Attack of the Cupids (2 page)

‘Very good.'

‘I've got the flood in, sir,' said the angel, who was rocking a bit as he stood, as if he wanted to hop from foot to foot in his eagerness. ‘Section fourteen – the impact's in the northern ocean, sending a great wave around the world. And the fault lines fracture, sir, so we get the fire – that's the magma coming up from below. And in the appendices there's an option on everlasting winter – we'd need a go or no-go decision on that by Month Minus Four . . .'

‘Excellent,' said Doomsday carefully. ‘A nod to tradition. I like that.'

Doomsday knew his assistants thought he was hopelessly old-fashioned (or maybe, just hopelessly old). He did not mind. He made up old-fashioned things to say, said them, and then carefully looked
somewhere else so that the lads could roll their eyes and jerk their thumbs behind his back. He did it to humour them. Working on the things they did, they needed all the humouring they could get.

He
did
have likes and dislikes. He did not, personally, like asteroids. He felt that the end of the world ought to come from within the world itself. The seeds of destruction should have been there from the very beginning. That was why he preferred projects such as Babel and the Millennium Bug. They were neat. The way they finished things off gave meaning to everything that had gone before. It was difficult to find meaning in a random splat.

But he did not let his feelings get in the way of his work.

‘Good job. You may put it to the Governors.'

‘Do you think they'll go for it, sir?' Mishamh
was
hopping from foot to foot now. ‘Do you think they will?'

Doomsday looked at his colleague thoughtfully.

The lad was very young. He couldn't have been more than a century – there was still down on his feathers. He worked surrounded by failed plans for the end of the world, and if he thought anything about them it was that somehow each and every one, in some
detail, could not have been good enough. He knew there was no flaw in his own plan. It was simple, and at the same time it had everything. He really thought he had done it. He had found the one piece that had been missing from the Great Curriculum all this time.

He had as much understanding of Heaven as a fly has of spiders' webs.

‘Come with me,' said Doomsday, in a voice that was not unkindly.

He led Mishamh down the aisles between the shelves. Together, they passed through the Door of Tears. They strode along the Passage of Ice, adjusting their pace easily as the floor rose and fell beneath them. (The floor rose and fell because the Geography Department was in a wing of the Heavenly palaces. When you ask the Heavenly Architects to put a ‘wing' on a building in the sky they think you really mean it.)

‘Uh – where are we going, sir?'

‘The Appeals Board.'

Mishamh was young, but he knew better than to ask why. It's not a question that gets asked in Heaven. To ask ‘Why' is to ask why love has allowed pain, why order has led to chaos, why perfection has given life to imperfection. It is to probe into the mysteries of the
Great Curriculum itself. If you dare to ask the question ‘Why?' you are going to have to listen to a very long answer. If you're lucky.

If you're
un
lucky, you might be listening to a very short one.

Down below them, small and blue and beautiful, turned the world they were going to destroy.

‘Not bad,' said Mr Kingsley. ‘Really not bad at all.'

Tuesday morning, Classroom C23, Darlington High School. Mr Kingsley's words were as soft as snowflakes and there was a shiver in them that was as close as he ever came to delight.

Sally waited.

The period was over. Everyone else had gone, stuffing their books into their bags and hurrying out into the corridors to make the most of morning break. But Sally had already finished her essay in class, so she had handed it in to Mr Kingsley before leaving. And Mr Kingsley had begun to mark it at once. She could have left him to get on with it but he had seemed to expect her to stay. So she had.

‘Hm,' said Mr Kingsley. He squiggled a line in
green ink. Mr Kingsley always used green.

Outside the sky was blue and the sunlight was pouring all over the sports fields. The colours were bright, the temperature had bounced and deodorants were suddenly essential. Girls lay in clumps on the grass. Boys charged about and wrestled with each other. Some of them had started a football game. The morning break was so short you wouldn't have thought it was worth it, but they always did it if they could. They could go from bell to ball to rolling in the mud in three minutes flat. Tough luck on whoever would be sitting next to them in third period.

Sally wanted to be out there too. It was the next thing on her list for the day. Shakespeare essay – ✓, done that. Hand it in – ✓, done that. Spend break in sun – ✓ . . . Hey, what's the hold-up? Can't he mark it sometime else?

(And why's he squiggling? It should have been
Very Good
. Easy.)

Five minutes of break had gone already.

Another five and she'd have just time to say ‘Hi' to her group before they all had to come back in again. ‘
How was your summer?
' ‘
Yeah, great, thanks – I spent the whole of it with Mr Kingsley, getting my English marked.
' (Sarcastic cheers.)

Alec Gardner was out there, and so were Tony Hicks and Zac Stenton – the three gods of Year Twelve. All of them were lean-faced, lean-bodied and had some secret way of never getting any spots. Alec's hair was blond and curly. His teeth were white and he smiled a lot. Tony was brown-haired and brown-skinned and had been voted the most perfect tan in the school. Zac was taller, dark, and he actually did notice you from time to time. Sally thought he was nice.

She wasn't especially thinking about any of them. That was just where her eyes went. Same as everyone else's did.

