Shades of Grey (14 page)

“We have a Grey named Jane as our maid,” I said, attempting to glean some information. “She seems a trifle . . . volatile.”

“We call her Crazy Jane, but
never
to her face. She’s broken more bones than almost anyone else in the village.”

“Accident-prone?”

“Not hers.
Ours
. She’ll punch anyone who mentions her nose, and once fractured Jim-Bob’s arm because she
thought
he was looking at her whatnots.”

“Was he?”

“Not on that particular occasion. But she won’t bother us for much longer. We’re not sure how deep into negative merits she is, but it’s rumored five hundred or so.”

I whistled low. “But she’s pretty, don’t you think?”

“I’ll concede that her nose is
definitely
the cutest and most retroussé in the village,” said Tommo, “but as for pretty—so is a viper. If you tried to kiss either, you’d get bitten on the face.”

The well-worn path through the lumpy grasslands took us past one of the many ancient streetlamps still standing.

“Repainted every year without fail,” said Tommo proudly, pausing for a moment to admire the cast-iron lampposts. “The janitor had to take the Ford into Vermillion to have the bands relined, so he took Jabez and me. On the outskirts you drive through a town that is long gone, but the streetlamps are still there, running in great rows upon the land, and standing in the middle of open pasture like stunted oaks.”

“Could one get to Vermillion and back in a morning?” I asked, Jane’s apparently impossible trip to Vermillion and back still on my mind.

“You could do it in the Ford.”

“Is that a practical proposition?”

“No. For a start, Carlos—he’s our janitor—treats the Model T better than his own daughter, and every drop of fuel oil has to be logged and accounted for. You
might
get in by Penny-Farthing, but you’d have to push it across the six miles of rutted track between Rusty Hill and Persimmon.
Plus
you’d have to find a way across the ferry without any transit papers. Believe me, if there
was
a way, I’d be the first person to try it. There are a hundred reasons for me to get to Vermillion, all of them highly profitable.”

He stared at me for a moment, then cocked his head to one side.

“Do you have some sort of scam cooking—or are you just thinking of a Plan B if you don’t get your Open Return back?”

“The latter,” I replied, and he nodded knowingly.

The Sorting Pavilion was like a miniature version of the town hall, with four shorter and narrower columns supporting the roof over the main entrance. It looked a good deal older than the buildings I had seen so far. The brickwork was crumbling, and years of hard winter rain had washed the mortar from the walls. The tympanum above the door held a sculpture of a reclining woman, carved in marble. She must have been earth salvage: From the navel upward the weather had scrubbed away the subtlety of the craftsman’s hand, but below this every muscle and sinew was finely detailed. The woman’s features had vanished almost entirely, but she would once have been beautiful. No one would have expended so much time and effort on such a monument if she wasn’t.

The Pavilion had a curved glass roof that boasted no less than three heliostats, and parked outside was a small handcart for moving the sorted sacks of scrap to the railway station nearby. We sat on the oak bench outside and took off our shoes. I knew the protocol, even though we didn’t have a Pavilion in Jade-under-Lime; all our scrap color was sorted at Viridian, one stop down the line.

“Ever been in a Pavilion before?” asked Tommo.

I shook my head.

“So who’s the hick now?” he said, and pushed open the doors.

The Pavilion’s sorting room was long, high and so well lit it was actually
brighter
than the outdoors, which was the point. It takes a lot of light to see color well, and I suspect that work stopped when the weather was overcast. Tommo directed my gaze toward a man a few years older than myself who was dressed head to toe in a yellow outfit, and apart from two Grey orderlies who were transporting sacks of unsorted tosh to the washing room suspended beneath a silk canopy full of floaties, he was the only person there.

“That’s Courtland,” murmured Tommo in a respectful whisper. “I know you claim to be leaving in a month, but for all our sakes, don’t annoy him or anything, okay?”

“Tommo, I have no reason to make enemies of the buttercup persuasion. And
certainly
not one with a mother on the Council.”

