Attack of the Cupids Page 4

  ‘Alas, the Board does not find it so simple. They have got themselves into something of a loop. Every fifty years or so they come around to the same point and start arguing it out all over again. It’s because Love is involved, you see. She has no intention of taking responsibility for wars or tragedies or anything. It makes it very difficult for the Board to get a handle on things. Frankly, Love is running rings around them.’

  ‘But the Appeals Board should overrule her!’

  ‘The Appeals Board,’ mused Doomsday, ‘are very professional colleagues. I have the highest regard for their work. So, unfortunately, have they.’

  Mishamh was silent.

  ‘Well,’ said Doomsday gently. ‘This asteroid of yours. Any chance we could, ah, ask it to call back later?’

  When the young angel spoke, his voice was hoarse. ‘In about two thousand six hundred years, sir. It’s got quite a long orbit.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry.’

  The aide rallied bravely. ‘We could do something with sunspots, sir.’

  ‘Sunspots?’

  ‘Affecting radio transmissions. Particle bombardment, aircraft fall out of sky, computer failure, reorder systems affected, panic buying, starvation – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Hm. Weren’t you going to do an alien invasion?’

  ‘They’re still travelling. About another million years to go.’

  ‘A million? Long-term planning, I see.’

  ‘That’s all we could do with that one, sir. We’re looking at dropping the invasion fleet into a black hole, but . . .’

  ‘No. Try the sunspots. I like the sunspots. Will they take long?’

  ‘We’ll need several cycles, sir.’

  ‘Do your best,’ said Doomsday.

  Do your best, thought Mishamh. To meet the next deadline that would come down from the Governors. Which would then be postponed, like all the other deadlines before it. So yet more souls would be born, and fall in love. So that there would be even more cases queuing on the Stair of Sincerity. And yet more deadlines would be postponed . . .

  In his arms he cradled the Zebukun folder as if it were a dying child. His throat was burning and there was a stinging sensation in his eyes. He was badly in need of some fire-retardant tissues.

  ‘This shouldn’t be happening!’

  Among angels, Innocence is highly prized. Doomsday wished he had some of it himself.

  ‘I have said so to the Governors. The Governors have written memos to the Appeals Board. And the Appeals Board has said that everything will be sorted out once it’s all been duly weighed and pondered and considered and the witnesses from the Department of Love have provided a full explanation of their position and so forth.’

  ‘But – the Governors set the Great Curriculum!’ Mishamh cried. ‘The Great Curriculum says the world has to end! Nothing makes sense if it doesn’t! Wh—’

  Just in time, he caught Doomsday’s warning look. Just in time, he bit down with his own celestial teeth upon his own angelic tongue. It hurt. But that was all right, because pain and suffering were part of the Great Curriculum too. For the time being.

  What was not part of the Curriculum was the use of the word he had nearly uttered – that word ‘Why?’ In Heaven, there was no ‘Why?’ If a thing was, then it was as it should be.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Doomsday.

  ‘Er . . . yes, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I have a theory about this.’

  But that was all he said.

  Mishamh scuttled beside him, trying to keep pace. He almost bumped into two figures who emerged from a passage that led to the back of the witness box. They were cupids. Scowling, Mishamh averted his eyes. He hurried on after his master.

  ‘Nice one,’ said one cupid to the other.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the second cupid, who was the one that had been in the witness box. His name was Fug.

  ‘Give ‘em the finger,’ said his fellow.

  ‘Ev’ry time,’ said Fug.

  They flew off down the corridor to tell their boss she was in trouble again. That’s ‘flew’ as in ‘propelled themselves with their wings without their feet having to touch the ground’. Other angels soar and swoop and stoop like eagles from Heaven. But a cupid in flight is more like a drunken bumblebee. They are not very aerodynamic.

  The fact is that some of Heaven’s rules do apply to cupids. They are different from the rules that other angels have to follow, but they’re still rules and the cupids have to stick by them. They set out, among other things, exactly what a cupid is allowed to wear, i.e. nothing. They say exactly how fat each cheek must be, that one chin (but not both) must have a dimple in it, the size of each roll of flesh that must be worn, and of course the fact that nothing must be worn on top of that. If cupids do get to be cheeky to senior angels, it’s because they’ve lots of cheek to go round.

