Good Omens(24)

“Yes.”

“Clean off that blasted cream cake before you get in.”

* * *

It was a hot, silent August day far from Central London. By the side of the Tadfield road the dust weighed down the hogweed. Bees buzzed in the hedges. The air had a leftover and reheated feel.

There was a sound like a thousand metal voices shouting “Hail!” cut off abruptly.

And there was a black dog in the road.

It had to be a dog. It was dog.. shaped.

There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of man.. made evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. These dogs advance deliberately, purposefully, the wilderness made flesh, their teeth yellow, their breath a.. stink, while in the distance their owners witter, “He's an old soppy really, just poke him if he's a nuisance,” and in the green of their eyes the red campfires of the Pleistocene gleam and flicker ...

This dog would make even a dog like that slink nonchalantly behind the sofa and pretend to be extremely preoccupied with its rubber bone.

It was already growling, and the growl was a low, rumbling snarl of spring.. coiled menace, the sort of growl that starts in the back of one throat and ends up in someone else's.

Saliva dripped from its jaws and sizzled on the tar.

It took a few steps forward, and sniffed the sullen air.

Its ears flicked up.

There were voices, a long way off. A voice. A boyish voice, but one it had been created to obey, could not help but obey. When that voice said “Follow,” it would follow; when it said “Kill,” it would kill. His master's voice.

It leapt the hedge and padded across the field beyond. A grazing bull eyed it for a moment, weighed its chances, then strolled hurriedly toward the opposite hedge.

The voices were coming from a copse of straggly trees. The black hound slunk closer, jaws streaming.

One of the other voices said: “He never will. You're always saying he will, and he never does. Catch your dad giving you a pet. An int'restin' pet, anyway. It'll prob'ly be stick insects. That's your dad's idea of int'restin'.”

The hound gave the canine equivalent of a shrug, but immediately lost interest because now the Master, the Center of its Universe, spoke.

“It'll be a dog,” it said.

“Huh. You don't know it's going to be a dog. No one's said it's going to be a dog. How d'you know it's goin' to be a dog if no one's said? Your dad'd be complaining about the food it eats the whole time.”

“Privet.” This third voice was rather more prim than the first two. The owner of a voice like that would be the sort of person who, before making a plastic model kit, would not only separate and count all the parts before commencing, as per the instructions, but also paint the bits that needed painting first and leave them to dry properly prior to construction. All that separated this voice from chartered accountancy was a matter of time.

“They don't eat privet, Wensley. You never saw a dog eatin' privet.”

“Stick insects do, I mean. They're jolly interesting, actually. They eat each other when they're mating.”

There was a thoughtful pause. The hound slunk closer, and realized that the voices were coming from a hole in the ground.

The trees in fact concealed an ancient chalk quarry, now half overgrown with thorn trees and vines. Ancient, but clearly not disused. Tracks crisscrossed it; smooth areas of slope indicated regular use by skateboards and Wall.. of.. Death, or at least Wall.. of.. Seriously.. Grazed.. Knee, cyclists. Old bits of dangerously frayed rope hung from some of the more accessible greenery. Here and there sheets of corrugated iron and old wooden boards were wedged in branches. A burnt.. out, rusting Triumph Herald Estate was visible, half.. submerged in a drift of nettles.

In one corner a tangle of wheels and corroded wire marked the site of the famous Lost Graveyard where the supermarket trolleys came to die.

If you were a child, it was paradise. The local adults called it The Pit.

The hound peered through a clump of nettles, and spotted four figures sitting in the center of the quarry on that indispensable prop to good secret dens everywhere, the common milk crate.

“They don't!”

“They do.”

“Bet you they don't,” said the first speaker. It had a certain timbre to it that identified it as young and female, and it was tinted with horrified fascination.

“They do, actually. I had six before we went on holiday and I forgot to change the privet and when I came back I had one big fat one.”

“Nah. That's not stick insects, that's praying mantises. I saw on the television where this big female one ate this other one and it dint hardly take any notice.”

There was another crowded pause.

“What're they prayin' about?” said his Master's voice.