Shades of Grey

Dorian and Imogen

Dorian was photographing that year’s floatie harvest. I walked past a field where a team of horses was pulling a plow through the harvested wheat field. As I watched, small specks of the floating material rose from the ground as they were unearthed, then started to drift off downhill, where they were channeled by a natural dip into long muslin nets strung a yard above the ground.

“Hello!” said Dorian, who was framing the billowing muslin with an oak tree in the background for his photograph. “Look at this one.”

He showed me an exceptional floatie that was the size of a chicken’s egg and still had a part number stamped on the side and some wiring attached. It was resting in the net with a lot of smaller sections—fragments, really, and some almost dust—and I tapped a finger on the top to gauge its strength. Ten merits per negative ounce was the usual price, and with the fragments, he might make twenty or thirty merits on this crop alone.

“We got up here late, so missed a few,” he said, pointing in the downhill direction that floaties always took. “Redby-on-Sea have a net across the estuary, but only in the past decade or so, and it doesn’t catch them all.”

I stared at the odd pieces of metal thoughtfully. That they were man-made was without dispute, and also that they were parts of something much larger. Quite what, no one knew, as a floatie’s natural propensity for heading off out to sea to seek the lowest point almost guaranteed there would be few around to study. The only pieces we could find these days were either trapped in natural hollows or embedded in the ground because of some past accident or burial.

“Where does it all end up?”

“Rumor speaks of a floating island somewhere on the oceans which is actually lived upon, but you’d need several thousand cubic meters of the stuff to have any chance of supporting a settlement. More than likely it’ll be a home for seabirds and the like—until the weight of the guano pushes it beneath the waves.”

I switched my attention to his camera, which was a full-plate Linhof. As in most cameras, the shutter had gummed up years ago, but emulsions were slower these days, and exposure was more usually controlled by simply removing the lens cap for the requisite period. I’d often asked for Constance and me to be photographed together, but her mother had forbidden it, lest “we get used to the idea.” Dorian let me look at the image formed upside down on the viewing screen, and the framing was actually very good.

“I need some good clouds for it to be perfect,” he said, staring up at the sky. “Had you heard that a deep red filter increases the contrast in the sky?”

I had heard that but didn’t know quite how it worked.

“I heard the trip was a huge success,” he added as we walked toward the handcart that held all his photographic gear and some tea-making equipment. “How were the bonemeal cakes I gave you?”

“Inedible.”

“I thought so, too. Have a look at this.”

He showed me the photograph he had taken of the expedition, which was suitably heroic if you didn’t count Carlos Fandango, who had ruined the picture by moving his head. I pointed this out.

“He did it on purpose. Mr. Fandango and I don’t agree on several fundamental issues. So,” he continued, “tell me about the trip—for the Mercury, you understand.”

So we sat on the grass and I told him as much as I dared, omitting the bits about Jane, Zane G-47’s house with all its treasures and the Pooka.

“Tell me,” I said while he was writing down the bit about meeting the Colorman, “how does a Grey get to be the editor of the village news sheet?”

“Before my Ishihara I was Lilac,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “My parents were frightfully disappointed, although not surprised—the family’s been going downhill for a while. My great-great-grandmother was head prefect in Wisteria, and Dad was the janitor here in Carmine before he died.”

“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was inevitable. In any event, I was doing the editing job before my Ishihara, and deMauve took pity on an ex-Purple and allowed me to keep it, although for loophole reasons, I’m officially the assistant typesetter—the highest wage grade I’m permitted to hold.”

“That’s annoying.”

“On the contrary,” he said with a smile. “It keeps me from twelve-hour shifts in the factory under the watchful eye of the delightful Mrs. Gamboge.”

“You should do an expose on the way Greys are treated here.”

“Yes,” he said, “that would be really smart. On reflection, it would be better to reserve my ire for more acceptable outrages—such as the scandalous level of sin at the Jollity Fair sideshows.”

I couldn’t agree, but didn’t say so. The unregulated “added attractions” were the best part of the fair.

“Hmm,” said Dorian, staring down at his shorthand. “I think I’ll leave out the heaps of dried bones and the rotted prefect, and just concentrate on the Caravaggio. I should have given you my Speed Graphic to take a picture.”