  Eventually, in another part of the palace, they came to a door. Before the door was the chamber where the second cupid worked as secretary to the important person they both served. There was a tall stool and, propped up against it, a large diary. The open page of the diary was a mass of entries, every single one of which had been crossed out or ringed with an arrow pointing to the new date on which it was now going to occur. Most had had one or both happen to it several times.

  Fug knew that if he had dared to turn the page, the next would have been exactly the same. So would the next, and the next, and the next, with every entry crossed out, postponed, moved or cancelled. Because this was the diary of Love herself. And Love can never keep an appointment.

  Fug hovered for a moment before the door of the inner chamber. He was feeling a lot less feisty than he had in the Appeals chamber.

  On Earth, there are teachers with really bad tempers. They snap and shout as if the only thing they can do to distract themselves from their inward unhappiness is to make somebody else even more unhappy than they are. They are pretty grim to deal with, but if you get one then at least you know what to expect.

  The Angel of Love is not like that.

  No, no! The Angel of Love, if she is like a teacher at all, is more the sort who wears sweatbands in class, talks about their divorces and never keeps up with the marking. If you’re called up to see the Angel, anything could happen, and the smallest ‘anything’ could turn out to be really big and heavy. And you’ll never know if she meant it to be like that or not.

  Fug was beginning to sweat. (Being a cupid, he was sweating honey.)

  ‘Good luck,’ said the secretary.

  Fug swallowed hard and entered the Presence of Love.

  Oh, that room! In all the Celestial Palaces there was no other like it. The walls were of Desire, the ceiling was an arch of pure Joy. The drapes were woven of lovers’ sighs, the mirrors were Burning Glances, the floor was tiled with Willing Sacrifice. Any mortal who entered would have been overwhelmed at once, melting into notes of music to join the unending harmonies in the air. Even Fug, himself an angel, had to squint a bit in the glory that glowed from the Being within. It was as if he had stepped through the door to find himself within a few feet of the surface of the Sun.

  ‘Hey-y, Fug!’ drawled a golden voice. ‘Good to see you, sweetie – you’ve been away so long! Have you been neglecting me, you naughty boy?’

  ‘Bin at ther Appeals Board, ‘n I?’ said Fug, donning a set of very necessary sunshades. ‘They want to see yer ‘bout me.’

  ‘Oh dear, really?’ said the golden voice. ‘What have I done now?’

  Fug pulled a face. ‘You said to tell ‘em, Erry. They din’t seem ter like it much.’

  ‘Fug, my darling Fug,’ sighed the Voice. ‘How many times? We are Love. We are patient, we are kind. We are not easily angered. We keep no record of wrongs. Tell me – don’t you like the nice job I gave you? Truthfully now?’

  Angels are angels, even when they are cupids. They have great respect for the truth. Fug told it.

  ‘Hate the b♥ggers,’ he said.

  ‘Then – would you like m
e to give you another one?’ said the angel gently.

  ‘Yeah?’ Fug was wary. He would have been very happy to be taken off the Appeals Board. But experience made him cautious. There were some jobs around the Angel of Love he really didn’t want.

  Anything but her secretary, he thought. If it’s anything but her secretary, I’ll do it. If she wants me to take over as secretary, I defect.

  ‘No need to be shy, Fuggie darling. It’s nothing you haven’t done before. There’s a little job I need done on Earth.’ Golden fingers plucked a card from thin air and spun it across the chamber. ‘Her.’

  The cupid caught it and looked at it coolly, like a pro hit man being handed the details of his next victim.

  His coolness warmed up very quickly. ‘What’s the . . .? This is a schoolgirl!’

  ‘I believe she is.’

  ‘So what’m I s’posed to do with her?’ said Fug sourly. ‘Hand her a crush on her Maths teacher?’

