Strip the Willow Read Online Free PDF Page B

very seldom and by very little, varied. The best temperature for creativity being 33° Fahrenheit below blood-heat, so that brain may cool but bits don’t freeze, every effort was made to maintain this. They used heat-pumps in dialogue with the tawdry, shifting residues of the outside world.
     
    Notwithstanding such huge provision, the meticulous consideration of creative needs, and the astonishing range of boost, only a small proportion of incomers, and thus only a tiny proportion of eligible cantonians, took active part.
     
    Ideas got smudged on the white paper with a brittle stick of charcoal . Polystyrene bergs, moulded by hot knives and heat guns, were the result. If such a tedious outcome occurred again, Lucy knew, LeopCorp would thrust the last vestige of community aside, and fill the gap with their own agenda.
    Canton, can do! was her underdespairing slogan.
quite a flow
    Lucy, on the hospitality balcony, shuffled from foot to foot. Alison was beside her.
    Guy Bord spoke into his lapel. She heard the words, Mr Marr, I believe we’re ready—
    – I’m so glad you believe, Lucy whispered in his left ear.
    – Shh, said Guy, for once, would you—
    There was a pause.
     
    It was the early days of Spectacle, thought Lucy. There would no doubt be better days, more vivid, more involving, days to come.
    An early draft, thought Guy. When the technical side was up to speed, and all the contracts were in place, what he and Rookie would produce would be far fiercer.
    A voice came over the loudspeaker system.
    – In the name of LeopCorp, and of the City Council, I name this street UberStreet.
    White blossom in a colosseum, bubbles eddied in the air.
     
    Bubbles alighted, the affected roared. Rice-cakes fell, as if, and frangible meringues. Then the strung charges of Semtex broke out bigger suggestive lumps to skirl at. Airy fridge-doors, bantam anvils, a slow white van. Tumbling like a car boot blessing, a street baptismal.
    As pluffs and whuffs continued above, folk whacked each other with joky clubs, till they were in white bubbles, into white bubbles, really high.
    – Ooh, said Alison. I fair fancy that.
    – What? said Lucy.
    – Bein in ower the thighs, said Alison. Floatin voters hae aa the fun.
     
    A green bottle flew through the air, and there was blood. Other bottles flew, and there was quite a flow. People started swimming across the top of the bubbles to get to each other.
    – Hmm, said Guy.
    – Hmm? queried Alison.
    – There go your floating voters. Thrashing around in the bloody nursery, trying to bump each other off.
    – Guy— said Alison.
    – Yes, Alison—?
    – Get a life.
    Lucy had had enough. She turned her back on proceedings, and left soon after. She thanked the staff in the ante-room and bid them Dobranoc, Goodnight. She didn’t see Bing Qing, who was in charge, and was in too much of a hurry to seek her out.
     
    After an hour or two, the last of the bergs was clawed to atoms.
    The Leopard, on behalf of LeopCorp, from his high perch, having first pressed the orange button to detonate concatenated Semtex, now pressed the black, and the invisible drifted belt that was UberStreet began to vibe eastward, down, then faintly uphill, towards his vantage.
     
    Just below in the Castlegate was a carved, blackened, hollow sandstone crown, where former traitors were beheaded. Now it was topped by a white marble unicorn on a tall pedestal. You could have gone a long way round the city, no doubt, asking what a white unicorn on a tall pedestal actually stood for, or rather pranced for, horny beast. The whole kit and caboodle was called the Mercat Cross, namely, in modern abstract, Intersection of the Market. Rookie Marr had not yet intimated any need to rename that.
    At the moment the rotating pavementette began its progress, the Mercat Cross, mounted on hidden hydraulic jacks, began to move upwards, mm by mm, so that a useful crevasse began to yawn.
    This facility was titled, plain as you like, the