Shades of Grey

Courtland Gamboge

The Big Banana, I discovered, was the name given to Courtland Gamboge, the Yellow prefect’s son. I asked Tommo why Courtland wanted to meet me, and Tommo explained that Gamboge-the-younger liked to meet everyone. He had apparently topped eighty points in his Ishihara two years before and was certain to take over from his mother when she retired.

“Not that she will anytime soon,” Tommo added, “but Courtland has to go some way to fill her shoes with the same level of ruthless unpleasantness.”

“All Yellows are ruthless. It’s what they do.”

“Not like these. Prefect Sally Gamboge has refused the Greyforce a holiday for seventeen years and has had them on sixty-eight-hour weeks for as long as anyone can remember. She treats them like dirt and is always drumming up bogus infractions. Even I think it’s out of order, and I’m grotesquely indifferent to the Greys.”

“Is there a reason she’s so particularly unpleasant?”

“The Gamboges think they should be players on a bigger stage. Lots of Yellow, all the overzealous ruthlessness—but a hopelessly provincial CV37 postcode. Transfer requests are simply ignored.”

It was a familiar story. Despite being officially only used for addresses, the right code meant a lot, and snubbing was common, if illegal. I was glad that I had an RG6.

“But she has to pay them overtime,” I pointed out, still thinking about the Greys. “That’s a compensation, at least.”

“It would be if there was anything they could spend it on.”

“Or even share, pool or bequeath their merits,” I said, pointing out one of the more iniquitous regulations regarding Grey wealth.

“Serves them right for always eating the bacon,” said Tommo, whose outrage at the Greys’ treatment was lamentably short lived, “Apart We Are Together, and all that guff.”

“If the Gamboges are so frightful,” I said, “I’m surprised you have anything to do with them.”

“That’s precisely the reason I do. If there’s a tiger in the room, I want to be the one that combs its whiskers. Besides, Courtland has an Open Return, and he might just sell it to me.”

We had been walking in the direction of the river.

“That’s where the Greys live, over there.”

He was pointing at a huddle of terraced houses set apart from the rest of the town. The twin rows of dwellings faced each other, with a roadway between them. Behind the houses were small gardens, tidy masses of runner-bean canes, fruit bushes and garden sheds, and clean laundry fluttering in the breeze.

The homes must have numbered a hundred or more. I had never entered a Greyzone alone or known anyone who had. Even the Yellows thought twice about a visit. But rather than admit they were nervous, they simply said the place was unhygienic, which was patently untrue. Greys just didn’t like us there, in the same way that they weren’t permitted in the village unless on business. The big difference was, Chromatics were allowed in the Greyzone—but thought it wiser to stay away.

“We have a Grey named Jane as our maid,” I said, attempting to glean some information. “She seems a trifle . . . volatile.”

“We call her Crazy Jane, but never to her face. She’s broken more bones than almost anyone else in the village.”

“Accident-prone?”

“Not hers. Ours. She’ll punch anyone who mentions her nose, and once fractured Jim-Bob’s arm because she thought he was looking at her whatnots.”

“Was he?”

“Not on that particular occasion. But she won’t bother us for much longer. We’re not sure how deep into negative merits she is, but it’s rumored five hundred or so.”

I whistled low. “But she’s pretty, don’t you think?”

“I’ll concede that her nose is definitely the cutest and most retrousse in the village,” said Tommo, “but as for pretty—so is a viper. If you tried to kiss either, you’d get bitten on the face.”

The well-worn path through the lumpy grasslands took us past one of the many ancient streetlamps still standing.

“Repainted every year without fail,” said Tommo proudly, pausing for a moment to admire the cast-iron lampposts. “The janitor had to take the Ford into Vermillion to have the bands relined, so he took Jabez and me. On the outskirts you drive through a town that is long gone, but the streetlamps are still there, running in great rows upon the land, and standing in the middle of open pasture like stunted oaks.”

“Could one get to Vermillion and back in a morning?” I asked, Jane’s apparently impossible trip to Vermillion and back still on my mind.

“You could do it in the Ford.”

“Is that a practical proposition?”

“No. For a start, Carlos—he’s our janitor—treats the Model T better than his own daughter, and every drop of fuel oil has to be logged and accounted for. You might get in by Penny-Farthing, but you’d have to push it across the six miles of rutted track between Rusty Hill and Persimmon. Plus you’d have to find a way across the ferry without any transit papers. Believe me, if there was a way, I’d be the first person to try it. There are a hundred reasons for me to get to Vermillion, all of them highly profitable.”

He stared at me for a moment, then cocked his head to one side.

“Do you have some sort of scam cooking—or are you just thinking of a Plan B if you don’t get your Open Return back?”

“The latter,” I replied, and he nodded knowingly.

