Shades of Grey

The Word

Мiss Pink gave Dad positive feedback, we bade her good day and then stepped out of the shop and back into the close summer heat. We loosened our ties no more than the proscribed amount, and looked about. The square, which before had been busy and noisy, was now deathly quiet. The townspeople had organized a voluntary fifty-yard exclusion zone—not unusual, but pretty pointless. A Mildew sufferer only becomes dangerously infectious an hour after death, when the skin is covered in fine grey tendrils and the victim, whose lungs are now under pressure from the rapidly multiplying moldy growth, will involuntarily expel the spores in a single explosive death cough. That is the moment to panic and leap out of the nearest window—irrespective of which floor you’re on, or whether it is open or not. Barring industrial accidents, sudden body failure, angry megafauna, Riffraff and—most relevant to me—the occasional yateveo, the Mildew got everyone in the end. It steadfastly ignored the barriers of hue and took the strongest Violet with the feeblest Achromatic. One morning you’d wake up with long nails and numb elbows, and by teatime you’d be good for nothing but tallow and bonemeal. But paradoxically, although the Mildew was the number one killer by a long stretch, very few people actually died of it. As soon as a victim had been diagnosed and murmured a rasped good-bye to tear-brimmed loved ones, they would be wheeled into the nearest Green Room, where they would drift into a highly pleasurable reverie and, from there, to death. It was safer that way—a corpse could be bagged and safely in the icehouse when it coughed.

When we reached the small crowd of onlookers at the edge of the exclusion zone, they parted to let us through, but not without a barrage of questions. Dad answered asambiguously ashe could. No, he didn’t know if a Mildew had been confirmed, and yes, Miss Pink had taken control of the situation. He was then asked by a reporter for the Vermillion Chronicle for an interview. He initially refused until the reporter mentioned he was also a newsfeed for Spectrum, so Dad agreed to say a few words. While he was thus engaged, I looked idly about at the gathered townsfolk and made a note of the time. We had thirty-one minutes to catch our train, and if a slowpoke Yellow was on verification duty today and we missed our connection, we might very well be here another day.

And that was when I saw Jane. I din’t know it was Jane, of course. I wouldn’t find out her name until that afternoon, after she had done her impossible conjuring trick. I didn’t usually stare at girls—less so when Constance was around. But on this occasion I just gaped. I was struck, poleaxed, smitten—whatever you want to call it. I don’t know why I felt that way. Even now, if you took me half drowned out of the yateveo, sat me on a log and said, “Listen here, Eddie old chap, what exactly was it that you found so attractive?” I would simply waffle about her small, almost perfectly upswept, retrousse nose, and you’d consider me insane and put me back. Perhaps I was struck by not what she was, but what she wasn’t. She was neither tall nor willowy, nor had any poise or bearing. Her hair was of medium length and had been tied back in a manner that fell just nine-tenths within permissibility. She had large, questioning eyes that seemed to draw me in, and a sense of quiet outrage that simmered just beneath the surface. More than anything, within her features there was a streak of wild quirkiness that made her dazzlingly attractive. In an instant, Constance and her privileged position vanished from my mind, and for the moment at least, I could think of nothing but the plain Grey in the dungarees.

I tried to think of a reasonable opening line, as I had several things to say that could be variously described as witty or intelligent, but not both. Quite why I needed to talk to her I had no idea. In half an hour I would be gone from this place, and likely never to return. But a few words with her might brighten my day, and a smile last me a week.

But my thoughts were interrupted. The crowd had given out a Collective murmur. It appeared that the Purple Pretender was being carried from the shop on a stretcher rather than a seamless polymer bag, which confirmed to everyone’s huge relief that it was not the Mildew. But Jane’s reaction was quite different. It was one not of relief but of concern, and my heart beat faster. She knew who he was —and probably what he was doing there. I took a pace forward and laid my hand on her forearm. But my touch, although innocent of meaning, illicited a furious response. She gave me a look of cold hatred and growled in a menacing voice, “Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

I was momentarily stunned—not just by the fact that she had used one of the Very Bad Words , but because she had threatened physical violence to someone up-Spectrum, and seemingly without the slightest provocation. I handled it badly, and defaulted to blustered outrage.

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Why not?”

It was so obvious a question that it barely needed answering, but I tried nonetheless.

“Because you’re Grey and I’m Red, for one thing!”

She reached forward, plucked the Red Spot from my lapel, dropped it onto the cobblestones and remarked sarcastically, “Can I threaten to break your jaw now?”

The impertinence was astonishing, and my as-yet-unbroken jaw may have dropped open. I should have asked her who the Purple Pretender was and put her on the back foot, but at that moment Dad called my name, and I turned away. By the time I looked back, the Grey had slipped away into the crowd.

“What are you looking for?”

“A girl.”

“With a train leaving in half an hour? Eddie, you really are the most hopeless optimist.”

They didn’t verify our postcodes down at the station. The Duty Yellow had found a dress-code infraction to deal with—something about work boots with a Travel Casual #3—so after we’d had our tickets checked and claimed our luggage, we settled into seats near the rear of the carriage, with me staring out the window, deep in thought.

“I’ve got something for you,” said Dad, and he handed me a dented soupspoon that had become thinned with centuries of use.

“Where did you get that?”

“The Grey wrongspot’s waistcoat pocket. I took it in lieu of payment.”

“Dad!”

He shrugged. “You saved his life. And besides, you don’t have one.” Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one’s person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred—shockingly—with the handle of a fork.

I pocketed the spoon without further comment, as the wrongspot most certainly did owe me, and we waited for the other passengers to board.

“Dad,” I said, “what would a Grey posing as a Purple be doing in a National Color Paint Shop in Vermillion?”

“Steady,” said Dad with a smile. “Curiosity is a descending stair—” I finished the oft-spoken rhyme with him: “—that leads to only who-knows-where.” Then I added, “but inquisitiveness will pay dividends when I’m a senior monitor.”

“If you become a senior monitor,” he corrected. “We don’t know whether you’ve got the Red—and Constance’s hand is not yet won. And remember: The inquisitive have a nasty habit of ending up in Reboot. Like that Carrot fellow—what was his name again?”

“Dwayne.”

“Right. Dwayne Carrot. Too many silly questions. So be careful.”

And after this sweepingly general piece of advice, he unfolded his copy of Spectrum and started to read.

Despite our closeness, I had never told Dad that I could actually see a lot more red than I let on. The question was not whether I had the 50 percent needed to be Chromogentsia and senior monitor, but whether I had the 70 percent required to become a potential Red prefect. I was quietly confident that I could, but I wasn’t certain. Color perception was notoriously subjective, and the very human vagaries of deceit, hyperbole and self-delusion all conspired to make pre-test claims pretty much worthless. But all doubts came to nought the morning of your Ishihara. No one could cheat the Colorman and the color test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life uncertainties eradicated forever. You knew who you were, what you would do, where you would go and what was expected of you. In return, you simply accepted your position within the Colortocracy, and assiduously followed the Rulebook. Your life was mapped. And all in the time it takes to bake a tray of scones.