from killing you?
I don't know enough, my Angel, to stir that little head of yours around as if it were soup.
I have to remember, however clever you are, that you are a poor, powerless creature. You want to make hell, but you can't do it without me. So you won't do it. You will, however, do whatever else it is in your nature to do.
Michael knew then what he was to do. He felt calm. He even liked himself. He gave the sleeping Nick a kiss on the cheek, and covered Nick's bare cold arm with his own.
In the morning, Michael was up first. It was he who cooked breakfast. Nick stumbled out, scowling with sleepiness, surprise and turned tables.
'My turn to cook, this time,' said Michael.
'What are you so bloody cheerful about?' Nick slumped into the chair.
'Life,' said Michael. He presented a plate of bacon and eggs to him. 'And, I've decided what I'm going to do about you.'
'Oh yeah,' sniffed Nick, smelling of sleep and trying to sound unconcerned. 'And what would that be?'
'Absolutely nothing.' Michael smiled.
'Oh yeah.'
'Yeah. There's nobody responsible for you mate, but you. So go ahead. You want to stay in this world? Be my guest. Like everything else, human or Angel, you'll have to decide what to do next. How you're going to live, where, how. Go ahead. Decide. That's life.'
Nick's jaws worked. 'You'll never get rid of me that way.'
'Who says I need to?'
Nick coughed. 'Suppose I smash the place up.'
Michael chuckled. 'Does it look like I care about this place?'
Nick was waking up. 'Suppose I go to the real Nick Dodder?'
'Go ahead. I don't suppose the real Nick Dodder gives a flying fuck about anybody, does he? What's he going to do, give you half his income? Say move in with my wife? Listen mate, Nick Dodder is a shit. He gets a certain perverse satisfaction pandering porn. He wants to hurt as many people, human or Angel, as he can. He's a real nasty piece of work, who cheats on his wife, and who, if the world let him, would poison it. But you. You are no longer Nick Dodder. You have an opportunity, mate. You can become different. You could become a nice person if you put your mind to it. But in the end, it's all up to you. Even if I were your Dad, or Lord God Almighty, it would still be up to you and not me.'
So Michael put on his suit, and pulled on his shoes, and Nick ate slowly, sullenly, ignoring him. So Michael said again: 'Up to you, Nick. Oh. And don't presume. I am no saint, Nick. Do anything to hurt me, and how do you know I won't lose patience and send you back?'
Nick blinked at him.
'You don't,' said Michael.
Michael went to work and sat down in his office to look at reports.
He heard a peeping sound.
He nipped out of his office to the warm and darkened, red-lit chamber. It was full of chicks. He had a single moment of profound confusion. Michael stood in the circle of his own self, which is timeless. For a moment he thought that these were the last batch of chicks without quite understanding why he felt so shocked. Then he remembered: we killed them.
Michael gathered himself in, and feeling delicate walked into Ebru's office rocking like a table with uneven legs. 'Ebru. Why did we order more chicks?'
She looked up. 'I… ah. Sorry, Michael. I don't understand you.'
'When did we order more chicks?'
She looked at Emilio.
Michael could feel sweat on his upper lip. 'If we need them for more data, you should have asked me. We need to control expenditure.'
Ebru went very still. Her eyes widened and she looked worried, and she said extremely carefully, 'Michael. What are you talking about?'
'The darkroom is full of chicks, how did they get there?'
'Michael. I cleaned the darkroom out yesterday. There is nothing there now.'
'It's full of chicks. Come and see.'
Ebru rolled her eyes, but they stayed wide. She looked like someone whose boss has finally gone mad, and is beginning to wonder if she herself has not helped drive him over the edge.
The eyes got wider as she heard the sound, the sound of need driving new life: chicks peeping.
Ebru followed Michael through the double sets of doors, which stopped all light entering. The room was thick with the smells of straw and faeces. Ebru took her head into her hands, and saw in the red light. In their warmed cages were 24 chicks.
'This, this was empty, Michael. I did not do this. Maybe… No. No, I don't think anyone would do this without consulting.'
And Michael understood: I did this. I've restored them. He picked up one of the chicks and felt it shivering. I need, the shivering pleaded. I need food and warmth. I need to be held. I need my mother. I need to live.
I restored them because I love them. And that means the miracle is not for lust. It's for love as well.
Lust, love, driving life.
You were dead, Michael thought at the chick. We killed you. And so, I brought you back. He lifted the chick to his lips and kissed it. 'Angel,' he pronounced it. He looked at it in the red light. Murder undone. Restitution.
He came up with an explanation that would appear logical. 'We… probably ordered these some time ago, and they just arrived.'
'But who hatched them? Who put them in the cages? Who brought the cages back, Michael?'
Michael shrugged. 'Hmmm. Who knows? Somebody who was doing their job. But Ebru, I don't want these chicks killed, all right?'
'Absolutely not, Michael, certainly, certainly. No.' Ebru was fierce; something had gone wrong and she was mortified.
'Nobody is to blame, OK Ebru?'
'What will we do with them?'
'Feed them. We still have some feed left over, don't we?'
'Yes. I was going to throw it all out.' Ebru made a desperate gesture, with her hands in her hair.
'Don't worry, Ebru. It's fine. It's all fine.' Michael still cradled the little chick to his bosom.
Ebru stood still. Her cheeks were outlined in the red light, but he could not see her facial expression. After a moment she said, 'You love them, don't you Michael?'
He sighed. 'Yes. Yes I do.'
She chuckled, nervously. 'That is not a scientific attitude.'
'Oh, I don't know. It just depends on the kind of science you're talking about.' He thought of life, of how it extended to wherever Angels came from. And if you could make Angels out of chicks, what did that mean for humans?
She stepped forward and lightly touched his arm. 'When the project is over, we will talk, OK?'
He nodded.
'There is a mystery here, Michael.'
'Yes,' he said. 'There certainly is.' Ebru left, and alone in the dark, he began to think.
Dominion over the animals. Over the fish, over the fowl, over the cattle. We never knew what that meant.
Responsibility. We are responsible for them. They are our children too.
Michael sat on the floor of the darkroom, and held up the chicken to look at it.
'What shall I call you, eh?' he asked it. The beak was stretched wide open, hungry for everything. 'I could call you Ali, or Bottles. I could call you Johnny or Mark. Maybe I could even call you Nick.'
Michael stood up, and gently tipped the chick back onto straw. 'Learn,' he told it. And he went and turned on the lights. Light flooded the room. Experiment ruined. No reason to kill them a second time. He left the lights
