“What’s going on?” asked my father, who had gotten bored posing with one elbow on the mantelpiece and joined us in the hall.
“Sally Gamboge,” said the prefect, putting out a hand for him to shake, “Yellow prefect.”
“Holden Russett,” returned my father, “holiday relief swatchman. And this is . . . ?”
“Jane G-23,” explained Gamboge. “I’m allocating her as your maid. She hasn’t gotten much positive feedback, I’m afraid, but she’s all I can spare. You can have her for an hour a day. Anything more can be privately negotiated. And I apologize in advance for any impertinence. Jane has . . . issues.”
“An hour only?” replied Dad.
“Yes. I’m sorry if you have to sort your own washing and make the bed,” said Mrs. Gamboge with a shrug. “Overemployment is particularly bad at present—too many Greys in unproductive retirement, if you ask me.”
“You could pay them to do overtime,” said Dad.
The Yellow prefect gave out a derisive laugh, not even considering that Dad might have been making a sensible suggestion. The Rules regarding retirement were universal across the Spectrum: As soon as you had discharged your fifty years’ obligation to the Collective, you were free to do what you wanted, and extra work would have to be paid for. “The best Greys,” our Yellow Prefect had once told me, “are the ones who catch the Mildew the morning of their retirement.”
“Hello, Jane,” said Dad, realizing he would get no sense from Mrs. Gamboge. His eyes flicked to the TRUCULENT and DECEITFUL badges below her Grey Spot. “Would you make a tray of scones?
The other prefects are due shortly.”
She bobbed and made to move away, but Gamboge was not yet done.
“Wait until you’re dismissed, girl,” she said in a curt tone, then added more warmly, “Mr. Russett, your son claims he has met Jane before and that she threatened physical violence. I want to know how that’s possible.”
Dad looked at me, then at Jane, then at Gamboge. When Yellows start making inquiries, you never really know where it will all end up. Not reporting something that had happened was sometimes worse than the infraction itself. But despite the fact that Jane had threatened to break my jaw, I didn’t want to get her into trouble. And it would be serious trouble. Threatening to assault was treated the same as assaulting—to the Rules, intent and implementation were pretty much the same thing.
“Well, Eddie?” said Dad. “Where have you seen her before?”
“In Vermillion,” I mumbled, wondering how I could back out without a demerit for wasting a prefect’s time with a spurious accusation. “This morning—just before we caught the train.”
“Then you are mistaken,” said Gamboge, and I saw a sense of relief cross Jane’s face. “Did you see her on the train?”
“No.”
“Vermillion is over fifty miles away, and what’s more, I saw her doing breakfast Useful Work this morning. There is only one train a day—and it heads north. Could you have been mistaken, Master Russett?”
“Yes,” I said, greatly relieved. “It must have been someone else.”
“Good,” said Gamboge. “You may go, girl.” And Jane headed off to the kitchen without another word.
“The head prefect will be attending you soon,” said Gamboge, addressing my father, “but in the meantime I was wondering if you could look at some Greys who are claiming to be unwell? If you’d countersign a malingering report, I can dock some merits and knock some sense into the work-shy scalybacks. It’ll only take ten minutes.”
“I’ll, um, do what I can,” said my father, mildly perturbed by the Yellow prefect’s obvious dislike of her workforce. Yellows were in charge of Grey employment allocation. Some did it well, others badly.
Gamboge was clearly one of the latter.
The door closed behind them, and I walked slowly down the corridor to the kitchen, where Jane was busying herself in a halfhearted manner. I stood at the door, but she ignored me. For a moment I thought that perhaps I was mistaken—no one could travel over one hundred miles in a single morning without a train. But looking at her, I knew that I wasn’t wrong, because when gazing at her, I felt the same odd tautness in my chest. And that nose. It was quite unique.
“How did you do it?” I asked. “Commute to Vermillion and back in a morning?”
“Commute?”
“I collect obsolete words,” I explained, attempting to impress. “It means to travel a distance to work every day—or something.”
“Have you heard of the term dickhead?”
“No, I haven’t got that one. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but it might describe you. And I didn’t ‘commute’ to Vermillion—you’re mistaking me for someone else. Did you just look at my nose?”
“No,” I said, which was a lie.
“Yes, you did.”
“All right,” I replied, feeling brave, “I did. So what? It’s actually rather—”
“I would be failing in my duty of care if I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Of what might happen if you were to use the words nose and cute anywhere near me.”
It might have been an odd leg-pull, so I laughed.
“Come on, Jane—!”
She glared at me and I saw that flash of anger again. It was definitely the same person.
“Did I say you could use my name?”
“No.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Red. You and I have nothing to say, because we’ve never met and have nothing in common. So let’s just leave it at that, and in a month you can go home to Polyp-on-the-Noze or wherever it is you come from, and carry on your pathetically uninteresting life as far from me as possible. Or farther.”
She went back to measuring out the flour as I stood in silence, wondering what to say or do. I’d never quite met anyone so forthright. It was like talking to a Prefect in the body of a twenty-year-old Grey.
“Do you have a preference over the fat I use in the scones?” she asked, holding up two pots. “Pure vegetable is more expensive, but the animal reconstitute might have traces of resident in it. I don’t know how qualmy you hub-dwellers are.”
“We’re not fussed. Who was the wrongspotted Grey in the Paint Shop?”
If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have asked. She paused for a moment, then grabbed the nearest utensil from the counter and hurled it in my direction, where it struck the door frame with a thunk. It was a carving fork. I stared at the quivering handle barely five inches from my face, then back at Jane, who was glaring at me, so livid with rage that I could see the red in her cheeks. Pretty nose or not, she had a serious temper.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “We’ve never met.”
The doorbell rang. Ordinarily, I would have expected Jane as maid to go and answer it, but she didn’t.
“I’ll, um, get that, shall I?”
She ignored me, so I left the kitchen, then came back, pointed at the fork where it was still stuck in the door frame, and said, “You wouldn’t really kill me, would you?”
“No.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Not here. Too many witnesses.”
I must have looked shocked, for she allowed herself a wry smile at my expense.
“Joke, right?” I said.
“Right.”
But it wasn’t, as it turned out.
I again expected it to be the head prefect at the front door, and again it wasn’t. On the step was a wrinkly old woman with two rosy bumps for cheeks and a cheery grin. She wore a dress that was to my eyes a dark burgundy, but it wasn’t. It was natural purple—I was just seeing the red component in it. She wore a bright synthetic Purple Spot and, below that, several merit badges and an upside-down head prefect badge—she had once run the village. Instinctively, I stood that much straighter in her presence.