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“Do witches keep drink in the house?” he ventured.
“Oh, 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.”
“Fine. 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.
“Did I tell you about the Tibetan coming out of a hole in the road?” Newt said, relaxing a bit.
“Oh, 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.
“If it comes to that, how did you know? Did he go ‘Ommm’ when you hit him?”
“Well, he—he looked Tibetan,” said Newt. “Saffron robes, bald head … you know … Tibetan.”
“One of mine spoke quite good English. It seems that one minute he was repairing radios in Lhasa, next minute he was in a tunnel. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get home.”
“If you’d sent him up the road, he could probably have got a lift on a flying saucer,” said Newt gloomily.
“Three aliens? One of them a little tin robot?”
“They landed on your lawn too, did they?”
“It’s about the only place they didn’t land, according to the radio. They keep coming down all over the world delivering a short trite message of cosmic peace, and when people say ‘Yes, well?’ they give them a blank look and take off again. Signs and portents, just like Agnes said.”
“You’re going to tell me she predicted all this too, I suppose?”
Agnes leafed through a battered card index in front of her.
“I kept meaning to put it all on computer,” she said. “Word searches and so forth. You know? It’d make it a lot simpler. The prophecies are arranged in any old order but there are clues, handwriting and so.”
“She did it all in a card index?” said Newt.
“No. A book. But I’ve, er, mislaid it. We’ve always had copies, of course.”
“Lost it, eh?” said Newt, trying to inject some humor into the proceedings. “Bet she didn’t foresee that!”
Anathema glowered at him. If looks could kill, Newt would have been on a slab.
Then she went on: “We’ve built up quite a concordance over the years, though, and my grandfather came up with a useful cross-referencing system … ah. Here we are.”
She pushed a sheet of paper in front of Newt.
3988. Whene menne of crocus come frome the Earth and green manne frome thee Sky, yette ken not why, and Pluto’s barres quitte the lightning castels, and sunken landes riseth, and Leviathan runneth free, and Brazil is vert, then Three cometh together and Four arise, upon iron horses ride; I tell you the ende draweth nigh. [. . . Crocus = saffron (cf.2003) . . . Aliens … ?? . . . paratroops? . . . nuclear power stations (see cuttings Nos. 798–806) Atlantis, cuttings 812–819 . . . leviathan = whale (cf.1981)? South America is green? ? 3 = 4? Railways? (‘iron road,’ cf.2675)]
“I didn’t get all of this one in advance,” Anathema admitted. “I filled it in after listening to the news.”
“You must be incredibly good at crosswords in your family,” said Newt.
“I think Agnes is getting a bit out of her depth here, anyway. The bits about leviathan and South America and threes and fours could mean anything.” She sighed. “The problem is newspapers. You never know if Agnes is referring to some tiny little incident that you might miss. Do you know how long it takes to go through every daily paper thoroughly every morning?”
“Three hours and ten minutes,” said Newt automatically.
“I EXPECT WE’LL GET a medal or something,” said Adam optimistically. “Rescuing a man from a blazing wreck.”
“It wasn’t blazing,” said Pepper. “It wasn’t even very wrecked when we put it back rightside up.”
