Shades of Grey (28 page)

Like most inertia racers, it was configured with two wheels, similar to a bicycle only sturdier. Because it was driven by gyros and they were all powered up, the
Flyer
was balancing on its own two wheels, much like a train. The gyrobike had been elegantly streamlined within tightly faired bodywork that put me in mind of a salmon, and as I stared at the machine, it gave out a shudder that started small, escalated, then rattled the bike quite violently before calming down again.

“The gyros are going in and out of phase,” Carlos explained when Turquoise asked him what was wrong, “and when they do, they tussle with one another. Hello, Eddie. Did you get Imogen’s information pack?”

I told him I had, and he nodded agreeably, then placed a tuning fork on top of the gyro housings, presumably to gauge which one was out of kilter.

“So listen,” said Turquoise, squatting down to have a closer look at the machinery, but from his look of utter bewilderment he might as well have been staring at the entrails of a goat. “Just confirm for me that this whole thing is compliant, will you?”

“Absolutely,” said Fandango. “All the Everspins do is charge up the gyros—they’re disconnected when it’s racing. The farthest it’s ever gone on a single charge is four miles.”

“Didn’t understand a word,” he replied, “but if you say so, I’ll sign it off.”

And he did, appending his signature to a form that Fandango handed him.

“Right,” said Turquoise, walking off in the direction of the glasshouse, with me trailing behind as I suspected our conversation was not yet over. “Since you’ll be with us for your Ishihara, I have to open your employment file. Any particular leaning you have in mind?”

I said the first thing that came into my head.

“Violin making.”

“That’s for us Blues only, old chap.”

“Then how about string?”

“You’d have to marry into the Oxbloods for that,” he laughed. “Be serious now. Any other ideas?”

It wasn’t worth explaining about Constance, so I thought about the Colorman.

“I’d like to work for National Color, sir.”

“Hmm,” muttered Turquoise, ignoring me entirely and looking down the list of approved Red-related professions, “how about plumbing? The Collective always need plumbers. I’m sure you’ll find the water supply business a dynamic and stimulating environment in which to work.”

“With respect, I’d far prefer to have a shot at the National Color entrance exam.”

I told him about my shade of mustard winning “best runner-up,” but he wasn’t listening.

“Heating or water?” said Turquoise, scribbling a note and handing me a pamphlet. “I’ll speak to the village plumber for you to have an intro.”

By now we had reached the glasshouse, which was situated a little way outside the village. Turquoise pushed the heavy door open and we stepped inside. Outside it had been hot, but inside it was even hotter, and the air was damp and tasted of lily ponds. Like most glasshouses the building was huge—almost twice as big as the town hall and with a gently curved ceiling shaped like a half melon that was about a hundred feet at its highest point. When built, it had been made of glass panels fully ten feet by four, but natural wastage and the inability to build replacements meant the roof was now filled with repaired sections of leaded glass of varying densities and quality. It was quite pretty in a patchwork sort of way, and I suspect multicolored, as I could see a few red panels and I suspected that ours was not the only color used.

“How are the pineapples, Mr. Lime?”

The head gardener was working without his shirt but with a tie and collar, as befits the letter of the Rules. He was stained with earth and had his spot affixed to a large floppy hat that was dark with sweat.

“Doing mighty fine, Mr. Turquoise,” replied the gardener affably. “The surplus will be colorized and shipped to Blue Sector North—you know how they go bananas over pineapples.”

Turquoise was taken on a brief tour of inspection, and I tagged along behind as we walked past rows and rows of fresh fruit and veg, all being attended by Greys, shiny with sweat in the heat. There had been an outbreak of clutching brambles that required prefectural approval to destroy, as any prehensile plants were classified as “partly animal” and thus subject to the Biodiversity Continuance Directive of the
Munsell Bestiary
.

“Absolute pests, they are,” said the head gardener. “I know they can be taught simple tricks, but cleaning glass or weeding has always evaded them.”

Turquoise filled out the extermination order and gave it to Mr. Lime, who thanked him and said he needed to show him something else.

