“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?”