Shades of Grey

I sat and stared out at the countryside, mostly to avoid the baleful glare of the Green woman, who was no doubt trying to devise an errand for me. My mind, however, was full of the quirky Grey girl who had threatened to break my jaw. She had, in a few short words, utterly defiled, defamed and defaced the finely tuned social order that was the bedrock of the Collective. But what was strangest was this: that anyone capable of such rudeness could have survived her youth. The disruptive were always flagged early by six-monthly reviews of merit tally and feedback. If the system was working, she would long ago have been spirited away to Reboot to learn some ma

The guard’s van was stacked high with boxes of fresh fruit, crates of chickens and personal luggage that couldn’t go in the boxcars. The train was too small to waste a Grey on ma

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“Emerald City,” he said in a soft voice, “on the Night Train.”

He meant Reboot. The arrival at Reform College at first light was meant to signify a new dawn and a fresh begi

“You’re on the wrong train for that,” I observed. “Green Sector North is on the other side of the Collective.”

“The farther, the better. I was expected there a week ago. You don’t have any grub on you, do you?”

I gave him a slice of seedcake from the kitchenette, and popped a ten-cent piece in the jar. He consumed the cake hungrily, then told me his name was Travis Canary, from Cobalt City.

“Eddie Russett,” I said, “from Jade-under-Lime, Green Sector South.”

“Friend?”

It was unusual to be offered friendship from a Yellow, and ordinarily I would have refused. But I quite liked him.

“Friend.”

We shook hands.

“So where are you going?” he asked.

“East Carmine. Their swatchman retired unexpectedly, and Dad is to fill in for a couple of weeks until they find someone permanent.”

“I wanted to be a swatchman,” said Travis thoughtfully, playing with the label on a consignment of cocoa beans, “healing people, y’know. But I’m third-generation sorting office manager, so I didn’t have much choice. Why are you with your father? Apprentice?”

“No,” I replied. “I made Bertie Magenta do the elephant trick at lunch. Two jets of milk shot out of his nostrils and went all over Miss Bluebird. I successfully pleaded Prank status, but the head prefect thought a bit of humility reassignment in the Outer Fringes might be good for me. Bertie is his son, you see.”

“Did they set you a Pointless Task?”

“I’m conducting a chair census.”

“It might have been worse,” he remarked with a grin.

This was true. I could have been checking the Collective’s stool firmness for Head Office’s dietary research facility or something. Mind you, that was a worst-case scenario.

I found some tea and placed a measure into the house-shaped infuser, then searched in vain for some lemon. Travis looked around for a moment, reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver swatch case.

He snapped open the compact, took a deep gaze at the color hidden inside, then said, “Lime?”

I considered for a moment that he might be trying to trick me into an infraction so he could steam me for some merits, but he looked so lost and beaten and hungry that I decided he was genuine. Besides, I hadn’t green-peeked for months. Dad was quite strict about it, because he thought lime could lead to harder colors, but was realistic. “As soon as you’ve taken your Ishihara,” he had told me, “you can look at whatever you beigeing well please.”

“Go on, then.”

Travis turned the compact toward me, and as my eyes fell upon the calming shade I felt my muscles relax and my anxieties about traveling to East Carmine fade away. Everything about the world suddenly seemed rather jolly—even the crummy bits, of which there were many. Constance’s inconstancy, for one, and the fact that I wouldn’t see the quirky rude girl with the retrousse nose again. But I was unused to peeking, and my head was suddenly full of Handel’s Messiah.

“Steady, tiger,” he said, and snapped the compact shut.

“Sorry?” I asked, momentarily deafened by the music.

He laughed and asked me if it was Schubert.

“Handel. So, listen,” I said, my inhibitions lowered by the lime, “what did you do to get sent off to Reboot?”

He thought for a moment before answering.

“Do you know why residents are discouraged from relocating within the Collective?”

I knew that travel was limited, but I had never thought to question the reason.

“To stop the spread of Mildew and disrespectful jokes about Purples, I should imagine.”

“It’s to save the postal service from descending into chaos.”

“That’s a nonsensical suggestion,” I retorted.

“Is it? Centuries of unregulated relocation have created a terrible burden. A letter might have to be redirected any number of times, as its mail route would have to follow not only your own but all your ancestors’ meanderings around the Collective.”

This was true. The Russetts had moved only twice since we were downgraded, so we could receive mail in two days. By contrast, the ancient and well-traveled Oxbloods, with their prestigious SW3 postcode, were on an eighty-seven-point redirection service, and would be lucky to receive mail in nine weeks, if at all.

“A bit nutty,” I conceded, “but it works, doesn’t it?”

“On the contrary. If you, or an ancestor of yours, had lived in the same place more than once, the mail redirection service defaults to the earlier redirection and goes around again. Three-quarters of the postal service does nothing but move post that is stuck in perpetual redirection loops and is never delivered at all. But here’s the really stupid bit: The postal service’s operating parameters are enshrined in the Rules and can’t be changed, so Head Office reduced personal relocation in order to impose a lesser burden on the postal service.”

“That’s insane,” I said, my tongue still loosened by the lime.

“That’s the Rules,” said the Yellow, “and the Rules are infallible, remember?”

This was true, too. The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell. They regulated everything we did, and had brought peace to the Collective for nearly four centuries. They were sometimes very odd indeed: The ba