Kabe looked round the haze horizon. He could see hundreds of pylons from here. 'He built all this himself?'
‘In a manner of speaking,' the avatar said, still staring up at the ceiling, which was painted with scenes of ancient rustic life. 'He asked for manufacturing capacity and design time and he found a sentient airship which also thought it would be a hoot to dot pylons all over the Breaks. He designed the pylons and the cars, had them manufactured and then he and the airship and a few other people he'd talked into supporting the project started putting the pylons up and stringing the cables in between.'
'Didn't anyone object?'
'He kept it quiet for a surprisingly long time, but yes, people did object.'
'There are always critics,' Ziller muttered. He was studying a huge paper chart through a magnifying glass.
'But they let him go ahead?'
'Grief, no,' the avatar said. 'They started taking the pylons down. Some people like their wilderness just as it is.'
'But obviously Mr Latry prevailed,' Kabe said, looking round again. They were approaching the mast on the low hill. The ground was rising towards the car's lower sails and their shadow was growing closer all the time.
'He just kept building the pylons and the airship and his pals kept planting them. And the Preservationeers - ' the avatar turned and glanced at Kabe, 'they had a name by this time; always a bad sign - kept taking them down. More and more people joined in on both sides until the place was swarming with people putting up pylons and hanging cable off them, rapidly followed by people tearing everything down and carting it away again.'
'Didn't they vote on it?' Kabe knew this was how disputes tended to be settled in the Culture.
The avatar rolled its eyes. 'Oh, they voted.'
'And Mr Latry won.'
'No, he lost.'
'So, how come-?'
'Actually they had lots of votes. It was one of those rolling campaigns where they had to vote on who would be allowed to vote; just people who'd been to the Breaks, people who lived on Canthropa, everybody on Masaq', or what?'
'And Mr Latry lost.'
'He lost the first vote, with those eligible to vote restricted to those who'd been to the Breaks before - would you believe there was one proposal to weight everybody's votes according to how many times they'd been here, and another to give them a vote for each day they'd been here?' The avatar shook its head. 'Believe me; democracy in action can be an unpretty sight. So he lost that one and in theory my predecessor was then mandated to stop the manufacturing, but then the people who hadn't been allowed to vote were complaining and so there was another ballot and this time it was the whole Plate population, plus people who'd been to the Breaks.'
'And he won that one.'
'No, he lost that one, too. The Preservationeers had some very good PR. Better than the Pylonists.'
'They had a name too by this time?' Kabe asked.
'Of course.'
'This isn't going to be one of those idiotic local disputes that end up being put to a vote of the whole Culture, is it?' Ziller said, still poring over his chart. He looked up briefly at the avatar. 'I mean, that doesn't really happen, does it?' he asked.
'It really happens,' the avatar said. Its voice sounded particularly hollow. 'More often than you'd think. But no, in this case the quarrel never went out of Masaq's jurisdiction.' The avatar frowned, as though finding something objectionable in the painted scene overhead. 'Oh, Ziller, by the way; mind that pylon.'
@ BG
