“Something on your mind, Edward?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kill him?”
He rose to his feet. I thought he was going to violent me, but he didn’t. He just laughed out loud and patted me on the shoulder.
“You’ve been listening to too much Renfrew, old chap. There isn’t any murder anymore—there’s no point to it. Why would we even consider such a thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. Besides, what proof do you have? Did anyone see you take that from Travis’ head?”
I didn’t say anything, which was answer enough.
“You’re sharp,” he said, “and I respect that. And since they say you’ve got good red and will be here for a while, I guess you and I will have to get along.”
“I’m not staying, Courtland.”
He smiled.
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
He pointed at my NEEDS HUMILITY badge.
“Do you really think it was Bertie Magenta’s elephant trick that got you sent out here?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to have to guess again. The Outer Fringes have a greater purpose than you credit them. They are a receptacle for those who have done nothing against the Rules but are deemed ‘potentially problematical. ’ When it comes to Harmony, it’s far better to be safe than sorry. Counting chairs in the Outer Fringes is Reboot with a small r.”
A sudden thought struck me. Old Man Magenta hadn’t been annoyed about the elephant trick perpetrated on his son. In fact, he had laughed for the third time ever, and Mr. Blaupunkt, our Blue prefect, had privately told me that Bertie deserved it, as he was something of a clot, and everyone thought so.
“It was the improved queuing, wasn’t it?” I said in a quiet voice.
“Now you’re getting it. The Collective has a built-in resistance to change. Not just in technology and social mobility but in ideas. Queue modification isn’t an offense, but it’s enough to have you covertly flagged.”
“What about ‘Buy one get one free’ offers? Is that a flag, too?”
“Tommo’s out here for the same reason. But it was greed that had him flagged, not seditious thoughts about corrupting the sanctity of the dinner queue. Are you certain you wouldn’t like some tea?”
“Certain.”
“Designing flyable models, discovering the harmonics, an overly obsessive interest in history, talking about specific ideas at the Debating Society, uncovering certain artifacts—the list is long. You’re not leaving.”
“But I’ve an Oxblood to marry.”
“Your frustration and anger will become bearable in time. Most people in the Fringes eventually stop struggling and wear their defiance with a certain tattered pride. In a generation or two your descendants will forget why they are here and may once more circulate. Unless—?”
“Unless what?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He then opened it in a very obvious manner so I could see how many notes were stuffed inside it.
“There is no proof of your ridiculous assertions regarding Travis, but let’s just say I am willing to be generous to someone who is perhaps a little too nosy for his own good. What’s the going rate for Red silence at the moment? Three hundred?”
I stared back at him.
“I won’t be bought off.”
He sighed. “Your misplaced scruples are becoming wholly tiresome, Master Russett. Are you going to name a price, or do we have to indulge in a tedious series of negotiations?”
“I just want justice for Travis.”
Courtland laughed again.
“Good luck to you. What have you got? A piece of scrap metal and an outrageous story. What have we got? A prefect and a senior monitor who will swear on the Word of Munsell that we saw and found nothing.”
He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a growl.
“You have nothing, Russett. Nothing. In fact, since earning the ire of the Gamboges, you have considerably less than nothing.”
“Low and slow, west by south!” shouted Preston, running toward the Ford. “And it’s a binary pair!”
It was indeed. The two football-sized balls were orbiting each other as they moved across the treetops about five hundred yards away, drifting with the breeze. Preston had the Ford started in an instant, and Courtland jumped on the back.
“Come on, Russett,” he said heaving the heavy crossbow around on its mount and checking that the copper spike was still seated securely on the string. “Why not make yourself useful?”
After a second’s hesitation, I hopped into the cab. I was just in time. With a lurch and a cry of “Tally-ho!” from Courtland, the Ford leaped forward, sped across the grass and drove down an incline toward a spinney.
“Hello,” I said to Preston. “Eddie Russett.”
“First time to hunt ball?”
I nodded as we bumped over a rut.
“You’ll like it. We get plasma storms every thirty-seven days; they’re so accurate you could set your calendar by them.”
I lowered my voice so Courtland couldn’t hear, but I needn’t have bothered, as the Ford drowned out everything but a shout anyway.
“Is Courtland a bit . . . you know?”
“Dangerous? Violent? Insane? Definitely. And you, sir, are as stupid as a clodworm. Accusing Courtland and his mother of murder? Do you think they’re going to take that lying down?”
“In Jade-under-Lime,” I said, “everyone respects the Rules.”
“You’re in the Outer Fringes now, Master Edward. Quite a different fish kettle.”
He steered through an open gate, entered the spinney, swerved around some trees and drove across some brambles before coming to a halt. We were in a small clearing surrounded by silver birches; an old twin-rail locomotive was lying half buried on its side, with the roots of a mature oak embracing it tightly. We expected to see the binary plasma spheres dancing close by, but the air was still, and they were nowhere to be seen.
“Burst?” asked Courtland.
“Nah,” replied Preston, licking his lips as he tasted the air. “Somewhere close. Metal’s a good attractor,” he added, nodding toward the rusty locomotive. “Feel that?”
