Chapter 2

(Four Years Later... )

"I KNOW YOU'VE been here a long time, Gabriel, but Heaven has to move with the times." God looked somewhat uncomfortable, despite lounging in His executive chair with His feet on the desk. He stubbed out His cigar in the ashtray. "You may refer to it as a campaign to get rid of you personally, but you're seeing it from a very narrow perspective. Actually, We're getting rid of a lot of people, and you're only one of them. It's called de-layering."

The Angel Gabriel bristled. "You can call it what You like. It's legalised robbery, that's what it is. I'm going to have words with some very important angels. My dad..."

"Gabriel, it's no good bringing the Archangel Gabriel into this. He's got plenty on his own plate these days since we promoted him sideways to look after Sex n' Drugs n' Rock n' Roll, whatever that is. You'll get an excellent redundancy package, five millennia's salary - the legal maximum - you can keep your cloud and your company car..."

"A Ford Mondeo!"

"It's the top of the range model, and you chose it yourself. Air conditioning, alloys, twelve-speaker stereo. It's only two years old. See the accounts manager on your way out about your pension."

"What about Puberty?" Gabriel grated as soon as he could get a word in.

"Puberty will look after itself," said God. "We're promoting Barnett to Warehouse Manager and introducing a new computer system. Bill and Jesus are looking after that aspect of it. There have been so many problems in that area, we're starting again with a clean sheet of parchment. For a start, a long overdue division into Male Puberty and Female Puberty. Thanks in no small part to your lack of organisational ability, boys have been steadily slipping further and further behind in development for some years now. Young girls are increasingly being forced to turn to older men. That's all going to change. Any boys who fall short of the full pubertal development package by the age of thirteen will from now on be entitled to claim compensation."

"Money? It will never work. The budget won't stand it."

"We're not talking about money. We're talking cock. Serious cock. Compensation will be paid on a sliding scale, extending up to thirty inches. Or is that centimetres... ?"

Gabriel spluttered indignantly. "You can't go giving boys of thirteen cocks that size! The whole structure of society as we know it would crumble to dust."

"The whole point is, We won't need to hand out cocks of that size. The system will run so smoothly, it won't be necessary to compensate anyone at all. They'll all be perfectly happy running around with five inches each."

Gabriel opened his mouth again.

"We're standardising on five inches. Or is it five centimetres?" God tapped a few figures into a calculator. "Inches. I knew I was right. I'm getting the hang of this metric stuff now. The World Standard Penis. It will be issued to boys on their twelfth birthday, and will remain..."

"Is that hard or soft?"

"What?" God looked puzzled.

"Is that five inches when it's hard, or when it's soft? Surely, Lord ... surely You know ... penises, penes, aren't always the same size all the time."

"You mean they grow? Of course they do. Babies have little teensy-weensy ones. Grown-ups have bigger ones. Teddy bears have none at all. That's another thing..."

"Never mind about teddy bears. Cocks don't stay the same size all the time. Surely You know that, even if You have led a sheltered life?" God looked blankly at Gabriel. "Look." Gabriel fumbled beneath his robe, then swept a clear space on the desk and carefully laid his cock on the polished mahogany.

"Where did you get that?"

"It's mine," said Gabriel modestly.

"Shit, it's enormous!"

"As Senior Manager of the Puberty Division, I am ... I was... entitled to certain perks. But that's not the point. Watch." Gabriel pulled God's keyboard towards him, tapped a few words into it and hit Enter. An image of a particularly well endowed young lady appeared on the screen. You're still watching?" said Gabriel. "Not her! This!"

"It's getting even bigger!"

"I know. It's called an erection. Men get them. So do boys." A coffee cup slid off the edge of the desk with a crash.

"Stop it! It's wrecking the place!"

"I can't stop it. That's the whole point!"

"We'll see about that," said God. "Nurse!"

"Rochelle, come on, love, it's time for school."

"Has she gone yet?"

"That's no way to speak of your twin sister, dear." Mother came into the bedroom, absently picking up magazines and clothes. "Adele caught the earlier bus. The one that's always full of boys from Marleigh. Come on, darling. It's a lovely morning." She flung open the window and grinned at her daughter. "Come on, get your arse out of bed!"

It wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say.

Rochelle began to cry.

"Sweetie, I'm sorry!" The statuesque and extremely bosomy woman hugged her younger daughter - her younger daughter by seven minutes - stroking her lustrous waist-length black hair.

