Shades of Grey

We Travel Out

I rose, had a bath in the hottest water I could bear and donned my Outdoor Adventure #9s. I left my signet ring, my spot and my merit book with the prewritten letters in the top drawer, then padded quietly down the gloomy staircase. I fumbled for my walking boots, strapped on my gaiters and picked up the knapsack that I had packed the night before. Dad was waiting for me by the door, and although we weren’t huggy sort of people, we were this morning. Despite his previous night’s optimism, this morning Dad looked like a man who knew he wouldn’t be seeing his son again.

The village was quiet and sleepy. Dawn in the summer wasn’t the hub of frenetic activity that it was in the winter. In fact, I didn’t expect anyone to be up for at least another half hour, and then it would be only the baker, the postmistress and the mole catcher. I made my way to the statue of Our Munsell to wait for Carlos Fandango and the Ford. I didn’t have long to wait, for a disheveled figure soon ran around the corner of the town hall. He seemed to be doing up his shoelaces as he ran, which was an impressive sight. It was Tommo, and I frowned. Not only because of who it was, but what he was dressed in—his Outdoor Adventure #9s.

“Hello, Ed!” he said with an uncharacteristic display of cheery purpose. “Ready for the big day? Good morning, Courtland.”

I turned to look behind me. It was Courtland, and he seemed also to be dressed for adventure. I didn’t quite get it. If there was anyone in the village who shouldn’t be sent to High Saffron, it was Courtland.

“There’s been a change of plan,” he announced. “Tommo and I are coming with you.”

“Does Yewberry know?”

“Not yet.”

“The Council will be furious when they find you’ve volunteered yourself,” I remarked suspiciously. “Why the change of heart?”

“The Gamboges have a bit of a public relations problem at present, and I’ll need some sort of credibility if I’m going to be Yellow prefect. Besides, I could do with the cash.”

He looked pointedly at me. “After all, you never know when demerits might come one’s way. Good morning, Violet.”

Violet had indeed just appeared. She smiled coyly at me and gave my arm a squeeze. I felt a flush rise to my cheeks, and was glad none of them would be able to see it. But if Courtland going on this trip was a mistake, Violet would be a disaster—and a serious liability. If anything were to happen to the head prefect’s daughter, we’d lose every single merit we’d earn. Lower colors had a duty of care to see that those of the very highest hues came to no harm.

“This is utterly, utterly insane,” I said.

“Oh, hush, Edward,” said Violet, “This is just the sort of merry jaunt that will firmly cement our relationship. Once we bravely face the terrors of the road together and emerge victorious, we can take our places as East Carmine’s most celebrated couple.”

“There are eighty-three people who might disagree with that plan—if they could still speak.”

“You are such a whiner,” said Courtland. “Just dry up and relax. Where are we meeting Fandango?”

“Right here, but he’s late.”

In answer, there was the sound of a vehicle approaching, and the Ford rounded the corner from the direction of the flak tower. But it wasn’t the sedan; it was East Carmine’s second best: the shabby flatbed, but with the heavy crossbow removed. And Fandango wasn’t driving, but Jane. My heart rose and fell in quick succession. I was glad to see her but didn’t want her to know what had happened that morning. If, as Stafford had intimated, Jane actually did have feelings for me, doing the youknow with Violet would not go down well, if at all.

“Where’s Fandango?” asked Tommo.

“Some damn fool tricked Bunty onto the train,” replied Jane. “He has to pick her up from Bluetown in the other Ford. Got a problem with that?”

Courtland and Tommo exchanged glances.

“So where’s the relief driver?” asked Tommo.

“Clifton called in sick,” replied Jane, “and Rosie has a bad foot. George and Sandy were unavailable, so I took over. Reluctantly.”

She didn’t look at me at all, and I smiled to myself. She’d changed her mind. She was here for me after all.

