Shades of Grey Read online

  “Hmm,” murmured deMauve after he had read Dad’s total. “Impressive.”

  “They were my wife’s,” said Dad simply.

  “Indeed?” replied deMauve, no longer so impressed. “She must have been a fine woman. We’re sorry for your loss.”

  “Was it lightning?” asked Mrs. Gamboge in a hopeful sort of voice.

  Dad paused, hoping that they wouldn’t press him, but these prefects were different from our bunch. Old Man Magenta might have been a fool and a martinet, but he knew when to let personal matters drop.

  “Swan attack?” suggested Yewberry.

  “It was the Mildew,” interjected my father in a quiet yet forceful voice, “and our grief is a private matter.”

  “We apologize,” said deMauve simply. He gave us back our books and rose to his feet. “No more will or should be said.”

  They made their way to the front door, where they all solemnly shook hands with my father in turn.

  “It may take you a few days to understand the peculiarity of village customs,” said deMauve, “but I will start you off. Although we’re relaxed about dress code, and first names are generally acceptable, we do insist that ties will be half-Windsored, and lateness to mealtimes is not tolerated. Mandatory sports for girls are squash and hockeyball; for boys, cricket and tag-footy. Voluntary sports are tennis, extreme badminton, croquet, fainting in coils and rowing.”

  “You have a broad enough river?” asked Dad, who used to scull quite a lot back home.

  “It’s mostly theoretical,” replied deMauve. “And we have a ninety-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for rainy afternoons.”

  “But someone lost the picture,” grumbled Yewberry, “and there’s a lot of sky.”

  “Challenging, we call that, Mr. Yewberry,” remarked deMauve. “Master Russett will be rostered Useful Work by Mr. Turquoise tomorrow, and I will have the junior Red monitor show him around the village. As part of this year’s Foundation Day celebrations we’ll be performing Red Side Story. If you want to contribute voice or instrument, my daughter Violet is holding auditions. Do you have any questions?”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “What’s fainting in coils?”

  “We have no idea, but the Rules state we have to offer it as a sport.” And that was it. Following the usual courteous farewells, bows, shaken hands and Apart We Are Together salutations, the door closed, and we were left alone in the hallway.

  “Eddie?”

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “Keep your eyes and ears open. I’ve seen a few odd villages in my day, but nothing like this. What was all that about Jane, by the way? The Prefects actually looked frightened of her.”

  “She doesn’t have anything to lose,” I replied simply. “She’s up for Reboot on Monday.”

  “Ah,” said Dad, “what a waste of a good nose.”

  The front doorbell rang. Dad opened it to find a junior Grey messenger, who told him that there had been another accident at the linoleum factory.

  “But there’s no hurry,” said the young lad cheekily, “unless you have a swatch that can stitch heads back on.”

  Dad tipped the messenger, picked up his traveling swatch case and made for the front door.

  “Keep your eyes open, Eddie. Things here seem a bit rum.”

  “Robin Ochre and his ‘irregularities’?”

  “Among others. And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t put so many sugar lumps out next time the Council come around.”

  I wandered back into the kitchen, where Jane was washing the dishes, and asked her what she had put into the scones.

  “You’re better off not knowing. And if you think not snitching on me is going to grant you any favors in the youknow department, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong,” I said, trying to sound as though the notion of some illicit youknow hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “Sure,” she said sarcastically, “next you’re going to tell me you’re saving yourself for your wedding night.”

  “That’s . . . no bad thing,” I said slowly, and she laughed. Not with me, but at me. It felt humiliating. I tried to get her on the defensive by repeating the awkward question: “How did you get to Vermillion and back this morning?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “It’s not possible. And we’ve never met before, remember?”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “That would take effort,” she replied. “Indifference is much, much easier. Listen, you did me a favor, and I did you a favor. So we’re quits.”

  “It was hardly equal,” I replied. “I saved you a whole bunch of awkward questions, and all you did was stop me eating scones.”

  “If you knew what I’d put in the scones, you might think differently.”

  “What—”

  “I’m done,” she said, drying her hands on the towel and getting ready to leave, “and what’s more important, we’re done. Speak to me again and I’ll break your arm. Make a comment about how cute and retroussé you think my nose is and I’ll kill you. Don’t think I won’t. I’ve nothing to lose.”

  “But you’re the maid. What if I need extra starch on my collar or something?”

  I wished I hadn’t said it. I’d wanted to simply keep on engaging with her at any cost, but the comment came out all reedy and needy. She picked up on this right away. It was abundantly clear who had the upper hand. She oozed authority. But it wasn’t the sort of authority that comes from a fortuitous birth gift; she had something else—a sense of clear purpose and strength.

  She took a step closer and stared at me, trying, I think, to figure out if I had any hidden depths. Then, after satisfying herself that I hadn’t, she made for the door.

  “If you want anything, you can leave me a note.”

