Crowley said nothing. Plan A had worked. Plan B had failed. Everything depended on Plan C, and there was one drawback to this: he had only ever planned as far as B.
"So," hissed Hastur, "time to go, Crowley."
"I think there's something you ought to know," said Crowley, stalling for time.
"And that is?" smiled Hastur.
Then the phone on Crowley's desk rang.
He picked it up, and warned Hastur, "Don't move. There's something very important you should know, and I really mean it. Hallo?
"Ngh," said Crowley. Then he said, "Nuh. Got an old friend here."
Aziraphale hung up on him. Crowley wondered what he had wanted.
And suddenly Plan C was there, in his head. He didn't replace the handset on the receiver. Instead he said, "Okay, Hastur. You've passed the test. You're ready to start playing with the big boys."
"Have you gone mad?"
"Nope. Don't you understand? This was a test. The Lords of Hell had to know that you were trustworthy before we gave you command of the Legions of the Damned, in the War ahead."
"Crowley, you are lying, or you are insane, or possibly you are both," said Hastur, but his certainty was shaken.
Just for a moment he had entertained the possibility; that was where Crowley had got him. It was just possible that Hell was testing him. That Crowley was more than he seemed. Hastur was paranoid, which was simply a sensible and well-adjusted reaction to living in Hell, where they really were all out to get you.
Crowley began to dial a number. "'S'okay, Duke Hastur. I wouldn't expect you to believe it from me," he admitted. "But why don't we talk to the Dark Council—I am sure that they can convince you."
The number he had dialed clicked and started to ring.
"So long, sucker," he said.
And vanished.
In a tiny fraction of a second, Hastur was gone as well.
Over the years a huge number of theological man-hours have been spent debating the famous question:
How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?
In order to arrive at an answer, the following facts must be taken into consideration:
Firstly, angels simply don't dance. It's one of the distinguishing characteristics that marks an angel. They may listen appreciatively to the Music of the Spheres, but they don't feel the urge to get down and boogie to it. So, none.
At least, nearly none. Aziraphale had learned to gavotte in a discreet gentlemen's club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s, and while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good.
So providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that he had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of argument, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one.
Then again, you might just as well ask how many demons can dance on the head of a pin. They're of the same original stock, after all. And at least they dance.*
And if you put it that way, the answer is, quite a lot actually, providing they abandon their physical bodies, which is a picnic for a demon. Demons aren't bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them.* But if you look from really close up, the only problem about dancing on the head of a pin is all those big gaps between electrons.
For those of angel stock or demon breed, size, and shape, and composition, are simply options.
Crowley is currently traveling incredibly fast down a telephone
RING.
Crowley went through two telephone exchanges at a very respectable fraction of light-speed. Hastur was a little way behind him: four or five inches, but at that size it gave Crowley a very comfortable lead. One that would vanish, of course, when he came out the other end.
They were too small for sound, but demons don't necessarily need sound to communicate. He could hear Hastur screaming behind him, "You bastard! I'll get you. You can't escape me!"
RING.
"Wherever you come out, I'll come out too! You won't get away!"
Crowley had traveled through over twenty miles of cable in less than a second.
Hastur was close behind him. Crowley was going to have to time this whole thing very, very carefully.
RING.
That was the third ring. Well, thought Crowley, here goes nothing. He stopped, suddenly, and watched Hastur shoot past him. Hastur turned and—
RING.
Crowley shot out through the phone line, zapped through the plastic sheathing, and materialized, full-size and out of breath, in his lounge.
click.
The outgoing message tape began to turn on his ansaphone. Then there was a beep, and, as the incoming message tape turned, a voice from the speaker screamed, after the beep, "Right! What?… You bloody snake!"
The little red message light began to flash.
On and off and on and off, like a tiny, red, angry eye.
Crowley really wished he had some more holy water and the time to hold the cassette in it until it dissolved. But getting hold of Ligur's terminal bath had been dangerous enough, he'd had it for years just in case, and even its presence in the room made him uneasy. Or… or maybe… yes, what would happen if he put the cassette in the car? He could play Hastur over and over again, until he turned into Freddie Mercury. No. He might be a bastard, but you could only go so far.
There was a rumble of distant thunder.
He had no time to spare.
He had nowhere to go.
He went anyway. He ran down to his Bentley and drove toward the West End as if all the demons of hell were after him. Which was more or less the case.
adame Tracy heard Mr. Shadwell's slow tread come up the stairs. It was slower than usual, and paused every few steps. Normally he came up the stairs as if he hated every one of them.
She opened her door. He was leaning against the landing wall.
"Why, Mr. Shadwell," she said, "whatever have you done to your hand?"
"Get away frae me, wumman," Shadwell groaned. "I dinna know my ane powers!"
"Why are you holding it out like that?"
Shadwell tried to back into the wall.
"Stand back, I tell ye! I canna be responsible!"
"What on earth has happened to you, Mr. Shadwell?" said Madame Tracy, trying to take his hand.
"Nothing on earth! Nothing on earth!"
She managed to grab his arm. He, Shadwell, scourge of evil, was powerless to resist being drawn into her flat.
He'd never been in it before, at least in his waking moments. His dreams had furnished it in silks, rich hangings, and what he thought of as scented ungulants. Admittedly, it did have a bead curtain in the entrance to the kitchenette and a lamp made rather inexpertly from a Chianti bottle, because Madame Tracy's apprehension of what was chic, like Aziraphale's, had grounded around 1953. And there was a table in the middle of the room with a velvet cloth on it and, on the cloth, the crystal ball which increasingly was Madame Tracy's means of earning a living.
"I think you could do with a good lie-down, Mr. Shadwell," she said, in a voice that brooked no argument, and led him on into the bedroom. He was too bewildered to protest.