And he went off to join his mother.
“Here,” said Dorian, as soon as Courtland had gone, “have a flapjack. We ran out of syrup, so I used cod-liver oil.”
“Crumbly,” I said after taking a bite, “and a bit fishy.”
We both stood on the far side of the street and looked across into the window of the Fallen Man.
“Now that we’ve got two tickets, we’ll certainly take the Colorman up on his offer,” murmured Dorian.
“We’ll be off on the Sunday train, straight after Imogen’s Ishihara.”
There was a pause.
“Eddie?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you take the train? You’re almost certainly going to disappear off into the Outfield tomorrow. And I know you can’t possibly want to marry Violet.”
“Do you want to know the real, honest, totally truthful answer?”
He nodded.
“Because there’s someone else here in East Carmine. Someone hopelessly unsuitable. It’s all a really bad idea and will lead to trouble of the worst sort. But no matter what, every minute in her presence makes my life a minute more complete.”
“Yes,” he said, looking across at Imogen, “I know exactly what you mean.”
We stood there for some moments in silence.
“Another flapjack?”
“No, thanks.”
I wrote several letters after I’d returned home. One to Constance, explaining that it was always my intention to marry her, and that we had both been the victim of an up-color Gazump. I wrote one to my father, telling him how much I loved him, and then one to Fenton, apologizing about the rabbit and enclosing a five-merit piece as compensation. I placed all the letters in my top drawer, to be found when my room was cleared out, then went downstairs to make supper. I made more than was necessary, and on two dishes, to make it easier for the Apocryphal man and his Extra.
There were periodic knocks on the door, and every time, my heart jumped as I thought it might be Jane come to tell me that she had changed her mind and would be coming with me to High Saffron. It wasn’t.
It was residents who wanted me to do something for them in High Saffron. Like look for Floyd Pinken, who had vanished there a decade previously, or Johnson McKhaki, who had done the same twenty-three years before that. “I’ll call his name,” I said to McKhaki’s aged widow, who would certainly have won first prize in a deluded hope contest.
Lucy Ochre came around to wish me well. She had a message from the Greyzone.
“You have a new name: ‘He-who-runs-with-scissors.’ ” I’d heard of the phrase before, and it referred partly to the “Home Safety and Sharp Objects” directive in section eight of the Book of Common Sense, but mostly to describe those who didn’t care what trouble they caused in the selfish pursuit of their own polluted ideals. It meant you had rejected the simple purity of the rainbow and were thus incompatible with the Word of Munsell. Beyond contempt, in other words, and well overdue for Reboot. From the Greys, a huge accolade.
“An honor like that,” I remarked, “is usually bestowed posthumously.”
“I think they wanted you to enjoy it, if only for a short while.”
“How thoughtful. Who sent the message?”
“The one with the retrousse nose who fights a lot. Have you and she got a thing going?”
“I don’t think she’s a ‘thing’ sort of girl.”
Lucy agreed with that sentiment, then asked me to take a pendulum with me to conduct a series of harmonic tests on the expedition.
“All my calculations seem to indicate that High Saffron is suffused with musical energy that seems to peak with the ball lightning cycle every thirty-seven days.”
I told her that while this was fascinating, I had enough on my plate, and she agreed, gave me a long hug, told me not to come back dead and went away.
“Tommo was right,” said Dad when he got in from work, “the deMauves are seriously oiled. We got ten grand for you, with two up front.”
I had gotten used to being treated as a commodity by now.
“Up front?” I said. “What for?”
“Tommo is an exceptional negotiator. George deMauve told me that he’d sign his daughter over as soon as he sees your Ishihara results. And I’m good for my word. Half the gravy will be yours.”
“And what if I don’t come back?”
“We’ll get you safely back somehow,” he said in a quiet voice. “We’re just not sure precisely how. How do you want to spend the evening? The Verdi concert?”
“What about Scrabble?” I suggested, thinking I should be in if Jane came calling. Dad agreed even though he didn’t much like Scrabble, and went to fetch the board.
The rest of the evening was something of a blur. I can recall the prefects’ coming in turns to wish me well, and to give useless snippets of advice that I could happily ignore. Even Sally Gamboge came around for form’s sake, but although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom. The Apocryphal man graciously took the smaller of the dishes, and I had just achieved a triple-word score with azure when the dusk warning bell sounded.
“I’m supposed to be meeting Violet,” I murmured. “I’d better be off.”
“Glad you’re coming around to the idea,” he said. “She’s not half as bad as she appears.”
But instead of going to see Violet, which was what I’d implied, I went to hide in the broom closet, which was what I’d meant.
So that’s where I was when Violet was looking all over the village for me. It was warm and comfortable, and quite against my own expectations, I fell fast asleep, only to wake when the lights-out warning bell sounded two hours later.
I trod silently up to bed and had just changed into my pajamas when the world once more plunged into blackness. I lay awake for a while, listening to the Morse on the radiator. The gossip was once more about me—how I was either insane or fatally misguided to have volunteered myself. I listened for a while to the gossip channel, acknowledged the words of well-wishers, then turned my ears to the serial, where, as promised, Mrs. Lapis Lazuli had extended the broadcast to finish the chapter of Renfrew of the Mounties.
I listened until all the Radtalkers had signed off, then settled down to sleep in the pitch-dark. Before I did so, I crept out of bed and fumbled my way around the bedroom to wedge a chair under the doorknob.
There was someone in the village who could see at night, and I didn’t want him or her coming into my room.
I didn’t know who it was. In fact, I didn’t know lots of things. But that would all change, come the following day. I would achieve enlightenment, and then, in celebration of this, Jane would have me eaten by a yateveo. But it wouldn’t be personal. It would be a precautionary.
Wedding Plans
3.6.02.01.025: Licentious behavior between unmarried partners is strictly prohibited. Fine: five hundred merits.
I awoke with a start to find my bedclothes in disarray. I had slept badly, waking at every tiny sound that might, to my fuddled mind, have been a threat. The room had just been brought back to sightfulness with a glimmer of sunlight on the opposite wall. I checked the bedside clock—it was five in the morning. I rolled out of bed and carefully removed the chair from under the doorknob, quietly opened the door and padded across the landing to the bathroom.
I had a pee and walked back into my bedroom and almost yelled in alarm. Staring at me from outside the window was none other than Violet deMauve. When she saw me jump, she put a finger to her lips and made a gesture for me to raise the sash, which I did, foolishly realizing at that moment that with all my elaborate plans to safeguard myself the night before, I had neglected to note that my window was easily accessible by standing on the back-door porch below.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. She didn’t answer, but simply clambered in, then turned and gave the thumbs-up to her unseen companion below, who took the ladder away. Violet then pulled down the window, jumped noiselessly onto the rug and started to remove her clothes, smiling coyly at me as she did so. I couldn’t deny that the fashion in which she did it was alluring. After all, Violet was not the sort of girl for whom anything could be left to chance, so she had doubtless rehearsed this often.