Strip the Willow (22 page)

But are there not 192 countries in the United Nations, give or take Taiwan
?

GrottoLotto has dealt with the arithmetic head-on.

Is ball interference to be permitted
?

No. GrottoLotto seeks to set the highest standards, and to
influence
the behaviour of the young everywhere.

What will happen in the event of foul play
?

The nine Pushers concerned, and, by inevitable implication, the nine Pushees, will have to retrace and reroll their path, and start from the Music Hall again.

Will the game not be over very quickly
?

No, the pavementette will be switched on in reverse. All teams will have to contend against a broad band of high-tensile pavementette rolling
away
from the direction of striving.

Where can one get a GrottoLotto ticket
?

Tickets at 1 dollar are available at 10,000 global outlets, and online. Any more questions?

No, that’s about it for now. Just one last.

Yes?

I have just worked something out.

What?

The odds against purchasing a winning lottery line would seem to be 21 times 20 times 19 times 18 times 17 times 16 times 15 times 14 times 13 times 12 times 11 times 10 times 9 times 8 times 7 times 6 times 5 times 4 times 3 times 2. Times 1 if you can be bothered.

And your point is?

Never mind people for the moment. Are there in this world five thousand million billion anything, apart from flies and grains of sand
?

I’m sorry, sir, that’s not in our briefing pack. Perhaps if you could call and see our Operations Director, Mr Bord. Mr Bord is on Balcony A. I’m sure he’ll deal with any query.

Thank you, I may do so.

Have a nice GrottoLotto.

As afternoon wore into evening, Rookie Marr became more and more animated. Even a motivator who had achieved the gratitude of fifty councillors, the participation of three hundred staff, the exploitation of a thousand workers, the channel-flicking attention of a billion viewers, even a godlike figure who had broadened the horizons of the media beyond belief, even a backhand shanker who needed streaming porn in his penthouse to raise a flutter—

Even such a man was excited now.

He was tempted by three choices of viewing platform.

One. In the Fastness, the Leopard’s lair.

Two. On the gold throne on a raised dais on Balcony A, in public view, where he might be seen justly as a contemporary emperor, might adjudge the quality of play in the GrottoLotto arena, and direct cheats back to the Music Hall with a peremptory flick of a horizontal thumb.

Three. Down the Hole, where each ball must fall and roll along the rail, and where all hopes, and many cameras, lay focussed. There, on his second-best throne, he might quaff from the
silver-chased
cup, engraved
Bon Accord
, that had been presented to him personally just last week, to mark the demise of the old city, and the birth of the new.

Guy Bord was updating him on security, at his request. There were all sorts of last minute rumours. The old G8 Gleneagles protestors had been heard on the waves, blithering on about
GL9
. The Faslane clowns were sniffing north for anything nuclear.

– Mounted police? queried Rookie Marr.

– Mounted, replied Guy Bord.

– Plainclothes security?

– Roger.

– Aerial surveillance?

– Lynxes warm, turning over, ready to hover.

– Tanks?

– Tanks shouldn’t be necessary.

– Tanks? repeated Rookie Marr.

– The Highland Light Desert are in reserve. A local regiment, they command affection.

– Good work, Guy. This won’t be forgotten. Oh, I have a picture of you with Luna you should see sometime. I know you like her.

Guy Bord, at the other end, missed a beat, missed Luna, missed another beat, and missed Lucy in that sudden moment. Her doughty deconstruction and reconstruction of sentences.
This won’t be forgotten.

Unfortunately for you,
Lucy would have added. It all piled up now, it had been piling up for weeks in Guy’s mind.

It was no mean feat to coordinate such Spectacle.

The battle over which three nations should be omitted as Pusher-suppliers had strung him out. They had tried a blind draw, but somebody hadn’t mixed the folded squares of paper properly, and it was
Uganda, UK,
and finally
USA
they landed up picking.

Lottery having its limitations, they tried reason. Alison suggested some of the former Russian states might want to reamalgamate. Or a few Balkans. She was in a dangerous kind of mood.

It came down to Otto’s brainwave. They picked out three
infinitesimal
countries with probably very bumpy airstrips, that would struggle to fly an athlete out to Leopardeen in a month of Sundays. Palau, Nauru, Burkina Faso.

The setting of the closing date for company qualification had been another bummer for him to handle.

When GrottoLotto’s entry conditions were first announced, there was some desperate trading on the exchanges, as companies tried to squeeze into the top twenty-one. Tokyo and the Hang Seng went bull, which was rare enough these days, and Frankfurt, the Footsie and Wall Street soon followed suit. The masses of action TV, free publicity, and universal pump-out were unrepeatable, short of the Olympics or World Cup. But those lofty spectacles appeared infrequently, once every four years, a marketing nightmare.
GrottoLotto
would be every month, soon every fortnight – perhaps, when
geared up, once a week.

Guy Bord pushed through a deadline of two weeks in advance, for company qualifying. Thus April 17th was the cut-off date for the May 1st opener. Even then, there were bitter complaints. A fortnight was a long time in business, an infinity in volatile trading. A company might be top whack on April 17th, but then by May Day be totally bust.

So Guy was not short of potentially runaway horses. He wished Alison would arrive and juggle a rein or two.

Where to position himself was still a toss-up, but since Guy was getting to be too much the supremo on Balcony A, and because it would be inconvenient tonight to sack him, and because the Hole was too much out of it, except at the end, then Rookie Marr tended to think that it had it best be the Fastness for him. Security had demanded he choose at the last moment anyway.

In the meantime he had brought his main meal forward, and had ordered barbecue-firers and tasters to present themselves in good time.

