“Five hundred demerits if you’d been caught with this,” I murmured, folding the swatch color side in. But instead of showing any remorse, she grabbed my wrist and stared at me intensely.
“They killed my father!”
“Lucy,” I said, “no one does the murder anymore. There’s no need. There are procedures.”
“Then why—” But she never got to finish. Tommo walked back in, and Lucy, who had been looking more and more unwell, promptly threw up all over the floor.
We found a mop and cleaned up while Lucy decided to sleep it off.
“Thanks for that,” whispered Tommo as we walked out of her house a few minutes later. “We can’t have the future Mrs. Cinnabar up on a charge of being saturated in public, now can we?”
“Lucy told me someone did the murder on her father.”
“As I said, it was the Green talking. Everyone knows he was Chasing the Frog; the prefects decided to lie for the good of the village. The communal fine would have been pretty swingeing—even more so for the prefects.”
This was true; with spectral rank came privilege, but also greater punishment when something went wrong. A prefect could be sent to Reboot for something a Grey would be fined fifty merits.
“Did Lucy say why she thought he was done in?”
I had to admit that she didn’t.
“Well and truly greened,” repeated Tommo, “and in an exciting way, a bit Lulu. Probably a tiger at youknow. Did I hear her offering you a friendship just now?”
“Yes.”
“Blast! She’s always turned me down when I’ve asked. In fact, I’m the only Red not on her list of friends.”
I decided to be diplomatic. “Perhaps she thinks of you as more than a friend.”
“That must be it,” he replied, much relieved. “Now, Rusty Hill—you won’t forget my shoes, will you?”
“Lucy wanted a spoon—and Mrs. Blood a pair of sugar tongs. Perhaps I should write a shopping list.”
“No need,” said Tommo. “I’ve got you one here.”
I looked at his list, which seemed to have everything on it: doorknobs, a pram, nail scissors, a trifle bowl, a butter dish, a unicycle tire, any shoelaces at all and a mackintosh, preferably in blue, which was silly, as I wouldn’t be able to tell. Tomio, it seemed, saw my excursion as a good marketing opportunity.
“I can’t get all this!”
“Just the size nines, then—and a spoon, of course, for Lucy.”
The Ford Model T
1.5.01.01.029: Abuse of medicinal hue is strictly forbidden. See Annex IV-B for list of banned shades.
Carlos Fandango arrived punctually with the Ford as promised, and ahoogah ed twice. He warmly shook hands with Dad and me, generously expressed his belief that we might one day be friends, then told me to ignore anything scurrilousthat Tommo had said. Before I could even deny that he had told me anything, Yewberry arrived with a carpenter and two journeymen carrying a hastily made crate in which to transport the Caravaggio. Yewberry then showed me a street map with the house where I would find the painting marked, and told me not to drop it or anything.
“And if anyone sees, hears or feels anything peculiar,” he added, “he must report it back to the Council.”
“How peculiar does something have to be before it’s worth reporting?” asked my father.
“Unprecedentedly so,” Yewberry replied. “I know it sounds stupid, but there were stories of Pookas just before the outbreak. Glimpses of travelers appearing here and there, now and then, to this one and that one. And keep an extra special eye out for swans. A Cygnus giganticus carnivorum can carry off a man—and at this time of year, a cygnet can eat eight times its own body weight per day.”
Dad and I looked at each other. Not because of the warning about swans, which were a well-known hazard—but about Pookas, which were not only of dubious existence but were listed as so in the Rules.
Even if you saw one, it was better not to report it. People often laughed.
Dorian G-7, photographer and editor of the Mercury, was waiting for us with his camera. He nodded me a greeting and had us all pose near the Ford. Fandango remained disagreeable during the photoshoot, and I saw him move his head just as the shutter was fired, ruining the shot. Dorian saw it, too, but didn’t say anything and didn’t retake the picture. Photographic materials were strictly rationed.
“Here,” he said, handing us a small package. “It’s a snack for the journey. Sponge cake with bonemeal instead of flour. Tell me what you think.”
We climbed aboard, Fandango cranked the engine into life and we moved off with a judder. Luckily for me, Dad said I could sit up front, as he’d been in a Model T many times, so I sat there in silence while Fandango skillfully negotiated a route out of town. The Ford was a four-seater sedan that smelled of oil, leather and burned vegetable oil and, despite continual maintenance over the years, was definitely showing its age. Quite what that was remained a matter of conjecture, as even though the numerical date of the Ford’s pre-Epiphanic manufacture was known, the time between that and the Epiphany wasn’t.
Conservative estimates had them seven hundred years apart, but they could be double that—there was really no way of telling.
We took the Perpetulite roadway that snaked off to the south, and passed the lumber store, twenty-six-acre glasshouse, hay barns and Waste Farm. After a brief pause to open the steel gate in the stockwall and place our spot-badges in a cubbyhole designed expressly for that purpose, Fandango shifted the Ford into top gear, and we were soon past the Outer Markers and thundering along at a terrific pace. Rusty Hill was about fourteen miles away, and at this speed we’d be there in half an hour.
Unlike all the other pre-Epiphanic roadways, which had long ago been rendered nearly invisible by centuries of natural reclamation, the Perpetulite’s powerful memory ensured that the road remained in almost pristine condition: smooth, well drained and clear of obstacles as close to forever as made no difference. But although it was clear of detritus, images of organic debris still remained in the dark grey covering—spidery imprints of fallen trees that had been absorbed to feed the organoplastoid’s self-maintaining agenda. At the edge of the Perpetulite it was a different matter, for the undergrowth grew unchecked right up to the bronze curb rail. The trees arched in above the road and entwined above our heads, which gave me the feeling that we were in a long and perfectly realized arboreal tunnel.
I wanted to ask Fandango a million questions, ranging from the Ford to the gyrobike of which I had heard much, but since he was a Purple—albeit a very light one—protocol demanded that I wait until he spoke first. So I sat on my hands in silence.
Traditionally, the profession of janitor was reserved for the lowest Purple in the village. The reason was probably because the job involved using Leapbacked technology on a Head Office exemption, and the Council wanted someone they felt they could trust. Janitors fell sharply into two categories: those on their way up the Spectrum, who embraced the job as a wonderful opportunity and a showcase for their responsibilities; and those on their way down, who lamented their lost status, and regarded the calling as nothing more than manual labor more suited to Greys. Carlos Fandango was apparently one of the former.