The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“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.