The Sorting Pavilion was like a miniature version of the town hall, with four shorter and narrower columns supporting the roof over the main entrance. It looked a good deal older than the buildings I had seen so far. The brickwork was crumbling, and years of hard winter rain had washed the mortar from the walls.

The tympanum above the door held a sculpture of a reclining woman, carved in marble. She must have been earth salvage: From the navel upward the weather had scrubbed away the subtlety of the craftsman’s hand, but below this every muscle and sinew was finely detailed. The woman’s features had vanished almost entirely, but she would once have been beautiful. No one would have expended so much time and effort on such a monument if she wasn’t.

The Pavilion had a curved glass roof that boasted no less than three heliostats, and parked outside was a small handcart for moving the sorted sacks of scrap to the railway station nearby. We sat on the oak bench outside and took off our shoes. I knew the protocol, even though we didn’t have a Pavilion in Jade-under-Lime; all our scrap color was sorted at Viridian, one stop down the line.

“Ever been in a Pavilion before?” asked Tommo.

I shook my head.

“So who’s the hick now?” he said, and pushed open the doors.

The Pavilion’s sorting room was long, high and so well lit it was actually brighter than the outdoors, which was the point. It takes a lot of light to see color well, and I suspect that work stopped when the weather was overcast. Tommo directed my gaze toward a man a few years older than myself who was dressed head to toe in a yellow outfit, and apart from two Grey orderlies who were transporting sacks of unsorted tosh to the washing room suspended beneath a silk canopy full of floaties, he was the only person there.

“That’s Courtland,” murmured Tommo in a respectful whisper. “I know you claim to be leaving in a month, but for all our sakes, don’t annoy him or anything, okay?”

“Tommo, I have no reason to make enemies of the buttercup persuasion. And certainly not one with a mother on the Council.”

“Just checking. If Courtland says ‘Jump,’ you just ask ‘How high and in what direction?’ ” Tommo waved at Courtland, and he gestured with a lazy jerk of his head for us to enter the work area, where he was sitting at one of the three sorting tables. I looked around curiously. Etched onto the surface of each table were three large intersecting circles representing the traditional primary colors, the intersections denoting the secondary hues. Sorting was a simple enough process. Each sorter was responsible for one of the three colors. Courtland, for example, would pick any yellow items from the tosh pile and place them in the pure yellow section of his intersecting circles, with the brightest shade at the top and the dullest at the bottom. At the same time, he would pick out any yellow-value object he could see from the red section, say, and place it in the intersecting area that belonged to both red and yellow, and from that it could be deduced that the object was orange. It was the same with the rest of the sorting table: Anything in the intersection of yellow and blue would have to be green; and anything in red and blue, purple. In this way, thanks to the talents of those highly perceptive in red, yellow and blue, the entire unseeable Spectrum of color could be laid upon the table. After sorting, the objects would then be bagged and sent off to the pigment plant to be milled, squeezed and enriched—and from there to communal enjoyment.

I noticed that the blue table seemed neat and orderly, as was Courtland’s. The red table less so. Untidy, to be truthful. In fact, I could see red items in the reject tosh pile that should have been placed, but had been missed.

“Who sorts your red?” I asked.

“Dullard Yewberry,” said Tommo, staring at the misplaced red tosh without a flicker. “He’s only acting prefect, so his perception is not first-rate. Why?”

“No reason.”

“Hello, Court,” said Tommo in a servile tone. “This is Eddie Russett. Eddie, this is Courtland Gamboge, son of the Yellow prefect and next one up.”

Courtland was tall, handsome and well dressed. He had a large jaw, strong eyebrows and odd, unblinking eyes that seemed to stare. Upon his lapel was a parade of badges awarded for meritorious work, and on his cheek a recent scar.

“How much red you got?” he asked.

“Enough,” I replied.

“Keeping your cards close to your chest, eh? Good idea. And what’s your HUMILITY badge for?”

I told him about Bertie Magenta and the elephant trick, and all that hoo-ha.

“They’ve given him a chair census to conduct,” said Tommo with a smirk.

Courtland sniggered. “It gets less imaginative each time. Now, Master Russett, do you need anything?”

“Not that I can think of right now.”

“Bear it in mind. Tommo and I like to think we can fix most things around here. If you want a good job or need to borrow a few extra merits until payday or are in the poo with the prefects, we can . . . make things happen.”

There was a pause.

“This is where you say ‘Wow’ or ‘Gosh’ or ‘Terrific,’ ” Tommo prompted.

“Gosh,” I said.

“Gosh indeed, Russett,” said Courtland. “But it’s very much quid pro quo. We do things for you, and you do things for us—to the mutual benefit of all. No point in living the Grey life just because the Rules have so little room for maneuver, hey?

