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“What’s the opposite?”
“If you must know, every time I try and make anything electronic work, it stops.”
Anathema gave him a bright little smile, and posed theatrically, like that moment in every conjurer’s stage act when the lady in the sequins steps back to reveal the trick.
“Tra-la,” she said.
“Repair it,” she said.
“What?”
“Make it work better,” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Newt. “I’m not sure I can.” He laid a hand on top of the nearest cabinet.
There was the noise of something he hadn’t realized he’d been hearing suddenly stopping, and the descending whine of a distant generator. The lights on the panels flickered, and most of them went out.
All over the world, people who had been wrestling with switches found that they switched. Circuit breakers opened. Computers stopped planning World War III and went back to idly scanning the stratosphere. In bunkers under Novya Zemla men found that the fuses they were frantically trying to pull out came away in their hands at last; in bunkers under Wyoming and Nebraska, men in fatigues stopped screaming and waving guns at one another, and would have had a beer if alcohol had been allowed in missile bases. It wasn’t, but they had one anyway.
The lights came on. Civilization stopped its slide into chaos, and started writing letters to the newspapers about how people got overexcited about the least little thing these days.
In Tadfield, the machines ceased radiating menace. Something that had been in them was gone, quite apart from the electricity.
“Gosh,” said Newt.
“There you are,” said Anathema. “You fixed it good. You can trust old Agnes, take it from me. Now let’s get out of here.”
“HE DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT!” said Aziraphale. “Haven’t I always told you, Crowley? If you take the trouble to look, deep down inside anyone, you’ll find that at bottom they’re really quite—”
“It’s not over,” said Crowley flatly.
Adam turned and appeared to notice them for the first time. Crowley was not used to people identifying him so readily, but Adam stared at him as though Crowley’s entire life history was pasted inside the back of his skull and he, Adam, was reading it. For an instant he knew real terror. He’d always thought the sort he’d felt before was the genuine article, but that was mere abject fear beside this new sensation. Those Below could make you cease to exist by, well, hurting you in unbearable amounts, but this boy could not only make you cease to exist merely by thinking about it, but probably could arrange matters so that you never had existed at all.
Adam’s gaze swept to Aziraphale.
“’Scuse me, why’re you two people?” said Adam.
“Well,” said Aziraphale, “it’s a long—”
“It’s not right, being two people,” said Adam. “I reckon you’d better go back to being two sep’rate people.”
There were no showy special effects. There was just Aziraphale, sitting next to Madame Tracy.
“Ooh, that felt tingly,” she said. She looked Aziraphale up and down. “Oh,” she said, in a slightly disappointed voice. “Somehow, I thought you’d be younger.”
Shadwell glowered jealously at the angel and thumbed the Thundergun’s hammer in a pointed sort of way.
Aziraphale looked down at his new body which was, unfortunately, very much like his old body, although the overcoat was cleaner.
“Well, that’s over,” he said.
“No,” said Crowley. “No. It isn’t, you see. Not at all.”
Now there were clouds overhead, curling like a pot of tagliatelli on full boil.
“You see,” said Crowley, his voice leaden with fatalistic gloom, “it doesn’t really work that simply. You think wars get started because some old duke gets shot, or someone cuts off someone’s ear, or someone’s sited their missiles in the wrong place. It’s not like that. That’s just, well, just reasons, which haven’t got anything to do with it. What really causes wars is two sides that can’t stand the sight of one another and the pressure builds up and up and then anything will cause it. Anything at all. What’s your name … er … boy?”
“That’s Adam Young,” said Anathema, as she strode up with Newt trailing after her.
