Shades of Grey

Pepetwlait and Vermeer

I sat on the wall of the color garden for a moment, thinking hard. If I was to have even a hope of returning from High Saffron, I would need someone to go with me. Someone motivated, highly adaptable and capable of violence. Someone like Jane, in fact. I found her potting tomato seedlings in the glasshouse. I hadn’t talked to her since the hockeyball match, and she had a bruised left eye.

“Hello,” she said with a refreshing lack of animosity that made me feel a great deal better. “How’s Violet’s new sweetheart?”

“Wishing he was Violet’s ex-sweetheart.”

“Think how happy you’ve made Doug. He’s had his eyes on Tabitha Auburn for a while.”

“He should get a half promise in before Violet changes her mind. The carnage at hockeyball was partly your fault, wasn’t it?”

She smiled.

“Just trying to even the score. I managed to plant a small one on Violet, but Courtland was just too quick. What made you volunteer for the High Saffron gig?”

I shrugged. “Getting back up to residency, and Constance, I suppose. Do you know anything about the town?”

“Enough to know that no one ever comes back.”

I wanted to ask her to come, too, but straight out was probably not the best approach. Luckily, I had a host of other questions I wanted to ask her.

“How did you get to Vermillion and back in a morning? Or even to Rusty Hill for that matter?”

I knew she didn’t like my asking, but I hoped that her hostility had moved from “naked” to “implied” in the time we’d known each other.

She looked at me and thought for a moment.

“Promise not to tell?”

She punched out on the time clock and we walked out of the glasshouse, past the Waste Farm and through a small spinney to where we came across the Perpetulite roadway. It was a leafy spot, hung about with beech trees whose long boughs trailed ivy against the grass. It was also conveniently deserted.

In one direction above the brow of a hill was the village; in the other was the stockgate, and beyond, Rusty Hill. She checked that we were quite alone and then took a small pendant from around her neck.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A really ugly piece of jewelry?”

“It’s the key that enabled the Previous to talk to the roads. If you see anyone coming, yell.”

She laid the bronze key on the surface of the Perpetulite and almost instantly a rectangular sunken panel about the size of a tea tray appeared in the road. It was barely a half inch deep and, curiously, was still the same color and texture as the roadway, but now had several raised buttons, a few graphs and windows in which figures constantly updated. Across the top on a separate panel were some curious words that looked as though they had been engraved into the surface.

“Pepetwlait Heol Canolfan Cymru A470 21.321km Secshwn 3B. Wedi codi 11.1.2136,” I read with a frown. “What does all that mean?”

“I’m not sure. The designation of the road and when it was built, probably. Despite all you’ve heard, the Previous were quite astonishingly clever. We all know that Perpetulite is a living organoplastoid that is able to self-repair, but what is less well known is that it’s possible to access the road’s inner workings through this panel. We can monitor the health of the Perpetulite and see what minerals it lacks, and best of all, we can tell it to do things.”

She let this sink in before continuing.

“I’m still learning, but I can set the temperature to keep ice off in the winter and illuminate the white lines.

I can fine-tune the absorption rate of organic debris and the speed at which water is removed, and display messages on the road itself, presumably intended to assist the travelers who once used it.”

“And how did you discover the panel was right here?”

She smiled. “It’s not here. It’s wherever I place the key.”

To demonstrate, she picked up the pendant, and the panel melted back into unblemished roadway. She walked a few yards down the way and laid the key on the road again, and the same panel opened there instead.

“If they could make something as mundane as roads do this,” she murmured, “just think what else they must have been able to do.”

I thought of harmonics and floaties, remote viewers, lightglobes and Everspins. It was like arriving at a concert just as the orchestra had finished, and all that was hanging in the air was the final chords, fading into nothingness.

“But how did you use this to get you to Vermillion?”

“Ah!” she said with a smile. “Watch this.”

She pressed one of the buttons, and the panel changed shape to a new set of buttons, each with some similarly unreadable writing above them. She expertly manipulated the controls, and the road began to ripple silently in a curious fashion, much as it does when removing objects. But instead of a localized ripple running sideways across the road, the movement ran laterally in the direction of Rusty Hill.

I looked at Jane, who seemed uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the whole thing.

“It’s a conveyor,” she explained, “I think intended for the removal of spoil when the road was built, although its uses could be almost without number. Watch this.”

She stepped on to the edge of the Perpetulite and was moved ever so slowly down the road. The center of the roadway rippled faster, however, and by simply walking to the middle of the road, she was moved swiftly off toward Rusty Hill. After thirty yards or so she again moved to the edge, where she once more slowed down; then she stepped off and trotted back to where I was waiting.

“I can make it go forward, backward—even limit the distance of the conveyor. Sit on a chair in the center of the road and you can be in Rusty Hill in twenty minutes. On a trip to Vermillion I’d convey to Rusty Hill, get off, walk the empty section and then rejoin the Perpetulite all the way to Vermillion—leaving out the ferry, of course, and getting off well before anyone sees me.”

She switched it off and the road abruptly reverted to its usual state, and when she picked up her pendant, the sunken panel vanished from view.

“It’s astonishing.”

“It seems astonishing now —but it was once so ordinary you’d not have given it a second’s thought. And, Red?”

“Yes?”

“You can’t tell anyone about this.”

I assured her I would add it to the long list of secrets, and she laughed. A sudden thought struck me.

“You’re not going to submit to Reboot, are you?”

A look of seriousness came over her face, and she replaced the pendent around her neck.

“No. Monday morning I’m gone. It’s not an ideal outcome, but I’m eight hundred merits below zero.”

“Eight hundred? What did you do?”

