Shades of Grey Page 7

  The senior toshing monitor immediately organized an expedition upstream, where it was found that a new channel had been cut through the remnants of an old village. Despite being almost three foot-hours into the Outfield and arguably closer to the village of Greenver’s Chase, it was claimed by Jade-under-Lime’s Council as Color-trove, and yielded several hundred tons of highly colored scrap over the next six years. The Council were extremely grateful. I was awarded two hundred merits and allowed to keep the Everspin, which was something of a treat: Under Rule 2.1.02.03.047, all Leapbacked technology not subject to an exemption was put “beyond use,” a term that generally involved several sharp blows with the blacksmith’s hammer. My Everspin didn’t work, of course. Or at least it didn’t when I found it. But after six months of drying out it started to rotate again, albeit slowly, and only when the weather was chilly. But I kept the Everspin’s everspinning to myself. Previous agreements notwithstanding, it would have been confiscated.

  I returned to the kitchen and found the kettle singing merrily to itself and half boiled out. I was just replenishing the water when there was a soft rap at the back door. I opened it to find a young man with a pale complexion, an almost nonexistent nose and overly large eyes that made him look as though he were constantly surprised. He seemed ill at ease, and wrung his hands nervously.

  “Master Edward?” he inquired. “My name is Dorian G-7. I’m the village photographer and editor of the East Carmine Mercury. Would you like some shortbread?”

  I thanked him and helped myself from the open biscuit tin he was holding.

  “What do you think?”

  “To be honest, somewhat . . . gritty.”

  He looked despondent.

  “I was afraid you’d say that. I had to use sand instead of sugar. Ingredients are very hard to come by out here. I’m trying to open a supply line for baking requisites. Do you know of anyone who might want to trade?”

  By chance, my friend Fenton’s father ran the Collective’s cake decoration factory, and he’d be the one in the know.

  “What are you offering?” I asked, since there was a world of difference between barter, which was legal, and unapproved trading for cash, which was definitely Beigemarket.

  “I’ve got some floaties,” he said, and dug into his pocket to produce a small leather pouch. He gave me a grin and emptied the contents into the air. It was a modest collection, to be honest. The half dozen or so scraps of dull metallic material bounced up and down in the air until they settled the usual yard or so above the kitchen floor’s lowest point, which was near the broom cupboard. I’d seen bigger lumps pop out of the earth and settle above the ground while I was out on walks, and Old Man Magenta had a section so large it would support his tea, which he used as an occasional table. But this was the Outer Fringes, and I didn’t want to hurt Dorian’s feelings.

  “That’s . . . impressive. I’m sure we can do something—do you have much more?”

  He explained that the East Field was being plowed, and it was traditionally a place where floaties would rise from the newly turned soil—and his family had the sole collecting rights. I said I would contact Fenton to see if a deal could be made, and then flicked one of the larger floaties with my finger. It shot off to the other side of the kitchen, only to drift languidly back to join the others.

  “Weird, aren’t they?” remarked Dorian. “Another shortbread?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Very wise. Could I do an interview with you for the East Carmine Mercury? Our readers are very keen on learning about how ridiculously self-obsessed you hub-dwellers are.”

  I thanked him and told him I was busy right now, but would make time for him in the next few days. He replied that this would be admirable, but seemed reluctant to leave.

  “Is there something else I can help you with?”

  “Forgive me for being forward, Master Edward, but there is a market for Open Returns in the village, and if—”

  “I’m not selling,” I said, smiling so he knew I wouldn’t report him. “I’ll need my ticket to get home.”

  “Of course. But I could offer, um, two hundred merits. And in cash.”

  It was a lot of merits for a Grey to have in transferable form, rather than unspendable in the back of his book. Actually, it was a lot for me to have. I could buy some serious evenings out with Constance, but if I couldn’t get back to Jade-under-Lime, there wouldn’t be much point. “Sorry,” I said, “I’ll need it.”