"Sorry, Mummy. It's just ... even after all these years. I've never stopped praying, you know. Not since I was ten. Nor has Del. But sometimes I've wondered if we're both praying for the same things."

Her mother couldn't answer. Her voice was too choked up. She rocked the girl gently in her arms, then leaned back and looked into her face. The twins had really become quite handsome girls in these five years since their dramatic introduction to puberty. It was such a pity really that poor Rochelle's bosom had never grown to more than a couple of tiny bumps. Adele had received far more than twice her share, it seemed, and far more than twice Rochelle's share as well. All Rochelle could claim as sign of her maturity was a considerably more than generous backside. Even the fact that the twins were five feet ten inches tall wasn't enough to compensate for Rochelle's 44 inch hips measurement.

"You'll miss the bus, darling. But don't worry. I've got to go into town this morning. I'll give you a ride to school."

The double-decker bus rocked along the twisting road to town. It was a Friday, so the kids were in fine high spirits. The presence of Adele Murchison in the upstairs compartment added to the atmosphere of celebration. On Fridays, the school allowed students to dress as they liked, within reason. Adele liked to push the envelope of reasonableness. Her jeans were dangerously tight, stretched over the globes of her broad and swelling bottom. She was four inches smaller than her twin around the hips, but north of the equator the difference was rather more marked. Adele was so much larger than Rochelle, she was almost out of sight. The boys gaped at the incredibly busty girl who had chosen a blue denim shirt. On her, it looked more sexy than if she had appeared on the school bus in a skimpy bikini. Her breasts thrust out more than twelve inches in front of her chest. Nobody knew what her bust measurement was, although there were many wild estimates.

The twins' classmate, Emily Thorpe, had recently been taken by her mother to see about appearing as a Page Three girl. According to Emily, the photographer had been startled by her bust size, but had taken a few hundred test shots and made a booking for Emily to come back in nine months' time, on her sixteenth birthday. Meanwhile, he had placed the test shots in his files, for use later.

Emily Thorpe's measurements were 45-22-35. Even so, Adele's bust was so much bigger than Emily's, it was quite impossible to guess its true dimensions. The one person who would be certain of the magical number was Veronica Twizzell, who managed a custom bra franchise in the town. She made Emily Thorpe's bras as well, as it happened, but for Veronica, a woman's bust measurement was a secret between her and her corsetiere. She disapproved of Emily's boasting around the school that she wore a size 34K cup.

"Whaddya doin' at the weekend, Del?" one of the bolder boys asked, leaning over the back of his seat and gawping at Adele's improbably straining shirt.

Del bit her lower lip and fluttered her eyelashes. "I have to get ready for summer. I need to do my legs and thighs."

"Do them? Howja mean?"

"Mum's got some special stuff to remove hair. You wouldn't believe how hairy I get. You should just see the state of my bikini line!"

The boy's mouth fell open. "Oh!" he said, and slowly subsided into his seat.

"See, we made it in time, dear, the bus has only just arrived."

The last of the students were tumbling off the bus and jostling their way into the school yard. Rochelle recognised Emily Thorpe amongst them. She hung back. At least, Adele would have arrived ten minutes earlier so there was no risk of bumping into her accidentally. She leaned across and kissed her mother. "Thanks, Mum. See you later."

"Have a nice day at school, dear." She watched until her daughter was out of sight, her shapeless smock dress billowing in the breeze that whipped around the school buildings.

"Have You finished the revised Puberty Rules for Boys, yet, Jesus?"

"All done, Dad. Bill's incredible at that sort of thing. He insisted that we removed the word 'soft' from the rules, though. Apparently it's a registered trade mark now. We're using 'flaccid' instead. And he can't work on the Girls this week. He's sorry, but he has some business to deal with down below. A merger with FordAOLBenzBoeing or something. But I think I know enough about girls to handle it on My own."

"Are You sure, Son?"

"I dealt with the Murchison twins' case five years ago. They still pray every night. Customer loyalty like that indicates a job well done."

"Have You looked at those two to see how they're getting on?"

Jesus paled. "I'm not going down there again, Dad. It's a nightmare down there."

"Hmmm. How about Your mother?"

"The Blessed Virgin Mary? I know We're the only two inhabitants of Heaven who are allowed to manifest Ourselves in human form, but how could Mother appear in disguise at an English school?"

"Why not? She's an attractive girl."

"She's a virgin, Dad!"

