I sent a telegram to my best friend, Fenton, at Jade-under-Lime to inquire about baking products for Dorian and also to confirm that I had logged the rabbit’s Taxa number, as requested. But since I hadn’t even seen the rabbit, let alone its bar code, there was a certain amount of fudging to be done. The first twelve digits to Mammalia were easy as they were the same as ours, but hazarding a guess as to the code after that was a bit of a puzzle. I eventually plumped on thirteen as the Order since there was a Taxa code gap between Rodents and Hedgehogs, then a two and seven for Genus and Species. I filled in the remaining code with random numbers, making sure I ended with an F, as even Fenton knew the Last Rabbit was female. I felt a bit nervous as it was a bald lie, but they’d never know, and I’d already spent the money they’d given me. I didn’t send a poetical telegram to Constance as I still needed to compose something half decent. Constance was used to receiving poetry from me and Roger Maroon, and the bar had been set quite high, since I’d been paying someone else to write it for me, and so had Roger, since neither of us was any good at the rhyming stuff.
Tommo asked me about myself as we left the post office, and I told him about the incident with Bertie Magenta, and the chair census, then about Jade-under-Lime.
“A bit Greencentric,” I explained when he asked me what it was like, “but none too bad for that, since the Moldies don’t really speak to us.”
“Is it on the grid?”
I nodded.
“Full CYM at twenty-six pounds’ pressure. We can get most on-gamut colors up around the sixty percent mark, saturation and brightness.”
Tommo whistled low.
“I wish we could.”
“East Carmine doesn’t look that bad,” I ventured as we walked across the scrubbed pantiles of the town square, past the central lamppost and twice-lifesize bronze of Our Munsell, who glared down at us paternalistically, his heavy eyebrows knitted in eternal deep thought. “At least you are not totally devoid of color.”
We had stopped outside the town hall, which was painted in a soothing green. A series of worn stone steps led up to an elevated terrace where six fluted columns supported a flat triangular tympanum high above. Carved into the limestone was the credo of the Collective: APART WE ARE TOGETHER .
The massive front doors were twice head height, and on either side of the entrance were faded wooden Departure Boards with names of past residents who had achieved notability in some field: TRACY PEACH, WHO WAS KIND AND THOUGHTFUL AND GONE A LOT TOO SOON—DECEMBER 23, 00207 or OLIVE OLIVE, WHO COULD JUGGLE SIX MELONS AND UNICYCLE AT THE SAME TIME—AUGUST 12, 00450 . There was even one for Robin Ochre, and the paint was still fresh: ROBIN OCHRE, A FINE SWATCHMAN WHO KEPT MILDEW AT BAY AND PROTECTED ONE AND ALL—JUNE 16, 00496 . The names were graded according to how Worthy they had been—Extremely, Very, Mostly, Partly—something that was determined by the highly unusual procedure of asking residents to mark pieces of paper with their choices.
“It’s lucky they repainted it when they did,” said Tommo, referring to the color of the town hall. “That stupid crackletrap pretty much cleared us out. It’ll be years before we can afford to have it repainted, and as for being on the grid—forget it.”
“Really? I heard the Outer Fringes were awash with uncollected scrap.”
“Yes,” said Tommo sarcastically. “As you can see, the streets here are paved in yellow. It’s all complete plums, sorry to tell. The Previous were always more numerous in the south. There are parts around here where I don’t think they ever lived. Besides, everything local has been pretty much teased out.”
It was a problem that was becoming increasingly common. Distribution of synthetic hue was strictly controlled by National Color and could be earned only in a single way: by the collection of scrap color for recycling into raw pigment. It was said that a ton of red tosh might yield about a gallon of univisual pigment—enough to keep three hundred roses at full color for six months or, at halfhue, a year. Some villages spent their every light-hour collecting scrap color, even to the detriment of basic food production.
Color, and the enjoyment thereof, was everything.
“The linoleum factory must bring in a few merits, surely?” I asked.
“We’re selling it at a tenth of the price it was two hundred years ago. The Council has been pleading with Head Office to either cut production or license it for use as roof tiles. It’s a little too hard wearing, to be honest.”
“I’d heard that about linoleum.”
We were still staring at the soothing olive color of the town hall.
“Do you think that’s really green?” asked Tommo.
“I’ve no idea,” I replied, for no one could explain how we could see a univisual green but not a real one.
After all, color in itself has no color—it’s simply a construction of the mind: a sensation, like the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly and the smell of honeysuckle. I knew what a red looked like, but I’d be hard pressed to explain what it actually is.
We had been staring at the town hall for a while now, so decided to move on before a prefect or a monitor walked by.
“So . . . have your family been here long?” I asked.
“I moved here only a year ago. I come from a less well-known strand of the Cinnabars. We’re shopkeepers. Good ones, too. Our co-op was the most profitable in Red Sector East.”
“So why are you out here?”
“Bog off.”
“You bog off.”
“No—BOGOF:‘Buy one get one free.’ It seems the Council took exception to my aggressive selling techniques. The ‘free kettle every morning for a week’ didn’t go down too well, either.”
“You could have covered yourself by logging them as Standard Variables,” I said, attempting to sound knowledgeable, even though I’d learned that from Travis on the way in.
“I know that now.”
I frowned.
“What’s the point in ‘buy one get one free’? Why not just offer something at half price?”
“Which would you prefer,” he retorted, “something at half price or something for free?”
“It’s the same thing.”
“It is and it isn’t,” he replied with a smile. “I think there was a whole science involved around selling. The Council said I had shown contempt of the Rules by using arcane knowledge, and I was fined thirty merits and shipped out here to study Floon beetle migrations.”
“Did deMauve take your Open Return?”
“Not at all—I lost it on a dead cert at Jollity Fair that came in third. I’ve been trying to buy my way out, but it’s not going too well; in fact, I’m well below zero.”
I frowned. Anywhere else, having negative merits would be seen as deeply shameful—Tommo seemed to be wearing his imminent Reboot with pride.
“Then Reboot doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
“Of course.”
He patted me on the shoulder.
“You worry too much, Eddie. I’ll figure out something before Monday.” He was taking his Ishihara this Sunday—the same as Jane. Back in Jade-under-Lime, we weren’t due to take our Ishihara for another eight weeks. But since we were being so open with each other, I decided to ask an indelicate question.