“Do you have a Ford in your village?” he said at last.
I told him that we had eight, although six were permanent members of our Mobile Lightning Fast Response Group. He said that Carmine had a second Model T, a flatbed that was used to hunt for ball lightning, then asked me how my village could possibly have amassed so many Fords in a time of great shortage.
“We had a very forward-thinking Council at the time of the last Great Leap Backward,” I explained, “and guessing the future, they secured eight Model Ts in the days when flatheads and Heavy Austins were still in widespread use. This year we acquired a pair of Darracqs and a DeDion Bouton, ready and waiting to take over when the Fords are put beyond use.”
“They won’t Leapback the Fords,” he said. “They’re just too useful.” He said it without conviction. The external telephone network had been about as useful as anything could be, and that had gone. He asked me where I was from and, when I told him, asked if I knew his cousin Elwood.
Few in the region didn’t. Elwood Fandango had been head accountant in the village, but had gone somewhat irresponsible in his senior years. During a Mutual Audit he had been found illegally mixing pigment in order to make a potent swatch of Erectile Blue , something that showed a considerable level of skill and experimentation, especially as he had mixed a fan of twenty-two different shades, to cover almost every level of perception in the village. Despite the severity of the crime, it didn’t surprise the auditor that Elwood had been leasing out the swatch for over ten years without anyone snitching.
Unusually, Elwood survived being sent to Reboot due to his having amassed a huge amount of merits in a lifetime of unimpeachably high social conduct.
“I bet your head prefect was peeved,” mused Fandango as he slowed to negotiate a low branch that had grown across the road.
“Incandescent,” I replied, “partly because illegal home blending had been going on right under his nose, partly because he’d never been offered a peek but mostly because Elwood had used up his merits to offset mischief rather than for the betterment of the Collective, such as dedicating a park bench or contributing to the bandstand reroofing fund.”
Fandango looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “So we have Jade-under-Lime to blame for senior delinquency?”
I had to admit that this was true. The concept of blowing a lifetime’s good deeds on a flagrant breach of harmony had spread like all good loopholery to outlying villages, the region and finally the whole Collective. Head Office dealt with the problem with a hard-hitting training play that reminded seniors of their responsibilities.
“Is Elwood still with us?” asked Fandango. “News travels so slow these days.”
“He succumbed last year at the age of eighty-eight,” I explained. “The whole village turned out to cheer him off as he was wheeled into the Green Room.”
We had driven out of the arboreal tunnel by now, and aside from the invasive rhododendrons, which Fandango explained were due “for a burn” quite soon now, the countryside was more open. The river was to our right and on the opposite bank was the railway we had traveled the day before. To our left was a steep, rocky slope, and as we swept around a corner, Fandango stamped on the brakes. Lying in the middle of the road were several large boulders, one the size of a garden shed. There was space to drive around them, but we were in no particular hurry, and stopped to watch. The rockfall was recent, and already the roadway was working to dispel the intruders. With a series of sinuous, wavelike movements, the Perpetulite gently shifted the broken rock toward the side of the road. As kids, we’d sat on baking trays and planted ourselves in the middle of the road, then raced one another to the curb.
“How long have you been janitoring?” I asked as we watched the largest boulder being moved as easily as if it were a feather.
“Thirty-one years, give or take,” he replied. “Seen three Leapbacks in that time, each one worse than the one before. I dread to see what they’ll ban next. I suppose you’re too young to remember tractors?”
We felt the Ford start to move as it too was recognized as useless debris to be rejected, and Fandango reversed gently back and forth to fool the Perpetulite.
“Not quite,” I replied, as the Leapback in question occurred when I was five. Horses did the plowing and drilling these days, and any devices that needed static power, such as threshing machines, were run off agri-exempted Everspins, each one about forty times the size of the one I had in my valise.
“I’d been more annoyed by the loss of gearing on bicycles,” I said as the larger of the boulders was successfully toppled onto the verge, and we moved off. “Direct drive doesn’t really excite, to be honest.” We drove on in silence for a few minutes, which allowed me to enjoy the untouched countryside, and after negotiating a long, unbroken stretch, we drove past the remains of an old town, reduced to little more than tussocky rubble by a series of aggressive excavations. “This was Little Carmine,” said Fandango, slowing so we could see, “picked clean of all hue in 00453. Great Auburn is about six miles to the east. It’s been our principal source of scrap color for almost three decades, but even that’s nearly exhausted. Most of our toshing parties these days concentrate on rediscovering individual villas or hamlets. It’s quite a skill, you know, reading a soft lump in the ground.”
We continued the journey, and Fandango and I chatted some more, mostly about the maintenance difficulties of the carbon-arc mechanism that lay at the heart of the central streetlamp—something that seemed to sap a disproportionate amount of his time. And it was in this manner that we passed the time until we arrived at the deserted railway station. Across the river was Rusty Hill, untouched and unvisited since the Mildew took everyone in it four years before.
Rusty Hill
1.1.01.01.001: Everyone is expected to act with all due regard for the well-being of others.
Dad and I climbed out of the car, and Fandango told us he would wait at the top of a nearby hill in case the Ford “proved difficult to start.” He wished us good luck, told us to signal when we wanted to be picked up and that he would ahoogah twice if he saw any swans. He then departed with almost unnatural haste in a cloud of white smoke.
Dad sat on a low wall and examined the town through his binoculars. Although unlikely this far west, it wasn’t unknown for Nomadic Riffraff to use abandoned settlements as homesteads, and neither Dad nor I had the slightest wish to bump into a grunge of well-established and dangerously territorial wildmen.
There were gruesome stories that related to well-hued men being kidnapped, with the threat of plum removal if ransom wasn’t paid. I knew of no one who wore their spot beyond the boundaries.
“Dad?”
“Yes?” he replied, still studying the deserted buildings.
“I learned something interesting this morning. Lucy Ochre’s been hitting the Lincoln pretty badly. She thinks her father was given the murder.”
I had thought Dad might reject the notion as quickly as I had, but he momentarily appeared ill at ease. He put down the binoculars and looked at me. “What’s given her that idea?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. Why, could he have been?”
“Technically, it’s possible. He could have been tied to the Departure Lounger and had his eyes taped open.”
“They would have seen evidence of that on the body.”
“Agreed. Here’s another scenario: Let’s say he was planning to Chase the Frog. He would have controlled the light coming into the room with the lever next to the Lounger. He’d rotate the shutters open to get the full effect of Sweetdream, then close them when he’d had enough, recover in the dark and creep out.”