Now that he mentioned it, I could feel something—a faint buzzing in the air and an odd metallic taste in my mouth. I followed Preston out of the cab and joined him at the back of the Ford, where Courtland was waiting silently. Our recent upset was for the moment forgotten. Hunting ball was more important, and besides, we could all sense that our quarry was near.
“There!”
With a rustle and a crackle, the two orbs slowly drifted from behind some foliage. Courtland lined up the sights of the crossbow while Preston jumped into action. He grabbed the drum around which the harpoon’s earthing wire was wound, then drove a copper stake into the ground a safe distance from the Ford. He clipped on the wire and yelled, “CLEAR!”
Several things seemed to happen at once. Courtland fired the harpoon, which took off with a twong, and the trailing wire ran out from the drum with a buzz. When the harpoon made contact, there was a bright flash as the energy coursed down the copper wire to the earthing stake, and with an ear-popping noise that sounded like a C-minor ninth, a massive hole was blown in the ground where the earthing stake had been. It took me a moment or two to recover, but Preston and Courtland were not yet done. There had been two balls, and bothof them were potentially destructive. I jumped onto the flatbed as Preston reversed out, and I helped Courtland re-tension the crossbow. Once we were back onto the pasture, it was easier driving, and we soon overtook the ball as it drifted toward the linoleum factory.
We stopped ahead of it, and with the crossbow now at full stretch and the string on the catch, Courtland placed a second copper bolt in the slide while Preston ran out the wire drum.
“Come on!” yelled Courtland impatiently as the ball floated overhead with a buzzing that could be felt rath
er than heard.
But Preston was having difficulties attaching the earthing wire to the stake.
“Quick!” said Courtland. “Help the idiot untangle it!”
I jumped off the flatbed and ran across to where Preston was struggling with the earthing wire. If the sun hadn’t been in the position it was, and casting Courtland’s shadow to my right, then I would not have lived to be eaten by the yateveo. But there it was, and I saw Courtland’s shadow as he swiveled the crossbow in our direction. I didn’t even think but moved rapidly to my left. There was a loud twong and I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my side as the harpoon buried itself in the grass in front of me.
For a moment, I thought it had gone right through me. I looked at Preston who by his expression, clearly thought the same. I paused for a moment, hardly daring to breathe, then brought up a hand to my midriff and felt around for a wound. I breathed a sigh of relief as I discovered that my swift avoidance movement had spoiled Courtland’s aim—the copper spike had merely nicked my side and done no more damage than a nasty cut.
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Courtland with a sense of shock in his voice that would have won a drama prize in any town of the Collective. “Are you okay?”
I stood up and turned to face Courtland. I had been a fool—again. I had so much still to learn.
“You piece of . . . shit,” I said, using a Very Bad Word for perhaps the third time ever. “You did that on purpose!”
“My dear fellow,” exclaimed Courtland with another liberal helping of faux concern, “an accident, nothing more! Ball hunting is a dangerous pursuit. Are you sure you are unhurt? I feel frightful about this.”
Saying nothing, I took my handkerchief from my pocket and pressed it across the cut, while behind us the missed ball evaporated harmlessly in midair—as they quite often do.
The ball hunt was over, but the Russett hunt had probably only just begun. I mused upon the irony of the situation. Courtland and Jane, poles apart from each other, yet united in their wish to get rid of me. Somehow, it seemed unbelievably unfair.
“Master Edward,” whispered Preston, “watch your back. The Gamboges will place everything possible in your path to trip you up.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“Trip me up?” I echoed.
“Yes. Are you sure you’re all right? You look kind of . . . dreamy.”
“Aside from a vexing Yellow problem, I’m okay,” I replied, “but thanks—you’ve just explained the point of the wheelbarrow.”
He frowned. “Wheelbarrows don’t have points.”
“This one did.”
Eyes and the Colorman
1.3.02.06.023: There shall be no staring at the sun, however good the reason.
I walked slowly home, all the while cursing myself for my own stupidity. Not just for needlessly putting myself in jeopardy with the most unpleasant family in the village, but also for not taking the opportunity to make a deal when it presented itself. I mused that there might, in fact, be something wrong with me. Something odd in the head that seemed to beg my own destruction. First Jane, now Courtland.
I flushed out the cut with the hottest water I could bear and affixed some newspaper dipped in vinegar over the wound. I then sat on the edge of the bath and considered my position. Sally Gamboge or Courtland—perhaps both—had, for reasons unknown, killed Travis. This in itself was incredible, and aside from keeping it to myself, I didn’t see quite what I could do to avoid them. I could only hope that Courtland might consider me so terrified by my near miss that I would be forever silent. In this he was undoubtedly correct—as he so rightly pointed out, I had no proof. Nothing at all. Not even a motive. It didn’t make any sense. Yellows don’t kill Yellows. They support them, nurture them—and, if necessary, lie for them.
I took a deep breath and stood up to stare at my reflection. I moved the light mirror into position so I could study my own eyes carefully. Preston had warned me about the Gamboges’ “putting everything in my path to trip me up,” and his comment, while helpful, put me on an entirely different train of thought. I had tripped over the wheelbarrow the night of Travis’ loss because someone had placed it in my path. And what’s more, done so under cover of darkness.
