"Oh, yes. The American diplomat," said the angel. "Rather showy, one feels. As if Armageddon was some sort of cinematographic show that you wish to sell in as many countries as possible."
"Every country," said Crowley. "The Earth and all the kingdoms thereof."
Aziraphale tossed the last scrap of bread at the ducks, who went off to pester the Bulgarian naval Attaché and a furtive-looking man in a Cambridge tie, and carefully disposed of the paper bag in a wastepaper bin.
He turned and faced Crowley.
"We'll win, of course," he said.
"You don't want that," said the demon.
"Why not, pray?"
"Listen," said Crowley desperately, "how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean."
Aziraphale looked taken aback.
"Well, I should think—" he began.
"Two," said Crowley. "Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?"
Aziraphale shut his eyes. "All too easily," he groaned.
"That's it, then," said Crowley, with a gleam of triumph. He knew Aziraphale's weak spot all right. "No more compact discs. No more Albert Hall. No more Proms. No more Glyndbourne. Just celestial harmonies all day long."
"Ineffable," Aziraphale murmured.
"Like eggs without salt, you said. Which reminds me. No salt, no eggs. No gravlax with dill sauce. No fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crossword. No small antique shops. No bookshops, either. No interesting old editions. No"—Crowley scraped the bottom of Aziraphale's barrel of interests—"Regency silver snuffboxes…"
"But after we win life will be better!" croaked the angel.
"But it won't be as interesting. Look, you know I'm right. You'd be as happy with a harp as I'd be with a pitchfork."
"You know we don't play harps."
"And we don't use pitchforks. I was being rhetorical."
They stared at one another.
Aziraphale spread his elegantly manicured hands.
"My people are more than happy for it to happen, you know. It's what it's all about, you see. The great final test. Flaming swords, the Four Horsemen, seas of blood, the whole tedious business." He shrugged.
"And then Game Over, Insert Coin?" said Crowley.
"Sometimes I find your methods of expression a little difficult to follow."
"I like the seas as they are. It doesn't have to happen. You don't have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right."
Aziraphale shrugged again.
"That's ineffable wisdom for you, I'm afraid." The angel shuddered, and pulled his coat around him. Gray clouds were piling up over the city.
"Let's go somewhere warm," he said.
"You're asking me?" said Crowley glumly.
They walked in somber silence for a while.
"It's not that I disagree with you," said the angel, as they plodded across the grass. "It's just that I'm not allowed to disobey. You know that."
"Me too," said Crowley.
Aziraphale gave him a sidelong glance. "Oh, come now," he said, "you're a demon, after all."
"Yeah. But my people are only in favor of disobedience in general terms. It's specific disobedience they come down on heavily."
"Such as disobedience to themselves?"
"You've got it. You'd be amazed. Or perhaps you wouldn't be. How long do you think we've got?" Crowley waved a hand at the Bentley, which unlocked its doors.
"The prophecies differ," said Aziraphale, sliding into the passenger seat. "Certainly until the end of the century, although we may expect certain phenomena before then. Most of the prophets of the past millennium were more concerned with scansion than accuracy."
Crowley pointed to the ignition key. It turned.
"What?" he said.
"You know," said the angel helpfully, "'And thee Worlde Unto An Ende Shall Come, in tumpty-tumpty-tumpty One.' Or Two, or Three, or whatever. There aren't many good rhymes for Six, so it's probably a good year to be in."
"And what sort of phenomena?"
"Two-headed calves, signs in the sky, geese flying backwards, showers of fish. That sort of thing. The presence of the Antichrist affects the natural operation of causality."
"Hmm."
Crowley put the Bentley in gear. Then he remembered something. He snapped his fingers.
The wheel clamps disappeared.
"Let's have lunch," he said. "I owe you one from, when was it…"
"Paris, 1793," said Aziraphale.
"Oh, yes. The Reign of Terror. Was that one of yours, or one of ours?"
"Wasn't it yours?"
"Can't recall. It was quite a good restaurant, though."
As they drove past an astonished traffic warden his notebook spontaneously combusted, to Crowley's amazement.
"I'm pretty certain I didn't mean to do that," he said.
Aziraphale blushed.
"That was me," he said. "I had always thought that your people invented them."
"Did you? We thought they were yours."
Crowley stared at the smoke in the rearview mirror.
"Come on," he said. "Let's do the Ritz."
Crowley had not bothered to book. In his world, table reservations were things that happened to other people.
Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours—he was incredibly good at it.
He had been collecting for a long time, and, like all collectors, he specialized.
He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from error's in typesetting.
These Bibles included the Unrighteous Bible, so called from a printer's error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?"; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment:, making it "Thou shaft commit Adultery." There were the Discharge bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs.
It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters.
The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five.
2. And bye the border of Dan, from rne the east side to the west side, a portion for Afher.