“But before we get too embroiled in complexities, you will need to do something for us. Something to prove your mettle.” He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “We want some Lincoln. You have access to your father’s swatch safe. Do that for us and we’ll be the best of friends.”

I frowned. This was a new one. Most bullies were uncomplicated characters who simply wanted unearned respect and cash. Stealing swatches was on another level entirely. Lincoln, or 125-66-53, was a chromatropic painkiller ten times more powerful than lime. Even a glimpse was enough to lower the heart rate, and a good ten-second stare would bring on a sense of dreamy otherworldliness and hallucinations. Some maintained that greening was a harmless indulgence, but heavy greeners risked damaging their visual cortex. Too much Lincoln and you could lose all sense of color—natural and univisual. Peddling Lincoln was peddling misery. I stared at them both in turn.

“I’m afraid I might have to pass on your request.”

Courtland looked back at me, unblinking, then put his hand on my shoulder in a friendly but firm gesture and said in a low voice, “What’s your first name again?”

“Eddie.”

“What you must realize, Eddie, is that I’m the highest Yellow you’re ever likely to be able to count as a friend. Friendship, I’m sure you will agree, is a very useful commodity if you’re going to spend the rest of your life in this backwater.”

“I’m only here for a month.”

“Were you fool enough to give deMauve your ticket?”

“Yes.”

“Then you could be here for longer. But here’s the bottom line: Defrauding the village out of some Lincoln might seem something of a Rule dilemma right here and now, but actually it’s a very wise long-term investment, wouldn’t you agree?”

He said it in a serious, businesslike manner, but with a strong undercurrent of menace. I’d seen Alpha Primes throwing their weight around, but never so blatantly. I looked across at Tommo, who was at the window, checking for prefects.

“I think that’s pretty reasonable, don’t you?” he said.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m not going to steal any Lincoln from my father.”

“Hoo,” said Tommo, “scruples.”

“I wasn’t for one moment suggesting you steal anything,” murmured Courtland with a smile. “A missing swatch of Lincoln would have the prefects all in a lather. No. Tommo has a much better idea.”

“Here’s how it works,” said Tommo, picking up his cue. “When your father comes to reorder the swatches, all you do is sneak into his office and write a ‘two’ in the ordering column next to Lincoln. He won’t notice, and it’s not likely deMauve will either. All you do then is ‘liberate’ the extra swatch when it arrives from National Color. Simple, hey?”

“What if my father doesn’t order any Lincoln?”

“Haven’t you heard? Robin Ochre was selling off the village swatches on the Beigemarket. The mutual auditor from Bluetown told me he sold almost the entire stock.”

Those were the “irregularities” surrounding Ochre that deMauve had been speaking of. It went against everything a swatchman had sworn to uphold. DeMauve was right: A fatal self-misdiagnosis may have been the best thing for him.

“It’s a brilliant plan,” I concurred.

“Splendid! And remember: If you need anything, anything at all, you only have to ask. We can fix pretty much anything, can’t we, Tommo?”

“Indeed we can,” he replied, “except get your Open Return back—or wangle you a date with Crazy Jane.”

Courtland laughed out loud.

“Do you remember when Jabez asked her to go to a tea dance with him?”

“Yes,” mused Tommo. “I hadn’t realized you could actually tear an eyebrow off.”

“So,” said Courtland, “we’re all agreed about the Lincoln.”

He gave me another smile, patted me on the shoulder and returned to his work. Tommo took my arm and steered me firmly toward the door.

“I think that went pretty well,” said Tommo as we walked back toward the village, “although you might have been a tad more obsequious.”

“I’ll try to remember that for next time.”

“Stout fellow. You won’t regret helping us out, you know. Doors can really open to anyone willing to play the system.

“Oh,” said Tommo as he snapped his fingers, “once you’ve got your paws on your dad’s swatch safe, would you let me borrow some 7-85-57?”

He was referring to Redlax, a cross-spectral laxative of instantaneous and unprecedented violence. Even a glimpse would have someone running for the thunderbox as if his life depended on it.

“If you’re having problems with your number twos,” I confided, “perhaps you might speak to my father.”

“It’s not for me,” said Tommo with a laugh. “I was thinking of using it to play a prank on deMauve—put it into his copy of Harmony just as he’s about to bore our chops off at assembly.”

I was struck speechless. He had to be pulling my leg. No one would try something like that.

“It, er, wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where the Redlax came from.”

“I’m not too concerned over the consequences of the prank,” replied Tommo, summing up his worldview in one swift statement, “more the prank itself.”

We took a path back toward the town, and on the way encountered a group of a half-dozen girls who had just come off their shift at the linoleum factory. They were all dressed in dungarees with their hair tied up in printed gingham head scarves, and were giggling and chatting in an exuberant manner.

“Good evening, ladies,” said Tommo politely.

