“That’s broken, too.”

“Both broken?”

“Yes, sir. Must be the cold water supply.”

“Then I’ll use the hot.”

“Are wheelbarrows made of bronze?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering.”

He shook his head and pushed past me. The door opened easily, and Turquoise strode to the sink. I looked around the bathroom. The shower curtain, usually open, was drawn all around the bath, and I could see the faint outline of a figure within. Turquoise, however, didn’t.

“The cold is working, Russett.”

“Must have been a blockage.”

“Must have,” he said, drying his hands. “Now, then, I’m responsible for career advice, organized glee, employment rosters and allocation of Useful Work. Can we walk and talk? I’ve got to check the inertia racer for Leapback Compliance. Fandango wants to run it at the Red Sector Jollity Fair next month at Vermillion, and it reflects badly on the village if he turns up with something that gets busted by the scrutineers.”

I readily agreed, and we walked downstairs, out the front door and across the square.

“Here,” said Turquoise, showing me my carefully prepared timetable.

“Sally Gamboge has raised the Grey retirement age to the maximum allowable, and is currently running sixteen-hour days, but we’re still short a thousand person-hours a week, so the demands on Chromatic time are perhaps a little more than you might be used to. I daresay, in fact, that you might have to give up tennis or croquet, as there won’t be time enough to do both.”

“I quite understand the need for sacrifices, sir.”

“Good fellow. I’ve got you down for Boundary Patrol first thing tomorrow, lightning watch on Saturday, anti-drowning supervision Mondays and Wednesdays and a turn teaching the juniors—this afternoon, in fact. Can you do that?”

“I’ve not much experience of teaching, sir.”

“I shouldn’t worry—there isn’t much left to teach. Talk to them about the different sorts of chairs or something. By the way,” he added, “top marks on the Rusty Hill expedition. If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.”

“I understand there’s a one hundred percent fatality rate?”

“True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundrerd percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn’t let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.”

“I think I may have to pass.”

“Well,” he replied, mildly irked, “if you’re going to insist on being so negative, I suppose we could raise the consideration to two hundred.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll put you down as a ‘maybe.’ ” We had reached the racetrack, which was a large oval of perhaps a mile in length. Because horses were too valuable to risk on the track, the Collective had found alternatives to race at Jollity Fair race day.

Ostriches had been briefly fashionable, as had kudu and large dogs ridden by infants. Bicycles had been popular until the single-gearing Leapback had made the races considerably less than exciting. To circumvent this, some bright spark had resurrected the notion of the pre-Epiphanic “Penny Farthing,” no doubt named after its inventor. The direct pedal drive on the outsize front wheel gave the cycles a healthy top speed but also made them dangerously top-heavy. With Mildew the most prevalent cause of death by a long shot, someone dying on the racetrack was of considerable novelty, and much applauded.

One sport, however, had dominated the Jollity Fair race day for more years than anyone could remember, and despite prefectural disapproval and a series of Leapbacks that required a great deal of ingenuity to circumvent, the sport had yet to be banned entirely. It was Stored Energy Racing, and East Carmine’s entry was called the Redstone Flyer.

Like most inertia racers, it was configured with two wheels, similar to a bicycle only sturdier. Because it was driven by gyros and they were all powered up, the Flyer was balancing on its own two wheels, much like a train. The gyrobike had been elegantly streamlined within tightly faired bodywork that put me in mind of a salmon, and as I stared at the machine, it gave out a shudder that started small, escalated, then rattled the bike quite violently before calming down again.

“The gyros are going in and out of phase,” Carlos explained when Turquoise asked him what was wrong, “and when they do, they tussle with one another. Hello, Eddie. Did you get Imogen’s information pack?”

I told him I had, and he nodded agreeably, then placed a tuning fork on top of the gyro housings, presumably to gauge which one was out of kilter.

“So listen,” said Turquoise, squatting down to have a closer look at the machinery, but from his look of utter bewilderment he might as well have been staring at the entrails of a goat. “Just confirm for me that this whole thing is compliant, will you?”

“Absolutely,” said Fandango. “All the Everspins do is charge up the gyros—they’re disconnected when it’s racing. The farthest it’s ever gone on a single charge is four miles.”

“Didn’t understand a word,” he replied, “but if you say so, I’ll sign it off.”

And he did, appending his signature to a form that Fandango handed him.

“Right,” said Turquoise, walking off in the direction of the glasshouse, with me trailing behind as I suspected our conversation was not yet over. “Since you’ll be with us for your Ishihara, I have to open your employment file. Any particular leaning you have in mind?”

I said the first thing that came into my head.

“Violin making.”

“That’s for us Blues only, old chap.”

“Then how about string?”

“You’d have to marry into the Oxbloods for that,” he laughed. “Be serious now. Any other ideas?”

It wasn’t worth explaining about Constance, so I thought about the Colorman.

“I’d like to work for National Color, sir.”

“Hmm,” muttered Turquoise, ignoring me entirely and looking down the list of approved Red-related professions, “how about plumbing? The Collective always need plumbers. I’m sure you’ll find the water supply business a dynamic and stimulating environment in which to work.”

“With respect, I’d far prefer to have a shot at the National Color entrance exam.”

I told him about my shade of mustard winning “best runner-up,” but he wasn’t listening.

“Heating or water?” said Turquoise, scribbling a note and handing me a pamphlet. “I’ll speak to the village plumber for you to have an intro.”

By now we had reached the glasshouse, which was situated a little way outside the village. Turquoise pushed the heavy door open and we stepped inside. Outside it had been hot, but inside it was even hotter, and the air was damp and tasted of lily ponds. Like most glasshouses the building was huge—almost twice as big as the town hall and with a gently curved ceiling shaped like a half melon that was about a hundred feet at its highest point. When built, it had been made of glass panels fully ten feet by four, but natural wastage and the inability to build replacements meant the roof was now filled with repaired sections of leaded glass of varying densities and quality. It was quite pretty in a patchwork sort of way, and I suspect multicolored, as I could see a few red panels and I suspected that ours was not the only color used.

“How are the pineapples, Mr. Lime?”

The head gardener was working without his shirt but with a tie and collar, as befits the letter of the Rules.

He was stained with earth and had his spot affixed to a large floppy hat that was dark with sweat.

“Doing mighty fine, Mr. Turquoise,” replied the gardener affably. “The surplus will be colorized and shipped to Blue Sector North—you know how they go bananas over pineapples.”