I took my place in the cab, sandwiched uncomfortably between Jane and Violet while Tommo and Courtland sat in the flatbed. Without a word Jane moved off and took the western road past the flak tower, the silent linoleum factory and the railway station. Within a few minutes we had let ourselves out of the stockgate in the boundary wall, and five hundred yards farther on we stopped just past the Outer Markers and the image of the giraffe. Without anyone speaking, Courtland, Tommo and I took off our ties, carefully rolled them up and placed them in our pockets. Violet removed the bow from the top of her head and used it to tie her hair in a loose ponytail. There wouldn’t be any prefects out here, and we could slip them back on before we crossed back again.

We picked up the pace on the smooth roadway and sat in silence. I didn’t want to say anything to Violet in case she let the cat out of the bag to Jane, and I didn’t want to talk to Jane, because everyone would know that we had some sort of common understanding. But I couldn’t sit there and say nothing, so I asked Jane how far it was to Bleak Point.

“Less than an hour, if all goes well.”

“How are you, Jane?” said Violet, attempting to be friendly and magnanimous.

“A whole lot better if you’d keep your overhued trap shut.”

Violet instinctively opened her mouth to voice objection, but then realized where we were. Beyond the Outer Markers, all the Rules past volume three hundred and eight were null and void. Jane could say what she wanted. Actually, she said what she wanted inside the markers. The only difference was that now she wasn’t going to be demerited for it.

“Well!” said Violet in a huffy tone. “That was uncalled for. What have I ever done to elicit such rudeness?”

“Let’s just look at the highlights, shall we?” replied Jane. “When we were five, you pushed me into a muddy puddle and then claimed I’d hit you. When we were eight, you told Miss Bluebird that I had copied your homework after you copied mine. When we were twelve, you nearly drowned me during water polo because I had bested you. And when we were fifteen, you deselected me from the Jollity Fair tennis squad because I was likely to win. The same year you had me demerited because I failed to curtsy in your presence, even though I didn’t know you were there because I was asleep after a double shift at the factory. In fact,” went on Jane, “you’ve accounted for almost a third of my demerits over the years, something I’ve spent an aggregate five months of my life working to offset.”

“Greys,” said Violet, looking at me and rolling her eyes, “always so overdramatic.”

“Mind you,” she added, “we’re not totally ungrateful—the cash you pay my brother for youknow helps keep food on our table.”

I heard Tommo and Courtland stop talking and tune into the conversation.

“Wow!” I said, pointing at some bouncing goats that were leaping through the scrubby Outfield in a series of enormous bounds. “Look at them go!”

But my attempt to get Violet and Jane off topic didn’t work.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to be at one’s best for one’s husband,” continued Violet, visibly rankled by Jane’s indiscretion, “but now that I am to wed,” she said, patting me on the shoulder, “he will have to ply his wares elsewhere—and good luck to him; he has learned much from my expertise.”

Jane gave a snort of a laugh that, had we been within the Outer Markers, would have been branded impertinent. Out here it was just fair banter, one-on-one.

“What are you sniggering at?” Violet demanded.

“That you think you’re an expert at youknow. The sorry truth is that Clifton gave you good feedback only to increase return business. He told me you were only in it for yourself.”

There was an icky silence, and I could tell Jane was enjoying herself.

“Nonsense,” replied Violet as her self-denial kicked in after a millisecond of doubt. “I can’t think why he would want to lie to you, or why his moonlighting might be suitable talk for a Grey dinner table. But we can clear this matter up once and for all. Eddie, darling, tell Jane how fantastically good I was this morning.”

I closed my eyes and felt sick. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. My only consolation was that I had been thinking of Jane when it happened, which didn’t sound like the sort of excuse I should use.

“Well?” said Violet.

“Yes,” added Jane, with a mixture of hurt and anger in her voice, “how was it? Do tell.”

“Look,” I said, turning to Violet, “I’m not here to give you public feedback every time someone criticizes you.”

“Is that a fact?” she replied, her shrill voice rising. “Then what are you here for? Marriage is a couple mutually joined as one but doing what the higher hue demands. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure she was going to tell me how insanely bossy up-color girls could be, but then she got the Mildew, and it must have slipped her mind.”

“I’m going to be the wisecracking, acerbic one in this marriage,” retorted Violet. “You’re to be the long-suffering husband who supports his wife with quiet dignity.”

“I’m glad we got that small matter cleared up. Shall we make it part of the vows?”

