Attack of the Cupids (5 page)

At their waists the carvings ended. They became smooth blocks like pillars that fell all the way to the floor. It was as if the heavenly sculptors had got that far and then given up in exhaustion, thinking, That's enough. Anyone who sees them will get the idea. Anyway – why would they want legs?
These
guys aren't going anywhere.

They were not. They never had been. They would
carry on standing there until the end (whenever that might be). They were in no hurry. They looked down on the soul before them with the same appraising, unchanging stare. They had not blinked once in three thousand years.

The soul was a woman. She stood alone in the centre of that vast chamber. She was tall, handsome and dressed in a plain white robe of the sort worn by a civilization that had collapsed thousands of years ago. Her hair was dark and done in ringlets. Her skin was lightly tanned. She wore no jewellery, because no one does in Heaven.

Before her, on a table made of pure, polished rose-petal, lay a golden arrow. Attached to the arrow was a thick roll of parchment. Even in Heaven, where nothing ever gets old, the parchment had gone a bit yellow and curly and looked as if it had lain exactly where it was for rather a long time. Seated high up in the galleries, Mishamh, with his angel's eyes, could make out the first line easily. In handwriting that was both neat and absolutely clear, it read:

‘
If you are not completely satisfied with our service
 . . .'

Beyond the woman there was a strange and forbidding hole in the floor. It took up nearly one
third of the central area. Mishamh could not see down into the bottom. It just dropped into blackness. He wondered if it even had a bottom, or if, supposing he happened to fall in there, he would just fall for ever. (Angels do not like the thought of falling. An angel who Falls is generally Bad News, so anything to do with falling is pretty much a sore point.)

Two more figures stood on either side of the woman. The nearer one was another angel, who was at that moment addressing the Board. But the other was grey-skinned and red-eyed, with . . . yes . . .
horns
.

An extraordinary, crawling feeling came over Mishamh. He could not quite believe what he was seeing.

Here?
How was it possible?

Could it really be what he thought it was? Surely it should be – well, cackling, salivating, dancing wildly and making rude gestures with its fingers?

Its very stillness disturbed him. Its eyes were half closed. It too looked as if it had been where it was for a very long time.

‘Sir . . .' he whispered. ‘Is that . . .'

‘It is The Enemy. One of them.'

Mishamh shuddered. ‘Why . . . that is, I mean – nobody's smiting it!'

‘It has immunity. It is here as a witness. It is also here so that if the Board says “Take Her Down”, the taking down can be done with suitable effect.'

Mishamh looked at the hole in the floor and shuddered. ‘But – it's disgusting! We'll be gratifying its cruel lusts! We'll be pandering to . . .'

‘Quite.'

‘Can't we do anything?'

‘We can have Patience, Mishamh. The Enemy has lived with this soul all her life, just as our Guardian colleague there has. Its evidence is a necessary part of the Appeal. You must remember that.'

‘Yes, sir,' said the angel obediently.

‘However. If you
should
happen to catch it in the corridors . . .'

‘Sir?'

‘Then you may jostle it a bit.'

Mishamh looked glumly at the horned figure. He doubted that it would be unwise enough to step even an inch outside the courts. But if it did, then yes, there would be a jostle.
Quite
a jostle.

He was planning a hundred-metre run-up, for a start.

Because The Enemy were working against the Great Curriculum! They spread Ignorance. They
spread Fear! They met the fresh, bright-eyed souls on the path to Heaven and said: ‘You don't want to go there. That place is only for posh kids. Come behind the bike sheds and see what we've got.'

Creation was infested with them. Because of their evil influence barely half of all human souls made the pass mark in the Entrance Exam. There was no getting rid of them. As long as the world existed they would be there to twist the truths of Heaven and make them a trap for the unwary.

And that was why the world had to end. It was obvious. The purpose of Heaven was to make things perfect. The Earth could not be perfect. Therefore the Earth must be destroyed. It was the only way, now, that the Great Curriculum could be rescued. Man must be set free, to enter Heaven at last amid general rejoicing. Then all the unpleasant subjects like Sorrow and Greed and Death could be dropped and everyone could settle down to studying the real stuff for all the rest of Eternity. Mishamh was quite looking forward to having a small tutorial group of, say, ten thousand souls or so, with whom he would spend the next few million years on the subject of Wonder, explaining all the marvellous things in the physical universe that they had so sadly missed during their time down below.

But before then there was a rescue to perform. Fates had decreed that he, Mishamh, would be the liberator. He clasped the file marked more closely under his arm. It nestled there, fierce and firm, like the hilt of a fiery sword.

One of the statues spoke. It had a high, cold voice, but because its lips did not move it was hard to tell which of the statues it was. By turning his head and moving his position a bit Mishamh worked out that it must be the one of marble, marked Mercy. Mercy was questioning a witness.

At length. Using a lot of long words.

In fact it wasn't really asking questions at all. It was more sort of . . .

‘. . . the proposition that your Department
knowingly
and
materially
interfered in this candidate's examination, causing the suspension of Free Will, and her subjection at the very least to Desires, and arguably to Influences that could be said to represent
Divine Intervention
, whereupon the answers she entered to questions 2304(a) through to 6823(d) part iii upon the examination
paper concerning Adultery, Illegal Marriage, War and Destruction were materially affected, implying that the
responsibility
for the answers submitted rest properly with your Department and not with the candidate . . .'