“It was what I didn’t do. When people take a dislike to you, it’s amazing how quickly you can become a demerit magnet.”

“Where will you go?”

“I have no idea. Rusty Hill, perhaps. It’s not an ideal situation, but at least transport isn’t a problem. I can ride the conveyor to wherever I want.”

I said the first thing that came into my head: “I’ll miss you.”

“Red,” said Jane, placing a hand on my arm with a rare display of tenderness, “you won’t be around to.”

I fell into silence for a moment. Despite her annoying forthright-ness, it was the first vaguely pleasant conversation I’d had with her—she hadn’t once threatened to kill me or hit me with a brick or anything, and we’d been talking for nearly twenty minutes. I’d like to think it was because she trusted me, but it was more likely that she, like everyone else, didn’t rate my chances at High Saffron very high. But I still didn’t feel the moment was right to ask her to come with me. I had an idea.

“Can you accompany me into the zone?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to have a look at the Vermeer.”

I’d visited the Greyzone in Jade-under-Lime only a few times, when much younger. It wasn’t somewhere Chromatics generally went. Partly because we had little business to be there, partly because the Rules were fairly strict when it came to Grey privacy and partly because we simply weren’t welcome.

I looked around curiously as we walked in. The houses were built in the twin-terraced fashion of mostly stone, with a single roadway in between the buildings, which had their doorways facing each other in an unusual fashion. The streets were scrubbed, and everything was as tidy as a new pin. Since almost a third of any town’s population was made up of Greys, the zone was a large part of the residential area but always slightly removed from the Chromatic part of the village. Apart We Are Together.

I had expected to be stared at when we walked in, but I wasn’t—no one took the slightest notice of me.

“It all seems very friendly,” I observed.

“You’re with me,” she said. “I wouldn’t attempt this on your own. Don’t believe me? Watch.” And she told me to wait for her as she ducked into a house.

I suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable. Within a very short time I was being stared at, and after less than a minute, a young man approached and spoke in a voice that, while polite, carried with it a sense of understated menace. “Have you lost your way, sir?”

“I was waiting—”

“He’s with me,” said Jane, coming out of the house, holding a plate with a slice of cake on it. “Clifton, this is the swatchman’s son. Red, this is Clifton, my brother.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, his manner entirely changed. “Jane says you’re ‘mostly deplorable,’ which for her is quite a compliment.”

I looked at Jane, who said, “Don’t listen to him. It’s every bit as insulting as it’s intended to be.”

“So,” continued Clifton, who seemed as gregarious as Jane was serious, “for you it’s death or marriage to Violet. You do like difficult choices, don’t you?”

“If I get back, she’s the last person I’d marry.”

He laughed. “So you say. Violet can be very persuasive. She and I have had an understanding that goes back a couple of years.”

He opened his eyes wide so the meaning was clear. “You won’t be disappointed. Mind you,” he added, “I upped the feedback score to ensure repeat business.” He winked and added, “If you don’t use the word no in her presence, I daresay you’ll be very happy.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I replied in a humorless tone.

He smiled, said it was nothing and departed.

“Clifton keeps us well fed with Violet’s tittle-tattle,” said Jane as we walked on, “so his position within the Hierarchy is not totally one sided. In fact, your marriage will cut off a very useful gossip stream.”

“I’m not getting back from High Saffron,” I said, “remember?”

“Then perhaps we’re safe after all. The cash helps, too. Here we are.”

We had arrived at a plain front door at the end of the terrace, and Jane knocked twice. The man who answered the door was Graham, the elderly man who’d had the sniffles.

“Enjoying your retirement?” I asked.

“What retirement? Mrs. Gamboge has me on part-time work.”

I asked him how this was possible, and he responded that Sally Gamboge was a master at finding ways to extract every last ounce of sweat from the Greyforce.

“We came to look at the Vermeer,” said Jane to Graham. “I brought you some cake.”

Mr. G-67 thanked her and then showed us upstairs, where the painting was hanging in a room all by itself. There was a linen-covered roof-light and a plain viewing bench to sit on.

“It’s quite lovely,” I said after a minute’s silence.

The canvas was of a woman pouring milk out of a jug and into a bowl. In front of her was a small table with a basket of bread laid upon it, and the whole scene looked as though it had been lit from a window to the left—although of the window itself there was no sign. The canvas had several scorch marks along the bottom of the frame, and the paint had come away in patches, but there was still enough that was wonderful.

“I’m told her tunic is yellow and her dress blue,” observed Graham. “The Greens come up here quite a lot to practice their color separation. We had someone around last month who was ticking Vermeers off her I-Spy book. Seen all eight, she said. I’ll leave you to it.”

I sat down on the viewing bench, leaving ample room for Jane, but she remained standing. I decided to pop the question. “I’d like you to come with me to High Saffron.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I never do death on a first date. Have you found out anything more about the Colorman?”

I shook my head.

“Then perhaps you should start going through his valise. See what you can find out.”

“You’re joking!”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“No. But—” I stopped because there was a mild commotion outside, and Jane moved to the window.

“What on earth are they doing here?” she murmured, and made her way swiftly out of the door.

Intrigued, I followed. But she didn’t exit out of the front of the house, where the commotion was; she made for the rear, through Graham’s kitchen. When I tried to follow, the elderly Grey stood in my path and looked at me in a way that, while not openly hostile, made me realize that the only way out of the house was the way I came in.

I stepped into the street and was met by a brilliant flash of yellow. It was Sally Gamboge, Courtland, Bunty McMustard and even little Penelope. They were striding down the street and didn’t look as though they were here to see the Vermeer.