“Eddie!”
It was my father, far behind me. I shouted back that all was well, but my voice, which I had intended to be deep and full of confidence, came out sounding weedy and fearful. He told me to turn around and they’d reel me in. I did actually turn, and far away, wrapped in a dark tunnel, was a small village entirely adrift in the night. It didn’t stay in one place, either, but seemed to move around as my unpracticed eyes darted back and forth, trying to make sense of the unusual surroundings. For a moment I thought I would do as he asked, but I’d be an even bigger fool if I didn’t actually accomplish anything, so I once again told my father that I was fine and asked for more string.
I moved on, despite his admonishments, and all of a sudden something hard struck me on the shin. I fell forward, collapsing onto a painfully angular object, and felt a sharp blow to my face, followed by a salty taste of blood in my mouth.
If there was a time for panic, then this was assuredly it. The swirling darkness suddenly seemed to gain shape and bear down upon me. I felt a cold hand grasp my heart and a sweat prickle my back. I bit my hand to stop myself from screaming, then sat down on the roadway, stared into the inky darkness and took deep breaths. All around me the night seemed to fall ever tighter and closer, in an embrace that made me feel as though I were being smothered; as if the darkness would close over me like a millpond, and I would gratefully pass into unconsciousness and death.
But it didn’t happen that way. I fought back the panic, discovered that the object I had fallen on was nothing more nor less than a wheelbarrow and allowed myself to be ignominiously reeled back into the village by none other than the head prefect himself. The feeling of a safe return was short-lived, as the flagrant irresponsibility of my actions were made abundantly clear to me. DeMauve explained in strident terms that I had just recklessly gambled the twenty years of investment that the Collective had placed on my person.
“If you want to attempt such foolhardy stunts,” he said, “you should conduct them in your retirement when your Civil Obligation is at an end.”
In short, I was subjected to an ear bashing of momentous proportions. But it was without demerit as I had done nothing against the Rules.
By way of consolation, my excursion had convinced the prefects that an effort should be made to look for Travis, “fallen Yellow or not,” and Mr. Fandango was dispatched to fetch some Daylighters. Mrs.
Gamboge, doubly furious not only that I had disobeyed her but that my actions had required her to do the right thing, insisted that she and Courtland look for Travis. When it was pointed out that this placed not only the Yellow prefect but also her successor in unnecessary danger, Mrs. Gamboge laughed it off and indicated that they would go as far as the boundary and no farther.
The Daylighters were soon produced, and after Gamboge senior and junior had donned walking boots, they pulled the firing cord of the first magnesium flare. The lamp fizzed for a moment before bursting into a flaming white light that pulsed and crackled as it burned, and it gave off an acrid white smoke that made us cough.
They wasted no time, and both hurried off into the night. We watched them beneath their umbrella of flickering light until they were lost from view in a dip.
“Three months’ flare allocation gone in a single evening,” grumbled Fandango, and the small crowd slowly dispersed.
Dad just shook his head sadly and told me I’d better go to my room and “consider my position,” which in Dad-speak meant that he was sorely hacked off, but that it would all be forgotten by the morning.
I went upstairs to my room and sat cross-legged on my bed. My muscles were still twitching from the night panic, but I didn’t feel half as bad as I thought I would. I could hear the Apocryphal man moving about upstairs, and the lighter footfalls of a second person, who moved slower. Despite Travis, I still had important matters to attend to, so after pushing the night’s events to the back of my mind, I took out my notebook, adjusted the angle-poise mirror to maximize the light that streamed across the landing and in my open door, thought for a moment and composed my telegram to Constance.
TO CONSTANCE OXBLOOD SW3 6ZH ++ JADE UNDER LIME GSW ++ FRM E RUSSETT RG6 7GD ++ EAST CARMINE RSW ++ MSGE BEGINS ++ JOURNEY WITHOUT SERIOUS INCIDENT ++ ARRIVED SAFE AND WELL ++ SAW RABBIT IN VERMILLION V INTERESTING ++ EAST CARMINE DELIGHTFUL ++ TWICE AS BIG AS JADE RIVER FRONTAGE AND LINOLEUM FACTORY ++ CAKE V EXPENSIVE AND LITTLE SYNTHETIC COLOR ++ SEND BEST WISHES TO YR CHARMING MOTHER ++ MY QUEUING SYSTEMS WORKING WELL ++ YR EDWARD XXX POEM FOLLOWS ++ O THAT I MIGHT RUN THE STORMY BOUNDARY MARKERS WITH YOU ++ TAKE YOU IN MY HEART AND SQUEEZE YOU ALTHOUGH NOT TOO TIGHT ++ AN ANGRY SWAN OR MARAUDING RIFFRAFF WOULD NOT STOP ME ++ MY COLOR IS YOURS COMMA THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE ++ MSGE ENDS
I decided for strategic reasons not to tell Constance of my early Ishihara. In fact, I thought I might surprise her with it on my return, and force her into a decision under Roger Maroon’s upswept nose. I was rereading the missive for the fourth time and wondering whether actually receiving the poem would make up for its lamentable lack of quality when I heard the Gamboges’ return. I moved to the spare room and looked out into the town square, where a small group were welcoming the Gamboges back with hot cups of cocoa and blankets. They were quite alone; Travis was now officially Nightloss. Only twenty minutes later, the first bell sounded, and exactly ten minutes after that the light abruptly went out, and the world was plunged into an inky blackness without depth, shape or form. Across the gulf of hollow emptiness I could hear the sounds of settling that a village makes when bedding down. The odd cry as someone was caught out and stubbed a toe on a bed leg, the bark of a dog and the wail of a child who’d not yet come to terms with nightfear.
Within a few seconds of lights-out, the first sound of the evening’s Radtalk began. It was quiet, as from a distant originator somewhere at the other end of the village, and I strained to hear the metallic Morse code strikes on the radiator. It wasn’t anything particularly inappropriate, just sounded like banal gossip among juniors—who fancied who, that sort of thing. They used call signs, as the centralized heating system was an open circuit, so I didn’t know who was being talked about, and wouldn’t have known them if I had. After a few minutes of this another stream started off, but this one used a wooden striker for separation. This Morse code was faster and harder to keep up with, but it turned out to be chapter eight of a serialized book titled Renfrew of the Mounties —likely as not, on the Leapback list. Tommo had hinted that Mrs. Lapis Lazuli might attempt something at story time, so I had to assume that this was she. And indeed, my Morse would have to be up to scratch, for the code was tapped out at a phenomenal rate.
I listened for a bit, until a third stream started up, this one below the other two, slower and more considered. It was also tapped out with a lead bar, again for easier separation of the streams. This one was directed to me, and after I had found a piece of metal and wrapped it in a pair of underpants to tap out an acknowledgment, I was asked by someone named “Fifi23” about news from the outside. I signed myself in as “Nik” and tapped out the broadest possible news that I had from the Green sectors. As soon as I strayed onto anything remotely sensitive, the duty radiator monitor would jam my stream with a series of fast random strikes that drowned out all the channels. The jam soon stopped, however, and I resumed, this time watching what I said more carefully. I tapped away for half an hour until my wrist grew tired, and after receiving thanks from “Fifi23” and quite a few others, I listened to Mrs. Lapis Lazuli’s serialization, which was enjoyable, despite making little sense—many of the words and idioms were obsolete, and it took me a while to figure out that a “Mountie” was some sort of Red Rule enforcer, but on horseback.