Shades of Grey (27 page)

“No one ever gets lost at night and returns,” observed Daisy, “except Jane, of course.”

I tried not to appear interested.

“Went missing for three days and nights,” whispered Doug, “eighteen months ago. She wouldn’t say what had happened to her or where she had been—just said she couldn’t remember anything until she wandered back into the village.” He leaned closer. “Her clothes were torn and she had lost her shoes—feet badly cut.”

“She hasn’t really been the same since,” remarked Daisy. “Before, she was weird but relatively calm. After—well, are you playing in our annual hockeyball thrashing?”

“I guess.”

“Then you’ll find out. If Jane looks like she’s going to tackle you, just let her have the ball and run the other way. Courtland tried to demerit her for a dress code infraction once and she went for him.”

“In what way?”

“Attacked,” said Cassie, speaking for the first time, “and rightly so. Courtland’s a beast and a liar.”

“She went for his eyes,” added Arnold, “gouged his cheek so hard he needed nine stitches. She’s for Reboot the day after her Ishihara, no doubt about it. And if you ask me, the best place for her. If there is anyone who most represents the dis-words, it’s her: disruption, disharmony and discourtesy—she’s got the lot.”

The conversation turned to High Saffron’s having been opened to toshing, and how the Council had shown unparalleled optimism in thinking that anyone would risk almost certain death to go there.

“It’s a large town to the west of here,” Tommo explained, “on the coast. It’s been abandoned since the Something That Happened, so is totally ripe for mining—raw scrap lying around in abundance, of a hue so bright even the lowbies can see it. Spoons, too, they say—and parrots of a color that
everyone
can see.”

“How is that possible?” asked Daisy, and Tommo shrugged.

Apparently, an attempt to build a road to High Saffron had been abandoned thirty years ago. Of the eighty-three who had been lost to the village’s exploration in the past fifty years, half had been overnighters on the way to Reboot, who had undertaken the hazardous duty in return for enough merits to buy themselves out of their below-zero merit status. But those willing to have a crack at High Saffron were fewer and fewer these days. Considering the odds, the Night Train suddenly looked quite attractive.

“I think it was flying monkeys that got them all,” said Arnold.

“You’re right,” said Doug with a sigh, “that’s exactly what got them—and they’ll get you, too, if you don’t hang some spinach in your wardrobe.”

Arnold sensed he was being mocked and fell silent. Flying monkeys were like Pookas, Khan, Freddie and the Hairy Irrational—something parents used to frighten small children who weren’t yet able to grasp the concept of Rules, Hierarchy or merits.

“Has anyone here actually seen a Pooka?” I asked.

“They say Rusty Hill’s full of them,” said Doug, pulling a face. “Echoes of the Previous.”

“I’ve heard some good Pooka stories,” said Arnold, “I sometimes frighten myself when I’m telling them.”

It was as I thought. Pookas were similar to masters and swans—often talked about, seldom seen. But I pushed them to the back of my mind. I was in no doubt that Jane would carry out her threat if I strayed from the path she had given me.

Dessert was prunes and custard. The prunes were as prunes are, but the custard was grey and unappetizing. Old Man Magenta might have been a colossal pain in the hoo-ha, but he always insisted that the custard was a bright synthetic yellow—sometimes paid for out of his own pocket. It was his single redeeming feature.

As it was being served, Bunty McMustard cast an imperious eye in our direction. At her own insistence, she was the permanent manners monitor. As she approached, the others at the table went quiet, sat up straight and tucked in their elbows. Instinctively, I joined them.

“Hair getting a bit long, Cinnabar?” she sneered.

“Bunty,” said Tommo in an even tone, “I’m disgusted by your ugly face.”

The whole table, and several about, suddenly went deathly quiet.

“
What
did you say?” said Bunty.

“I said, ‘This custard, my, has a lovely taste.’ Why, what did you think I said?”

She glared at him, then at us. We all looked back with expressions of innocence. She gave out a “harrumph” and walked off.

“You are
so
going to Reboot,” muttered Daisy, who could hardly stop herself from giggling.

“Bunty’s a hoo-ha,” he replied. “Doug, did you manage to slip the toe into her pocket?”

He nodded, and we all burst out laughing.

O
nce lunch was over I ambled off toward our house, hoping I might bump into the Colorman when he came home. I’d never met anyone from National Color who had deigned to speak to me before, and I wanted to try to milk the association for all it was worth.

“Master Edward?”

It was Stafford the porter, and he was holding a small envelope. It was a telegram from Constance, and it wasn’t good news.

I cursed and scrunched it up.

“Problems?” asked Stafford.

“You could say that. Roger can barely spell his own name, much less write poetry. That ‘gleeful darting of the house martins’ stuff sounds suspiciously like the work of Jade-under-Lime’s resident verse mercenary, Gerald Henna-Rose.”

Roger Maroon had decided to up the ante in my absence, so I would have to do likewise. I asked Stafford if there was anyone in the village who could write romantic poetry.

“But,” I added, “it’s got to be really good, and not too racy—Constance isn’t one for overtly rude metaphors, worse luck.”

“I think I know someone who might be able to help,” returned Stafford, “but it won’t come cheap. There are risks involved. You know how the prefects take a dim view of irresponsible levels of creative expression.”

