Shades of Grey

A Herald Speaks

We followed the track of the old road, which zigzagged steeply down the escarpment. Jane and I both insisted that Courtland walk at least twenty paces in front of us, something he said he didn’t mind since he wouldn’t be able to see our “loathsome faces.” He was carrying Tommo’s satchel as well as his own, so clearly had high hopes of bringing home some spoils. I had checked the time before we left; we had used up almost half an hour of our contingency.

“So,” said Jane, “how did you enjoy meeting your first Riffraff?”

“I owe her my life, and perhaps yours.”

“Possibly. Was it the mother or the daughter who let you out?”

“Daughter, I think.”

“That would be Martha. They don’t call themselves Riffraff, you know.”

“What, then?”

“The Digenous.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just what they call themselves.”

“And what do they call us?”

“Many names, and none of them polite.”

At the bottom of the escarpment the road seemed to vanish entirely, until I realized that a watercourse had also considered this the best way to reach the valley floor, and had washed out the roadbed. So we followed the stream, past the rubble of houses, a telephone booth still with flecks of red paint and yet another land crawler, which was now half buried in the streambed, having had the road washed out from beneath it. I’d not seen one before this morning, and now they seemed to be everywhere.

“So what made you change your mind and follow us?” I asked as we negotiated our way around a boulder the size of a garden shed.

“You may have noticed I have a temper,” she said, “but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.”

“That’s quite a compliment.”

“Savor it,” she said. “I don’t give them out often.”

We reached a gentle rise in the land. The river moved off to its original course on the right, leaving us on the flat, grassy track of the old road and taking us into a beech forest of great maturity. Large slabs of fractured concrete had been lifted by the slow power of root systems, but of any visible scrap color, there was none. Five centuries of accreted leaf mold, soil and vegetation had effectively put it beyond easy reach, and any bizarre notion that color might be lying around on the surface was nothing more than wishful thinking. Opening High Saffron to mining operations was going to be a massive task. DeMauve would have had no choice but to found a satellite village closer to High Saffron and then have Chromatics spend a week at a time sorting the tosh before transporting it back to the railhead at East Carmine. The extraction of hue would be a long time coming and barely worth the effort. But that, I thought, was why High Saffron remained the treasure trove that it was. Untouched and virgin, it would be as rich as any tosh pit, yet discovered.

“Courtland’s getting quite far ahead.”

“Let him,” said Jane and stopped walking. I did the same, and she turned to look at me. “Are you ready to run with scissors?”

“Could I walk with them first?”

“No. You’re either in or out. Now: Are you ready to run with scissors?”

“I think so.”

“There’s no ‘think’ to it. Your life is going to change radically in the next few hours, and I want to make sure that you’re not going to do anything stupid. You need to know that there is no one you can trust, no one you can talk to, no one you can rely on, except me. We do things my way, or we don’t do them at all. And if you try to take matters into your own hands or betray me, I’ll be there to make sure that all avenues back to me are permanently silenced. Do you understand how important this is?”

“Yes, but as you’ve threatened my life several times before, I may be getting blase about the whole thing.”

“Okay, we need to add some trust. I’m going to show you something I’ve never shown anyone before.

Watch carefully.”

And she leaned closer. I knew she had lovely eyes, but until now I’d never realized quite how lovely.

Light in tone, but with a curious corona around the edges. As I watched, the fine pinpoints of her pupils moved, stretched and grew in size. I tried to step away in alarm, but she held me tightly until her empty pupils were almost to her whites, and she had the grotesque, hollow-headed look of the Previous. I shivered. But I didn’t look away, and her eyes slowly returned to normal, until with a few rapid blinks, they were back to pinpoints once more.

“That was . . . really creepy.”

“Long ago, everyone could do it. And listen, I’m sorry about putting the wheelbarrow in your path—I had to know whether you were one of . . . them. After all, you were showing a lot of interest.”

“That was because I liked you.”

“No one’s ever liked me before,” she said, “so you’ll excuse me for becoming suspicious.”

“Jabez liked you.”

“Jabez liked my nose.”

“I like your nose.”

“Yes, but you don’t only like my nose. There’s a big difference.”

“Whoa!” I said, as what she had told me finally hit home. “You can see at night?”

She gave me a smile.

“Quite well, too. On a full moon there’s almost enough light to play tennis. I think I’m the only one they don’t know about.”

“They?”

“The ones who killed Ochre. The ones who arrive after dusk and are gone before dawn.”

“Riffraff?”

“Nightseers. Above and beyond the Rules. The last line of defense against attacks upon the Munsell Doctrine.”

“How can you be sure they don’t know about you?”

“Because I’m alive. Are you running with scissors or not?”

“I’m in,” I said taking a deep breath. “But wait. How does—”

“Soon, Red, soon.”

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. It seemed like a totally natural thing for her to do, and I wasn’t shocked or surprised. But the guilt wouldn’t go away.

“Violet is very strong-willed,” I said quite spontaneously.

“As long as you didn’t enjoy it.”

“She was very aggressive,” I remarked reflectively. “It’s not supposed to be like that, is it?”

She shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s supposed to be quite fun.”

“Actually,” I added, looking down, “it was a harvest for a Purple offspring. Dad showed her the egg shade last night—she’s with my child.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “And all this with the collusion of the head prefect?”

“With a one hundred percent fatality rate, I wasn’t expected to make it back. I think the plan was for her to lament my loss and then marry Doug as planned. He’d never know it wasn’t his son.”