  Dorian apologized, said he would be delighted to talk whenever I was free, and departed.

  I filled the sugar bowl with our own supply of lumps, then went through to the drawing room.

  “Odd,” I said to my father, who was sitting in the window seat and fighting a losing battle with the crossword. “I’ve just had an offer to buy my Open Return.”

  “The Fringes aren’t for everyone,” he remarked, not looking up. “You didn’t sell it, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. Don’t hand it to the prefects for safekeeping, either—they’ll probably sell it themselves.”

  I thanked him for this good advice, then asked him if he could guess who our lodger was.

  “Three down,” he muttered. “I spy an Equus. Nine letters, begins and ends in A.”

  “Apocrypha.”

  “Apocrypha? Jolly good.” And he filled it in without thinking.

  “No, Dad, our lodger is Apocrypha.”

  “Dangles,” he mumbled, rubbing out the answer for perhaps the sixth time. “An Apocryphal man, eh? You didn’t ask him for supper, I hope?”

  “I didn’t ask him anything,” I replied, depositing the milk and sugar lumps with the tea things before joining him at the window seat, “and since he doesn’t exist, I guess that means he can’t be there—even if he is.”

  “They’re never anywhere,” replied Dad, “that’s the point. I spy an Equus. Hmm.”

  And that was when I heard the doorbell jangle.

  “Would you get that?” said Dad, putting down his newspaper, straightening his tie and then adopting a dignified pose by the fireplace. “It’ll be the head prefect.”

  A Grey and Sally Gamboge

  1.2.31.01.006: Anyone caught paying underprice or overprice for goods or services shall be fined.

  I stood up straight, my heart beating faster. I went to the front door, pausing only to polish the toes of my shoes on the back of my trouser legs.

  But it wasn’t the head prefect.

  “You!” I cried, for standing on the doorstep was the quirky rude girl who had threatened to break my jaw back in Vermillion. I felt a curious mix of elation and trepidation, which came out as looking startled. And so was she. A second’s worth of doubt crossed her face, then she relaxed and stared at me impassively.

  “You’ve met?” came a stern voice. Standing behind her was a woman who I assumed must be Sally Gamboge, the Yellow prefect. She, like Bunty McMustard at the station, was covered from head to foot in a well-tailored bright synthetic-yellow skirt and jacket. She even had yellow earrings, headband and watch strap. The color was so bright, in fact, that my cortex cross-fired, and her clothes became less of a fierce shade and more the sickly-sweet smell of bananas. But it wasn’t actually a smell; it was only the sense of one.

  “Yes,” I said without thinking. “She threatened to break my jaw!”

  It was a very serious accusation, and I regretted saying it almost immediately. Russetts don’t usually snitch.

  “Where was this?” the woman asked.

  “Vermillion,” I replied in a quiet voice.

  “Jane?” said Gamboge sternly. “Is this true?”

  “No, ma’am,” she replied in an even tone, quite unlike the threatening one I had heard that morning. “I’ve never even seen this young man before—or been to Vermillion.”

  “What’s going on?” asked my father, who had gotten bored posing with one elbow on the mantelpiece and joined us in the hall.

  “Sally Gambo
ge,” said the prefect, putting out a hand for him to shake, “Yellow prefect.”

  “Holden Russett,” returned my father, “holiday relief swatchman. And this is . . . ?”

  “Jane G-23,” explained Gamboge. “I’m allocating her as your maid. She hasn’t gotten much positive feedback, I’m afraid, but she’s all I can spare. You can have her for an hour a day. Anything more can be privately negotiated. And I apologize in advance for any impertinence. Jane has . . . issues.”

  “An hour only?” replied Dad.

  “Yes. I’m sorry if you have to sort your own washing and make the bed,” said Mrs. Gamboge with a shrug. “Overemployment is particularly bad at present—too many Greys in unproductive retirement, if you ask me.”

