Attack of the Cupids Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 . . .
    â€˜. . . 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 examinationpaper 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, theirbellies 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
.)
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Wait a moment,’ said the red sandstone statue (J USTICE ), in a voice as dry as desert wind. ‘Wait. We’ve been here before . . .’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜. . . 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 manifestationsknown 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