  And she departed, leaving me feeling deflated and somewhat confused. I’d thought Outer Fringes would be uncomplicated and wholly parochial, but in the short time I had been out there, it had begun to seem more subtle and complex than anything my uneventful existence at Jade-under-Lime had thrown at me. There were, however, two things in my favor. First, she had moved from threatening to break my jaw to threatening to break my arm, which I think was a step in the right direction. Second, and far more important, Dad had given me the Grey Purple Pretender’s spoon. And engraved on the back, as with every other personal spoon, was his full postcode: LD2 5TZ. I wish now that I had ignored it, but I didn’t. The yateveo’s barbed snatch-boughs were already descending.

  Tommo Cinnabar

  5.3.21.01.002: Once allocated, postcodes are permanent, and for life.

  “Hullo!” said a lad who knocked on the door about half an hour later. “Are you the Russett fellow?”

  “Eddie.”

  “I’m Tommo Cinnabar. DeMauve told me to give you the grand tour of East Carmine’s glittering highlights. I expect you’re almost insane with excitement, eh?”

  “It’s all I’ve been thinking of for weeks.”

  “Actually, it’s a dump,” he said as we moved off. “Even the cockroaches think it’s a toilet. Friend?”

  “Friend.”

  The lightning lure atop the flak tower was easily the most unusually dominant feature as we walked across the square, and I mentioned this to him.

  “Did the Yellow Peril tell you the crackletrap was her idea?”

  “I think she mentioned something about it.”

  “The old ratbag bangs on about that to everyone. The lure cost the village more than three hundred thousand communal merits, yet we’ve had only six people zapped in living memory—and five of those were ball lightning, against which a crackletrap is no defense. She makes us drill every week, and insists on a manned watch if there’s so much as a single cloud in the sky. I think it’s all grade D hogwash. What say you?”

  I liked his unruly bluffness almost immediately. He was a stocky lad slightly shorter than myself, with rounded features and a furtive, darting manner that would not have looked
out of place on a Yellow. He wore an IMPERTINENT badge below his Red Spot, along with LOW MERIT and HEAD JUNIOR MONITOR badges, which would seem to conflict with each other.

  The Cinnabar family were well known. They were big in the crimson pigment trade until a price-fixing scandal led to a massive demerit and forfeiture of assets. Despite this, they still maintained a certain stubborn, tainted pride—and were never averse to bending the Rules when it suited them. But despite Tommo’s impressive dynastic lineage and the clan’s glamorous FK6 postcode, several ill-advised unions to lesser colors—a clumsy attempt at vanity eugenics, some say—had diluted the line, and now the Cinnabars were generally mid- to low-level perceptors, and heading toward Grey. Russetts were on the way up, Cinnabars on the way down. That’s how it worked.

  “Can we stop by the post office?” I asked. “I have to send a telegram.”

  The post office was on the corner, as post offices generally are. There was a board outside with the week’s headline from Spectrum chalked on it—something to do with Riffraff committing some outrage somewhere. There was also a mailbox, which was a soft, natural shade of red, quite unlike the high-chroma ones in Jade-under-Lime. In fact, it took me a while to realize that the mailbox was a natural red, and deeply faded. In fact, on looking around, I realized that there was very little synthetic color in the village at all.

  I sent a telegram to my best friend, Fenton, at Jade-under-Lime to inquire about baking products for Dorian and also to confirm that I had logged the rabbit’s Taxa number, as requested. But since I hadn’t even seen the rabbit, let alone its bar code, there was a certain amount of fudging to be done. The first twelve digits to Mammalia were easy as they were the same as ours, but hazarding a guess as to the code after that was a bit of a puzzle. I eventually plumped on thirteen as the Order since there was a Taxa code gap between Rodents and Hedgehogs, then a two and seven for Genus and Species. I filled in the remaining code with random numbers, making sure I ended with an F, as even Fenton knew the Last Rabbit was female. I felt a bit nervous as it was a bald lie, but they’d never know, and I’d already spent the money they’d given me. I didn’t send a poetical telegram to Constance as I still needed to compose something half decent. Constance was used to receiving poetry from me and Roger Maroon, and the bar had been set quite high, since I’d been paying someone else to write it for me, and so had Roger, since neither of us was any good at the rhyming stuff.

  Tommo asked me about myself as we left the post office, and I told him about the incident with Bertie Magenta, and the chair census, then about Jade-under-Lime.

  “A bit Greencentric,” I explained when he asked me what it was like, “but none too bad for that, since the Moldies don’t really speak to us.”

  “Is it on the grid?”

  I nodded.

  “Full CYM at twenty-six pounds’ pressure. We can get most on-gamut colors up around the sixty percent mark, saturation and brightness.”

  Tommo whistled low.

  “I wish we could.”

  “East Carmine doesn’t look that bad,” I ventured as we walked across the scrubbed pantiles of the town square, past the central lamppost and twice-lifesize bronze of Our Munsell, who glared down at us paternalistically, his heavy eyebrows knitted in eternal deep thought. “At least you are not totally devoid of color.”