She shook her head sadly. “That’s Purples for you. Now, listen,” she added, rummaging in her bag while I stood there blinking stupidly to myself. “We need to take some precautions, you and I. Try to think of nothing.”

She had a compact much like the one Travis had used to keep his lime. She flicked it open, and the color—a rampant Gordini, I think—seemed to come flooding out and fill my vision. My entire left side went immediately numb, then began to burn with the sensation of a million pins and needles.

“Good afternoon!” said a cheery voice. I blinked, for there in front of me was a young man in a tidy grey suit with the splashy paint tin logo of National Color embroidered on the left breast. “Thank you for accessing Gordini Protocol NC7-Z. Please be patient while reconfiguration is in progress.”

“I can see someone,” I whispered, leaning closer to Jane.

“Just relax. Keep staring at the Gordini and tell me when you hear the big dogs.”

“If you suffer any undue discomfort during reconfiguration,” continued the young man in a jolly singsong sort of voice, “you may wish to seek assistance with customer services, available on .” He smiled again.

“National Color. Here for your convenience. And remember, feedback helps us help you.”

And he vanished. I continued to stare at the Gordini, as did Jane. The pins and needles were replaced by the smell of freshly baked bread and I could hear my twice-widowed aunt Beryl talking about cats, which she never did. And through it all, music and onions.

“Mantovani.”

“I get Brahms. Keep staring.”

The edge of my vision fringed with all the colors of the rainbow, and then, for a brief and very exciting moment, I could see in full color. It was like the world had been transformed into a color garden—but one that exhibited not the limited CYM palette of National Color, but an infinite variety of hues, delicately complementing and enhancing one another in a complex Chromatic harmony—I could even see the off-gamut violets, a color I had never seen before. The world as it was meant to look.

“It’s . . . beautiful!”

I then heard the sound of rushing water. My fingers snapped straight and I blinked uncontrollably.

“Got the dogs yet?”

“No, I’m still at blinking.”

And then they started up. Terriers yipping and wailing in an annoying fashion as the pathways in my head cross-fired. Light to sound, smell to memory, touch to music, and color to everything.

“Small dogs any good?” I asked.

“Keep at it.”

The small dogs were joined by medium-sized dogs, then finally the deep, throaty woofs of Great Danes.

They were joined by bloodhounds and wolfhounds, and pretty soon my head was full of dogs doing nothing but barking, whining and panting.

“Big dogs.”

She snapped the compact shut, and the sound abruptly cut out. I staggered for a moment.

“Steady,” she said, holding my elbow.

“What was that?”

“Precautions. A little bit of reconfiguring in the cortex. The big dogs just indicate you’re done—like the whistle on a kettle. Make a note of the time. We’ve got a couple of hours to be safe.”

“I saw colors. Real colors. And a Pooka.”

“He’s actually a Herald. A lost page from a missing book. He’s always there and always says the same thing.”

But I wasn’t really listening; I had far too many questions.

“You said ‘precautions’? And what do you mean, ‘We’ve got a couple of hours’? A couple of hours for what?”

“All in good time, Red. Come on, we better catch up with Courtland.”

“The Herald said something about ‘Gordini Protocols.’ What are they?”

“Trust me, Red, all in good time.”

We found Courtland waiting for us at a stone meetinghouse that was smothered with heavy ivy and still a creditable two stories high.

“Thought I’d lost you,” he said. “Get a load of this!”

He pointed inside the meetinghouse. The roof had vanished long ago, and the floor was covered in a thick carpet of moss. Floating just inside the doorway was an elegant craft about the size of a Ford. It was definitly a vehicle of some sort, but without wheels and constructed entirely of floatie material.

Despite a thick layer of lichen and creepers that were draped on it from above, it was still drifting free. A yard-high mark around the inside of the meeting house showed where it had moved about with the air currents, scraping against the walls. The only reason it had not drifted out and eventually made its way to the sea was that the meetinghouse door had partially collapsed, blocking its only escape. I placed my hand on the craft but, even by pulling hard, could make it dip only a small amount.

“At least six hundred negative pounds,” murmured Courtland, “spoons, a complete floatie. This place has riches in abundance—am I glad I came!”

I looked at Jane, who said nothing, and we moved off. The road we had been following was soon joined by a second that snaked in from the north. But it wasn’t any easier going. If anything, it was worse. The road was covered with the grassed-over lumps of rubble, long-rusted wreckage, stunted trees trying to grow as best they could on the thin soil, and at times impenetrable rhododendron that had to be skirted around, further slowing our progress.

“Where does the Perpetulite start?” asked Courtland.

“About a mile down the way,” Jane replied.

I looked at my watch. “We’re getting pressed for time. At this rate all we’ll manage is a quick look around before we need to head back.”

“You won’t want any more than that.”

After thirty minutes of scrambling over debris, we finally arrived at the Perpetulite. It was a four-lane roadway of perfect grey-black compound, and the bronze pins had been driven in closer together than at Bleak Point, so the spalling was less severe.

“Thank Munsell for that,” breathed Courtland, emptying a bootful of earth and sitting on the glossy black central barrier. The roadway even had Perpetulite lampposts of a much more modern design than the iron posts I was used to, and the lightglobes, where still present, were alight.

We walked down the road, which seemed somehow more incongruous here in the depopulated wasteland than at home. There, at least, there was someone to use the road or even see it; here it existed purely for its own sake.