Shades of Grey

Courtland

The progress was easy on the Perpetulite, but it slowed when we reached the spalling and the road reverted to thick rhododendron and tussocked lumpiness. Courtland was hampered even more by his load and was soon sweating and blowing like a steam engine. He called a halt as soon as we had reached the place where the road branched.

“I’m going to leave these here,” he said, unloading all the cutlery except the ones he was carrying in the satchels. “We could tell Yewberry that we need to come back for a further expedition.”

“We’re not coming back,” said Jane in a quiet voice. “There’s nothing here for anyone.”

Courtland laughed. “There’s enough spoons here to fund an entire color garden; forget the scrap color, East Carmine is in the spoon business, with me at its head. Are you tired, or is it just me?” He sat down heavily on a moss-covered lump of concrete.

“People aren’t supposed to come here,” said Jane, perching on a fallen tree. “After the wires corroded and the flak towers fell into disuse, the Perpetulite was necrotized to keep visitors away. No one was ever supposed to come back from High Saffron, and no one ever did.”

“Until now,” said Courtland.

“Yes,” repeated Jane, “until now. Tell me, Courtland, when you were pretending to conduct the chair census in the Greyzone yesterday, were you looking for anything in particular?”

“Like what?”

“Unlicensed supernumeraries.”

His surprise was genuine. “There’s one in East Carmine?”

“There are sixteen,” replied Jane cheerfully, “and five of them are blind.”

“B-word?” he asked incredulously. “You mean without-sight b-word?”

“Mrs. Olive has been blind for twenty-two years,” said Jane, looking at me. “Makes a nonsense of the fear of night, doesn’t it?”

“How can someone survive Variant-B Mildew?” asked Courtland, not unreasonably. “I mean, as soon as the sight starts to go, the Rot kicks in, and you’re spared the horror of permanent darkness.”

“It’s not a horror,” said Jane, “far from it. Someone remade the night as a barrier to restrict movement, and sightless people who have no fear of the darkness would give the game away.”

“Night as a barrier?” asked Courtland. “But why?”

I looked at Jane. I wanted to know, too.

“There used to be places called prisons before the Epiphany, where the demerited were restrained against their will.”

“It sounds hideously barbaric,” I said.

“Prisons are still with us,” she said, “only the walls are constructed of fear, taboo and the unknown.”

“But why didn’t the sightless catch the Mildew?” I said. “I still don’t understand.”

“They didn’t catch Variant-B for the simple reason that they were safe and comfortable in their attics,” explained Jane. “In fact, not one single supernumary has ever caught the Mildew. And that’s quite significant, don’t you think?”

I’d heard enough. I wanted it to stay as death on the road at the end of the Night Train, and Head Office quietly feeding the wantonly disruptive to carnivorous trees and an ancient technology. It was enough for today, enough for all week—enough for all time. Enough.

“We’ve got to get moving,” I said in a more forceful tone. “If we’re not at Bleak Point by sundown-minus-one, we’re going to spend a miserable night in the Faraday cage. Courtland, Jane—we’re leaving.”

Jane didn’t budge, and neither did Courtland.

“I feel a bit odd,” he said, “and I can’t feel my elbows.”

I felt my own elbows, and noticed nothing unusual. I looked at Courtland’s fingernails. They had grown a half inch. It could be only one thing.

“The Rot,” he said in a quiet voice, tinged not with dread but with sadness and inevitability, “and not a blasted Green Room in sight. What rotten luck. If there’s one thing good about curling up, you at least get to Chase the Frog.”

“No, no, no,” I said, holding my head in my hands. “Don’t make the Mildew part of this!” I felt tears well up inside me, and a retching sob as everything came crashing down around me. The yateveos and Perpetulite didn’t kill anyone back at High Saffron—they just mopped up the remains.

“It was as I said,” murmured Jane. “Everything looks fine, but behind the door there’s a fire raging. I’m sorry, but if you and I are going to run side by side with scissors, you’re going to have to open that door and feel the heat on your face. Perhaps even burn a little. Scar tissue always heals harder.”

“Mildew’s not a disease at all, is it?”

She took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. “It’s a color. A greeny-red that I call greed. The piazza at High Saffron is made of self-colored Perpetulite.”

“But almost everyone gets the Mildew,” I said slowly, “and hardly anyone comes down here.”

“There’s a list,” said Jane sadly. “Annex XII. And when you show symptoms of anything on the list, you’re shown the Mildew.”

It took a moment for what she was saying to hit home, and when it did, I didn’t like it.

“Don’t leap to judgment,” she said hurriedly, guessing what was on my mind. “A swatchman’s job is ninety-five percent healing. They’re not murderers. Once, I think Annex XII was a list of symptoms that would allow you the option to enter the Green Room. Somewhere along the line it became compulsory.

But ask yourself this: Does your father preside over many Mildews?”

“No,” I said, considering the matter, “he’s always been proud that he hasn’t lost a single person to the Rot.”

“It’s a good sign,” said Jane. “It shows that he has a conscience. Robin Ochre worked the system as best he could to avoid having to show anyone the Mildew. He juggled targets, cooked the books and even used misdiagnosis and misdirection to avoid the worst. When that didn’t work, he had them pretend to do a walkout and confined them to attics. Anything to avoid the checks-and-balances man from Mutual Audit. We had twenty-six Extras hidden away at one point. Some of them still ended up in the Green Room, but by their own choice. He kept the village entirely Rot-free for seven years. He was an extraordinary man.”

“And that’s why they killed him?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not sure of the precise reason. All I know is that he was taken from his bed at night, flashed some Sweetdream and then dumped in the Green Room. He never even saw them coming. In the night, you never do.”

“Have you ever seen them?”

