Good Omens by Terry Pratchett Read Free Book Online Page B

sell the shop itself so that it could be turned into the kind of retail outlet more suited to the area. Sometimes they'd offer cash, in large rolls of grubby fifty-pound notes. Or, sometimes, while they were talking, other men in dark glasses would wander around the shop shaking their heads and saying how inflammable paper was, and what a fire trap he had here.
    And Aziraphale would nod and smile and say that he'd think about it. And then they'd go away. And they'd never come back
    Just because you're an angel doesn't mean you have to be a fool.
    The table in front of the two of them was covered with bottles.
    "The point is," said Crowley, "the point is. The point is." He tried to focus on Aziraphale.
    "The point is," he said, and tried to think of a point.
    "The point I'm trying to make," he said, brightening, "is the dolphins. That's my point."
    "Kind of fish," said Aziraphale.
    "Nononono," said Crowley, shaking a finger. "'S mammal. Your actual mammal. Difference is—" Crowley waded through the swamp of his mind and tried to remember the difference. "Difference is, they—"
    "Mate out of water?" volunteered Aziraphale.
    Crowley's brow furrowed. "Don't think so. Pretty sure that's not it. Something about their young. Whatever." He pulled himself together. "The point is. The point is. Their brains."
    He reached for a bottle.
    "What about their brains?" said the angel.
    "Big brains. That's my point. Size of. Size of. Size of damn big brains. And then there's the whales. Brain city, take it from me. Whole damn sea full of brains."
    "Kraken," said Aziraphale, staring moodily into his glass.
    Crowley gave him the long cool look of someone who has just had a girder dropped in front of his train of thought.
    "Uh?"
    "Great big bugger," said Aziraphale. "Sleepeth beneath the thunders of the upper deep. Under loads of huge and unnumbered polypol-polipo-bloody great seaweeds, you know. Supposed to rise to the surface right at the end, when the sea boils."
    "Yeah?"
    "Fact."
    "There you are, then," said Crowley, sitting back. "Whole sea bubbling, poor old dolphins so much seafood gumbo, no one giving a damn. Same with gorillas. Whoops, they say, sky gone all red, stars crashing to ground, what they putting in the bananas these days? And then—"
    "They make nests, you know, gorillas," said the angel, pouring another drink and managing to hit the glass on the third go.
    "Nah."
    "God's truth. Saw a film. Nests."
    "That's birds," said Crowley.
    "Nests," insisted Aziraphale.
    Crowley decided not to argue the point.
    "There you are then," he said. "All creatures great and smoke. I mean small. Great and small. Lot of them with brains. And then, bazamm."
    "But you're part of it," said Aziraphale. "You tempt people. You're good at it."
    Crowley thumped his glass on the table. "That's different. They don't have to say yes. That the ineffable bit, right? Your side made it up. You've got to keep testing people. But not to destruction."
    "All right. All right. I don't like it any more than you, but I told you. I can't disod-disoy-not do what I'm told. 'M a'nangel."
    "There's no theaters in Heaven," said Crowley. "And very few films."
    "Don't you try to tempt me ," said Aziraphale wretchedly. "I know you, you old serpent."
    "Just you think about it," said Crowley relentlessly. "You know what eternity is? You know what eternity is? I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird—"
    "What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.
    "This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years—"
    "The same bird every thousand years?"
    Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said.
    "Bloody ancient bird, then."
    "Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies—"
    "—limps—"
    "flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak—"
    "Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of—" The angel