Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. “Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldn’t have any alternative. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch 'You really will.'Ī look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.” 'And you'll enjoy it,' Crowley said relentlessly. '-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music.' Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly. 'Listen,' said Crowley urgently, 'the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-'Īziraphale opened his mouth. 'Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak,' mused Aziraphale. 'And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again,' said Crowley quickly. 'Sharpen its beak on the mountain,' said Crowley. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to-' He hesitated. 'So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end.

'Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about,' said Aziraphale.

'It could use a space ship,' said the angel.Ĭrowley subsided a bit. 'But it gets there anyway,' Crowley persevered. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of-' The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. '-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-' And every thousand years this bird flies-'

'What little bird?' said Aziraphale suspiciously. “I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-'

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