The Woman Who Died a Lot

“May I ask a question, sir?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know anything about the plan for evacuation on Friday? It’s not like anyone in the city council seems that troubled.”

“They are, believe me. With the whole of the financial district and the cathedral up for destruction, they’ve been hunting about for another plan. The price of cathedrals is simply shocking these days, and insurance is impossible, as you know.”

“The ‘act of God’ clause?”

“Right. You know Councilor Bunty Fairweather?”

“Very well.”

“She’s in charge of smite avoidance as well as fiscal planning, so you should talk to her. I hear whispers of a ‘grand plan’ to save Swindon from His wrath.”

“Any idea what? Just in case Tuesday doesn’t manage to get the defense shield working?”

“I’m afraid not. All a bit hush-hush. I can make inquiries, though.”

I thanked him for this. From past experience I knew that a smiting could take out an area half a mile in diameter right in the middle of the city—easily evacuated. But if that was the case, something would surely be planned by now. Perhaps the council had more confidence in Tuesday than I did.

“And your son?” asked Braxton, who was big on family. We rarely met without comparing our relative fortunes. “Is he coming to terms with his non–career move at SO-12?”

“Slowly. Knowing that you were once going to save the planet seven hundred and fifty-six times but now won’t do it even once takes some adjusting. He’ll be okay when he discovers a new function for himself.”

“What about house, car, wife and babies? Not strikingly original, but as functions go, it has the benefit of long tradition.”

“Perhaps.”

“My daughter could do with a stable hand on her tiller,” said Braxton. “High-spirited lass, is Imogen. Perhaps we should get them on a date or something. Coffee, please.”

He was talking to the waitress.

“And let me try a sardine and moon-dried banana on caraway seed closed with reduced butter and coleslaw and shredded trumpet on the side.”

“You do know the shredded trumpet is only for decoration?” said the waitress.

“I’d assumed it was,” said Braxton with a smile.

The waitress nodded and departed.

“So,” I said, “we all want to know why SpecOps is being reinstated.”

Braxton looked at me for some moments. “No one will confirm this,” he said at last, “but what we think is this: It was an act of supreme folly to disband the SpecOps divisions, and arguably an even bigger act of folly to reinstate them.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” I replied. “It seems rather sensible to me.”

“Financially speaking,” said Braxton, “it’sinsane. It’s like building a cathedral, then tearing it down so you can build another just like it.

“Reinstatement of the service so recently after disbandment,” he went on, “is not just an act of folly but a hugely expensive one. And the more wasteful of public funds it can become, the better.”

“This is linked to the stupidity surplus?”

“So it seems,” said Braxton in a grim tone. “It looks like SpecOps is expected to help make up the shortfall.”

The problem was this: Prime Minister Redmond Van de Poste and the ruling Commonsense Party had been discharging their duties in such a dangerously competent fashion over the past decade that the nation’s stupidity—usually discharged on a harmless drip feed of minor bungling—had now risen far beyond the capacity of the nation to dispose of in it a safe and sensible fashion. The stupidity surplus was so high, in fact, that three years ago Van de Poste had sanctioned the hideously expensive Anti-Smite Shields, in order to guard against the damaging—yet unlikely—wrath of an angry God, eager to cleanse mankind of sin. It was hoped that building a chain of Anti-Smite Shields at massive expense would lower the stupidity surplus and bring the country back toward the safer realms of woolly-headed complacency.

Unfortunately for Van de Poste, and to many people’s surprise, the Almighty had decided to reveal Himself and, in a spate of Old Testamentism not seen for over two millennia, began to punish mankind for its many transgressions. Damage to people and property aside, this had the unintended consequence of making the Anti-Smite Shield de facto sensible, a state of affairs that required a new and increasingly expensive outlet for the nation’s increasing stupidity surplus.