"Ah. I see your point. Well, we could bend the rules and send somebody else. Delegation, that's the name of the game. In fact, I know someone who's at a loose end right now. You could send Gabriel down to check them out. A bit of covert surveillance."

"Gabriel? How's he going to blend in with the scenery at a school? Even if he could hide his wings under his shirt, he's got pretty distinctive features."

"He could have a nose job before he goes. We've got a few weeks before they break up for the summer holidays. The job itself will only take him a week or so. He'd have to check out the twins, get a couple of pictures of them in the showers, and he could take a shot or two of Emily Thorpe while he's at it. I'm quite proud of young Emily, actually."

"Page Three, apparently," Jesus nodded. "Some guy's already taken a few dozen rolls of her and he'll be flogging those to the Sunday Smut for release just before the Sun comes out with Emily's sixteenth birthday layout. Scandalous!"

"It ought to be stamped out," God agreed.

"The new Puberty Rules for Girls will sort all that, Dad. It will put an end to early and late developers. All girls will develop at the same age. It will allow us to make huge staff savings in Puberty Stores and Stock Control. And there won't be any need for the Sunday Smut to release pictures of fifteen year-old girls; all girls will be fully developed long before then. No more of those sleazy quotes, 'I'm still growing, so I don't know how big I'll end up... !' All girls' breasts will start and stop growing at the same time."

"You feel strongly about this, don't You?"

"Quite right, too. It's a disgrace."

"My records tell me..." God consulted His monitor... "Those two Murchison girls are still praying for bigger breasts, and of course, I'm still sanctioning them regularly."

"Regularly?"

"Every twenty-eight days."

"Can You just imagine how much paperwork that involves, Dad? We'll be able to rule that out at a stroke when the new system is introduced. Maybe one or two more months, and that will be the lot. You'll still be able to answer their prayers, but instead of bigger and bigger breasts, they can have useful things like boyfriends."

"You mean they're sexually active? I thought they were only fifteen?"

Jesus looked at His Father. "Dad..."

"I wish you'd stop doing that, Del."

Adele switched off the razor. "Sorry, I can't hear you."

"That electric shaver thing. You've been playing with it for half an hour."

"I'm not playing with it. I'm tidying up my bikini line. It's important."

Rochelle rolled off the lower bunk and stood up. Her sister was looking at her with an aggrieved expression. She was sitting cross-legged on the top bunk, on a large sheet of newspaper, wearing only a pair of bikini pants. A staggeringly huge heap of dark curls on the paper represented work completed.

"You've shaved all that lot off? Why can't you stop?"

"I've only done half of it." Adele spread her legs. One thigh was more or less clean shaven, the other was still in its original hirsute state. "And I've still got to do the top, where it goes up to my belly button. Should I do under my arms, do you think?" She raised an arm, displaying a gorilla-like bush.

Rochelle winced. "It hardly seems worth the trouble. Although once you've got rid of all that lot, you'll be five pounds lighter."

"Wow, thanks!" Adele sniffed beneath her armpit and wrinkled her nose. "Christ," she said. "Do I need a shower!"

"I don't know how you can blaspheme like that," said Rochelle sternly. "You say your prayers every night..."

"And they get answered, too! Look at the size of these monsters! I'm going to Miss Twizzell's this afternoon for my new bikini. Dad's given me the money. Just think what you've got to look forward to when yours eventually start developing."

She was talking to herself. Rochelle was already out of the room and stomping downstairs.

"Still growing, I see, Adele."

"Yes, Miss Twizzell," said Adele proudly.

"You can call me Veronica, you know. You're not a kid any more."

"I suppose I'm not," said Adele, raising an arm and peering at herself in the mirror. "Shel said I didn't need to shave under my arms. Maybe I should, really. I'm like an ape under there. You should have seen how much I shaved off my inner thighs."

"Golly! Really!" Veronica went slightly pale at the thought. She flourished her tape measure. "Waist still the same?"

"Twenty-five," said Adele.

"Check. Twenty-five. Hips, forty?"

"I'm afraid so. Still, that's better than forty-four, like my sister."

"Chest under the bust, thirty-two, as usual." Veronica tapped on her teeth with her pencil, then tugged experimentally at Adele's well-laden bra. "This one's holding up well."

"Two months old, this one," Adele confirmed.