When it fell silent, which happened some time later, it did so with an air of satisfaction. And although not one of the stone faces changed in the slightest, there was a perceptible brightening of the atmosphere, as if the three great presences were somehow pleased by the way the question had been asked. Which they were. In their book, using no fewer than three thousand seven hundred and thirty-two words to say ‘Come on, admit it – it was all your fault, wasn't it?' was an achievement worth celebrating.

The speech had been addressed to the witness box, where the witness was situated. This was a cupid.

It is not difficult to recognize a cupid. For a start, they are shorter than anyone else in Heaven. The cupid was not only standing
in
a box; he was very probably standing
on
one.

And cupids are always stark naked. No one knows why, but they are. It's not as if their bodies are anything to boast about. Their cheeks are fat, their
bellies are round, they have at least two chins each and their little willies hang down like points between their flabby thighs. In Heaven, which has a fairly strict School Uniform Policy, meeting a cupid can be a shock. The first reaction is almost always to avert your eyes. (The second is to wonder, since cupids are after all a sort of angel, what they could possibly be using those little things
for
.)

‘Wozzn't us,'
said the cupid. Its voice was startlingly deep.
‘Woz some guy ‘oo's left.'

There was a moment's pause. Even after millennia of dealing with cupids, the Appeals Board couldn't help feeling that there should have been more than this.

‘Wait a moment,'
said the red sandstone statue (J
USTICE
), in a voice as dry as desert wind.
‘Wait. We've been here before . . .'

‘We've been here before at least twenty times,'
said the grey granite (V
ENGEANCE
), and its voice was like a landslide that buries a city.

‘. . . and what we
said
,'
said the red sandstone, determined not to be interrupted,
‘was that we should consider all acts performed by the nominally separate persons of cupids, cherubs, winged messengers and the specific manifestations
known variously as Venus, Aphrodite, Aidin, Branwen, Chalchiuhtlicue, Erzulie, Hathor et cetera et cetera, to rest
in substance
within the
Department of The Angel of Love
. Are we to understand that the Department now wishes to submit further arguments for consideration on this point?'

‘Wozzn't us,'
said the cupid again.

A sigh rustled around the nearly empty chamber. The woman bowed her head. She shifted her weight slightly to the other foot.

‘We shall naturally entertain any
new
arguments the Department is pleased to put forward,'
said the sandstone.
‘The mere assertion that the Department of Love was not responsible, however . . .'

‘What did she do?' whispered Mishamh.

‘She fell in love with a man,' said Doomsday, ‘and left her husband for him. There was a war and a city was destroyed.'

‘She destroyed a city?'

‘I believe that was question ten thousand and something,' said Doomsday. ‘The Board is still looking at her answers to questions two thousand to seven thousand, which are mainly about whether it was
her fault that she fell in love. It's a test case. A lot of other appeals you saw waiting outside will depend upon what's decided here.'

Mishamh thought about this.

‘When you say “a lot” . . .'

The dead are not numberless. Not to an angel. They've set up a counter on the wall just inside the Pearly Gates to keep an exact total. But it's quite hard to get a reading because the last dial is a bit of a blur.

‘. . . Don't they
all
fall in love?'

‘Most of them do. At least, they say so.'

‘But . . . but . . . shouldn't they hurry this up? There's a deadline from the Governors!'

‘I'm afraid,' said Doomsday slowly, ‘that the Governors will put back the deadline to allow time for the appeal. That's what they've always done in the past.'

Asteroid (38562975) Zebukun.
Six months to impact. If the deadline was put back, Zebukun would not happen. Nothing would come of all the work and thought he had devoted to it. Nothing, except that his plan would be shelved . . .

In the Library.

It would be placed in the huge Library of
Geography, where the bookcases were already stuffed with plans for the end of the world, all of which had been dutifully written to meet the Governors' deadlines. And which had been postponed, one after another, because . . .

Now Mishamh understood the meaning of that library. He understood why none of those plans had ever happened. A pit seemed to open in his stomach, as deep and dark as the one in the floor.

‘But they
can't
! There's the Curriculum . . .!'

The file pressed beneath Mishamh's arm: solid, meticulous, beautiful – and betrayed.

‘Can't they just get it decided?' he cried, desperately.

‘B♥gger ♥ff!'
said the cupid.

A delicate shudder ran around the Court. The Board was (momentarily) lost for words. The marble column turned a shade of pink. Then Vengeance spoke.

‘The remark of the witness contravenes the Rule laid down in Governors' Memo No. 88463 “Re: Conduct of Appeals Board Business,”
it grated, in tones like a slide of shale.

‘♥♥♥♥ all of you!'
said the cupid.

‘This is
unacceptable
. The witness will stand
down until further notice. We wish to discuss his conduct with the Angel of Love.'

‘Love, you see, comes from Heaven,' said Doomsday, as he left the chamber with his assistant trailing sadly alongside him. ‘It is itself a part of the Great Curriculum. Suppose, then, that a woman falls in love, and because of her love a city is destroyed and she fails her examination. Should she be handed over to The Enemy for that reason?'

‘No, sir. Not if the Department of Love made it happen.'

Doomsday's mouth twitched into a wry smile. ‘I see that you will never be a philosopher, Mishamh. You have made your argument in just eleven words.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘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.'