Strip the Willow Read Online Free PDF Page A

people, really—
    – Alison’s been spending time with her daughter, said Lucy.
    – Quality time no doubt, said Guy.
    – Helping her prepare. Gwen’s got an interview on Monday in LeopCorp Towers.
    – Really? said Guy.
    – But you knew that, Guy, said Lucy. Don’t come the innocent with me. You’re probably on the panel.
    – It would help if Alison was here, said Guy. We need someone we can rely on, to monitor.
    – You lot have CCTV coming out your eyeballs, said Lucy.
    – No, but to evaluate, from your side, the Council side.
    – The Council can look after its side, said Lucy.
    She knew that wasn’t true. The Provost and his cash-strapped Council were desperate for LeopCorp, and would do anything.
     
    The City Council’s Chief Executive, for example, was chairing the City Bypass Group, and had done so for the past dozen years. The Bypass was his baby and, because the baby had not emerged yet, from any of its many tubes of planning paper, it needed so much of his pre-natal attention that he chose not to be locked up in nitty-gritty committees with LeopCorp, or indeed its offshoot, UbSpec Total. He could thus avoid dirt, and abstain from controversy.
     
    Instead Lucy and her deputy, Alison, were landed with the representative Council role, as front officers.
    What kind of front shall we put on today? she’d said to Alison before one meeting. Foo aboot black-affrontit ? Alison had replied; she was seldom short of a breezy answer.
the flummery option
    Lucy had been instrumental in fighting a LeopCorp plan for a citywide spaghetti of flumes. Swink had suddenly broadcast his enthusiasm for The Flummery Option, as he called it, on Echo TV, before it was even heard of by committee. The plan seemed as follows.
    Item: Long bendy translucent flumes, to carry Spectators steeply from Cairncry and the like, more sedately from the likes of Cults, in a rush and whoosh of coloured water to fairly get them into a mood, according to the Lord Provost.
    Item: Spectators unable to access flumes with a favourable slope to be pumped up in capsules from nearby suburbs, to arrive gushing .
    Item: Those dwelling in distant Torry, principally Polish workers, however, would not be pondered to, he said, and would have to arrive under their own steam.
     
    It would be a merde and an abandonment to allow this rubbish, Lucy decided. At the next meeting, she had confronted Guy.
    What are these flumes supposed to be for, when we get down to it? she’d asked him.
    Simple, said Guy. Firstly, to stimulate the customer base.
    Yes, they should stimulate a few bases, she said.
    Secondly, to integrate the surface transportion and entertainment agendas.
    There was no answer to that. Guy didn’t get where he was by an inability to jam abstract nouns together.
    But, centrally, Guy said, to multiply value for all Spectacle, and, crucially, the inaugural Spectacle we’re sponsoring, Calving Glaciers.
    Thanks, she’d answered.
     
    Apparently the water in the flumes was to be quite warm, a little below elbow. And, of course, similar warm water in the globe’s plumbing was deemed to have precipitated the current rash of glaciorum praecox and glacier-wilt, the rather damp results of which threatened to overwhelm the dunes at Balmedie and drive to their few hills the folk of Bangladesh.
    The proposed flumes, therefore, Guy had proclaimed, will maximise Spectacle through heightened client awareness—
    Yes, Cairncry is a bit above sea level, said Lucy.
    In supersomatic modes of virtual realism— said Guy.
    Yeah, she’d said. Wet T-shirts: empathy for a drowning planet.
     
    Guy had put on a show of fuming. Then he’d let her deploy her small moral thunders and, on this occasion, win.
    She spoke against throttling the whole city for the sake of Spectacle. It would be like a Salvationer strangled in his own euphonium. Some councillors’ eyes lit up at this. She moved smartly on. The flumes would grip and drape the city , she said, like garish octopi,