"Let's go for it, then. Hold still." The tape went round the girl's bust. "Hmm-mmm. You're an inch or so bigger than a month ago, but that's neither here nor there, given how big you are. Take your bra off, and I'll measure you in all the other directions." She watched critically as Adele unhooked and unloaded herself, carefully lowering her breasts to their full length. They rested low down on her stomach, wobbling softly. "You can choose your material after I've done this. I've got some new stretchy shiny stuff that looks rather nice in larger sizes. And you're certainly one of those. I wouldn't swear to it, but this is probably the biggest bikini I've ever made."

"I shall disguise myself, of course," Gabriel announced loftily. "Angels aren't a common sight around high schools. I'll have a word with Transformations and see if they have anything my size."

"Can they do anything about your nose?" asked Jesus.

"He could go as a scaly anteater," suggested God.

"It's not a fancy dress ball," Gabriel complained. "This is a serious mission. Apart from anything else, it will show You the folly of Your dispensing with the services of valuable members of Your organisation. What about cash?"

"Cash? Angels don't need money."

"This one does. I'll be disguised as a mere mortal. A school student. I will need lots of pocket money for Coke, magazines, Chinese take-aways, CDs, tampons..."

"Tampons? You're going as a girl?"

"Of course. How else can I get close enough to the objects of my scrutiny. I need to get right into their changing rooms, their bedrooms..."

"Give him fifty, Jesus..."

"Fifty won't keep me going for more than a couple of days. Make it two hundred."

"One hundred."

"One seventy-five."

"One fifty."

Gabriel grumbled as he counted the grubby notes before tucking them under his left wing. "I'll see You next week sometime."

"There's a new girl starting in our class today. I just saw her in the office." Adele was chirping with excitement.

"Funny time to start school," said Rochelle. "We go on holiday in three weeks."

"She must have just moved into the town."

"What's she look like?" Emily Thorpe wanted to know.

"I didn't get much of a look at her. Blonde, a big nose."

"What about her figure, Adele?" Emily drawled. "Another skinny lizzie, or has she got a body, like us?"

Adele looked the Page Three Star up and down. "Like yours, you mean, or like mine?"

"How big are her boobs?"

"I couldn't see them," Adele admitted. "I was only passing the door. Miss Ambrose said she was in our class and we'd be meeting her at ten o' clock."

"Another half an hour," said Rochelle, and added under her breath, "I hope she's got a huge arse."

At that moment, Gabrielle was completing the formalities. "Mother's maiden name was Gates," she improvised. "Pearl E Gates."

"Pearly Gates?" said the school secretary. "And you're Gabrielle Angelo? How heavenly!"

"I suppose it is," admitted Gabrielle, who hadn't heard that one for at least fifty years. "I hadn't thought of it before."

"No doubt your new classmates will enjoy the joke. Your classroom is 14E, over in the next block. Miss Ambrose is your Form Teacher." She watched as Gabrielle stood up, rather unsteady on her two inch heels. The unaccustomed footwear caused Gabrielle to stick out her generous rump in one direction and her much more than generous bosom in another. "Golly," said the secretary. "You've got a pair there! You don't get many of them to the pound. Are they real?"

Gabrielle suspected she had overdone things a little in the voluptuousness stakes. She'd asked Puberty for a decent set of breasts, and hadn't really thought too much about it when she'd tried them on in the low-G conditions up in Heaven. Down here, she realised, carrying a pair of melons like these was no joke. They wobbled all over the place. She'd kill that Barnett when she got back home. He'd insisted these were the standard breast equipment for a fifteen year-old English schoolgirl. They were at least three times as big as any others she had seen in her first half hour at the school, and they were infinitely bigger than the school secretary's. But then, Gabrielle reflected, it was variety such as this that made life so interesting. When the new management had Its way, all girls would be the same size. Like identical twins. Well, like some identical twins.

She found the classroom and paused outside the door. This was a new experience for her, meeting a bunch of mortals for the first time. She looked down at herself. Barnett had definitely overdone the breasts. A group of boys had passed her in the corridor and their eyes had nearly popped out of their heads. The school uniform consisted of an appallingly tight blouse, what seemed to be a quarter-cup platform bra, a pair of panties that were doing their best to crawl into every fundamental orifice she possessed and - just about concealing them - a navy blue pleated skirt apparently tailored for a girl no more than four feet tall.

And surely, Transformations hadn't got the footwear right. These heeled shoes were designed to cripple her, and as for these black stockings with that elaborate device to hold them up...

She was on the point of fleeing to call Heaven and get transformed into something else when the classroom door opened.