“Five percent finder’s fee?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

 

I pushed open our front door and checked the hall table to see if there were any messages. There was one from the persistent Dorian G-7 of the
Mercury
inviting me to give my account of the trip to Rusty Hill, several from Reds suggesting we become friends, and one from “the desk of Violet deMauve” reminding me of my obligations to the orchestra. There were several for my father, too, and Imogen Fandango’s spousal information pack. The scrapbook contained a studio photograph of Fandango’s daughter, who was, I had to admit, not unattractive in an upmarket perky-nose Purplish sort of way. Written testimonials were followed by a long list of her virtues, which numbered seventy-five. They began with a well-worded
implication
of her potentially high Ishihara rating, and ended with her wish to one day help represent East Carmine in the Jollity Fair unicycle relay. I put the details aside, and decided to wire Bertie Magenta first thing tomorrow morning. Fandango had been asking six thousand for Imogen, and a 2 percent finder’s fee would be one hundred and fifty—a useful addition to my dowry, in order to sway Constance from Roger and his perfidious use of proxy poets.

I walked upstairs to add Constance’s telegram to my collection. It was, in truth, a pretty feeble collection—less one of letters professing undying love than of letters requesting favors for one thing or another, or telling me how I should be more like Roger Maroon. I did actually consider burning it, but I was nothing if not dutiful with my filing, as Our Munsell had once noted that
life
is an anagram of
file,
and the relevance was pretty clear.

As I passed the door of the bathroom I noticed that it was swinging shut. It seemed odd, since there wasn’t a breath of wind either within the house or without. I paused in my stride, and the door stopped swinging. I was the only one in the house; I had even seen the Apocryphal man shouting at a drainpipe in the corner of the town square as I came in.

“Hello?”

There was no answer to my call, and I very gently pushed the door. It opened easily for six inches or so, then stopped. But it wasn’t as if it were pushing against a chair—it was the soft, yielding sensation of a
hand
. There was someone behind the door. I briefly thought it might be Jane, who had decided to perhaps kill me after all, but on reflection I decided that hiding behind the bathroom door with a hatchet or something was decidedly not her style.

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer, and then it struck me: It might be the Apocryphal man’s roommate, the one I had heard overhead.

“Do you live upstairs?” I asked, and whoever-it-was knocked once, for yes. I asked, “Can I see you?” and heard two urgent raps, for no. I was just about to frame a more complex question when I heard someone trot up the stairs below. I thought it might be the Colorman or the Apocryphal man, but it wasn’t. It was Mr. Turquoise—the Blue prefect.

“Mr. Turquoise!” I said. “How do you do?”

I felt the bathroom door close slowly behind me.

“Good afternoon, Master Russett,” he said in a businesslike tone. “The front door was open, so I came straight in. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Good lad. How’s the chair census going?”

“I’ve yet to start.”

“Plenty of time. May I use the bathroom?”

He moved forward, but I stepped into his path. “No!”

“What?”

I had to think fast. Whatever the truth about our unseen lodger, it was something that would be best learned without any prefects getting involved.

“It’s . . . broken. Something to do with the cistern.”

He smiled. “I only want to wash my hands.”

“That’s broken, too.”

“
Both
broken?”

“Yes, sir. Must be the cold water supply.”

“Then I’ll use the hot.”

“Are wheelbarrows made of bronze?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering.”

He shook his head and pushed past me. The door opened easily, and Turquoise strode to the sink. I looked around the bathroom. The shower curtain, usually open, was drawn all around the bath, and I could see the faint outline of a figure within. Turquoise, however, didn’t.

“The cold is working, Russett.”

“Must have been a blockage.”

“Must have,” he said, drying his hands. “Now, then, I’m responsible for career advice, organized glee, employment rosters and allocation of Useful Work. Can we walk and talk? I’ve got to check the inertia racer for Leapback Compliance. Fandango wants to run it at the Red Sector Jollity Fair next month at Vermillion, and it reflects badly on the village if he turns up with something that gets busted by the scrutineers.”

I readily agreed, and we walked downstairs, out the front door and across the square.

“Here,” said Turquoise, showing me my carefully prepared timetable.

“Sally Gamboge has raised the Grey retirement age to the maximum allowable, and is currently running sixteen-hour days, but we’re still short a thousand person-hours a week, so the demands on Chromatic time are perhaps a little more than you might be used to. I daresay, in fact, that you might have to give up tennis or croquet, as there won’t be time enough to do both.”

“I quite understand the need for sacrifices, sir.”

“Good fellow. I’ve got you down for Boundary Patrol first thing tomorrow, lightning watch on Saturday, anti-drowning supervision Mondays and Wednesdays and a turn teaching the juniors—this afternoon, in fact. Can you do that?”

“I’ve not much experience of teaching, sir.”

“I shouldn’t worry—there isn’t much left to teach. Talk to them about the different sorts of chairs or something. By the way,” he added, “top marks on the Rusty Hill expedition. If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.”

“I understand there’s a one hundred percent fatality rate?”

“True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundrerd percent
survival
rate. Really, I shouldn’t let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.”

“I think I may have to pass.”

“Well,” he replied, mildly irked, “if you’re going to
insist
on being so negative, I suppose we could raise the consideration to two hundred.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll put you down as a ‘maybe.’ ”

We had reached the racetrack, which was a large oval of perhaps a mile in length. Because horses were too valuable to risk on the track, the Collective had found alternatives to race at Jollity Fair race day. Ostriches had been briefly fashionable, as had kudu and large dogs ridden by infants. Bicycles had been popular until the single-gearing Leapback had made the races considerably less than exciting. To circumvent this, some bright spark had resurrected the notion of the pre-Epiphanic “Penny Farthing,” no doubt named after its inventor. The direct pedal drive on the outsize front wheel gave the cycles a healthy top speed but also made them dangerously top-heavy. With Mildew the most prevalent cause of death by a long shot, someone dying on the racetrack was of considerable novelty, and much applauded.

One sport, however, had dominated the Jollity Fair race day for more years than anyone could remember, and despite prefectural disapproval and a series of Leapbacks that required a great deal of ingenuity to circumvent, the sport had yet to be banned entirely. It was Stored Energy Racing, and East Carmine’s entry was called the
Redstone Flyer.