“No,” she replied, “but I’m always on my guard, and check out all newcomers where possible. I don’t frighten easy, but they frighten me. There’s nothing they won’t do to protect the Stasis. Nothing.”

“Dad might be staying,” I said. “Mrs. Ochre and he have a thing going.”

“Then he may need our help. He’ll need to know about the Extras.”

“And place him in danger?”

“By not enthusiastically embracing the full capabilities of the Mildew, he’s already at risk—even if he doesn’t know it.”

I looked at Courtland, who was now coughing almost continuously. His skin was going waxy, and his ears had become white and brittle. He was dying, and he knew it. I helped him off the slab of concrete and laid him on the soft grass with one of his satchels under his head.

“Why not us?” I asked.

“The Gordini I showed you,” she said quietly. “For a couple of hours we’re immune to all hues—good or bad.”

“But you didn’t show it to Courtland,” I replied reproachfully. “Your inaction killed him. No one deserves this. Not even him.”

She looked at me and sighed.

“You’re right. But he couldn’t go blabbing about all this into the village. If we’re to make a difference here, we have to make hard decisions. And as tough calls go, this one is a doozy. Believe me, you’re going to have to do much worse than this—in the pursuit of freedom, the innocents will suffer—and at your hands.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but I’m not there yet.”

I pulled out the small square of Lincoln that I had taken from Lucy. I was expecting a quick hit when I unfolded it, but nothing happened. Or at least, not to me. To Courtland it was everything, and he sighed with relief when I showed it to him. After a moment or two, his breathing became easier and he stopped panicking. I didn’t put the Lincoln away, even when he’d had enough. He carried on staring at it until he became drowsy, confessed that it was Sally who “did Travis in,” told me I was a rogue and a cheat and then asked us to tell Melanie that he actually quite liked her, and that it wasn’t all about the youknow. He mentioned something about not trusting Tommo, then lost consciousness. I lifted his eyelids to keep the numbing shade flooding into his cortex, and could feel myself shaking. I didn’t even like Courtland, he had tried to kill me—and still I felt tears running down my cheeks. Within five minutes the grey tendrils had started to appear on his lips, and as we watched, a cakey substance sprouted from his ears, nostrils and tearducts. I kept his eyes firmly open and bathed in Lincoln, and although not as enjoyable an exit as Sweetdream, it was fairly painless. After ten minutes the growth had filled his lungs, and his breathing became more labored, then stopped entirely. I pressed my finger on his neck and kept it there until his pulse had faded to nothing.

I stood up and walked away to think for a moment.

“Are you okay?” asked Jane. “Don’t go all funny on me. I’m out on a limb for you here.”

I swallowed my anger and revulsion, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, turning to face her, “we can go.”

“Not yet, we can’t.”

She took Courtland’s arms and instructed me to take his legs, and we carried him into the forest until we reached a grove of yateveos. She told me to haul him to his feet at the edge of the spread, and we then just let him fall backward. There was a flash of movement, and the tree had him deposited in its trunk within a couple of seconds while Courtland’s spoons spilled from his satchel and cascaded to earth with a musical ring.

“I always act out my cover stories for real where possible,” said Jane as we walked away. “I’m not going to be caught out by shoddily prepared homework. Come on, it’s getting late.”

We headed off among the grove of yateveos and followed the narrow strips of safe ground that lay between the highly territorial trees.

“You said the Herald was a lost page from a missing book. What did you mean by that?”

“I was being dramatic. The truth isn’t lost or missing—it’s right here, in our heads.” She tapped her forehead. “We’re more complex than you think. Perhaps more complex than you can think. There’s stuff locked up in our heads—we just can’t access it without the correct combination of hues. Pookas, memory sweeps, cross fires, the Mildew, Lincoln, lime and Gordini are only the smallest part of it.

There’s more. Much more. We’ve only dipped a toe in the lake.”

“How does it work?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea, but I don’t think we’re the first society to embrace the visible Spectrum as the focal point of our lives. There was another before us. A better one. One that went wrong or was displaced. They left stuff behind. Not just Chromaticology and the Mildew, but complete histories, accessed by nothing more complex than a subtle combination of color.”

“The painted ceiling,” I said, “Rusty Hill.”

“You saw a partial Herald while you were looking at the violets. But not enough of the ceiling is finished to hear her speak. When it is, then we might know more about the Something That Happened. We may even discover the nature of Munsell’s Epiphany.”

I thought about this for a moment.

“Zane was buying paint that day in Vermillion, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. “We need to complete the mural. To even have a hope of defeating Head Office and Chromocentric Hierarchilism, we have to know how it all came about. Ochre stole the swatches to exchange for paint. Zane wrongspotted himself so no questions would or could be asked. I wrangled the Perpetulite to get him around—we even went into neighboring sectors to avoid suspicion.”

“Is that why everyone was Mildewed in Rusty Hill?”

“Yes,” she said in a quiet voice. “They started to complete the roof, and the workers started to see confused snippets of Heralds. They were reported as Pookas, and the system swung into action to protect itself.”

There was a pause.

“So that’s what enlightenment feels like,” I said in a quiet voice. “You said cozy ignorance was a better place for people like me.”

“It still might be. And listen, I want you to know I’m sorry.”

I stopped. We were standing on the narrow area of safety between the spreads of two medium-sized yateveos. I had been in this situation before with her, and my heart fell. I thought we’d been getting along.

I turned to face her, and she looked at me apologetically.

“Do you have to?” I asked.

“I do. And I’m really, really sorry.”

She hooked a leg in mine and expertly heaved me off balance. I landed with a thump, and there was a sound like a whipcrack. I cried out in pain as one vine wrapped around my leg and another took hold of my arm. I felt the sensation of being lifted, and the ground and Jane moved rapidly away from me. I think she waved.