  Fug was tough and cunning. He had been doing a cupid’s work for a long time, down among all those humans with their warm blood and hormones and their great, beating hearts that were about as easy to miss as a barn door. What he liked best were the hard targets – the people who thought they had seen everything, who had little hearts and locked souls and who never believed they could fall in love again. And when he did get them, there were consequences that went far beyond the victims themselves. That was what the Department needed him for. In the slang of hit men everywhere, he did the special deliveries.

  Early-teen crushes weren’t his thing. They were more of a mass-mailing job.

  ‘My dear, sweet Fug,’ said The Voice, unrolling the ‘r’ on ‘dear’ as if it were a rich carpet. ‘Why do you think I picked you? She’s to get “the works”, as you like to say. The “full kazooie”. Yes?’

  That ‘Yes’ lingered in the air like the dying note of a bell. Fug raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Erry?’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘Yeah, but what’s the deal?’

  The Light pulsed slightly, as if to warn the little cupid that he had come very close to using that word ‘Why?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  (OK, thought Fug. So someone had upset the boss. Or done something to get her interested, which came to the same thing only usually a bit worse. Last time he had done a “full kazooie”, an empire had fallen and three hundred aunts had been thrown into a snake pit.)

  The name on the card said Sally Jones.

  ‘I want you to do her for me, Fug,’ said the angel with a slow, sweet smile. ‘Do her properly. Make her an offer she can’t refuse.’

  In the mind of Sally Jones walked Muddlespot, Messenger of Hell.

  He was not a happy little Muddlespot.

  He had said he was going to lie down. But he couldn’t lie down. He was all jangly. He was depressed.

  He knew he should never tire. He should never give up. He should keep coming back, disguised as this, veiled as that, suggesting, whispering, steering, ready for those moments when Sally was weak and using every one.

  It was just that she never was.

  The pathways of her thoughts spread in all directions. They ran under high, arched ceilings, up flights of broad steps and through many-sided chambers that opened onto more corridors down which the perspectives dwindled towards infinity. The walls were made of crystal that pulsed with gentle colours. Muddlespot could see through them. He could even see through floors, to other chambers and corridors far above his head, or many, many levels below his feet. It was dizzying. Looking down through a hundred and fifty different layers of assorted Facts made his stomach tingle.

  There were slogans and mottos and signs up on the walls. Some were about the way Sally wanted things done in her mind. They said things like PLEASE WALK ON THE LEFT or HURRY UP, YOU’RE NEEDED.

  Others said things like ASK NOT WHAT MISS SMITH CAN DO FOR YOU BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR MISS SMITH. (Miss Smith was the new Art teacher at Darlington High. Muddlespot had tried telling Sally that she was hopeless. Sally said yes, she knew. That was the point.)

  In Sally’s mind there were war rooms with charts and maps upon the tables, where steely-eyed, square-shouldered thoughts gathered to take reports, write letters to important people and plan appeals for Operation Save The World. The thoughts wore green uniforms with rank badges in the shape of oak leaves. They moved purposefully and spoke in short, clipped voices like crack troops who knew that, whatever the odds, they were going to win.

  In the corridor below Muddlespot’s feet, Sally’s French thoughts were knocking off their shift and returning to their rooms. There were smiles among them and a sense of a job well done. They wished each other cheerful goodbyes and disappeared through doors marked Nouns, Subjunctives, Irregular Verbs etc. The German and Spanish thoughts and the Japanese club thoughts lived in other corridors around the mind. They were all kept separate from each other. No mingling was allowed. No way was Sally going to go looking for a word like saucisson and find a Würst popping up instead. That sort of thing didn’t happen to her.

  There was a list on the wall. It was headed ‘One Thousand Things To Do With My Life.’ There were exactly a thousand things on the list. Some of them even had ✓s against them. ‘Save the World’ didn’t have a ✓ yet but the way things were going it might not be much longer.

