At the moment, though, Wormwood was peering beneath the hood of the car and fiddling with some part of the engine that only he could name. Nurd could probably have named it too, if he was bothered, which he wasn’t, or so he told himself. After all, he was the brains of the operation, and therefore couldn’t be going around worrying about carburetors and spark plugs and getting his hands dirty. It never struck him that Wormwood, as the individual who actually understood something of how the car worked, might have had more of a claim to being the brains than Nurd, but that’s often the way with people who don’t like getting their hands dirty. You don’t necessarily get to be king by being bright, but it does help to have bright people around you.11

“Have you worked out the problem yet?” asked Nurd.

“It’s the ignition coil,” said Wormwood.

“Is it really?” said Nurd, who tried not to sound too bored, and failed even at that.

“You don’t even know what an ignition coil is, do you?” said Wormwood.

“Is it a coil that has something to do with the ignition?”

“Er, yes.”

“Then I do. Do you know what a big stick capable of leaving a lump on your head is?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you need to be reminded, just continue giving me lip.”

Wormwood emerged from beneath the hood and wiped his hands on his overalls. That was another thing: on the front of the car manual there had been a photograph of a man wearing overalls and holding a tool of some kind in a vaguely threatening manner. On the left breast was written his name: “Bob.” Wormwood had decided that this was the kind of uniform worn by people who knew stuff about engines, and had managed to make himself a set of patchwork overalls from the contents of his meager bag of clothes. He had even stitched his name on them, or a version of it: “Wromwood.”

“It’s the copper wire on the windings,” said Wromwood—er, Wormwood. “It’s taken a bit of a battering. It would be good if we could find some replacements.”

Nurd turned and stared out from the mouth of the cave. Before them stretched a huge expanse of black volcanic rock, which made a change from the huge expanse of gray volcanic rock that had until recently been the site of their banishment. The sky was dark with clouds, but tinged permanently with a hint of red, for there were always fires burning in Hell.

“We’re a long way from copper wire, Wormwood,” said Nurd.

Wormwood joined his master. “Where are we, exactly?”