  “You could pay them to do overtime,” said Dad.

  The Yellow prefect gave out a derisive laugh, not even considering that Dad might have been making a sensible suggestion. The Rules regarding retirement were universal across the Spectrum: As soon as you had discharged your fifty years’ obligation to the Collective, you were free to do what you wanted, and extra work would have to be paid for. “The best Greys,” our Yellow Prefect had once told me, “are the ones who catch the Mildew the morning of their retirement.”

  “Hello, Jane,” said Dad, realizing he would get no sense from Mrs. Gamboge. His eyes flicked to the TRUCULENT and DECEITFUL badges below her Grey Spot. “Would you make a tray of scones? The other prefects are due shortly.”

  She bobbed and made to move away, but Gamboge was not yet done.

  “Wait until you’re dismissed, girl,” she said in a curt tone, then added more warmly, “Mr. Russett, your son claims he has met Jane before and that she threatened physical violence. I want to know how that’s possible.”

  Dad looked at me, then at Jane, then at Gamboge. When Yellows start making inquiries, you never really know where it will all end up. Not reporting something that had happened was sometimes worse than the infraction itself. But despite the fact that Jane had threatened to break my jaw, I didn’t want to get her into trouble. And it would be serious trouble. Threatening to assault was treated the same as assaulting—to the Rules, intent and implementation were pretty much the same thing.

  “Well, Eddie?” said Dad. “Where have you seen her before?”

  “In Vermillion,” I mumbled, wondering how I could back out without a demerit for wasting a prefect’s time with a spurious accusation. “This morning—just before we caught the train.”

  “Then you are mistaken,” said Gamboge, and I saw a sense of relief cross Jane’s face. “Did you see her on the train?”

  “No.”

  “Vermillion is over fifty miles away, and what’s more, I saw her doing breakfast Useful Work this morning. There is only one train a day—and it heads north. Could you have been mistaken, Master Russett?”

  “Yes,” I said, greatly relieved. “It must have been someone else.”

  “Good,” said Gamboge. “You may go, girl.” And Jane headed off to the kitchen without another word.

  “The head prefect will be attending you soon,” said Gamboge, addressing my father, “but in the meantime I was wondering if you could look at some Greys who are claiming to be unwell? If you’d countersign a malingering report, I can dock some merits and knock some sense into the work-shy scalybacks. It’ll only take ten minutes.”

  “I’ll, um, do what I can,” said my father, mildly perturbed by the Yellow prefect’s obvious dislike of her workforce. Yellows were in charge of Grey employment allocation. Some did it well, others badly. Gamboge was clearly one of the latter.

  The door closed behind them, and I walked slowly down the corridor to the kitchen, where Jane was busying herself in a halfhearted manner. I stood at the door, but she ignored me. For a moment I thought that perhaps I was mistaken—no one could travel over one hundred miles in a single morning without a train. But looking at her, I knew that I wasn’t wrong, because when gazing at her, I felt the same odd tautness in my chest. And that nose. It was quite unique.

  “How did you do it?” I asked. “Commute to Vermillion and back in a morning?”

  “Commute?”

  “I collect obsolete words,” I explained, attempting to impress. “It means to travel a distance to work every day—or something.”

  “Have you heard of the term dickhead?”

  “No, I haven’t got that one. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “but it might describe you. And I didn’t ‘commute’ to Vermillion—you’re mistaking me for someone else. Did you just look at my nose?”

  “No,” I said, which was a lie.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “All right,” I replied, feeling brave, “I did. So what? It’s actually rather—”

  “I would be failing in my duty of care if I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warn me about what?”

  “Of what might happen if you were to use the words nose and cute anywhere near me.”

  It might have been an odd leg-pull, so I laughed.

  “Come on, Jane—!”

  She glared at me and I saw that flash of anger again. It was definitely the same person.