She was thinking about how to save the world. Weather like this was OK, but it also reminded her that global warming was on its way. Monsoons were coming to Darlington. So were all the poor people from the lands around the Mediterranean which would have turned to desert. Everybody said it and nobody seemed to be doing very much about it. So Sally had added ‘Stop Global Warming' to her list. And stop it she would. She just needed to get enough people to see what had to be done.

She was also wondering if she would get Mr Kingsley for English next year. Mr Kingsley was
quite mad in at least three different ways. Six terms times three different madnesses equalled eighteen terms of chronic insanity. She didn't think she could cope.

But then pretty well all the teachers at Darlington High were mad one way or another. For her GCSE options for next year she was going to have to choose between taking Music with Mr Bright, Drama with Mrs Popham or (shudder) P.E. with Miss Tackle. Mr Bright and Mrs Popham and Miss Tackle were all just as mad as Mr Kingsley. Rumour had it that Miss Tackle had changed her name by deed poll.

Mr Kingsley's sorts of madness were: i) being about thirty but looking sixty; ii) being pale and grey and long-nosed and sitting so slumped in his seat that his back curved like a snail's shell; and iii) dreaming about the love life he had never had. He also mumbled poetry.

‘Hm,' said Mr Kingsley, and squiggled again.

Twelve minutes left of break.

And she was thinking about Viola Matson. She was wondering if Viola really was getting somewhere with Tony. Cassie, Viola and all that group always acted as if they were older and more sophisticated than the other Year Nines. They hung
about looking haughty and they went to parties with the sixth-formers (sometimes they were even invited). And word had just come round the Year Nine girls that if anyone
else
were seen near Tony, that person would live only long enough to regret her mistake very much indeed. Signed, Viola and co. You didn't usually get one of those unless something was going on.

But hey, nobody could stop you looking.

‘“I, being poor, have only my dreams,”' sighed Mr Kingsley (in relation to nothing at all, as far as Sally could tell).

Eleven minutes. Maybe she would have time to walk out there and at least reach her group before they all came back in again. Maybe she would get to say ‘hey' to Zac or Alec as she passed.

Maybe she could dye her hair white and make her eyes up in black and undo her top button and yank her tie-knot halfway down her chest and wear a skirt that covered just the top two centimetres of her thigh. And if she did, maybe people like Zac and Alec and Tony would look at her a bit more. If she could somehow possibly do all that and still be for real.

She was not thinking about the birthday.

The birthday was on Sunday.

She was Not Thinking About It.

‘Not bad at all,' said Mr Kingsley at last. ‘Apart from the introduction.'

‘What's wrong with my introduction?'

Mr Kingsley cleared his throat. ‘“Love, present in every Shakespearian comedy,”' he read from Sally's page, ‘“. . . is a theme accessible to all: young and old, rich and poor, man and woman.
Midsummer Night's Dream
is not to be found lacking . . .” (indeed it is not). “. . . The first, rather unfortunately warty, example of love I am going to explore is that between Helena and Demetrius . . .”'

He stopped, pushed his varifocals to the end of his nose and peered sadly at her over the top of them. The whites of his eyes had a whingey tinge of grey in them as if they had gone a little bit mouldy.

‘“Rather unfortunately warty?”' he murmured.

‘She loves him. He's dumped her. So she tells him the girl he wants has run off to the woods to escape him. That's just stupid. And she knows he's no good. She says so.'

‘She does indeed.' Mr Kingsley returned his varifocals to the ‘close' position. He squinted at the paper.

‘Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.'

‘This, in your view, is “warty”?'

‘It's putrid. She knows what he is, but she chases after him anyway.'

‘The greatest English poet is saying that Love transforms things into something better.'

‘I think the greatest poet just meant us to laugh at her.'

Mr Kingsley looked glum. He lived a lonely life, but in his heart he clung to the belief that one day some model or film starlet would see him from afar, fall for him madly and carry him away to unending True Love. He clung to it, and at the same time lived in quiet terror that the World would find out his belief and laugh at him cruelly.

Sadly for Mr Kingsley, the World could read him like a book. This was because he mumbled love poems to himself and sighed aloud over pictures of models and film starlets. It rather gave him away.

It was also clear to everyone – including all his Year Eight, Nine, Ten and GCSE pupils – that Mr
Kingsley actually knew as much about True Love as a frog knew about gourmet cooking, i.e. he had next to no chance of experiencing it and, if he ever did, it would be painful, surprising and very horribly fatal to his existence. Sally was quite worried for him sometimes.

‘“I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow / By his best arrow with the golden head” . . . This does not appeal? No? Very well. I will allow any view, so long as you are able to support it with argument. A shame that we are not studying Austen this year. You would enjoy
Sense and Sensibility
.'

‘I've read it.'

‘And?'

‘I liked the “Sense” bit.'

‘I see. Perhaps we should try a different theme.' Mr Kingsley rummaged in his briefcase. ‘Something to keep you occupied while the others are finishing theirs.'

Sally hesitated. Then she shrugged. ‘Sure,' she said.

‘Explore that idea of yours, hm? Laughter in Shakespeare. Interesting one. You might look at this . . .'