Shades of Grey (57 page)

“I shall do so,” replied Jane in a formal manner, “and I thank you for your interest.”

And we bowed curtly and shook hands. I walked smartly away, and was instantly grabbed by Mrs. Gamboge and tugged unceremoniously away from the crowd.

“Don’t think I don’t know you killed him,” she growled, staring at me angrily. “I’ll have my revenge. Not just on you but on that stupid Grey.”

“She’s Green.”

“She’ll always be a Grey
within,
Russett. And I’ll find proof. Even if I have to walk to High Saffron myself.”

“Be my guest,” I replied, “but you’re wrong. Courtland died trying to save me.”

“And that’s where your story falls apart. I know my son. He would never have lifted a finger to save you.”

It was a very sound argument, and we hadn’t thought of it. Jane and I would have to review our lying procedures.

“You disgust me,” added Gamboge, “I’ll make it my life’s work to destroy you.”

“Likewise,” I said, leaning closer. “I will aggressively pursue the manner of Travis’ death. Perhaps we should discuss the timing of Penelope’s allocation at Council tomorrow?”

She blinked several times and pursed her lips. But she said nothing more and moved away. The strange thing was, I hadn’t even broken a sweat under her attack. Being a prefect was going to be quite enjoyable.

I made my way through the crowd and rejoined my father. “Okay,” I said, “we’ll do it your way.”

V
iolet had scored 28 percent Red and 64 percent Blue, which made her Purple enough to one day become head prefect. She was delighted when my father got word to her of developments, and quickly broke off with Doug, much to his relief. She was well mannered enough not to comment on Jane’s and my misfortune, and we sat side by side on the sofa in the living room of their house, one of the largest on the main square. They had two servants, three Titians and not a spot of synthetic purple anywhere in the house. They had breeding, after all, and the overly ostentatious expression of one’s hue was not the done thing at all.

My father was there, and he had been chatting to Mrs. deMauve, who was as delighted and relieved as Violet over the change of circumstances.

“More tea?” said Violet.

“No, thanks.”

The door opened, and deMauve walked in. I knew almost immediately that he had bribed the Colorman, as he had the faint smile on his face of someone who had just turned up a winning ace.

“So,” he said to my father, “I understand things did not work out as expected?”

My father explained that, due to an “unforeseen incident,” his son was once more available, and wondered if deMauve would care to enter his daughter into an arrangement.

“At the same rate?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Dad.

“No,” said I.

“It seems as though your son has issues with authority,” said deMauve, “an ugly trait, and not one we should encourage.”

“I would like to work for National Color,” I said, “but I need you to endorse my application.”

“Absolutely not,” replied deMauve crossly. “Yewberry is the worst Red sorter we’ve ever had, and with High Saffron a washout, we’ll need you in the Pavilion to even have a
chance
of meeting scrap-color targets.”

“What if I were to make East Carmine the spoon capital of the Collective?”

“We can’t make spoons,” he replied gruffly. “It’s not allowed.”

“But what if I can get
around
the Rules? Can you imagine the riches such loopholery might bring to the community?”

DeMauve stared at me. Like it or not, I was an adult now, and at 86 percent, almost an equal.

“Keep talking.”

I showed him the utensil that had been embedded in my backside when I was thrown into the yateveo. It wasn’t really a spoon, but then it wasn’t a fork, either. It had a spoonlike shallow scoop, but with the addition of three tines of a fork. I handed it to deMauve, who stared at it intently.

“I call it a spork,” I said.

“How
ingenious,
” remarked Violet, who was eager to have the pretense of a strong and supportive marriage, and was resolved to start as she meant to continue. “Whatever made you think of a brilliant name like that?”

“It’s engraved on the back.”

“Oh.”

DeMauve turned the instrument around in his hands. It was mildly corroded from where it had lain inside the tree, but none the worse for that.

“Redundant production-line space at the linoleum factory could churn these out by the thousands,” I said. “We’d be on full grid color by next year, and hosting Jollity Fair in three.”

The head prefect nodded to himself. “I think you might be right. If the other prefects agree, we will do a trial batch for peer review of Rule Compliance. If it passes, you can have your endorsement to National Color.”

The marriage deal was duly completed, and although expected to kiss Violet in front of them all, I didn’t, which caused only minor consternation. I was still a good catch, even if the marriage was a sham. The meeting ended with the nuptials fixed for tomorrow at ten, with a week’s honeymoon at Purple Regis, paid for by the deMauves. There was also the question of surname, and it was decided that I would abandon the Russett name, but that it would become a middle name for the infant. There were other wrinkles to iron out, but nothing too onerous—or nothing that
seemed
onerous, given that I was marrying Violet.

H
alf an hour later I walked down to the railway station to see Imogen and Dorian off. Despite a last-minute attempt by Yewberry and deMauve to find something in the Rules to stop them, there was nothing they could do. The couple had made their beds, completed their laundry and even finished homework that had been left over from their schooldays. Bertie Magenta was incandescent with rage, and not just because he was losing Imogen or his evening “on appro.” It seemed that he had surrendered his ticket for “safekeeping” and had been told by his father to “work his passage home.”