“Don’t lip me, Russett. I can make this marriage bossy or five decades of living nightmare. Believe me, you’ll prefer bossy.”

We fell silent after that as the age-worn Ford crept slowly up the hill with a cacophony of growls and rattles, squeaks and groans. I looked across at Jane, but she was staring ahead, lips pursed. I needed to talk to her about recent events but didn’t see how I could. Not alone, anyway.

We had been driving toward the dam complex and had by now reached the top of the first one. The effort had been worth it. A shimmering expanse of water hemmed in by rocky valley walls suddenly appeared to greet us. It was spectacularly lovely yet also surprisingly bleak, as frequent rhododendron-halting fires had reduced the vegetation to nothing more than stunted scrub. The road was suffering, too. Where the Perpetulite ran across rock, it had thinned with malnutrition, and small rocky outcrops now poked through the roadway, requiring us to creep over some of the larger obstructions with care.

The road followed the eastern side of the reservoir, passed the remains of an arched bridge and carried on until it petered out into silted-up marshland, where the reed beds were home to waders, spoonbills and, most gloriously, flamingos.

We motored up a short rise where we found a second dam that had been breached long ago and was now once more a valley with a stream running through it. The road twisted and turned and rose, the vegetation became less burned, and pretty soon we were driving across open moorland. We passed a grove of stunted oaks, then two rusted-iron land crawlers, badly eroded by the wind and rain. Then, just when all seemed to be going well, the road abruptly stopped in an erratic plume of errant Perpetulitic growth, with six knotted plastoid tendrils stopped in their tracks by a series of bronze spikes. The Perpetulite had not taken well to the spalling and had gone into an ugly frenzy of errant growth. Lumpy roadway had bulged up, and the white center line had twisted about itself like cream being stirred into coffee.

Jane pulled off the road onto a grassy verge next to a Faraday cage.

“It’s called spalling,” said Tommo, since we were all staring at the panicked manner in which the road had attempted to rejoin with its lost section. “When Perpetulite catches plastoid necrosis , the only way to protect the road system is to amputate and then spike. I don’t think it likes it very much.”

“Like I give a ratfink what the road thinks,” said Violet. “Let’s get on with it.”

“I leave an hour before nightfall,” announced Jane, breaking out the oilcan from the toolbox. “If you’re not here, I go home without you. Have fun now, children, and don’t squabble.”

“You better be here,” said Courtland.

“I’ll be here,” she said, giving him a smile, “but will you?”

She was trying to frighten him, but it didn’t seem to be working.

We gathered our knapsacks, and with little ceremony we walked past the spalled Perpetulite and onto the track of the vanished road, which, despite being fully reclaimed as grassy moorland, was still visible as a flatter section of ground. Almost immediately, I made some lame excuse and hurried back to the Ford, which was being assiduously oiled by Jane with the oversize oilcan.

“I thought you were here because you changed your mind.”

“I thought so, too,” she said without looking at me, “right up until you couldn’t resist giving darling Violet your very best. You had me fooled. For a moment there I thought you were actually quite pleasant.”

“It was an accident.”

“Where did you mean to put it? Her sock?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?” She took a deep breath. “Whatever it was, Eddie, it’s gone. I don’t care any longer. But since I owe you, here’s some advice: There’s a flak tower three foot-hours away. Don’t go beyond it.”

“I have to. That’s the point of the expedition.”

She shrugged, switched on the ignition, hand-cranked the engine, jumped into the driver’s seat, and without another look at me, moved off in a cloud of smoke.

I sighed, cursed my own weakness, then ran to catch up with the others.

We stuck to the easily recognized path of the gone-away road, and after a half mile of well-grazed moorland we descended a short hill and entered a forest of mature oak. A few trees had fallen across the road but nothing too dramatic.

“We’d get the Ford along here,” said Tommo, who had trotted forward to join me up front.

The road took us around a sweeping curve and then up a slight incline, where, standing forlornly in a sun-dappled glade, we came across a Farmall crawler such as might have been used to assist with logging. This was where the battle to reopen the road had ended thirty years ago, the Farmall abandoned when it was replaced by plow horses as motive power during one of the periodic small stepbacks.

