The Woman Who Died a Lot

25. Wednesday: Smite Solutions

Duffy looked at me nervously as I limped into the office. He had already replaced the sofa slipcover, and you wouldn’t have known that only this morning an unlicensed nonevolutionary life-form had been dispatched in a violent manner.

“The only person I want to see is Bunty Fairweather,” I said as I walked in, “and put the banning of the Blyton Fundamentalists on the agenda for the board of governors’ next meeting.”

Duffy coughed politely. “There is no board of governors, Chief Librarian.”

“There isn’t?”

“No—you wield absolute librarying power here in Wessex.”

“In that case: I ban Blyton Fundamentalists from all Wessex Library property.”

“Are you totally sure that’s wise?” asked Duffy. “They’re a powerful lobby.”

I glared at him before sitting down at my desk.

“Very good,” said Duffy with obvious approval of my stance. “Shall I send Mrs. Fairweather in straightaway or wait a couple of minutes?”

“Straightaway.”

Bunty Fairweather was a tall woman, for whom the words “willowy” and “pale” might have been invented. Although we hadn’t spoken for over a decade, I knew her quite well, when she was on the SpecOps Complaints Committee. It was a job in which she could have been difficult and vindictive, but she always played fair.

“Hello, Thursday,” she said brightly as we shook hands and I offered her a seat. “Congratulations on your appointment. Fed up with the carpet business?”

“I was attracted back to the literary world by the bright lights and good pay. You’ve done well for yourself. Last time we met, you were adjudicating complaints against the department.”

“I’ve been at the council for almost eight years,” replied Bunty jovially. “After my SpecOps liaison work, they thought I’d be best placed to deal with the mildly odder aspects of council work. At present I’m negotiating with the Swindon Meridian Society to try to stop them from insisting on implementing a citywide Swindon Time Zone.”

“I heard about that.”

This particularly fatuous idea had been in the news a lot recently and would require people to set their watches seven minutes back when going into Swindon, then seven minutes forward when they came out. Luckily, the chief sponsors of the bill all lived in Liddington just outside Swindon, so they were given their own time zone in order to shut them up.

“It would cause chaos at Clary-Lamarr,” said Bunty, “and set a dangerous precedent around the nation. So what can I do for you? There’s a limit to what we can discuss ahead of the budget meeting tomorrow. You do know I’m on the Swindon City Council’s Fiscal Planning Committee?”

“Yes— but I wanted to talk about Smite Solutions.”

She nodded her head approvingly. “Good,” she replied, “for there is much to discuss. I am also head of the city’s Smite Avoidance Team. It is my responsibility to ensure that people and property are safe from the mysterious yet destructive ways of our Creator.”

“Do you want some coffee?”

“No thanks. The nation had been hoping the Anti-Smite Defense Shield would offer some kind of defense by now, but I understand there have been a few overruns.”

“She said it would take eight,” I replied defensively. “It’s only been three so far.”

“No one’s blaming your daughter, Thursday. We have to work with what we’ve got.”

“It’s possible she may crack the software issue in time,” I said. “The only stumbling block is finding a value for the Madeupion Unentanglement Constant.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something about acorns in Hertfordshire,” I said, thinking hard.

“Well, if she manages it, then so much the better—Swindon would be a fine place for the defense shield to have its first success. But we can’t leave it to chance. Now, Swindon’s strike will be the tenth around the globe, and the previous nine have given the Smite Solutions^® Inc. valuable experience in what to expect.”

I rubbed my leg. “Do you mind if I walk around?” I said. “I get the most excruciating pins and needles if I sit still for too long.”

“Not at all,” said Bunty from where she was perched on the sofa as I paced around the office.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Smite Solutions is a company?”

“One backed by one of the preeminent tech companies in the world.”

“The Goliath Corporation?”

“Who else?”

“Go on.”

Bunty cleared her throat and launched into the subject using her best presentation voice. “The nature of a smiting is pedantically identical on every occasion,” she said. “A groundburst of a circular nature precisely fifteen hundred ancient cubits or half a mile in diameter and centered on the biggest place of worship within the target area.”