“Just checking. If Courtland says ‘Jump,’ you just ask ‘How high and in what direction?’ ”

Tommo waved at Courtland, and he gestured with a lazy jerk of his head for us to enter the work area, where he was sitting at one of the three sorting tables. I looked around curiously. Etched onto the surface of each table were three large intersecting circles representing the traditional primary colors, the intersections denoting the secondary hues. Sorting was a simple enough process. Each sorter was responsible for one of the three colors. Courtland, for example, would pick any yellow items from the tosh pile and place them in the pure yellow section of his intersecting circles, with the brightest shade at the top and the dullest at the bottom. At the same time, he would pick out any yellow-value object he could see from the red section, say, and place it in the intersecting area that belonged to both red and yellow, and from that it could be deduced that the object was orange. It was the same with the rest of the sorting table: Anything in the intersection of yellow and blue would have to be green; and anything in red and blue, purple. In this way, thanks to the talents of those highly perceptive in red, yellow and blue, the entire unseeable Spectrum of color could be laid upon the table. After sorting, the objects would then be bagged and sent off to the pigment plant to be milled, squeezed and enriched—and from there to communal enjoyment.

I noticed that the blue table seemed neat and orderly, as was Courtland’s. The red table less so. Untidy, to be truthful. In fact, I could see red items in the reject tosh pile that
should
have been placed, but had been missed.

“Who sorts your red?” I asked.

“Dullard Yewberry,” said Tommo, staring at the misplaced red tosh without a flicker. “He’s only
acting
prefect, so his perception is not first-rate. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Hello, Court,” said Tommo in a servile tone. “This is Eddie Russett. Eddie, this is Courtland Gamboge, son of the Yellow prefect and next one up.”

Courtland was tall, handsome and well dressed. He had a large jaw, strong eyebrows and odd, unblinking eyes that seemed to stare. Upon his lapel was a parade of badges awarded for meritorious work, and on his cheek a recent scar.

“How much red you got?” he asked.

“Enough,” I replied.

“Keeping your cards close to your chest, eh? Good idea. And what’s your
HUMILITY
badge for?”

I told him about Bertie Magenta and the elephant trick, and all that hoo-ha.

“They’ve given him a chair census to conduct,” said Tommo with a smirk.

Courtland sniggered. “It gets less imaginative each time. Now, Master Russett, do you need anything?”

“Not that I can think of right now.”

“Bear it in mind. Tommo and I like to think we can fix most things around here. If you want a good job or need to borrow a few extra merits until payday or are in the poo with the prefects, we can . . . make things happen.”

There was a pause.

“This is where you say ‘Wow’ or ‘Gosh’ or ‘Terrific,’ ” Tommo prompted.

“Gosh,” I said.

“Gosh indeed, Russett,” said Courtland. “But it’s very much quid pro quo. We do things for you, and you do things for us—to the mutual benefit of all. No point in living the Grey life just because the Rules have so little room for maneuver, hey?

“But before we get too embroiled in complexities, you will need to do something for us. Something to prove your mettle.” He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “
We want some Lincoln.
You have access to your father’s swatch safe. Do that for us and we’ll be the best of friends.”

I frowned. This was a new one. Most bullies were uncomplicated characters who simply wanted unearned respect and cash. Stealing swatches was on another level entirely. Lincoln, or 125-66-53, was a chromatropic painkiller ten times more powerful than lime. Even a
glimpse
was enough to lower the heart rate, and a good ten-second stare would bring on a sense of dreamy otherworldliness and hallucinations. Some maintained that greening was a harmless indulgence, but heavy greeners risked damaging their visual cortex. Too much Lincoln and you could lose all sense of color—natural
and
univisual. Peddling Lincoln was peddling misery. I stared at them both in turn.

“I’m afraid I might have to pass on your request.”

Courtland looked back at me, unblinking, then put his hand on my shoulder in a friendly but firm gesture and said in a low voice, “What’s your first name again?”

“Eddie.”

“What you must realize, Eddie, is that I’m the highest Yellow you’re ever likely to be able to count as a friend. Friendship, I’m sure you will agree, is a very useful commodity if you’re going to spend the rest of your life in this backwater.”

