Shades of Grey (30 page)

“Don’t try anything stupid,” I warned. “Elopements always end in failure—and sometimes put you on the Night Train.”

“Didn’t Munsell say that we should always choose the lesser of two evils?” retorted Imogen. “Besides, it’s said that Emerald City is so large a couple might find work without questions being asked.”

“That’s right,” said Dorian. “We can vanish into the city.”

I wasn’t convinced. “You’d never get farther than Cobalt junction.” “We’re going to wrongspot. Not even a Yellow would dare question a Violet.”

It was a crazy plan, and they both knew it. Romantic-induced walk-outs were always returned, but wrongspotting was punishable by a ten-thousand demerit. Reboot, effectively. And at Reboot, couples are always separated. It showed how desperate they had become. It also explained why Dorian had wanted to buy my Open Return.

“You’re not going anywhere without tickets.”

“We’ve got one,” explained Dorian. “The other is . . . under negotiation.”

“Courtland says he wants me in the wool store for it,” said Imogen, “which is all fine and good, except that he won’t hand over the Open Return until he’s been paid in full.”

“He has no intention of giving up the ticket.”

“Yes, we know.”

“
Blast!
”

“What?”

I said it was nothing, but it wasn’t. Having now met these two, I couldn’t introduce Bertie Magenta to Fandango, and in consequence of that, I would not be receiving my one-hundred-fifty-merit commission. And that was almost a year’s wages—for one lousy telegram. It was the fastest one-fifty I never made.

“Listen,” I said, “my cousin the Colorman goes to Emerald City on a regular basis. Let me make some inquiries, and I’ll get back to you. Just don’t do anything stupid, and don’t take Courtland up on his offer.”

They both stared at me.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Perhaps,” I said, “I want for you what I can’t have for myself. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do my Useful Work.”

T
he school was situated at the back of the village, two streets behind the town hall and opposite the firehouse. Due to the architectural infallibility of the Rules regarding school design, no better building could or would be thought of, so every school in the Collective was identical. I immediately knew my way around, and the place had an eerie familiarity about it.

I paused in the main hall next to the bronze bust of Munsell and read the school’s oft-quoted mission statement: “Every pupil in the Collective will leave school with above-average abilities.” It wasn’t until I had studied advanced sums that I realized this could not be possible, since by definition not
everyone
could be of above-average ability.

“It’s a
historical
average fixed soon after the Something That Happened,” my mentor, Greg Scarlet, had explained when I dared broach the subject. “How else would you be able to compare one year with another? Besides, an average pegged to a time when education was considerably worse than it is now ensures that no pupil is ever stigmatized by failure.”

This was true, and since one’s career path was never decided by ability or intellect, it didn’t much matter anyway. Lessons were generally restricted to reading, writing, French, music, geography, sums, cooking and Rule-followment, which meant sitting in a circle and agreeing on how important the Rules were. Most pupils referred to the subject as “nodding.”

I made my way to the head teacher’s office and tapped nervously on the door.

“Glad you could make it,” she said as soon as I had explained who I was and what I was doing there. She introduced herself as Miss Enid Bluebird. She was a slight woman who was dressed in shabby tweeds and carried the benign expression of the inwardly harassed. This was not surprising, as her office was knee-high in stacks of dusty and much-faded examination papers.

“I’ve managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years,” she announced with some small sense of achievement. “I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“A very worthy aim,” I replied, thinking carefully about how I could apply queuing theory in this instance. “Excuse the impertinence, but wouldn’t it be better to reverse the queuing order so that the
oldest
papers were
last
marked? It would allow pupils to know their results sooner, and as far as I can see, would not be against the Rules, since queue direction is not specified.”

She stared at me oddly, then smiled kindly after having given the matter no thought at all.

“A fine idea, but since everyone is above average, improvement to the system is really not that important.”

“Then why mark them?” I asked, emboldened by the rejection of my suggestion.

“So we can make sure the education system is working, of course,” she replied as though I were simple. “If I work really hard I might be able to clear the backlog to the fifty-year mark by the time I retire—and we can know just how well we were doing half a century ago. If we commit ourselves wholly to the task, in twenty years we might know how well we are doing right now.”

“You must have very little time for teaching.”

“No time at all,” she replied airily, “which explains why Useful Workers like you are now essential to the smooth running of the school. Why, we’ve not had a teacher actually
teaching
for over three centuries.

She introduced me to the class, and I gave the afternoon lesson. Because Munsell had attempted to make the world knowable for everyone by simply reducing the number of facts, there wasn’t that much to teach. But I did my best, and after doing some long-division practice and talking a little about my home village, I set them a puzzle in which they had to estimate how many Previous there had once been by using Ovaltine sales projections of the year known as 2083. Following that, we discussed why the Previous might have been as tall as they were, which foodstuffs made it through the Epiphany, then possible reasons why the Previous had apparently denied the future by ranking their year system without a double-zero prefix. After that, we had a general Q&A session, where they asked me stuff about Riffraff eating babies, and why the Previous’ tables had four legs rather than the more stable three we used at present. I answered as best as I could, and after giving them a brief introduction to the skill of reading bar codes, we ended up talking about the rabbit. I was very glad that I had earlier found an article in
Spectrum
that described a visit to the rabbit six years ago. I sounded almost expert.

We finished up with a song of praise to Munsell as the clock moved around to four, and as soon as I dismissed them there was a flurry of banged desk lids and they were all gone.

I was rather pleased with myself, and after pushing in the chairs and placing their homework in the waste bin, I went to find Miss Bluebird, who asked me how it went without much interest, and then gave me positive feedback and ten merits.

 

“Find anything useful to teach them?”