“The cathedral?”

“No—the Bank of Goliath’s fifty-seven-story Greed Tower.”

I looked out the widow to where we could easily see the glassy tower, framed between the traditional wonky spire of the cathedral and the Skylon.

She passed me a map with a circle drawn around the area of potential destruction.

“As you can see, the Absolute Zone of Smite takes in three of the skyscrapers in the financial center, most of the cathedral, part of the croquet stadium, a four hundred-yard section of railway track, two complete neighborhoods, the sports center, six shops, a launderette and a motorcycle dealership.”

“But the SpecOps Building and the library are well outside the zone, yes?”

“Absolutely. Not even the Brunel Centre will be touched.”

I’d never seen a smiting, but apparently it was quite a show. Everyone would be watching it from a nearby hill. The parting of the clouds is an impressive precursor to the main event—a pillar of pulsating orange light the color of a setting sun, with sparkly bits firing off inside the column of fire. It’s especially spectacular if it’s raining: The water vaporizes with faint popping noises like Bubble Wrap, and you can get up to nine rainbows at once—all in different directions.

“Okay,” I said, “so what’s the plan? Evacuation?”

“Total evacuation within the zone of destruction and for a hundred yards beyond it.”

This explained the lack of any large-scale evacuation plans from the council. A smiting was both hideously destructive and peculiarly precise. The Smite Zone ends so abruptly that houses— people, even—have been known to be sliced cleaned in half.

“So we’re going to lose the financial center?”

“Not if we can help it,” said Bunty with a faint smile. “The technicians at Smite Solutions have offered us an alternative to losing anything at all. They have a novel and proven method of luring a smiting away from a city.”

I stopped pacing around the room and stared at her. She was looking straight ahead, unwilling to catch my eye.

“What’s the plan?”

“I’m not fully aware of the technique,” she said quietly. “I am here only to organize evacuation policy in the city, and I must respectfully demand that library staff be evacuated from the building an hour either side of the time of smiting. We’re extending the evacuation zone.”

“Why?” I asked.

“As a precautionary measure.”

She gave me a memo outlining when we should evacuate the building and where to. It was less rigorous than the Smite Zone downtown, but still quite large.

“You’re not going to tell me any more, are you?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. The less people who know, the better.”

“Fewer,” I said. “The fewer people who know, the better.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, I’ll be off then.”

“How much?” I asked as she hurried out.

“How much what?”

“For Smite Solutions to fix the problem.”

“It’s no secret,” she said. “A hundred million pounds. Considering the potential damage to property, it’s a snip.”

“Goliath is like that,” I said sarcastically. “Magnanimous and generous to a fault.”

“If you were in our shoes, you’d do the same, Thursday. They offer a solution, and we take it.”

“You can’t trust them,” I said.

“We don’t have a choice,” she replied pointedly, and she was right. I’d do exactly the same.

I saw her to the door and then walked through to Duffy’s office, where everyone there abruptly sat down. Like all good assistants, they had been listening at the door.

“Right,” I said, looking at the large map of Swindon stuck to the wall in that office, “let’s see what Bunty and Smite Solutions are up to.”

Duffy, Geraldine and I plotted the places that were listed on the memo’s distribution list. There were about sixty in total, and it looked as though Bunty were visiting companies and private residences on a swath a half mile wide leading from the financial center toward Wroughton, a few miles south-southeast of the city. It looked like a corridor of sorts—and if Smite Solutions planned on luring the smiting away, it had to be drawn away to somewhere.

I tapped the map at the disused airfield in Wroughton. “Something’s going on here,” I muttered.

“Any idea what?” asked Duffy.

“None—but I aim to find out.”

“Chief Librarian?” said Geraldine, the other assistant.

“Yes?”

“Your son is waiting in reception. About a trip to the Kemble Timepark.”

I asked her to tell him I’d be straight down, then asked Duffy to cancel all appointments for the rest of the day. He looked faintly annoyed but agreed—and then reiterated how important the budget meeting was the following morning.

“That’s the one where we learn how much our budget is cut?”

He nodded.

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”