We walked down the central aisle toward the unused fallow section of the glasshouse, which had turned into a jungle of date palms and a small grove of bamboo, from which several marmosets stared at us cheekily, munching on fruit.

“We’ve had a bit of a problem with these recently,” said the gardener, opening a jam jar and showing us a large white centipede about five inches long and thicker than a man’s thumb, “and we have no idea what they are.”

I glanced at the Taxa bar code on its back.

“Phylum: Arthropoda. Class: Chilopoda,” I murmured, and they both stared at me.

“I can read bar codes,” I explained. “I can tell you it’s a centipede, female, and about six thousand generations from being Taxa tagged—but nothing more than that.”

“A useful skill,” said Mr. Lime, who was impressed. “Then you concur it is unknown?”

“I do.”

The gardener wiped his brow with a filthy handkerchief.

“Yewberry says the same. But if it’s not listed in the
Munsell Bestiary,
it should officially be Apocrypha—but we can’t ignore it as it’s eating through everything. Any suggestions, Mr. Turquoise?”

The Blue prefect stared at the pest minutely, which squirmed in Mr. Lime’s hand and gave out a series of high-pitched squeaks in the key of F.

“Can you eat them?”

“We haven’t tried.”

“Get a Grey to volunteer. If they’re not palatable I can still define them as ‘farmed comestibles’ under Rule 2.3.23.12.220. We can then simply trap them, fry them and dump them. Or, if they
are
palatable, feed them to the Greys. It might make them leave some bacon for us.”

Mr. Lime nodded agreeably at this fine display of loopholery, upon which we said our farewells and passed out of the south side of the glasshouse to walk in the direction of the Waste Farm.

“Now,” said Turquoise, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, “activities. Sport and dancing are compulsory, of course—do you favor cricket or soccer?”

I told him I preferred cricket but denied my skill with the bat. Being able to actually see the naturally red ball gave an Alpha Red an edge. If you wanted to hide your bestowal, it was good practice to miss a few.

“And your favorite hoof?”

“We used to dance the lambada quite a lot in Jade-under-Lime.”

Turquoise looked shocked, even though it was a leg-pull. I’d never danced the lambada—not even by myself, in secret.

“Quite inappropriate, Master Russett. We are fox-trot and rhumba people in East Carmine. Tango is permitted on occasion, but only for approved couples and well out of sight of the juniors. How about pastimes? Beekeeping? Photography? Reenactment societies? Slug racing?”

“You can race slugs?”

“It’s quite popular out here in the Redstones. Since slugs are hardwired for strict territorial limitations accurate enough to keep them out of gardens, all you need do is log the bar code on a local slug and then release it outside Vermillion. First one back wins the pot.”

“That must take a while.”

“Decades, sometimes. A champion my father released eighteen years ago should be hitting the home stretch in about two years.”

“I had no idea slugs were so long-lived.”

“It’s not the original slug,” he explained. “The command string for territoriality descends through the offspring, so all we need do is read the Taxa numbers on the slugs as they come in—their heredity can be quickly established. It takes about four generations per mile, Mrs. Lapis Lazuli tells me. It could be done faster, but slugs are easily distracted. So, what shall I put you down for?”

“None of them hugely appeal, sir.”

“Listen here, Russett, I have to put you down for
something
.”

“The Photography Society, then. But under Rule 1.1.01.23.555 I’d like to form my own association for the social advancement of the Collective.”

“I see,” Turquoise said suspiciously. He knew 1.1.01.23.555 well enough. It was one of the loopholes that had been serially abused over the years. “And just what would this association do?”

I thought of Jane wanting me to remain curious as a smokescreen for her own activities. “A Question Club.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Horses? No problem. Everyone likes horses. Especially horses. Horses like horses most of all.”

“No, no, not
Equestrian
Club—a
Question
Club.”