  She had everything sorted out and in its place. She had Dates, Must-do’s and Should-do’s. She had libraries of Things I Know. She had fountains of Generosity, gardens of Patience and an entire lighting system of Hope with bulbs that never blew. Her mind was built upon space, purpose and clarity. And the greatest of these was clarity.

  ‘Boo,’ said Muddlespot sulkily.

  He shuffled past another war room. This one was working on Operation End World Poverty. The guys in there looked as though they were winning too. If Muddlespot had had something to kick he would have kicked it.

  He skirted the Reading Corridors carefully. The normal rules of Sally’s mind (space, purpose etc) did not seem to apply so much to the Reading Corridors, which were dark and narrow and the nearest thing her brain had to a rough end of town. They tended to turn sharp corners so you couldn’t see what was waiting round them. Doors and little windows opened on these passages, and from behind them came strange sounds, music maybe, and the noise of hidden feasting, or perhaps screams and cries of battle. Some very queer things lived down there, and sometimes came out. Whenever you found something unexpected in Sally’s mind, the chances were that it had wandered out of the Reading Corridors. It was an unsettling place. Muddlespot could never quite escape the feeling that he himself might somehow have come from there, even though he knew with every part of his scientific and rational being that he had been created when someone had hit someone else with a brass hammer in the City of Pandemonium far below, and that he had flown in here on a batskin airplane with squadrons of enraged doves on his tail. Sally had been reading Paradise Lost at the time.

  He came to the Rules.

  They were written into a wall of transparent crystal. When you moved around and looked at them from the other side, you could still read them because the lettering wasn’t backwards. And every thought in Sally’s mind knew what they said.

  The First Rule was this:

  Be nise to evryone and they wil be hapy.

  It had been written very early in Sally’s life when her mind had been quite a different place, much smaller and with bright colours and slides and ball parks and things. The words and they wil be had been changed several times over the years, first by adding usuly and then by more elaborate forms such as they will be more likely to be and it will help them to be and more than they otherwise would be and so on, in the light of experience. Muddlespot had even tried writing in it will not make them any more . . . But the words Be nise to evryone . . . hapy were still there underneath it all, carved deep in a childish hand. They always would be, to the end of Sally’s life.

  The Second Rule had bee
n written in about Year 4. It read:

  Do your best at everything because you can.

  There had been no amendments. Experience hadn’t even tried to argue with that one.

  The Third Rule had been added after a rocky couple of months with relationships in Year Eight. It said:

  Keep ruls 1 & 2 but dont rub friends faces in it & dont wory 2 much cos they wil probly b OK with u again soon.

  Again there were no amendments. Although a little while afterwards the hand of Experience had added a and a ✓.

  ‘What,’ groaned Muddlespot, ‘am I supposed to do with this?’

  He had tried and tried. He had spent hours whispering to Sally things like ‘Did you see the way she looked at you?’ and ‘Why are they excluding you?’ and ‘They’re only being friendly because they want you to help them with their homework’ etc. It had made no difference at all. Sally liked and was liked by too many people. If things ever went bad with someone she would go off and be with others for a bit. And (see Rule 1) look for a way to make up. Because everybody did like Sally. Even Muddlespot liked her – a bit. As much as his professional duties allowed.

  Which made it all very difficult.

  ‘But I’m here all the same,’ he snarled, leering at his reflection in a crystal pillar. ‘Me, Muddlespot. Prince of Evil!’

  His reflection leered back at him. The surface of the column was curved. It exaggerated his waist while doing nothing for his height. As he was basically round anyway the effect was not flattering.

  He found a flat bit of wall between two powerful-looking statues. Here he studied his reflection again, frowning fiercely and drawing himself up to his full shape (that of a pear on short stilts). ‘I was sent for a purpose,’ he intoned. ‘Hand-picked.’

  The statues looked down upon him. The list from which he had been picked had numbered precisely one. The Authority whose hand had done the picking had gone strangely quiet since the Incident of the Cat, the Muffin and the Wonky Oven. As far as Low Command were concerned, Sally was now in the box marked ‘Off Limits’ and Muddlespot in the one marked ‘On His Own’.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want me!’ he cried.