Enthusiasm for keeping the road open had seemingly died with it. I made a note in my exercise book.

“So,” I said to Tommo as we walked past the crawler and around a bramble thicket to rejoin the track of the old road, “what’s going on?”

“Yes, I suppose I should explain.”

“Would you?” I asked. “I’d be really very grateful.”

“No need to be like that.”

“So what are you doing out here? I thought most Cinnabars were cowards.”

“Not most, all,” he replied with disarming honesty.

“I’m still listening.”

“Right. Well, we were talking about your insane mission, and blow me down if Lucy doesn’t go all gooey and say how brave and manly you are. And Courtland and I got to thinking that instead of making it a trip of almost certain death and unspeakable horrors, we could invest in a few safeguards to make the trip work to everyone’s advantage. We had a brief chat, and here we are: Courtland, Violet, me and yourself.”

“And where do the safeguards come into it?”

“You’ll see.”

We had arrived at a stone house by the side of the road. The interior was a sea of brambles, and there was a beech growing in the corner. Next to the building were the remnants of an outhouse that had collapsed long ago, and beneath the carpet of roof tiles, leaf litter and moss were the remnants of a vehicle. Although anything metallic had rusted or corroded away long ago, the plastic still remained, along with four perished rubber tires and a pair of glass headlights, which looked as though they might have been cast yesterday. A flash of white on the ground caught my eye, and I picked up a sun-bleached molar. It was definitely human, although it looked as though someone had stuck some metal neatly onto the worn surface. I tapped the tooth on my palm, and the metal section dropped out. It was heavy and shiny, so I put it in my pocket.

“Okay,” said Courtland, “here will do.”

The three of them dispensed with their knapsacks. Violet and Courtland sat down, while Tommo poked in a grassy mound with a stick. Scavenging for color was one of those pursuits that followed you into adulthood.

“We should give it another half hour before a break,” I said. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take to get there.”

“We’re not resting,” said Courtland with a sense of finality. “We’ve stopped.”

Tommo and Violet looked at me, then at Courtland. Tommo had outdone himself again.

“That’s the safeguard?” I asked. “Not going to High Saffron at all?”

“The best plans are always the simplest,” observed Tommo with a smile. “Let me explain. We’re going to rest up for the day, discard all our gear and a shoe or two, rip our clothes and then stagger back into town whimpering incoherently about swans and Riffraff. Everyone’s a hero, we get excused from Useful Work for a month, receive seven hundred merits each and clean up on the sweep I’ve got going back home. There’s no risk, we don’t have to do squiddly and no one has to walk their feet off—or come back dead.”

He found something in the mound of dirt he had been prodding, and held it up. “Guys?”

Courtland shook his head, but Violet nodded.

“Blue,” she said in a grumpy tone.

“And what about the report?” I asked. “We don’t get a bean unless we actually reach the town.”

He shrugged. “We’ll claim we reached the outskirts. You can make up something suitably vague:

‘pre-Epiphanic ruins, entwined with the roots of mature oaks,’ then add a bit about ‘vibrant color lying half buried in the leaf mold.’ That will do it.”

“We could do the same thing next month,” said Violet, “and the month after that.”

“And without prefects to check up on us,” added Courtland, “there’s no risk.”

“So you’re with us on this, right?” said Tommo. “No sense in risking certain death when you can make good money with a little harmless subterfuge.”

I stared at them all. Ordinarily I might have entertained such an action, especially with two prefects-in-waiting already signed up. With me onboard, there would be three-quarters of East Carmine’s future Council in agreement, which would be enough to keep it hidden forever. But it didn’t bode well. If this was the level of corruption before they were in power, I dreaded to think what it might be like when they took office. Besides, I didn’t like being pushed. Not one little bit.

“Why don’t you guys just stay here?” I suggested. “I’ll walk over there on—”

“We really have to be together on this,” said Violet. “We’ll be debriefed. They’ll see through it.”

Courtland got up and walked toward me. I dearly wanted to take a step back, but I thought I’d fare better with him knowing I wasn’t frightened of him, so I stood my ground.

