"Mom, if any throughput eventuates premising to interface with Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger telephonically, Mom, sir, this individual will—"
"Sorry, Tommy?"
Tom Deisenburger hung his gun on the wall, above his father's battered old rifle.
"I said, if anyone calls, Mom, I'll be down in the Big Field, with Pop and Chester and Ted."
The van drove slowly up to the gates of the air base. It pulled over. The guard on the midnight shift looked in the window, checked the credentials of the driver, and waved him in.
The van meandered across the concrete.
It parked on the tarmac of the empty airstrip, near where two men sat, sharing a bottle of wine. One of the men wore dark glasses. Surprisingly, no one else seemed to be paying them the slightest attention.
"Are you saying," said Crowley, "that He planned it this way all along? From the very beginning?"
Aziraphale conscientiously wiped the top of the bottle and passed it back.
"Could have," he said. "Could have. One could always ask Him, I suppose."
"From what I remember," replied Crowley, thoughtfully, "—and we were never actually on what you might call speaking terms—He wasn't exactly one for a straight answer. In fact, in fact, he'd never answer at all. He'd just smile, as if He knew something that you didn't."
"And of course that's true," said the angel. "Otherwise, what'd be the point?"
There was a pause, and both beings stared reflectively off into the distance, as if they were remembering things that neither of them had thought of for a long time.
The van driver got out of the van, carrying a cardboard box and a pair of tongs.
Lying on the tarmac were a tarnished metal crown and a pair of scales. The man picked them up with the tongs and placed them in the box.
Then he approached the couple with the bottle.
"Excuse me, gents," he said, "but there's meant to be a sword around here somewhere as well, at least, that's what it says here at any rate, and I was wondering…"
Aziraphale seemed embarrassed. He looked around himself, vaguely puzzled, then stood up, to discover that he had been sitting on the sword for the last hour or so. He reached down and picked it up. "Sorry," he said, and put the sword into the box.
The van driver, who wore an International Express cap, said not to mention it, and really it was a godsend them both being there like this, since someone was going to have to sign to say that he'd duly collected what he'd been sent for, and this had certainly been a day to remember, eh?
Aziraphale and Crowley both agreed with him that it had, and Aziraphale signed the clipboard that the van driver gave him, witnessing that a crown, a pair of balances, and a sword had been received in good order and were to be delivered to a smudged address and charged to a blurred account number.
The man began to walk back to his van. Then he stopped, and turned.
"If I was to tell my wife what happened to me today," he told them, a little sadly, "she'd never believe me. And I wouldn't blame her, because I don't either." And he climbed into his van, and he drove away.
Crowley stood up, a little unsteadily. He reached a hand down to Aziraphale.
"Come on," he said. "I'll drive us back to London."
He took a Jeep. No one stopped them.
It had a cassette player. This isn't general issue, even for American military vehicles, but Crowley automatically assumed that all vehicles he drove would have cassette players and therefore this one did, within seconds of his getting in.
The cassette that he put on as he drove was marked Handel's Water Music, and it stayed Handel's Water Music all the way home.
t around half past ten the paper boy brought the Sunday papers to the front door of Jasmine Cottage. He had to make three trips.
The series of thumps as they hit the mat woke up Newton Pulsifer.
He left Anathema asleep. She was pretty shattered, poor thing. She'd been almost incoherent when he'd put her to bed. She'd run her life according to the Prophecies and now there were no more Prophecies. She must be feeling like a train which had reached the end of the line but still had to keep going, somehow.
From now on she'd be able to go through life with everything coming as a surprise, just like everyone else. What luck.
The telephone rang.
Newt dashed for the kitchen and picked up the receiver on the second ring.
"Hello?" he said.
A voice of forced friendliness tinted with desperation gabbled at him.
"No," he said, "I'm not. And it's not Devissey, it's Device. As in Nice. And she's asleep."
"Well," he said, "I'm pretty sure she doesn't want any cavities insulated. Or double glazing. I mean, she doesn't own the cottage, you know. She's only renting it."
"No, I'm not going to wake her up and ask her," he said. "And tell me, Miss, uh… right, Miss Morrow, why don't you lot take Sundays off, like everybody else does?"
"Sunday," he said. "Of course it's not Saturday. Why would it be Saturday? Saturday was yesterday. It's honestly Sunday today, really. What do you mean, you've lost a day? I haven't got it. Seems to me you've got a bit carried away with selling… Hello?"
He growled, and replaced the receiver.
Telephone salespeople! Something dreadful ought to happen to them.
He was assailed by a moment of sudden doubt. Today was Sunday, wasn't it? A glance at the Sunday papers reassured him. If the Sunday Times said it was Sunday, you could be sure that they'd investigated the matter. And yesterday was Saturday. Of course. Yesterday was Saturday, and he'd never forget Saturday for as long as he lived, if only he could remember what it was he wasn't meant to forget.
Seeing that he was in the kitchen, Newt decided to make breakfast.
He moved around the kitchen as quietly as possible, to avoid waking the rest of the household, and found every sound magnified. The antique fridge had a door that shut like the crack of doom. The kitchen tap dribbled like a diuretic gerbil but made a noise like Old Faithful. And he couldn't find where anything was. In the end, as every human being who has ever breakfasted on their own in someone else's kitchen has done since nearly the dawn of time, he made do with unsweetened instant black coffee.*
On the kitchen table was a roughly rectangular, leather-bound cinder. He could just make out the words 'Ni e and Acc' on the charred cover. What a difference a day made, he thought. It turns you from the ultimate reference book to a mere barbecue briquette.
Now, then. How, exactly, had they got it? He recalled a man who smelled of smoke and wore sunglasses even in darkness. And there was other stuff, all running together… boys on bikes… an unpleasant buzzing… a small, grubby, staring face… It all hung around in his mind, not exactly forgotten but forever hanging on the cusp of recollection, a memory of things that hadn't happened.* How could you have that?
He sat staring at the wall until a knock at the door brought him back to earth.
There was a small dapper man in a black raincoat standing on the doorstep. He was holding a cardboard box and he gave Newt a bright smile.
"Mr."—he consulted a piece of paper in one hand—"Pulzifer?"