“I’m only here for a month.”

“Were you fool enough to give deMauve your ticket?”

“Yes.”

“Then you could be here for longer. But here’s the bottom line: Defrauding the village out of some Lincoln might
seem
something of a Rule dilemma right here and now, but actually it’s a very wise long-term investment, wouldn’t you agree?”

He said it in a serious, businesslike manner, but with a strong undercurrent of menace. I’d seen Alpha Primes throwing their weight around, but never so blatantly. I looked across at Tommo, who was at the window, checking for prefects.

“I think that’s pretty reasonable, don’t you?” he said.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m not going to steal any Lincoln from my father.”

“Hoo,” said Tommo, “
scruples
.”

“I wasn’t for one moment suggesting you
steal
anything,” murmured Courtland with a smile. “A missing swatch of Lincoln would have the prefects all in a lather. No. Tommo has a
much
better idea.”

“Here’s how it works,” said Tommo, picking up his cue. “When your father comes to reorder the swatches, all you do is sneak into his office and write a ‘two’ in the ordering column next to
Lincoln
. He won’t notice, and it’s not likely deMauve will either. All you do then is ‘liberate’ the extra swatch when it arrives from National Color. Simple, hey?”

“What if my father doesn’t order any Lincoln?”

“Haven’t you heard? Robin Ochre was selling off the village swatches on the Beigemarket. The mutual auditor from Bluetown told me he sold almost the entire stock.”

Those were the “irregularities” surrounding Ochre that deMauve had been speaking of. It went against
everything
a swatchman had sworn to uphold. DeMauve was right: A fatal self-misdiagnosis may have been the best thing for him.

“It’s a brilliant plan,” I concurred.

“Splendid! And remember: If you need anything,
anything at all,
you only have to ask. We can fix pretty much anything, can’t we, Tommo?”

“Indeed we can,” he replied, “except get your Open Return back—or wangle you a date with Crazy Jane.”

Courtland laughed out loud.

“Do you remember when Jabez asked her to go to a tea dance with him?”

“Yes,” mused Tommo. “I hadn’t realized you could actually tear an eyebrow
off
.”

“So,” said Courtland, “we’re all agreed about the Lincoln.”

He gave me another smile, patted me on the shoulder and returned to his work. Tommo took my arm and steered me firmly toward the door.

 

“I think that went pretty well,” said Tommo as we walked back toward the village, “although you might have been a
tad
more obsequious.”

“I’ll try to remember that for next time.”

“Stout fellow. You won’t regret helping us out, you know. Doors can really open to anyone willing to play the system.

“Oh,” said Tommo as he snapped his fingers, “once you’ve got your paws on your dad’s swatch safe, would you let me borrow some 7-85-57?”

He was referring to Redlax, a cross-spectral laxative of instantaneous and unprecedented violence. Even a glimpse would have someone running for the thunderbox as if his life depended on it.

“If you’re having problems with your number twos,” I confided, “perhaps you might speak to my father.”

“It’s not for me,” said Tommo with a laugh. “I was thinking of using it to play a prank on deMauve—put it into his copy of
Harmony
just as he’s about to bore our chops off at assembly.”

I was struck speechless. He
had
to be pulling my leg. No one would try something like that.

“It, er, wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where the Redlax came from.”

“I’m not too concerned over the
consequences
of the prank,” replied Tommo, summing up his worldview in one swift statement, “more the prank itself.”

We took a path back toward the town, and on the way encountered a group of a half-dozen girls who had just come off their shift at the linoleum factory. They were all dressed in dungarees with their hair tied up in printed gingham head scarves, and were giggling and chatting in an exuberant manner.

“Good evening, ladies,” said Tommo politely.

“Good evening, Master Thomas,” said the tallest of the group, an attractive willow of a girl who was shaking out her long tresses as she removed her headscarf. “Who’s the newbie?”

“This is Master Edward Russett, Melanie. All the way from some dreadful dump near the inner boundary. He has scruples, counts chairs and has seen the Last Rabbit.”