“There’s already a Question Club,” he said. “It’s called the Debating Society. There’s a meeting this evening, isn’t there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Frightful waste of time. An hour spent on the jigsaw puzzle would be an hour much better spent. If we don’t get a move on, we’ll not see the puzzle finished in our lifetime, and I must confess I’d rather like to know what the puzzle actually
depicts
before they wheel me into the Green Room.”

We had arrived at the Waste Farm, which for drainage purposes was always lower than the rest of the village. We found the chief-of-works next to one of the off-rotation settling tanks that was being scraped clean. He was a middle-aged man who was short, had a weather-worn face and whistled when he spoke, owing to a missing tooth that for some reason had failed to grow back. Like most of those versed in the arcane recycling arts, he was highly eccentric. He wore a bowler hat and insisted on a three-piece suit with a gardenia in his buttonhole. He wore no spot or gave any hint of Chromatic Hierarchy, which didn’t help me know whether I should talk up or down to him.

“Hullo!” said the chief-of-works, who gave his name only as Nigel. “I heard you had a spot of bother with a tree this morning.”

“You could say that.”

“Don’t feel bad by being outsmarted by a vegetable. You’re not anyone until you’ve been wandering in the forest whistling a merry tune, only to find yourself suddenly hauled in the air by your ankle and dumped in ninety gallons of partially digested kudu. I know I have.”

I looked around.

“The farm doesn’t smell half as bad as I thought it would.”

“The very idea!” exclaimed Nigel. “All the pits are sealed. If you can smell something it means we’re not doing our jobs properly. But listen, if you want to know how bad it
can
smell, come and poke your nose in the rendering sheds.”

Turquoise stayed in the office to check that the 87.2 percent recycling target was being met, and Nigel escorted me past the methane solidifiers to a brick building where the hot air was heavy with the pungent smell of heated offal. Despite the rudimentary exterior of the shed, the interior was scrubbed and tidy, the steel equipment all polished to a high shine. The concrete floor looked as though it was frequently hosed, and two of the plant’s workers were feeding chunks of animal waste into a shredder that was driven by an Everspin. The combined kettle and press were to one side, and a gloopy substance—yellow, apparently—was slowly dripping into a bucket as the machine heated and folded the waste to remove the fat.

I covered my mouth and nose with my handkerchief.

“It’s actually more skilled than you think,” said Nigel with a smile. “The renderers get paid extra when they have to deal with a villager—which is stupid, really, since it’s only something we walk around in. Mind you, I’m not entirely without feeling. I excuse them rendering duty if it was a friend or family member.”

I almost gagged at the foul smell and staggered outside.

“Not for the squeamish, eh?” said Nigel as he followed me out. “We’ve got a backlog at present—we’ve been working our way through an elephant that dropped dead fortuitously just
inside
the Outer Markers.”

“An elephant? I heard they weren’t worth troubling with—low-quality tallow and whatnot.”

Nigel leaned closer.

“It’s the targets,” he said with a grin. “An elephant
really
boosts the figures.”

Once Turquoise had signed off on the pachyderm-assisted target and calculated the monthly bonuses, we struck out from the Waste Farm and into the open fields, where expansive fields of wheat were gently rolling in the breeze.

“What were we talking about?” asked Turquoise.

“I was requesting a Question Club, sir.”

“Oh, yes. And I was telling you we already have one—the Debating Society.”

“The debating society is restricted to the Chromogentsia,” I pointed out. “I want a club where anyone can ask questions.”

He stared at me suspiciously.

“What sort of questions?”

“
Unanswered
questions.”

“Edward, Edward,” he said with a patronizing smile, “there are
no
unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can’t find the correct answer, then you are obviously asking the wrong question.”

This was an interesting approach, and initially I could think of no good answer. We were walking along a track that was in a slight dip, and all that could be seen of the village was the flak tower with the lightning lure on top of it. It seemed a good point to raise.

“What were flak towers used for?”

“It’s a nonquestion. The intractable ways of the Previous are best forgotten. Their ways are not our ways. Before, there was material imbalance and a wholly destructive level of self. Now there is only the simple purity of Chromatic Hierarchy.”