Shades of Grey

One Eyebrow

I took a deep breath, and sat on a nearby bench to gather my thoughts. I needed to get to Zane G-49’s old address in Rusty Hill if I was to have a chance of figuring out what he was doing in the Paint Shop, but Dad was right: I would have to have a very good reason to go with him. Rusty Hill was just close enough to walk in a day, and if I took the ten-merit fine for lunch nonattendance, it could be a possibility.

I just didn’t fancy walking twenty-eight miles, especially in this heat. I was just wondering if there was a Penny-Farthing in the village that I could borrow, when I heard a voice.

“Do you have any hobbies?”

I looked up. The Widow deMauve was sitting at the other end of the bench, and she was staring at me.

It was a rhetorical question, as a minimum of one hobby was mandatory, even for the many Greys who didn’t have the time. The theory was that a hobby “drove idle thoughts from the mind,” but the Rules weren’t specific over what that hobby might be. Trainspotting and collecting coins, stamps, bottles, buttons or pebbles were pretty much the default options, but needlework, painting, guinea-pig breeding and violin making had their adherents. Some collected artifacts from before the Something That Happened, such as super-rare bar codes, teeth, money cards or keyboard letters, all of which came in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. There were also those who made up silly hobbies to annoy the prefects, such as belly-button casting, hopping and extreme counting. For myself, I favored the abstract. I collected not just obsolete terms and words, but ideas.

“I’m currently devising improved methods for queuing,” I said in a grand manner, but she wasn’t the slightest bit interested.

“I like to put holes in things,” she announced, showing me a piece of paper with a hole in it.

“That must take a considerable amount of skill.”

“It does. I put holes in wood, cardboard, leaves—even string.”

“How do you put a hole in string?”

“I tie it in a loop,” she said, with dazzling simplicity, “and there you go: hole. I thought I was the only one.

But look what I found in the co-op this morning.”

She showed me a ring doughnut. “Well!” she exclaimed, much aggrieved. “It’s as though no one can think of an original hobby these days without some copycat jumping on the bandwagon.”

“It’s probably Mrs. Lapis Lazuli,” I whispered mischievously, and Widow deMauve’s eyes opened wide.

“I knew it!”

“Would you excuse me?” I said. “I’ve just seen someone I must talk to.”

I got up and trotted after a Green who had just walked past, carrying a trombone. It wasn’t an excuse to get away; I’d noticed that he had only one eyebrow.

“Pardon me?”

He stopped and stared at me for a moment, then a look of recognition came over his face. “You’re the new swatchman’s son, aren’t you?” he asked. “The one who’s seen the Last Rabbit?”

“Y-es.”

“What was it like?”

“Furry . . . mostly.” I introduced myself before he could quiz me too carefully over the rabbit, but it felt uncomfortable and a bit odd talking to him—I hadn’t really held a friendly conversation with a Green before. Back in Jade-under-Lime we kept ourselves verymuch to ourselves. Jabez was not far short of his quarter-century and, by his dress code, looked as though he were a farmer.

“Your eyebrow,” I said, pointing to where it wasn’t. “Tommo told me Jane pulled it off. Is that true?”

“Oh, yes,” he replied with a grin as he touched the scarred area with a fingertip, “but she did it quickly so it wouldn’t hurt too much. If she’d hated me, she could really have drawn it out.”

“She seems generous in that respect,” I said slowly.

“I was thinking of having a donor eyebrow sewn on,” said Jabez, “but if they attached it badly I’d look quizzical for the rest of my life. Are you thinking of asking her out on a date?”

“Not anymore.”

“I don’t know why I did,” said Jabez with a frown, “probably that nose of hers. It’s quite something, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I admitted, “it certainly is.”

“Just don’t tell her. She . . . doesn’t like it.”

“Hullo!” said Tommo, who had just reappeared. “Eddie, this is Jabez Lemon-Skye. He’s first-generation Green, so hardly objectionable at all. What’s going on?”

“Eddie and I were just discussing how to get a date with the Nose.”

Tommo raised his eyebrows. “So you are interested in Jane?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Sure you are. I’d leave her well alone, if you want my advice.” He gave out a conspiratorial chuckle.

“And if we’re talking about guilty secrets, Jabez is a love child. His parents married because—get this— they couldn’t bear not to! Weird, huh?”

“I’ll not be made ashamed of it,” remarked Jabez with great dignity, “but muse on this: When you meet an Orange or a Green, you’re not looking at wasted primal hue, but the product of a couple motivated by something more noble than the headlong rush for Chromatic supremacy.”

Up until that point, I hadn’t really thought about it that way. The Russetts had been trying to make up our lost hue for over a century. Marrying into the Oxbloods would finally take us back to where we were before my great-grandfather married the Grey. Red was my destiny, if you like—the hue I was born to.

“If we’re being so open with one another,” declared Jabez with a smile, “perhaps you can tell Eddie how you like to stare at naked bathers.”