To Dorian, this was more than his job. He took his interest in photography seriously, and told me that in the past twenty-four hours he had taken the East Carmine Scrabble team’s group photograph, a picture of Mr. Eggshell’s champion lupin, the Rusty Hill expedition picture, several individual portraits and the inquest photograph of yesterday’s power guillotine accident. “Do you want to see?”

“Go on, then.”

He opened one of the many bulging portfolios that were lying on the cart. The pictures were of village life, the harvest, fields, residents swimming in the river, that kind of stuff.

“Look,” he said, “that’s Mr. and Mrs. Beetroot just before they were burned alive in their home, and this is one taken just afterward. The Rules state only that the sprinkler system has to be fitted. They don’t state that it has to work.” He turned over another. “This one is of the village performing Hamlet, Prince of Tyrian last year—Violet deMauve played Ophelia, as you can see.”

“Was she any good?”

“She was awful. Everyone cheered when she drowned.”

“How did she take it?”

“She rose from the dead, told us all to go to Beige, then died again.”

He showed me another. “This was taken a few minutes after Jerry was dragged screaming into the threshing machine. The largest part we found of him was his leg.”

He showed me the picture of the limb, which lay on the ground with a crowd of curious villagers standing around.

“I remember seeing this in the cautionary-photo section of Spectrum.”

“Thank you,” he said modestly. “They pay ten merits and a positive feedback for every one they print.

What do you make of this?”

He showed me another photograph, which made me frown. It was taken from an attic window, as the rooftops and the town hall were clearly visible—not so strange in itself, except for the fact that the sky was pitch-black with a series of very fine circular white lines radiating out from a central point.

“Where did you take it?”

“Outside—at night. I had set the camera up to try to photograph lightning, but then I fell asleep and left the shutter open. What you see here is a seven-hour exposure.”

“And these circles in the night sky?”

“I don’t know what they are. It might be some sort of—I don’t know—unexplained phenomenon. But here’s weird for you: There was no moon that night.”

The notion that there was a small amount of light reflected from the moon was pretty much accepted wisdom. Although much too feeble for us to see by, it was enough for some creatures: Tracks of Nocturnal Biting Animals were often found in the morning where none had been the night before, and I had once seen a herd of grazing capybara and a hippo illuminated by a lightning flash. But Dorian’s picture posed an entirely new concept: that there was light from another source when the moon had waned—enough to illuminate the buildings and hills over seven hours—and that this source might be the curious circles in the night sky that he had photographed.

“Can I have this?” I asked.

“Sure. This is yesterday’s accident,” he said, handing me another photo. “Look.”

The atmosphere of the shot was particularly strident. A shaft of light had shone in from one of the factory windows at precisely the right moment, backlighting the victim’s severed head agreeably.

“I like the framing,” I said, “especially the windows reflected in the pool of blood.”

“Thank you.”

At that moment a pretty girl trotted up. I was partially hidden behind Dorian’s handcart, and she didn’t see me.

“Snookums—!” she said to Dorian with a smile, and my heart fell. The girl was Imogen Fandango, and Dorian was the “unsuitable attachment” the janitor had alluded to.

“Oh!” said Imogen as soon as she saw that Dorian wasn’t alone. “Master Russett. I, um, didn’t see you there. I actually meant ‘Snookums’ in a pejorative sense—Dorian and I hate each other—don’t we, darling?”

She wasn’t fooling anyone.

“I’m not going to snitch,” I told her.

Acutely embarrassed, Dorian rubbed his forehead, and Imogen shyly clasped his hand after looking around to check that we were unobserved.

“We don’t know what to do,” she said, glad, I think, to be able to share the problem. “Daddy has been advertising in Spectrum and wants six thousand for me. Who’s this Purple he’s asked you to contact?”

“Just some guy back home,” I said awkwardly. “He probably won’t be interested.”

“That’s a relief,” replied Imogen, blinking her large eyes. “There’s still hope. Perhaps Daddy will get bored and let us marry—he said he loves me, after all.”

“The only thing he loves about you is your ability to have Purple children,” grumbled Dorian. “If he wants to trade in eggs, he should start a chicken farm. It’s not as though you’re even his daughter.”

They then started to have an argument, right there in front of me. It was all a bit embarrassing. Imogen told Dorian that her father was a good man “compelled by circumstance” to sell her to the highest bidder.

Dorian was more the one for action, and hinted darkly at “extreme measures,” which I took to mean an escape.

“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.”