  “Did I say you could use my name?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Red. You and I have nothing to say, because we’ve never met and have nothing in common. So let’s just leave it at that, and in a month you can go home to Polyp-on-the-Noze or wherever it is you come from, and carry on your pathetically uninteresting life as far from me as possible. Or farther.”

  She went back to measuring out the flour as I stood in silence, wondering what to say or do. I’d never quite met anyone so forthright. It was like talking to a Prefect in the body of a twenty-year-old Grey.

  “Do you have a preference over the fat I use in the scones?” she asked, holding up two pots. “Pure vegetable is more expensive, but the animal reconstitute might have traces of resident in it. I don’t know how qualmy you hub-dwellers are.”

  “We’re not fussed. Who was the wrongspotted Grey in the Paint Shop?”

  If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have asked. She paused for a moment, then grabbed the nearest utensil from the counter and hurled it in my direction, where it struck the door frame with a thunk. It was a carving fork. I stared at the quivering handle barely five inches from my face, then back at Jane, who was glaring at me, so livid with rage that I could see the red in her cheeks. Pretty nose or not, she had a serious temper.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “We’ve never met.”

  The doorbell rang. Ordinarily, I would have expected Jane as maid to go and answer it, but she didn’t.

  “I’ll, um, get that, shall I?”

  She ignored me, so I left the kitchen, then came back, pointed at the fork where it was still stuck in the door frame, and said, “You wouldn’t really kill me, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Not here. Too many witnesses.”

  I must have looked shocked, for she allowed herself a wry smile at my expense.

  “Joke, right?” I said.

  “Right.”

  But it wasn’t, as it turned out.

  I again expected it to be the head prefect at the front door, and again it wasn’t. On the step was a wrinkly old woman with two rosy bumps for cheeks and a cheery grin. She wore a dress that was to my eyes a dark burgundy, but it wasn’t. It was natural purple—I was just seeing the red component in it. She wore a bright synthetic Purple Spot and, below that, several merit badges and an upside-down head prefect badge—she had once run the village. Instinctively, I stood that much straighter in her presence. She was also carrying a cake: a plain, jamless sponge cake, but with the unusual luxury of a single bright red glacéed cherry atop a sheet of perfect white icing.

  “The new swatchman?” she asked in an incredulous tone. “You seem barely out of short pants.”

  “That would be my father,” I replied.
“He’s with Mrs. Gamboge, sorting out the malingerers. Can I help?”

  “I suppose one must get used to the swatchmen getting younger,” she said, sighing, as if I’d not spoken. “Welcome to East Carmine.”

  I thanked her, and she told me that her name was Widow deMauve, that she could see lots of purple and that she was our next-door neighbor. After relating a tedious yet mercifully short story regarding a fatal industrial accident that had left three households struggling to find a cleaner, she finally asked me if I would like the cake.

  “That’s very kind,” I replied, taking the cake from her, “and with a cherry of all things. Would you like to come in?”

  “Not particularly.”

  She paused for a moment, and then leaned closer. “Since you are new here, it would be only fair to warn you of Mrs. Lapis Lazuli.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Despite her honeyed words and faux generosity, she’s a thieving, Rot-dodging congenital liar whose contribution to the village would be much improved if she were soap.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  “What a suggestion!” replied the Widow deMauve in a shocked tone. “She is one of my closest and dearest friends. She and I log Pooka sightings. Have you seen one recently?”

  “Not recently,” I replied, not thinking an ex-head prefect would concern herself with something as childish as specters.

  “We also run East Carmine’s reenactment society—would you care to join?”

  “What do you reenact?” I asked, which was a reasonable question, since there wasn’t much to reenact except scenes from Munsell’s Life, which was too dreary to even contemplate.

  “We reenact the previous Friday every Tuesday, then every Saturday morning is reenacted the following Thursday. It’s a lot of fun when the whole village gets involved. At the end of the year we reenact the highlights. Sometimes we even reenact the reenactments. Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  I made no reply, so she pointed at the cherry cake.