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“The way I see it,” said Crowley, staring into the crystal of his Ritz wine glass, “since the world still exists, there are three possibilities as far as the Ineffable Plan.”
Aziraphale looked at him, seeming surprised. “Infinite possibilities, I should think. More than three, in any case. Infinite and eternal and beyond all measure or comprehension. It all comes with the ineffability part, you see.”
“Um. Right. Um.” Crowley tried to recapture his train of thought. “That’s not what I meant,” he hazarded. He didn’t think it was, anyway. Though it was hard to be sure.
“It isn’t?” Aziraphale blinked. “Oh. Sorry. What did you mean, then?”
That was a good question. Crowley groped after the answer. “I meant,” he explained, “about everything that happened today. Or, well, everything that didn’t happen today.”
It was Aziraphale’s turn to say, “Um.”
“The Great Plan,” Crowley clarified. “Which may or may not have been the same thing as the Ineffable Plan, because on the one hand everyone knew the whole apocalypse thing was written but on the other hand it’s always possible there might have been something else written in another place—”
“In larger print, and with double underlining?” Aziraphale filled in.
“Exactly.” Crowley nodded. “Come to that, could even be triple-underlined.”
“I suppose it could. Or quadruple, for that matter. If there was enough space between the lines. I imagine it would get rather difficult to read otherwise.” Having finished his own meal several minutes ago, Aziraphale snagged a bite from Crowley’s plate. “I thought you were saying something about three possibilities, though?”
Aha, and there it was! Train of thought, regained. “Yeah,” Crowley said. He took a drink.
“And?” the angel prompted.
“And. So. Possibility one, maybe all that baloney we threw at Beelzebub and company was right—”
“I beg your pardon,” Aziraphale broke in, “we did not throw baloney at them! That would be terribly uncouth. And messy. What we did was engage in perfectly rational deduction and reasonable argumentation.”
“Whatever. Point is, maybe it was accurate. Maybe the dolphins were never supposed to boil at all. So in that case, we’re still just” — Crowley didn’t like this one, but it was entirely probable, at least as much as anything else — “still just playing along with the Plan without knowing it.”
“We could well be,” Aziraphale agreed. “That’s ineffability for you.”
“Fine.” Crowley grimaced. “Second possibility. There was never a Plan. Gabriel made it up, or humans did, or it was just another joke like the dinosaurs, or… or, who knows. Either She isn’t paying attention or She’s making it up as we go along. Either way, it isn’t ineffable, it isn’t effable either, it just isn’t.”
“No,” said Aziraphale sharply. “I don’t believe that one.”
“You can’t know—”
“Yes, I do. There is a Plan. There is. You said it yourself, way back in the Beginning, with the fruit and everything. She wouldn’t have set things up like She did if it wasn’t all part of— ”
“Could’ve just been an experiment,” Crowley muttered, but he held up his hands in surrender before it could spiral into another theological debate. As much as he usually enjoyed that sort of discussion with Aziraphale, that wasn’t the point he was trying to make now. Though he was still trying to figure out what precisely his point was. He just knew he was trying to make it.
“Possibility number three,” he said. “We were right, there was a Plan all along. Except today, thanks to whatever Adam did, him and the lot of us—”
“I don’t think we actually did much of anything,” Aziraphale pointed out.
“Irrelevant.” Crowley hurried on. His point was almost in sight now, and he wanted to catch it before it escaped around the corner again. “Possibility number three is that there was a Plan, and as of today, it failed.”
“The Ineffable Plan,” said Aziraphale, “is infallible.”
Crowley opened his mouth, then decided to move past that potential argument too. “Plan A just failed, then. Look, everyone should have backup plans, it's just part of doing good planning. And you can’t tell me the Almighty isn’t a Good Planner.” He emphasized the capital letters for, well, emphasis.
Aziraphale seemed to consider, then accepted that. “In that case,” he observed, “that would mean we’re on Plan B now.”
“I guess so.”
“But to all intents and purposes, that isn’t any different from the first possibility you mentioned. Because either way we can’t know what the Plan is now.” Aziraphale paused, frowning in silent thought. He nibbled at Crowley’s dinner again. Then his head came up. “Wait, and it's the same as your second possibility, too, isn’t it? Functionally, that is. Because if we don’t know what the Plan is, or if you were right — which you aren’t — and there wasn’t a Plan at all, then either way we still can’t know the Plan…”
“Exactly!” Crowley shouted, loudly enough that the well-dressed couple dining three tables over exchanged disapproving glances. He calmed down slightly, and beamed triumphantly at the angel. He should have known; he could always trust Aziraphale to come through when it mattered and help him find what he needed. “That’s exactly my point!”
“It is?” Aziraphale looked pleased. “Excellent, then. Good point.”
They were silent for a little while. Crowley signaled to a waiter, who brought them a fresh bottle of wine.
“What,” Aziraphale asked at last, “is the point of the point?”
Another good question. Somehow, this felt like the really important bit. Crowley concentrated.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “the point is that we should stop worrying so much about the Plan.”
Aziraphale sipped wine. “You, my dear boy, are the one who brought it up in the first place.”
“I know,” Crowley admitted.
“And you did the same thing in Eden. I think you spend more time worrying about the Plan than I do. It’s what comes of questioning ineffability, I daresay.”
There was no criticism in Aziraphale’s voice, just a sort of fond observation, and he did have a valid point. They certainly tended to worry about the Plan in different ways, at any rate. “But,” said Crowley. “But, I think now… I think maybe if it’s meant, it will be, and we can’t do anything about it.”
“The Plan will take care of itself, you mean.”
Crowley played his hand on the table, thinking. “Right,” he said.
“All right.”
“And if it isn’t meant,” Crowley added, “then it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t, if it wasn’t.”
“So,” said Crowley, “the point of the point—”
“Of the point,” Aziraphale interjected. “We’re at three levels now. Or somewhere around there.”
“The point of the point of the point?” Crowley mused on that for a moment, then gave it up. “You know what, fine. Anyway, the point is… what you said.”
“What did I say, again?”
“That the Plan will take care of itself. So. So. So, we should stop worrying about it and… and just do what we want.”
Aziraphale looked pensive.
Then he nodded once, decisively, and laid his hand carefully and deliberately over Crowley’s. Crowley’s heart did a light flip in response.
“I think,” Aziraphale said, smiling at him, “you make a very good point.”