“That’s a scurrilous untruth!” declared Tommo. “I wasn’t staring—I was simply asleep with my eyes open, and they happened to walk past.”

There was a pause. I didn’t really know what to say to make conversation with a Green, so said the first thing that came into my head. “What’s it like seeing green?”

Jabez lowered his voice. “It’s quite simply . . . the best. The grass, the leaves, the shoots, the trees—all ours. And do you know, the subtle variations in shades are almost without number—in leaves, from the brightest, freshest hue when unfurling, to the dark green in late summer before they turn and we lose them. Thousands of shades, if not millions. Sometimes I just sit in the forest and stare.”

“He does, you know,” Tommo put in. “I’ve seen him. But I’d not swap my reds for his greens if you paid me a thousand merits—Tommo’s not going to be taken by the Rot fully conscious, no, sir.”

It was one of the downsides of being the Color of Nature: When the Mildew came for you, the Green Room had no effect—even with offset spectacles. If Green, you had to go the hard way. Fully conscious, and slowly asphyxiated as the spores inexorably clogged up your airways. Some Greens took the matter into their own hands to effect a quick way out, and others joined a self-help syndicate, much against the Rules.

“That’s the difference between you and me,” replied Jabez, staring at Tommo with a smile. “A lifetime of nature’s rich and bounteous color in exchange for five hours of suffering? The forest wins hands down every time.”

“Not for me,” Tommo replied cheerfully. “As soon as the spores start sprouting, I’m diving headfirst into the endorphin soup without so much as a ‘Thanks, guys, it’s been a heap of number twos.’ ” Jabez considered it time to go before Tommo became too insulting.

“Welcome to the village, Eddie—and listen to one word in eight from walking Reboot here. Friend?”

I paused for a millisecond. I’d never accepted a friendship from a Green before. In fact, aside from twelve Oranges, six Blues, Bertie Magenta and just recently Travis, all of my 436 friends were Red.

“Friend.”

He gave Tommo a friendly shove, and departed.

We walked along a cobbled street lined with shops of varying description and usefulness. I noticed a tailor, a hardware store, a mender, Dorian’s photographic studio, a combination wool shop and haberdasher’s and a Head Office-approved forksmith. Tommo pointed out people of interest, and introduced me if he thought it appropriate.

“That’s Bunty McMustard. The most poisonous woman in the village.”

“We’ve met already.”

“Then you’ll know. When she succeeds in prizing Courtland out of Melanie, the offspring will be so devious they’ll spontaneously combust—but you didn’t hear me say that.”

“Of course not.” But I was thinking about Rusty Hill. “You said you could fix things, Tommo.”

“Most things. Courtland was overplaying it when he said ‘anything.’ ”

“My dad’s going to Rusty Hill tomorrow, and I need a reason to go there with him.”

He bit his lip. “Do you know how many people died in the Mildew outbreak? Eighteen hundred. If I was truly without respect for the Rules—which I’m not, by the way—I’d be over there like a shot. There have to be at least a hundred spoons kicking around—and if I can find one with a postcode that is unregistered, it means we can add another worker to the Collective, and any village will pay handsomely to boost their population. Pots of cash, see—but I still wouldn’t go.”

“Why?”

He looked around and lowered his voice. “Pookas!”

“There’s no such thing as Pookas. It says so in the Rules.”

“That’s what everyone at Rusty Hill thought. But there were stories. So are you sure you want to go?”

“Are you sure you want the Lincoln?”

“Leave it with me,” he said, thinking hard. “I might be able to come up with something.”

We passed the janitor’s workshop, where a battered Ford Model T was being judiciously oiled by a man in coveralls.

“Hello, Spoonpacker,” he said, addressing Tommo. “Is that Master Russett you have with you?”

“That’s me,” I answered.

“Welcome to East Carmine,” he said with a mildly superior air. “I’m Carlos Fandango, the janitor. Is Tommo here giving you the grand tour?”

I nodded.

“Good show. Fine fellow, but don’t lend him any money.”

“Sell his own granny, would he?”

“You heard about that? Terrible business.”

“At least I can tell when a tomato is ripe,” retorted Tommo, who didn’t much care for having his besmirched family name besmirched even further. The tomato comment was a demeritable breach of protocol, not to mention downright rude. Fandango, however, simply ignored him, and told me that he would be taking my father to Rusty Hill tomorrow, and would be outside the house at eight o’clock sharp.

I said I’d relay the message. Tommo, hot with indignation that his insult had had no effect, tugged on my sleeve and said we had to move on.

“Fandango is only fourteen percent Purple,” said Tommo as we walked away. “He puts on all the airs and graces, but before his Ishihara he was a Grey. Four points lower and he’d be out in the fields or laying burlap in the factory. He has high hopes for cashing in on his daughter Imogen, though, who they think will turn out to be a fifty-percenter.”

