“True,” I conceded.

“Excellent. This map is an amalgam of every trip that was aborted in the High Saffron direction, mixed with a few guesses and some unsubstantiated rumor. As you can see, the Perpetulite only goes partway.

It spalled at Bleak Point, and after that it’s about sixteen miles, all on foot, all trackless. Mr. Fandango will take you to the Bleak Point and drop you there. The track of the abandoned roadway can be clearly seen, and it was worked on up until thirty years ago—you may find some abandoned Leapback on the way and a Faraday or two. In fact, it’s all plain sailing until you get to . . . here.”

He pointed to a spot on the map about five miles beyond Bleak Point, where there was a picture of a flak tower. I leaned forward and studied the map carefully. Beyond this, the detail was worryingly vague. Of High Saffron itself, there was only its position on an estuary. But also marked on the map were Riffraff, man-eating megafauna, an impenetrable grove of yateveos and the Apocryphal bird with the long neck that wasn’t an ostrich. I pointed this out.

“Mapmakers can get carried away,” he admitted. “The sorry truth is that once past Bleak Point, it’s all pretty much guesswork.”

“May I take the map?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I wouldn’t want anyone to find his way back here.”

I knew he meant nomadic Riffraff, but I said, “Like who? Swans?”

“That’s not funny, Russett. Any more of that kind of disrespectful backchat and you could find yourself—” He stopped, wondering what he could do to make my life any worse. He couldn’t, so instead opened a wooden box and showed me a compass.

“Can I take that with me?”

“Absolutely not!” said Yewberry. “I just thought I’d show it to you—the only one in the village. Beautiful, isn’t it? I like this leather bit here especially.”

“Very nice. So . . . what can I expect to find in High Saffron?”

“We’re not really sure. A detailed study of the Council minutes suggests that the founders of East Carmine first attempted to mine it about three hundred years ago. They described it as about forty square miles in size, with evidence of a bypass, a harbor, a railway station, several thousand domestic dwellings, municipal buildings, something loosely described as ‘defensive structures’ and two temples of commerce.

But to be honest, that might describe any one of hundreds of pre-Epiphanic towns, and they saw it only two centuries after the Something That Happened. So aside from the odd cementless building and anything made of Perpetulite, there won’t be much left.”

“And what do you want me to actually do?”

“You’re to sketch, observe and describe. Take any pieces of scrap color that you can find for appraisal back here, and keep an eye out for a route that the Ford might take. But most of all, we really want to know if it’s safe. No swans or Riffraff, that sort of thing—and what happened to the others, of course.”

“How do I report back if it’s not safe, sir?”

“Hmm,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I think you’ve got me there. Returning would help, I suppose.”

He thought for a moment, then showed me his daylight calculations. “You’ve got a little over sixteen hours of daylight tomorrow, but I can’t give you any accurate journey timings as the precise terrain and distances are unknown. You’ll need to time yourself from Bleak Point to the flak tower, and from there to High Saffron. No matter what happens, make sure you leave enough time to get back to Fandango an hour before sundown—that’s when he’ll leave.”

“Marvelous,” I said, somewhat rattled. A four-hour walk beyond Jade-under-Lime’s Outer Markers was the farthest I’d ever gone from the safety of civilization. Even in the long days of high summer, a two-hour margin for safety was the minimum during an extended toshing trip—although tough nuts had been known to make it back with only twenty minutes of light left. Mind you, I always suspected that they’d engineered it that way. That they might have got back hours ago and then waited around the corner, for the hero effect.

“Now,” said Yewberry, “we want you to complete this mission, but not to throw your life away unnecessarily.”

“I’m with you on that one, sir.”

“Good man. Is that sofa still uncomfortable?”

“Almost excruciating, sir.”

“Excellent. Watch out for eruptives on the summit section, keep a wary eye out for megafauna, clutching brambles and yateveos—and don’t keep any metal that is unusually warm to the touch. Oh, yes,” he added, “if you you find any toy Dinky cars, bring them back for my collection. I’ll give you an extra ten merits for each one you find. Any questions?” “Yes,” I said. “What do I get in my packed lunch?” “Whatever you decide to put in it, I suppose.”

Pepetwlait and Vermeer

I sat on the wall of the color garden for a moment, thinking hard. If I was to have even a hope of returning from High Saffron, I would need someone to go with me. Someone motivated, highly adaptable and capable of violence. Someone like Jane, in fact. I found her potting tomato seedlings in the glasshouse. I hadn’t talked to her since the hockeyball match, and she had a bruised left eye.

“Hello,” she said with a refreshing lack of animosity that made me feel a great deal better. “How’s Violet’s new sweetheart?”

“Wishing he was Violet’s ex-sweetheart.”

“Think how happy you’ve made Doug. He’s had his eyes on Tabitha Auburn for a while.”

“He should get a half promise in before Violet changes her mind. The carnage at hockeyball was partly your fault, wasn’t it?”

She smiled.

“Just trying to even the score. I managed to plant a small one on Violet, but Courtland was just too quick. What made you volunteer for the High Saffron gig?”

I shrugged. “Getting back up to residency, and Constance, I suppose. Do you know anything about the town?”

“Enough to know that no one ever comes back.”

I wanted to ask her to come, too, but straight out was probably not the best approach. Luckily, I had a host of other questions I wanted to ask her.

“How did you get to Vermillion and back in a morning? Or even to Rusty Hill for that matter?”

I knew she didn’t like my asking, but I hoped that her hostility had moved from “naked” to “implied” in the time we’d known each other.

She looked at me and thought for a moment.

“Promise not to tell?”

She punched out on the time clock and we walked out of the glasshouse, past the Waste Farm and through a small spinney to where we came across the Perpetulite roadway. It was a leafy spot, hung about with beech trees whose long boughs trailed ivy against the grass. It was also conveniently deserted.

In one direction above the brow of a hill was the village; in the other was the stockgate, and beyond, Rusty Hill. She checked that we were quite alone and then took a small pendant from around her neck.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A really ugly piece of jewelry?”

“It’s the key that enabled the Previous to talk to the roads. If you see anyone coming, yell.”

She laid the bronze key on the surface of the Perpetulite and almost instantly a rectangular sunken panel about the size of a tea tray appeared in the road. It was barely a half inch deep and, curiously, was still the same color and texture as the roadway, but now had several raised buttons, a few graphs and windows in which figures constantly updated. Across the top on a separate panel were some curious words that looked as though they had been engraved into the surface.

“Pepetwlait Heol Canolfan Cymru A470 21.321km Secshwn 3B. Wedi codi 11.1.2136,” I read with a frown. “What does all that mean?”