“Good evening, Master Thomas,” said the tallest of the group, an attractive willow of a girl who was shaking out her long tresses as she removed her headscarf. “Who’s the newbie?”

“This is Master Edward Russett, Melanie. All the way from some dreadful dump near the inner boundary. He has scruples, counts chairs and has seen the Last Rabbit.”

“What’s it like?” piped up the youngest of the group, a short girl with pigtails and a birthmark on her cheek.

“Well, y’know, kind of . . . rabbitlike.”

“Will you draw me a picture?”

“I could do you a shadow puppet.”

“Chairs, rabbits and scruples, eh?” cooed the tall one, taking a step closer and tugging at my tie in a playful manner. “That sounds like a combustible mix.”

She was being almost intolerably forward. The girls in Jade-under-Lime were all demure and polite, and I felt myself grow hot.

“Tommo is wholly mistaken,” I said, trying to sound sophisticated.

“Then you have no scruples?” asked the girl called Melanie in a low voice as she touched my cheek with the back of her hand. Her companions let loose a volley of sniggering. It was embarrassing, but not without a tinge of pleasure—Melanie’s touch was warm and almost tender. Constance had held my hand six and a half times, if you don’t count the tea dancing, but never once touched me on the cheek—unless you include the time she slapped me for suggesting that her mother “had politeness issues.”

“Yes,” I stammered, feeling awkward and seriously out of my depth, “that is to say—”

“Let us know when he makes up his mind as to whether he has scruples or not, Tommo,” sang Melanie as she stepped back, my humiliation complete, and they all dissolved into peals of laughter.

Although I felt hopelessly ill at ease, the girls’ free and easy laughter was one of the most wonderful sounds I had ever heard. But I was no longer of interest, and they all started to chatter again and moved off toward the Greyzone.

“If you want to meet any of those delightful ladies in private, I can arrange things for a five percent fixer’s fee,” said Tommo as we watched them walk off. “Do you want to see their unofficial feedback ratings?”

I stared at him, unsure of what to do or say. That an illicit market in youknow existed in Jade-under-Lime, despite Old Man Magenta’s watchful eye, I was pretty sure. In fact, it was entirely possible that everyone indulged quite happily. But I’d been unprepared for the fact that someone like Tommo—it would have to be someone like Tommo—would not only be able to arrange things but do it so openly, and seemingly without fear of punishment. It explained his cash merits, too.

“But not to a complementary color,” he added, in case I was a deviant or something. “I may live in a partial Rule vacuum, but even I have standards of decency. If you’re not up for a bit of youknow,” he continued, doubtless reading the look of shocked disapproval that had crossed my face, “they’re all game for a cheeky bundle or a lambada in private. But,” he added after a moment’s thought, “I can’t help you with Jane. And don’t even think of tall Melanie—she’s on a promise from Courtland.”

“Courtland doesn’t strike me as the sort of Yellow to do such a decent thing—bring a Grey up—what with Bunty McMustard waiting in the wings.”

Tommo laughed.

“He’s not going to actually go through with it, dummy. Courtland tells me Melanie will do anything for him. Anything. And it doesn’t cost him a bean. He knows Bunty will hang on for him indefinitely, so he’ll just dump Mel when the Council decides they need some more Yellows.”

“No!” I muttered.

“Daring, isn’t it?” Tommo agreed. “Thinking of trying it yourself?”

“Never! I mean, that’s the most dishonest and cruel thing anyone can do to someone, not to mention contravening at least eight Rules—including Fundamental Number One. What’s he going to say when this gets out?”

Tommo shrugged. “Deny it, I guess. Who are they going to believe? Melanie-Nobody-at-All or Alpha-Yellow-Prefect-in-Waiting Courtland ‘Big Banana’ Gamboge?”

“I’ll tell them.”

“You heard him promise her?”

“No—”

“Then wake up, pinhead. Forget fundamentals. Rule one as far as Courtland is concerned is Don’t get involved. Courtland will one day be the Yellow prefect. Just keep that in your mind and fix on it. It will make your life a lot easier, I can tell you. Now, can I fix you up with someone?”

“No, thanks.”

“If you change your—”

“I won’t. What would the prefects say if they knew you were brokering youknow?”

Tommo stared at me, oblivious to the implied threat. He leaned closer and whispered, “I simply bring the buyer to the market, and I have a broad client base. A very broad client base. Why do you think a loser like me is the junior Red monitor? You need to loosen up. If you can get the poker out of your hoo-ha, you’re going to enjoy it here.”

“But what about the Rules?”

He leaned closer and smiled. “You’re living in the Fringes now, Eddie. Out here, the Rulebook is printed on rubber paper. Will you excuse me until later? I have to fetch some sandwiches for Ulrika.”

“Ulrika?”

“Of the flak,” he replied, as though it were obvious.