“He married a strong Purple?”

“Quite the reverse.”

He pulled a faux-shocked face, indicating that the Chromatic disparity between parent and offspring might suggest a bit of fence leaping. And on this occasion, for profit.

“The Fandangos went to Vermillion to celebrate at the Green Dragon after being allocated an egg chit,” he explained. “The bridal suite there is known as the Rainbow Room—for a price, you can have whatever color child you want.”

“A Purple flogging their hard-won heredity?” I replied with an incredulous sniff. “Ridiculous. Besides, they’d never do anything to risk losing authority.”

“Do they really bring you up so naive in the hub?” he said. “There’s a whole world out there behind the Rules, if only you look. In any event, Carlos will bend your ear about any suitably rich Purples you might know. If you want to drive the Ford or be shown around the gyrobike, play along.”

It would take me a while to get used to how rude Tommo could be—not just his flippancy, but divulging other people’s perceptions. It was the height of bad manners.

“How did you know I sold my own granny?”

“I didn’t. I was trying to be funny.”

“Ah. Listen, when you get to Rusty Hill, will you bring me back a pair of Male Outdoor Casuals?” He showed me his shoes, which were actually not shoes at all, but scraps of well-shined leather tied to the top of his feet.

“Okay.”

“Size nines.”

“Size nines it is.”

“See that guy over there?” He was indicating a handsome man, probably in his early thirties. “Ben Azzuro. Nice guy and a fine all-arounder, but nearly caused a riot in the henhouse by declaring himself.

Personally, I’d like to see more like him in the village.”

“You’ll be declaring?”

“No. It would just tip the marriage market more in my favor. The way I figure it, if six more moved across, I might actually end up with someone quite pleasant. This might come as a huge surprise to you, but I’m not considered much of a catch.”

“Whyever not?”

“Careful of the sarcasm, sunshine. That’s the local salt lick over there. The woman behind the counter is Mrs. Crimson.”

He was pointing at the tearoom, always the busiest establishment in any village. It was called the Fallen Man, which was an unusual name, given that most tearooms were called Mrs. Cranston’s . I looked at the faded-to-monochrome painting on the board above the front door. It depicted a man sitting in a leather armchair while plummeting past some fluffy clouds, his tie flapping upward.

“Odd name,” I said, indicating the sign.

“Not for here,” he said cheerfully. “The other tearoom is called the Singing Coathanger. They both refer to local legends: the Fallen Man to someone who fell to earth quite near here, and the Singing Coathanger to a, well, a coathanger that started to sing.”

I’d heard about pieces of metal giving off a tinny noise that sounded like speech or song, but had never witnessed the phenomenon myself.

“Singing bits of wire and fallen men are all we’ve got in the legend department,” added Tommo. “What about you?”

“We have the Lapper Venus ,” I explained, “though it’s more unexplained artifacture than folklore, to be honest. But,” I added, “there was the Night of the Great Noise. The elderly still talk about how in the morning everything was covered with something resembling cobwebs, and all the ladders were missing.”

“I’m almost sorry I asked. That’s Daisy Crimson,” he added, indicating a young woman who was walking past. “Nice girl and from a good family, if a little low-hued. Her father runs the village’s heat exchangers . Some say Daisy giggles too much and her nose is a little too pointy, but it’s never troubled me—or her, come to that.”

We had arrived at the flak tower, which was entirely typical in its construction. Square in plan but with a slight taper to the apex, where flat-lobed projections stuck out on all corners. The bronze doors had been removed long ago for scrap, and the unchecked Perpetulite had grown across the aperture, so all that remained was a vertical scar and a rough dimpling, like on unbaked bread. Another couple of hundred years and there wouldn’t even be that.

Tommo walked to the side where a series of bronze pitons was clear evidence of how the crackletrap builders had managed to get to the top. At chest height someone had left a length of steel piping no thicker than a man’s fist in what had once been a window. Tommo placed sandwiches in the pipe, followed by an apple, while I stared at him, confused.

“Sandwiches,” he explained, “for Ulrika of the Flak. I think she’s Riffraff.”

“You mean there’s—”

“Shh!” he said. “You don’t want to frighten her.”

When he wasdone, he beckoned me away, and inanswer to my doubtless quizzical expression, said, “What’s your problem?”

“How did she get in there?”

He shrugged.

“Then how do you know she’s Ulrika? Or a woman? Or even Riffraff, for that matter?”

“Eddie,” he said, pulling me closer, “if I want to have a pet Riffraff called Ulrika who lives in the flak tower and gets fed through a pipe, then I will, and no low-end, slow-end rabbit watcher is going to tell me otherwise. Do you understand?”

I said that I totally understood—now—but didn’t mention that I too had an imaginary friend who needed feeding. I called him Perkins Muffleberry, and he lived in a hollow beech at the edge of the village. I know it sounds childish, but the food was always gone by morning.