“Listen,” he said once he was uncomfortably close, “we’re not expected back, so if we lose a member no one will be surprised. We can do this with you or without you. Do it our way, and it’s a heap of cash and certain life. Do it your way, and it’s certain death and no cash.”

“Kill me and Violet’s dynasty goes all to Blue.”

“I think I’m okay in that respect,” said Violet, patting her stomach. “If I marry Doug on Sunday night no one will look too carefully at the calendar.”

I could feel my heart sink. “Two grand up front,” I murmured, suddenly realizing what was going on.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Tommo. “As your father will no doubt attest, I am a fine negotiator. With the High Saffron excursions sporting a one hundred percent fatality rate, he was wise to at least make something from you. And he gets a grandson—even if he can’t ever tell anyone. Don’t judge him too harshly. It was his best option. And he got deMauve to agree in writing that the boy would be called Eddie.”

I didn’t know what annoyed me more, being threatened with death or having my own father sell our Chromatic heritage without my knowledge. Dad must have shown Violet the ovulating shade, too.

DeMauve had gotten a lot for his money.

“He didn’t know about the not-going-to-High-Saffron plan, did he?” I asked.

“No,” said Tommo, mustering a shred of decency. “As far as he was concerned, it was simply the deMauves hedging their bets against your disappearance.”

It was consolation of sorts. At least I knew my father’s actions had been fiscal rather than personal.

There was a long pause in which we all stared at one another.

“So what’s the deal?” asked Violet, who was growing impatient.

Courtland was bluffing. He wouldn’t kill me in front of Violet. She’d have leverage over him at every single future Council meeting and would never keep something this serious under her hat.

“There’s no deal. I’m going on.”

“You Russetts!” screamed Violet. “So nauseatingly self-righteous!” She folded her arms and glared, not at me but at Courtland and Tommo. “Honestly, boys, I thought you said you’d gotten this all sorted out.

If I get into trouble over this, I’m going to really make you burn when I’m head prefect.”

“We had sorted it out,” explained Tommo meekly. “We just hadn’t thought Russett here would be such a party-pooper-prefect’s-pet.”

“Then I’m bailing on this monumental farrago,” remarked Violet as she came rapidly to a decision. “I think I’ve just twisted my ankle and am unable to proceed.” She looked daggers at me. “And if you commit the discourtesy of surviving so I have to marry you, I will strive to make you unhappy for the rest of my life.”

Violet got to her feet and shouldered her bag before turning to face us. “What’s our story?”

“Simple,” said Courtland, still staring at me. “We stopped here for a break, and you stumbled on the way out on some rubble, then headed back.”

“What if Russett blabs that this was all a merit scam?”

“Don’t worry,” replied Courtland, “he’ll come around. Won’t you, Eddie?”

“All I want to do is to complete the expedition,” I said, staring back at Courtland. “Other than that, I don’t give a ratfink’s bottom.”

“There,” said Courtland, “he agrees.”

And Violet walked off at a brisk pace without another word.

“This is all very well,” said Tommo once we had gathered up our belongings, “but this means we actually have to go to High Saffron!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Courtland. “Frightened?”

“Too bloody right. I think I might have twisted my ankle, too—or something.”

“You’re coming with us,” said Courtland in a voice that didn’t invite contradiction. “You got us into this stupid mess, so you can certainly see it through.”

“Right you are,” said Tommo without enthusiasm, “overjoyed.”

“We’re moving out,” I said. “The next rest break is in an hour.”

I saw Tommo and Courtland exchange glances. If Tommo had gone with Violet, I would have felt disagreeably ill at ease. Courtland was capable of almost anything, but not, I reasoned, with Tommo about. Toady that he was, Tommo could stand to earn serious merits for snitching on Courtland if he tried anything stupid. Even so, I knew I would have to be careful.

Before leaving, I wrote on a sheet of paper torn from my exercise book that Violet had turned back, added the time, signed it and laid it in the middle of the road with four stones stacked in a pyramid on top of it.

We walked out, and I mused to myself that this expedition was much like any other I had been on—full of arguments, and running anything but smoothly.