Fandango, too, was outraged, and while a small crowd, variously mixed with well-wishers and outraged parties, stood arguing opposite Imogen and Dorian’s compartment, I went to wish the Colorman a safe journey.

“I heard you got deMauve to agree that you could sit the National Color entrance exam. Congratulations.”

“As you said,” I replied, “a capacity for ingenuity is looked on favorably by National Color.”

“It is indeed. I am not involved in training, but I suspect we shall meet again. I like to think of National Color as a close-knit family.”

He paused for thought.

“I never did find Ochre’s second accomplice,” he said. “I would expect you to tell me if any information reaches your ears?”

“I shall.”

“Good. Do you want some advice, Edward?”

“I would welcome it.”

“Sometimes people dabble in ideological matters that they shouldn’t before they follow the one true light.”

He said it in a pointed manner, and I felt my skin prickle. He might
suspect
something about Jane and me, and he might be fishing. I was instantly on my guard.

“I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”

“Then let me throw some figures at you. Three hundred years ago, upward of ten thousand people were consigned to Reboot per annum. Last year’s figure was five hundred and sixty-nine. In another three hundred years, it might be nil. Do you understand?”

I did, of course. He was trying to prove the system to me. I couldn’t even show I properly understood.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, “it shows that Munsell was right, in all things—except perhaps the spoons.”

I laughed, and the Colorman laughed with me.

“Yes,” he said, “the spoons.”

He nodded in the direction of Imogen and Dorian’s compartment.

“A fine couple.”

“A happy couple.”

“I’ve instructed them to take the Night Train to Emerald City,” he said, fixing me with a steely gaze. “It’s more comfortable.”

I felt my heart miss a beat.

“But . . . that’s the
Reboot
train,” I remarked, trying to sound as normal as I could. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to send them on the Emerald City Express?”

The Colorman stared at me with seemingly no emotion.

“I’ve wired instructions for them to be met and sent into the City. There is no risk. Do you have any objections to this plan, Edward?”

He stared at me with, I think, something of a triumphant smile. He had me trapped, and he knew it. If I said nothing, Imogen and Dorian would be sent to High Saffron. If I lodged an objection, he’d know that I was fully aware of what was going on. Jane and I would be finished even before we’d got started.

I took a deep breath, and recalled Jane’s words:
The innocents will suffer, and at your hands
. I’d bested Sally Gamboge and deMauve, I was on the Council and even had a chance at infiltrating the notoriously secretive National Color. More,
I knew things no one should ever know
. Jane and I had an outside chance to discover the whole truth and destroy the Collective. Was all that more important than Dorian and Imogen?

“They could go on either train,” I said. “I’m just happy for them to get away.”

And I smiled. And in that smile, I condemned two people to death. Two innocent people. Two people in
love.
But also in that smile, I might have saved thousands. I also laid the foundation for Jane and myself. We would succeed, if only for Dorian and Imogen, and all the others who left their spoons behind in High Saffron.

The Colorman’s face fell. He thought he’d got me.

“Excellent,” he said without emotion. “Good day, Mr. Russett. We shall meet again, of that I am certain.”

I told him I would look forward to that day, but he was no longer interested. The whistle blew, I wished him a safe journey and the train steamed out of East Carmine.

It took part of me with it.

 

 

 

 

I
am hugely indebted to both Hodder and Penguin for affording me the luxury of tackling this novel, a departure from my usual oeuvre that proved rather more difficult to get onto paper than I had anticipated. I trust and hope that the tardiness in its delivery have not tested too harshly a robust relationship. In particular, I would like to thank Carolyn Mays and Jamie Hodder-Williams in the UK, and Molly Stern and Clare Ferraro in the United States, for their patience, guidance and continued faith in my abilities. My thanks also to the many talented individuals in marketing and publicity both sides of the pond, and to Bruce Giffords and Ian Paten for their sterling work in correcting what is my poor grammar and speling.

Huge thanks must also go to Tif Loehnis and Luke Janklow of Janklow and Nesbit for their support and continued efforts on my behalf, and to Dot Vincent and Rebecca Folland for their work developing my considerable foreign readership. My thanks would be incomplete without mention of Eric Simonoff, who for many years oversaw my U.S. interests and without whom my presence on the western side of the Atlantic would not be as strong as it is today.

I would also like to thank Mari Fforde, for help in ways too numerous to mention, from simple research to support, editorial skills and also allowing me continued sleep when Tabitha was teething. My thanks also to Matt McDonell for his valuable insights into what it is like to be colorblind, to Mike Pringle for the “enactment” joke and to Tom, Charlie and Corisande for many valued discussions. I should also mention my immediate family of Maddy, Rosie, Jordy, Alex, Tabitha, Mum, Cress, Maggy and Stewart for simply being there, and finally my thanks to Milly, who has always believed in me and whose unwavering enthusiasm for walkies kept me well exercised.