I had heard my mentor, Greg Scarlet, speak of the theoretical possibility of being able to see at night, and although it was an interesting concept, I had never given it a huge amount of thought. The night was quite simply the night: an empty time, a hole in your life. Nothing happened, nothing stirred. A time to be safe, the time to be home.
I stared closely at the entrance aperture of my eye. It was, to my best estimation, barely a sixteenth of an inch across. Not much light could enter, which was why we all saw best in bright sunlight. But Greg Scarlet’s reasoning was that, since there was a large area surrounding the pupil, it would seem to indicate that a bigger entrance hole would be physically possible. And from what I knew about the basics of photography: bigger hole, more light, see farther into the twilight.
Unusually, this wasn’t all conjecture. Many of the Previous who were featured in pre-Epiphanic photographs and paintings were noted for their strange wide-pupil “hollow-eyed” look, and the fact that they could see at least tolerably well at night was pretty much uncontested. But the vast quantity of optical correctives that had been uncovered seemed to suggest that whatever night sight they enjoyed was at huge cost to clarity of vision. Up until now, I had thought seeing in the dark was a lost skill, like speed skating or the cha-cha-cha, but it wasn’t: Someone had been out watching me the night I attempted to rescue Travis and had placed the wheelbarrow in my path to see if I would trip over it. There was someone in the village who could see at night.
“Eddie?”
It was the Colorman, and I jumped guiltily.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “You should sing ‘Misty Blue’ if engaged in thingy—you know the convention.”
“I wasn’t thingying—I was looking at myself in the mirror.”
“Vanity is an abomination, Edward.”
“I was looking at my eyes.”
There must have been something uncertain in my voice, for the Colorman nodded sagely and told me he’d see me in the kitchen if I wanted to talk.
I went downstairs ten minutes later to find that the Colorman had made me a cup of tea. I couldn’t even begin to think what an honor that was. Someone titled His Colorfulness making me tea. It put my mind at rest almost immediately. At least I had someone on whom to unburden myself, and it also resolved the whole “Do I snitch on Jane?” issue, for with the wheelbarrow mystery finally resolved, I had something positive to give him. He had, after all, showed me considerable kindness regarding the National Color entrance exam.
But the Colorman was surprisingly uninterested in the wheelbarrow.
“That’s it?” he said when I’d finished. “You fall over a wheelbarrow, and all of a sudden people are doing things they haven’t done for over five centuries? Nothing happens at night, Eddie, that’s the point.”
“The wheelbarrow couldn’t have been left there,” I explained. “Perpetulite removes all debris. I timed it the following morning.”
“While fascinating,” he said in a voice tinged with displeasure, “I find this wholly far-fetched. Really, Edward, I was hoping for a little more information from you—something about the theft of the swatches.”
I had disappointed him. I didn’t want to tell him about Jane, so thought I’d give him something he already knew.
“I don’t think Robin Ochre misdiagnosed himself.”
“I agree,” replied the Colorman. “Do you know who his accomplice was yet?”
“No, sir.”
He gave me a piercing look. He knew I was hiding something. If I told him there was nothing, he’d know I was lying.
“I don’t know. Not yet. But there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“I believe someone did the murder on Travis Canary.”
He raised an eyebrow. ??
?Is this related to the swatches?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You have proof?”
“Not really.”
“What about a motive?”
“I’m still thinking about that.”
“A suspect?”
“Someone . . . in the high Yellows.”
“Well, now,” he murmured in a disparaging tone, “I’m beginning to think you are the sort of person who does a great deal with very little.”
He meant a liar.
“Now, listen,” he said, “is there anything else you want to tell me?”
As bad luck would have it, that was precisely the moment when Jane opened the back door. By the look on her face, she had heard the Colorman’s last sentence. The two cups of tea and the relaxed style of sitting at the kitchen table probably spoke volumes, too.
I looked up, and she blinked twice. If she was surprised or angry, she didn’t show it.
“I’m sorry, Your Colorfulness,” she remarked in a respectful tone. “I was just collecting the washing. Am I disturbing you?”
The Colorman turned to look at her. I don’t think he’d given her much thought before now, and he smiled in a manner that to me looked like politeness, but to Jane would have appeared patronizing.
“What’s your name, my dear?”
“Jane, sir.”
“Well, Jane, has anyone ever told you that you have a very pretty nose?”
Her eyebrow twitched momentarily. “People tend to avoid mentioning it,” she said slowly. “I’ve no idea why.”
The Colorman told her that if he lived here, he would make a point of praising her nose quite often. Jane replied ambiguously that he might “think differently, given time.” He told her there were some shirtsin his wardrobe that could do with a pressing. She bobbed politely and departed.
I tried to say something within earshot of Jane to at least set her mind at ease, but the Colorman held up a finger to keep me silent until her footsteps had reached the top of the stairs. “Greys are notorious gossips and busybodies,” he said. “Now, what else can you tell me?”
“Nothing positive, sir. But I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Good lad. And please, keep your wild night-vision fantasies to yourself, eh?”