Twenty minutes later we entered another steep valley, crossed the river and passed through a V-shaped gap in the hills. Then, as the trees thinned and the smoke and steam momentarily cleared, I had my first glimpse of East Carmine: the twin redbrick chimneys of what I would later learn was the linoleum factory. The train passed through the Outer Markers, crossed the river, slowed for the stockwall railgate, then entered the neatly tilled land of the sub-Collective. East Carmine’s patch must have been perhaps thirty miles by ten at its widest part and occupied the middle section of a wide, fertile valley, with low hills to the east and mountains to the north and west. I could see now why there was a settlement here. It was quite lovely in a quaint, uncomplicated sort of way and, despite being on the weather side of the country, warmer and lusher than I had imagined. The railway station was a half mile or so from the village, which was fairly low-lying—except for the omnipresent flak tower, which, along with the Perpetulite roadways, was probably the most visible evidence of the Previous, and no less strange. Quite why anyone would build stark, windowless towers all over the country was never fully explained, nor was how they came by their name. But oddly, East Carmine’s flak tower seemed to have a nonstandard domed construction on top of it.
“Already?” grunted my father when I nudged him awake. He got up, pulled our bags from the luggage rack and laid them in the corridor before turning to me. “Eddie, how long have we been father and son?” “As long as I can remember.”
“Exactly. Now, remember: Best behavior, and keep your wits about you. The towns in the Outer Fringes sometimes interpret the Rulebook a bit differently than we might be used to, and are awash with the potential for embarrassing faux pas.”
I nodded my agreement, and we watched as the tall chimneys grew larger and larger until, with a squealing of brakes, a hissing of steam and a cloud of water vapor that dispersed rapidly in the warm air, we arrived at East Carmine.
East Carmine
2.4.01.03.002: Feedback may not be modified once given.
Waiting to greet the train were a stationmaster, a freight dispatcher, a postman and a Yellow arrivals monitor, whose job it was to log in the arrivals. The youthful stationmaster wore a Blue Spot on his uniform and remonstrated with the driver that the train was a minute late, and that he would have to file a report. The driver retorted that since there could be no material difference between a train that arrived at a station and a station that arrived at a train, it was equally the stationmaster’s fault. The stationmaster replied that he could not be blamed, because he had no control over the speed of the station; to which the engine driver replied that the stationmaster could control its placement, and that if it were only a thousand yards closer to Vermillion, the problem would be solved. To this the stationmaster replied that if the driver didn’t accept the lateness as his fault, he would move the station a thousand yards farther from Vermillion and make him not just late, but demeritably overdue.
The postman watched the argument with a bemused grin, then swapped the outgoing mail package with the incoming before setting off back to the village without a word. The freight dispatcher ignored everyone and walked to the flatbeds at the rear to oversee the loading of linoleum and the unloading of raw materials.
We were the only ones to alight, so the Yellow had little to do.
“Codes and point of departure?” she said without preamble, or even a welcome.
Dad gave her our postcodes and the name of our home village, and she wrote them in her logbook. She was in her mid-twenties, had rounded features and wore a long dress that reached to her ankles. Of the twenty-six permitted modes of dress for girls, it was the one that spent the least time in fashion. It was less of a dress and more of a bell-tent with ankles. And as usual for the sort of Yellow who wore his or her blighted shade with an almost obscene pride, the dress was enriched with synthetic yellow. There was no mistaking the adherence to her hue, and equally, she wanted you to know it.
“I’m the holiday relief swatchman for Robin Ochre,” said Dad, looking around. “I was expecting him to be here to meet us.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Did you know him?”
“We were at Chromaticology school together.”
“Ah,” replied the Yellow, and lapsed into silence.
“So,” said Dad to fill the embarrassing silence, “is there anyone here to meet us?”
“Sort of,” she replied, without giving any further information. Her attitude would have been considered outrageously rude in any other hue; with Yellows it was pretty much standard operating procedure.
“There’s a Rebootee hiding on the train,” I said, recalling that Travis Canary owed me ten merits.
The Yellow looked at me, then the train, then marched off without a word.
“That was a rotten thing to do,” whispered Dad. “I thought I told you Russetts never snitched?”
“He paid me to. We each get five merits out of it. His name’s Travis Canary. He set fire to three tons of undelivered mail, then cooked spuds in the embers.”
“Life was a lot less complex before you tried to explain.”
We both jumped as a chirpy voice rang out behind us, “Welcome to East Carmine!”
We had expected Robin Ochre or a prefect to greet us, but we got neither. The man addressing us was a porter. Despite the implied insult that we were little better than Grey ourselves, he was well turned out.
He wore an immaculately pressed uniform, was just touching middle age and had a friendly demeanor about him, as though he had just been told a very funny joke not half a minute ago.
“Mr. Russett and son?” he inquired, looking at us both in turn. Dad said that we were, and the porter responded with a polite bow, “I’m Stafford G-8. The head prefect asked me to take you to your quarters.”
“They are busy, then?”
“Oh, lumme,” he muttered, suddenly realizing that a prefectless welcome might seem a mite insulting.
“Please don’t read anything into it. The prefects always play mixed doubles on Tuesday afternoons.”
“Croquet or tennis?”
“Scrabble.”
Dad and I exchanged glances. It perhaps confirmed what we had already suspected—that a streak of discourtesy had corrupted the Outer Fringes. While we thought about this, the porter noticed the Yellow woman approaching with Travis.
“Who’s that?” he asked, already infringing protocol by initiating a conversation.
“He set fire to some potatoes,” confided Dad, “then cooked some undelivered post in the embers.”
“Did he, now?” said Stafford. “What a strange fellow. I would have done it the other way around.”