  We had stopped outside the town hall, which was painted in a soothing green. A series of worn stone steps led up to an elevated terrace where six fluted columns supported a flat triangular tympanum high above. Carved into the limestone was the credo of the Collective: APART WE ARE TOGETHER. The massive front doors were twice head height, and on either side of the entrance were faded wooden Departure Boards with names of past residents who had achieved notability in some field: TRACY PEACH, WHO WAS KIND AND THOUGHTFUL AND GONE A LOT TOO SOON—DECEMBER 23, 00207 or OLIVE OLIVE, WHO COULD JUGGLE SIX MELONS AND UNICYCLE AT THE SAME TIME—AUGUST 12, 00450. There was even one for Robin Ochre, and the paint was still fresh: ROBIN OCHRE, A FINE SWATCHMAN WHO KEPT MILDEW AT BAY AND PROTECTED ONE AND ALL—JUNE 16, 00496. The names were graded according to how Worthy they had been—Extremely, Very, Mostly, Partly—something that was determined by the highly unusual procedure of asking residents to mark pieces of paper with their choices.

  “It’s lucky they repainted it when they did,” said Tommo, referring to the color of the town hall. “That stupid crackletrap pretty much cleared us out. It’ll be years before we can afford to have it repainted, and as for being on the grid—forget it.”

  “Really? I heard the Outer Fringes were awash with uncollected scrap.”

  “Yes,” said Tommo sarcastically. “As you can see, the streets here are paved in yellow. It’s all complete plums, sorry to tell. The Previous were always more numerous in the south. There are parts around here where I don’t think they ever lived. Besides, everything local has been pretty much teased out.”

  It was a problem that was becoming increasingly common. Distribution of synthetic hue was strictly controlled by National Color and could be earned only in a single way: by the collection of scrap color for recycling into raw pigment. It was said that a ton of red tosh might yield about a gallon of univisual pigment—enough to keep three hundred roses at full color for six months or, at halfhue, a year. Some villages spent their every light-hour collecting scrap color, even to the detriment of basic food production. Color, and the enjoyment thereof, was everything.

  “The linoleum factory must bring in a few merits, surely?” I asked.

  “We’re selling it at a tenth of the price it was two hundred years ago. The Council has been pleading with Head Office to either cut production or license it for use as roof tiles. It’s a little too hard wearing, to be honest.”

  “I’d heard that about linoleum.”

  We were still staring at the soothing olive color of the town hall.

  “Do you think that’s really green?” asked Tommo.

  “I’ve no idea,” I replied, for no one could explain how we could see a univisual green but not a real one. After all, color in itself has no color—it’s simply a construction of the mind: a sensation, like the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly and the smell of honeysuckle. I knew what a red looked like, but I’d be hard pressed to explain what it actually is.

  We had been staring at the town hall for a while now, so decided to move on before a prefect or a monitor walked by.

  “So . . . have your family been here long?” I asked.

  “I moved here only a year ago. I come from a less well-known strand of the Cinnabars. We’re shopkeepers. Good ones, too. Our co-op was the most profitable in Red Sector East.”

  “So why are you out here?”

  “Bog off.”

  “You bog off.”

  “No—BOGOF:‘Buy one get one free.’ It seems the Council took exception to my aggressive selling techniques. The ‘free kettle every morning for a week’ didn’t go down too well, either.”

  “You could have covered yourself by logging them as Standard Variables,” I said, attempting to sound knowledgeable, even though I’d learned that from Travis on the way in.

  “I know that now.”

  I frowned.

  “What’s the point in ‘buy one get one free’? Why not just offer something at half price?”

  “Which would you prefer,” he retorted, “something at half price or something for free?”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “It is and it isn’t,” he replied with a smile. “I think there was a whole science involved around selling. The Council said I had shown contempt of the Rules by using arcane knowledge, and I was fined thirty merits and shipped out here to study Floon beetle migrations.”

  “Did deMauve take your Open Return?”

  “Not at all—I lost it on a dead cert at Jollity Fair that came in third. I’ve been trying to buy my way out, but it’s not going too well; in fact, I’m well below zero.”

  I frowned. Anywhere else, having negati
ve merits would be seen as deeply shameful—Tommo seemed to be wearing his imminent Reboot with pride.

  “Then Reboot doesn’t bother you?”

  “Should it?”

  “Of course.”

  He patted me on the shoulder.

  “You worry too much, Eddie. I’ll figure out something before Monday.” He was taking his Ishihara this Sunday—the same as Jane. Back in Jade-under-Lime, we weren’t due to take our Ishihara for another eight weeks. But since we were being so open with each other, I decided to ask an indelicate question.

  “Just how many merits below zero are you?”

  “Around a hundred, I think,” he said with a laugh, “but deMauve said he’d give me five if I showed you around—and as long as I didn’t inveigle you into any Tommo-inspired devilry.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “Don’t be. Tommo devilry is of the very highest quality. Do you want to sell your Open Return?”

  “With what would you buy it?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “it’s only book merits I’m short of. Cash is a different bird entirely.”

  It meant he’d been working the Beigemarket. But if his cash merits were unofficially earned, they wouldn’t help him when it came to Reboot. He could be richer than Josiah Oxblood, but it wouldn’t matter. You couldn’t take cash to Reboot, either—just a spoon. A good one usually, and sometimes two. It was said the remedial teachers liked to exchange them for privileges.