“What plan could there be for not having enough spoons?”
“This is precisely why the Debating Society is open only to the Chromogentsia,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Open discussion leads to the mistaken belief that curiosity is somehow desirable.
Munsell tells us over and over again that inquisitiveness is simply the first step on a rocky road that leads to disharmony and ruin. Besides,” he added, “asking a poor question gives it undeserved relevance, and attempting to answer a bad question is a waste of spirit. The question you should be asking yourself is: How can I discharge my Civil Obligation most efficiently to improve the smooth running of the Collective? And the answer to that is: Not wasting a prefect’s valuable time with spurious suggestions for associations.”
He stared at me, but not in a bad way—I think he was secretly enjoying the discussion as much as I was.
We had arrived at the circular head of a tosh pit, brick built and protruding three feet from the ground.
The wooden cover was off, and two Greys were on duty—one with a polished bronze mirror on a stand to reflect the sun’s rays down the mine to the workers below, and another who held a rope, presumably to haul dirt and scrap color to the surface. Beside them was a cart, half-filled with damp black soil, while laid out on trestle tables close by was low-quality rubbish, ready for sorting.
“Good morning, Terry,” said Turquoise.
“Sir.”
“Anything to report?”
“Not much this morning, sir. Jimmy found what he thought was a car at vector 65-32-420, but it was only a front wing.”
“That’s annoying,” said Turquoise, running an eye over the tosh. I could see that little of it was red, and by the look of the prefect’s demeanor, not much blue, either.
“Better get it down to the Pavilion as soon as you can—the Colorman wants to have an inspection tomorrow.”
The Grey nodded and we walked away.
“We had a tosh-pit collapse last week that almost cost us a first-class miner,” said Turquoise. “We’re all about colored out. Another good reason for you to go to High Saffron for a look-see. What about two hundred and fifty merits?”
“I’ll consider it,” I said, actually meaning I’d do no such thing. “And my Question Club?”
“Very well,” replied Turquoise through gritted teeth, since, according to the Rules, he couldn’t refuse.
“Consider your association formed. We will allocate you a slot within the prescribed time frame.”
He stared at me for a moment.
“Just because you can pull wool, Russett, it doesn’t follow that you should. With the leadership of an association comes responsibility, something I trust we will not see abused.”
I told him I would do no such thing, and asked to be excused if he was done with me, which he was. I’d just noticed a figure a few fields off with a camera on a tripod, and this could only be Dorian—he had requested an interview from me for the Mercury.
Dorian and Imogen
1.1.6.23.102: The raising of one’s voice is permissible only at sporting events, and only by the spectators. At all other times, speech is to be kept at a polite volume.
Dorian was photographing that year’s floatie harvest. I walked past a field where a team of horses was pulling a plow through the harvested wheat field. As I watched, small specks of the floating material rose from the ground as they were unearthed, then started to drift off downhill, where they were channeled by a natural dip into long muslin nets strung a yard above the ground.
“Hello!” said Dorian, who was framing the billowing muslin with an oak tree in the background for his photograph. “Look at this one.”
He showed me an exceptional floatie that was the size of a chicken’s egg and still had a part number stamped on the side and some wiring attached. It was resting in the net with a lot of smaller sections—fragments, really, and some almost dust—and I tapped a finger on the top to gauge its strength. Ten merits per negative ounce was the usual price, and with the fragments, he might make twenty or thirty merits on this crop alone.
“We got up here late, so missed a few,” he said, pointing in the downhill direction that floaties always took. “Redby-on-Sea have a net across the estuary, but only in the past decade or so, and it doesn’t catch them all.”
I stared at the odd pieces of metal thoughtfully. That they were man-made was without dispute, and also that they were parts of something much larger. Quite what, no one knew, as a floatie’s natural propensity for heading off out to sea to seek the lowest point almost guaranteed there would be few around to study. The only pieces we could find these days were either trapped in natural hollows or embedded in the ground because of some past accident or burial.
“Where does it all end up?”
“Rumor speaks of a floating island somewhere on the oceans which is actually lived upon, but you’d need several thousand cubic meters of the stuff to have any chance of supporting a settlement. More than likely it’ll be a home for seabirds and the like—until the weight of the guano pushes it beneath the waves.”
I switched my attention to his camera, which was a full-plate Linhof. As in most cameras, the shutter had gummed up years ago, but emulsions were slower these days, and exposure was more usually controlled by simply removing the lens cap for the requisite period. I’d often asked for Constance and me to be photographed together, but her mother had forbidden it, lest “we get used to the idea.” Dorian let me look at the image formed upside down on the viewing screen, and the framing was actually very good.
“I need some good clouds for it to be perfect,” he said, staring up at the sky. “Had you heard that a deep red filter increases the contrast in the sky?”
I had heard that but didn’t know quite how it worked.
“I heard the trip was a huge success,” he added as we walked toward the handcart that held all his photographic gear and some tea-making equipment. “How were the bonemeal cakes I gave you?”
“Inedible.”
“I thought so, too. Have a look at this.”
He showed me the photograph he had taken of the expedition, which was suitably heroic if you didn’t count Carlos Fandango, who had ruined the picture by moving his head. I pointed this out.
“He did it on purpose. Mr. Fandango and I don’t agree on several fundamental issues. So,” he continued, “tell me about the trip—for the Mercury, you understand.”
So we sat on the grass and I told him as much as I dared, omitting the bits about Jane, Zane G-47’s house with all its treasures and the Pooka.
“Tell me,” I said while he was writing down the bit about meeting the Colorman, “how does a Grey get to be the editor of the village news sheet?”
“Before my Ishihara I was Lilac,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “My parents were frightfully disappointed, although not surprised—the family’s been going downhill for a while. My great-great-grandmother was head prefect in Wisteria, and Dad was the janitor here in Carmine before he died.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It was inevitable. In any event, I was doing the editing job before my Ishihara, and deMauve took pity on an ex-Purple and allowed me to keep it, although for loophole reasons, I’m officially the assistant typesetter—the highest wage grade I’m permitted to hold.”
“That’s annoying.”
“On the contrary,” he said with a smile. “It keeps me from twelve-hour shifts in the factory under the watchful eye of the delightful Mrs. Gamboge.”