The moment for GrottoLotto had almost arrived.

From Golden Square, from its fresh-marked grid, shortly would be released the Top Twenty-One. Transparent, strong, soft, sac-like, these were balls almost like human eyes. Eyes like something out of Bosch; eyes with people climbing in. In the membrane of each ball there were nine sealable lids. The lids were as wide as naked
shoulders
, with tubs of grease on hand to ease ingress for the big-hipped, the better-endowed.

Within each sac-like eye, eighteen bare feet now locked into position, soles curved in dynamic tension against the central balance ball, while eighteen palms pattered about till they found their
optimum position and braced outwards, against the membrane. Like Barbarella plural plus attendant Orcs, like an UberEye strutted with flesh, like an orb with a pulse, within the strong, soft sacs now stood the tantalisation and transfiguration of Lottery; the beautiful Pushees. One hundred and eighty nine of them.

Shortly all hundred and eighty nine Pushers would move into their positions too.

Shortly all the banks of red lights in UberStreet would flick to green.

Shortly all three hundred and seventy eight Tiger Cub
Supershoes
would be driven, against the considerable friction of adverse pavementette.

And shortly, the naked Pushees, all of a whirl, on to the public concourse would be impelled.

– What will shake will shake, said Guy to the acolytes, come the hurly-burly.

He realised that Luna had exited his mind, what with the
Leopard’s
veiled threat, what with the bevies of naked beauties. He wished that Lucy was beside him, and Alison. There he was in the middle of history, a situation he had midwifed, practically
single-handedly
, and his words were thrown away.

What will shake will shake,
he spoke to himself,
come the
hurly-burly
.

Ludwig was an ex-POW, and though he had worked in Scotland during his incarceration and ever since, he did not qualify for much in the way of pension. Amande, his partner, was an immigrant,
multi-jobbed
, probably unemployable now, being seventy-odd, and with few insurance stamps accrued. Andy, their next-door neighbour, got his state basic, plus bits and bobs, and, being the man he was, he divvied it in three.

These straitened circumstances explained why they were headed
downtown now. Ludwig piloting the motorbike. Amande with her lined cheek laid to his cracked leather shoulder-blade, and tugging at his waist. Andy Endrie in the sidecar, neck and spine taut.

And their chestnut-roasting stall, squat and stainless, 3,000
chestnuts
aboard, bouncing along on a ball-hitch, swivelling behind. It was like a remake of Jarry’s
Supermale,
only it wasn’t. For of late they had supped but little of nectar, ambrosia, perpetual love food: some trust or faith must have pickled them, for three to have come so far.

Guy decided to see if he still had Lucy’s name in his phone.

– What’s that, is that you Guy? she said. You serious, who do you think I am? Come where?

– I’ll throw you down a security badge.

– What’s got into you, I’m not even dressed.

– I’ll think you’ll find that fits the spirit of the evening, Guy replied.

– I won’t know anybody, will Alison be there?

– Oh, sure. You know her. Sometime.

– Good, because we have a distance to make up, said Lucy.

She suddenly felt almost jolly, caught up in something bigger, conscience quietened, if not stilled.

– How’s your pavementette these days? she said.

– As yet unmarked. But this is the test.

Bing Qing had always had the same weakness; it was the secret of her success. She did not delegate. Tonight’s catering for the special guests would be the pinnacle of her career in Scotland. It was indeed strange. She had left China to flee a Cultural Revolution. Forty years on she found herself, in this most stable of cities, in this most
traditional
of countries, in the middle of yet another. She did not know
what to think; she did not have time to. Her string of restaurants, inherited from her uncle, spoke of a care for quality, a care for the customer, that was in her both cultured and innate.

When you make each small thing good, there is great profit,
her uncle used to say. As well as the obvious surface meaning, he intended that as advice for a whole path in life, a path she followed.
In the middle of revolution, the one is valued who is the same,
was a saying which she had more recently composed.

And even though her sayings would never be published, and her poems on sand perished away, they guided her. All her children and grandchildren were enslaved by the TV. A set sat high in each
take-away
, and in a corner of each kitchen. Vexation.

Tonight was GrottoLotto. Lesser guests on Balconies E to Z were being hosted by Proof Positive, the alcohol provider, and Hints, the luxury ice-cream. But Bing Qing had gained the contract to cater fully on Balconies A, B, C and D for distinguished guests.

A street can be a dangerous place. She would stay behind the curtain. She would not watch it.

For Rookie Marr, the tasting of his meats was more than short-term precaution, it was part of a deeper ritual.

Given the envies that pertain against the successful, it was not beyond the bounds of reason that some slow poison was being administered to him. Nevertheless, by keeping the same person in post, the cumulative effects of any longer-term venomous addition to his meats would affect the Assistant Principal Taster too.

But even the standard taster stratagem might not signal quickly enough any vile intention of the envious. He had thought of that too. Therefore it came about that he required his taster every night to eat twice the size of portion that he, Rookie Marr, had appetite
for and could consume. It required a taster who was practically starved the rest of the day to do full justice to his prophylactic role.

The Assistant Principal Taster, by keeping his stomach
otherwise
empty, seemed to fulfil this, and the truth was, as Rookie Marr knew by diligent DVD recording, that whether he was weak through irregular aliment, or fatigued by the antics of fleshly labour, his Assistant Principal Taster spent much of the day in bed.

All for the best. The matter of the CCTV was good too. The taster man and the Gwen woman could have no knowledge of it, and constraint was placed only on the mother, the Alison woman. It was ideal to have a hostage on the Council, so that nothing arose from that quarter to disturb his plans for world entertainment.