“I don’t suppose there’s any point asking how you got here?”
“None at all. I’ll be honest, Red—you had me fooled with that shamefully ludicrous ‘I’m an idiot who fancies you’ act. And I don’t fool easily. But right now, I need to know who you are, how much you know and what you think you’ll do with the information.”
I blinked twice. I was glad that she seemed to now have some respect for me, even if through a misunderstanding, but as long as she kept thinking that I wasn’t groping in the dark, perhaps she might reveal just what she and the wrongspot had been doing in the Paint Shop that day. Or better still, start to like me.
“I’m sorry about Zane. It seems he was a friend of yours.”
“Two days ago he was a friend. This time next month he’ll be tallow, methane and bonemeal. How long have you known about him?”
“Oh, a while.”
“What else do you know?”
“About you—but only since Vermillion.”
“And who have you told about us?”
“Why don’t we discuss this over tea at the Fallen Man?” I asked, attempting to be suave. “I’ve heard the scones are excellent—or at least, more edible than yours.”
But she didn’t go for it. “I’d sooner discuss it right here and now.”
“Then perhaps,” I replied, “you should tell me what you were doing in the Paint Shop?”
She lapsed into silence for a moment, and moved across the room to touch one of the lightglobes. She didn’t need to—she was just positioning herself between me and the exit. I’d asked the wrong question.
It told her that I didn’t know what she was doing in the Paint Shop. On reflection, a better question might have been “How long has this been going on?” or even “Tell me the whole story, right from the beginning—and leave nothing out.”
“Are you working for Thorny Yellowood?”
“I’m no fan of the Yellows.”
“You risked your life to save one last night.”
“He was a friend.”
“If that’s true, then you’re a privateer, in it for the merits. Which is arguably worse.”
“It is?”
“Of course. Snitching for the good of the Collective is misguided loyalty. Snitching for cash is nothing but personal greed.”
“Oh.”
“Irrespective of your motivations, I’ll take what you’re selling,” she went on, “but I need to know the quality of the silence I’m buying.”
I stared back at her, trying to figure out what I should do, and feeling hopelessly out of my depth.
“Unless,” she added, “you really are as dumb as you look and have stumbled onto Zane and myself by accident?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I blurted in a vain attempt to regain lost ground. “How could I have known Zane lived here?”
This seemed to make sense to her, but at that moment I heard a distant whistle from my father. I was overdue. And if I didn’t come back, he’d start to look for me.
“Okay,” she said, stepping aside to let me past, “I’ll tell you everything.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’ll stop to quarantine on the way back. Make an excuse and head toward the river. I’ll meet you down there. Understand?”
I told her I understood, and she nodded her head toward the door. I walked slowly out, hoping to impressher withmy insouciant manner, an effect that was somewhat dented when I stumbled on the doormat.
I picked up the Caravaggio and returned to where Dad was waiting for me at the color hydrant. He was not alone. There was a man with him, and he was from National Color. I knew this because he had the splashy paint-tin logo embroidered on his breast pocket, and his denim boiler-suit was liberally covered with smudges, drops, splashes and smears of a hundred different synthetic hues that hung to the cloth like jewels. It showed he had been doing the job for a while; the color-soiled coverall was a mark of rank and worn with pride. He had been checking the magenta in the hydrant as a cheery splash of vented hue lay glistening on the ground, and he was just putting away a leather-cased analyzer. Even more exciting was that he had arrived by bicycle—a sleek racing model of considerable vintage with all the gears fully working. It would be too much to hope he would allow me to ride the exempted Leapback, but I stared, nonetheless.
“Where the Ostwald have you been?” asked Dad.
“Exploring,” I stammered, my recent conversation with Jane still ringing in my ears. I wasn’t going to mention Zane, Jane or the faded Pooka woman in the Colorman’s presence—or indeed, at all. Dad didn’t like to be told stuff he shouldn’t know. Swatchmen could sometimes tread fine lines of conflicted loyalty between Council and family, and deniability helped.
“This is His Colorfulness Matthew Gloss,” remarked Dad, turning to the Colorman, “before he was elevated to National Color, he was a Russett— distantly related.”
I shook hands in something of a daze—I’d not met someone with the title “Colorfulness” before. It was a title rarely bestowed. I couldn’t stare openmouthed for long, however, as Dad said we should be leaving.
We crossed the river to the safety of the opposite bank, with myself and Dad carrying the Caravaggio and the Colorman with the stack of swatches Dad had liberated. Once there, we took the time to size each other up more carefully. Matthew Gloss was a relaxed-looking gent of late middle age with a craggy timeworn face. What little hair he did have was wispy and stuck out in many directions, and his ears seemed inordinately large.
“You say you’re from East Carmine?” he said, once more fulsome introductions were finally over. “Not on foot, surely?”
Dad explained that we had a Ford and suggested that he join us for the trip back, to which the Colorman readily agreed, as he had just pushed his bicycle across the roadless gap that began at the remote pump station at Yerwood, six miles away, and he could do with a break.
We sat on a wall to wait for Fandango, and the Colorman told us he was doing a pipeline inspection because Camberwick Red had been receiving their grid magentas at greatly reduced chroma, and that suggested a fracture somewhere in the network of feed pipes.
“It’s not an easy job, either,” he added, “the grid’s full of disused spur lines, most of which are unmapped.”
Fandango arrived soon after, having fortunately started the Ford without trouble, and after more introductions, we headed back toward East Carmine, complete with sixty-seven swatches, a cure for the sniffles, a Caravaggio, a traveling Colorman with a twenty-one-speed bicycle and the knowledge that Jane would finally tell me what was going on.
Quarantine
5.2.03.01.002: Any resident who has even been indirectly exposed to Mildew must follow quarantine procedures.
The janitor brought the Ford to a stop on a curved bluff next to the weathered WELCOME TO EAST CARMINE sign. We were within easy sight of the village, less than a mile away, and Fandango flashed a Morse code mirror-message that we had returned, were safe and well and had picked up a traveler. The lightning lookout flashed back that the message had been received, and confirmed that our quarantine would end at midday. If we were infected with Mildew, we would certainly show symptoms within two hours.
The morning was hot, so we sat under a nearby tree while Fandango brewed some tea on an oil stove and the Colorman told us about his career, which sounded forty times better than managing a stringworks. I listened with rapt attention as he spoke of the burning and intractable issues of the day with a sense of authority that I’d not heard before.