"What a nice person," said Newt. "You could almost overlook her blowing up an entire village."
Anathema ignored this. "Anyway, that's about it," she said. "Ever since then we've made it our job to interpret them. After all, it averages out at about one prophecy a month—more now, in fact, as we get closer to the end of the world."
"And when is that going to be?" said Newt.
Anathema looked meaningfully at the clock.
He gave a horrible little laugh that he hoped sounded suave and worldly. After the events so far today, he wasn't feeling very sane. And he could smell Anathema's perfume, which made him uncomfortable.
"Think yourself lucky I don't need a stopwatch," said Anathema. "We've got, oh, about five or six hours."
Newt turned this over in his mind. Thus far in his life he'd never had the urge to drink alcohol, but something told him there had to be a first time.
"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.
"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."
"It could of been," Adam pointed out. "I don't see why we shouldn't have a medal just because some old car doesn't know when to catch fire."
They stood looking down at the hole. Anathema had called the police, who had put it down to subsidence and put some cones around it; it was dark, and went down a long way.
"Could be good fun, going to Tibet," said Brian. "We could learn marital arts and stuff. I saw this old film where there's this valley in Tibet and everyone there lives for hundreds of years. It's called Shangri-La."
"My aunt's bungalow's called Shangri-La," said Wensleydale.
Adam snorted.
"Not very clever, naming a valley after some ole bungalow," he said. "Might as well call it Dunroamin', or, or The Laurels."
"'S lot better than Shambles, anyway," said Wensleydale mildly.
"Shambala," corrected Adam.
"I expect it's the same place. Prob'ly got both names," said Pepper, with unusual diplomacy. "Like our house. We changed the name from The Lodge to Norton View when we moved in, but we still get letters addressed to Theo C. Cupier, The Lodge. Perhaps they've named it Shambala now but people still call it The Laurels."
Adam flicked a pebble into the hole. He was becoming bored with Tibetans.
"What shall we do now?" said Pepper. "They're dipping sheep over at Norton Bottom Farm. We could go and help."
Adam threw a larger stone into the hole, and waited for the thump. It didn't come.
"Dunno," he said distantly. "I reckon we should do something about whales and forests and suchlike."
"Like what?" said Brian, who enjoyed the diversions available at a good sheep-dipping. He began to empty his pockets of crisp packets and drop them, one by one, into the hole.
"We could go into Tadfield this afternoon and not have a hamburger," said Pepper. "If all four of us don't have one, that's millions of acres of rainforest they won't have to cut down."
"They'll be cutting 'em down anyway," said Wensleydale.
"It's grass materialism again," said Adam. "Same with the whales. It's amazin', the stuff that's goin' on." He stared at Dog.
He was feeling very odd.
The little mongrel, noticing the attention, balanced expectantly on its hind legs.
"S people like you that's eating all the whales," said Adam severely. "I bet you've used up a nearly a whole whale already."
Dog, one last tiny satanic spark of his soul hating himself for it, put his head on one side and whined.