Jane was waiting for me outside the school. She looked almost pleased to see me, and that instantly made me suspicious.

“I . . . like to think so,” I replied cautiously, looking around to see if there were witnesses in case she tried something.

She picked up on my nervousness and raised an eyebrow. “What are you so worried about?”

“The last time you smiled at me, I found myself under a yateveo.”

She laughed. The sound was lovely—yet quite out of character. It would be like hearing a fish sneeze. “Honestly,” she said, “are you going to drag that up every time we meet? So I threatened to kill you. What’s the big deal?”

“How can you not think it’s a big deal?”

“Okay, I’ll demonstrate. You threaten to kill me.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Come on, Red, don’t be such a baby.”

“All right: I’ll kill you.”

“You have to say it like you mean it.”

And she punched me in the eye.

“Ow! That
hurt
. And how could that possibly demonstrate that it’s no big deal?”

“You might have something there,” she said thoughtfully. “It
could
have been a bit rude of me. But let’s face it, you are a bit pointless, and the world will certainly carry on spinning without you.”

I rubbed my eye. “You really have a winning personality, don’t you?”

“Steady,” she said, again with a slight smile. “I’m supposed to be the sarcastic one.”

“What in Munsell’s name is going on?” Miss Bluebird had just walked out of the school. She was carrying a huge pile of papers, and had a look of shocked disbelief on her face. “Did I just witness a lethal threat and an up-color assault?”

It was time to think fast, and when it comes to making up lieful deceits on the spot, I soon realized that Jane was even better than Tommo. “Far from it,” she replied innocently. “Master Edward and I were discussing the best way to mock-fight in
Red Side Story.
”

“We’re attending the auditions together,” I added, “aren’t we, Jane?”

She gave me a brief grimace, but nodded.

“It was
most
convincing,” replied Mrs. Bluebird, full of admiration. “I’m adjudicating this evening—perhaps you might demonstrate the technique for us all?”

“As many times as you want,” replied Jane happily.

“Splendid!” replied Mrs. Bluebird. “See you there, then.”

As soon as she was out of earshot, Jane turned to me and said in a low growl, “We’re
not
going to the auditions.”

I had to agree, as being punched endlessly wouldn’t be much fun. In fact, I’d prefer to just lose an eyebrow and be done with it.

“We should keep moving,” said Jane, “before we raise any suspicions. If anyone comes within earshot, talk to me about what you’d like for dinner, and then castigate me about the poor starching of your collar.”

We walked off, and after a moment of silence I said, “You were waiting for me. Did you want something?”

“No,” she said, “but you do. Word in the Greyzone is that a sad Red wannabe with no imagination and a lump in his trousers needs help to get his leg over some unobtainable Alpha crumpet back home.”

“Aside from the subtly imbedded ‘I don’t like you’ message hidden in your statement, what does that mean?”

“It means I heard you wanted some poetry written.”

“And you’re the best poet in the village?”

“By a long way.”

I attempted to take advantage of the narrow window of opportunity that had just opened, and asked if she’d like to discuss it down at the Fallen Man over a d’nish pastry.

“I’d sooner stick a bodkin through my tongue.”

“You really don’t like me, do you?”

“It’s not
just
you. You might say I am impartial in the politics of the Colortocracy—I despise all Chromatics equally.”

“Would there be any point in asking what’s going on in Rusty Hill, and how Zane and you relate to Ochre and the selling of the village swatches?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I thought you might say that . . . and we should have mutton on Wednesday,” I said, as Yewberry was walking past, deep in conversation with the Colorman about pipeline routing, “and with salad, not vegetables.”

Yewberry acknowledged my presence with a nod of his head, but the Colorman actually greeted me with a polite “Edward.” I replied, “Matthew,” which I could see impressed Yewberry.

“Right,” said Jane as soon as they had passed, “poetry. Who’s the bunny?”

I took a deep breath. “The ‘bunny,’ as you so indecorously call her, is an Oxblood,
Constance
Oxblood, and her father runs the stringworks in Jade-under-Lime. We’ve been seeing each other for several years, and we’ve even—”

“Do I look as though I’m interested?”

“Not really.”

“You’re right. The details of your hopeless quest to sacrifice your individuality on the altar of Chromatic betterment is about as exciting to me as pulling clodworms out of the juniors. Do you love each other?”

“I’m sure that in the fullness of time we will come to regard each other with—”

“That’s a no, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied with a sigh. “She needs the Red, and my family need the social standing.”

“How
awesomely
romantic! Have you told her? It would put the union on a business footing, and you’d save a small fortune in flowers, chocolates and poets.”

“She knows. It’s just a game, really. Besides, the old-color Roger Maroon is the odds-on favorite—despite his lack of Red, intelligence, charm and looks. Here,” I said, handing her a letter I had been drafting, “you may like to use this as a basis.”

“Drivel,” she said, scanning the words quickly. “Were you really going to send that?”

“The bit regarding the Caravaggio was okay,” I replied a bit stupidly, “and I thought it important to mention the queuing. Should I scrub the paragraph about the rabbit?”

“It’s all sheep and no shepherd,” she remarked and started to write on the back of my letter as we walked. She scribbled, crossed out and then wrote again, a bit like an artist trying to capture a likeness. She looked quite lovely, and it wasn’t just her nose. The hair that wasn’t tucked into her ponytail dropped in front of her eyes several times, and she pushed it out of the way behind her ear, where it would stay for perhaps twenty seconds or so before making its way out again. I could have watched her for several circuits of the village, and fervently hoped she was a slow poet. Unfortunately, she wasn’t.

“There,” she said a minute later, and handed over the finished product.