skin of crusted, melted rubber left around the metal wheel rims, but seeing that the wheel rims were still somehow riding an inch above the road surface this didn’t seem to make an awful lot of difference to the suspension.
It should have fallen apart miles back.
It was the effort of holding it together that was causing Crowley to grit his teeth, and the biospatial feedback that was causing the bright red eyes. That and the effort of having to remember not to start breathing.
He hadn’t felt like this since the fourteenth century.
THE ATMOSPHERE in the quarry was friendlier now, but still intense.
“You’ve got to help me sort it out,” said Adam. “People’ve been tryin’ to sort it out for thousands of years, but we’ve got to sort it out now.”
They nodded helpfully.
“You see, the thing is,” said Adam, “this thing is, it’s like—well, you know Greasy Johnson.”
The Them nodded. They all knew Greasy Johnson and the members of the other gang in Lower Tadfield. They were older and not very pleasant. Hardly a week went by without a skirmish.
“Well,” said Adam, “we always win, right?”
“Nearly always,” said Wensleydale.
“Nearly always,” said Adam, “an’—”
“More than half, anyway,” said Pepper. “’Cos, you remember, when there was all that fuss over the ole folks’ party in the village hall when we—”
“That doesn’t count,” said Adam. “They got told off just as much as us. Anyway, old folks are s’pposed to like listenin’ to the sound of children playin’, I read that somewhere, I don’t see why we should get told off ’cos we’ve got the wrong kind of old folks—” He paused. “Anyway … we’re better’n them.”
“Oh, we’re better’n them,” said Pepper. “You’re right about that. We’re better’n them all right. We jus’ don’t always win.”
“Just suppose,” said Adam, slowly, “that we could beat ’em properly. Get—get them sent away or somethin’. Jus’ make sure there’s no more ole gangs in Lower Tadfield apart from us. What do you think about that?”
“What, you mean he’d be … dead?” said Brian.
“No. Jus’—jus’ gone away.”
The Them thought about this. Greasy Johnson had been a fact of life ever since they’d been old enough to hit one another with a toy railway engine. They tried to get their minds around the concept of a world with a Johnson-shaped hole in it.
