Excelence: переводы

→Ted Grey: Twenty Years Among the Chromatacians

→The Cinnabar family had been big in the crimson pigment trade until illegal price-fixing which led to their downfall and made them fairly toxic in the marriage market. When all Cinnabars had no better option than to marry a Grey, the family would be no more. Once in the Greyzone, all fallen hues were rendered equal – until someone married up-hue and the whole thing started over again.

→‘Yes; it revolves chiefly around a large helping of delusive hope, and failing that, a good pair of running shoes.’

→‘You have?’

→‘We’ve got a plan,’ I said.

→Despite my involvement in the plot that saw Carlos’ daughter and Dorian run away together, he seemed not to bear me much ill will. That would change dramatically if he knew what had ultimately happened to them. I would have to ensure he never did.

→‘I hope you and Jane have a good strategy in place,’ said Carlos once we were out of earshot. ‘Those two will try anything to get you into the Green Room.’

→She handed me back my merit book and I thanked her for my punishment in order to avoid a further demerit due to ‘inadequate acknowledgement of personal failings’, then departed quickly before they could drum up some more charges.

→I sighed and handed over my merit book and was fined twenty merits for ‘impugning upon the reputation of an elder’, ten for ‘speaking out of turn’, and five for ‘additional nonspecific impudent intent’.

→‘How dare you?’ said Mrs Gamboge. ‘Your suggestion of a predecided outcome is insulting, demeaning and unruleful. Your book, please.’

→‘I thought this was to be a fair and free hearing?’ I said as I placed Celandine’s valise on the ground next to him.

→‘I despise him already,’ returned Mr Celandine. ‘You have my unwavering support in this matter.’

→‘That’s the one who killed my son,’ said Mrs Gamboge, pointing a bony finger at me. ‘Note him well.’

→Carlos stopped outside the Gamboges’ house, easily recognised by the bright Univisual yellow door. Sally Gamboge was waiting on the doorstep and greeted Mr Celandine warmly.

→We lapsed into silence as Fandango drove us through the East Gate and into the village, the centre of which was laid out as a large open square with the prominent hues’ residences at the north end and with the cafés, shops, library and artisans’ workshops making up the remainder of the periphery, all in their prescribed position, the exact same in each ‘C’-sized town. The main hall sat in the middle, outside the main doors of which was the twice-lifesize statue of Our Munsell. Beyond the central square were the lower hues’ quarters, kitchens, workshops and granaries with hay barns, dairy and Carlos’s workshop a little way distant, with the rendering sheds, tannery, Green Room and Greyzone downwind and most distant of all.

→The vast, mildly tapered structure was at least three times as tall as the town hall, and like the town hall and Council Chambers it had been grown out of building-grade Perpetulite. The tower might have been a storehouse, lookout, or even a store of Perpetulite itself, waiting to be called into use as something else, but never was. Like so much around us, the past was not only unknown, but unknowable.

→‘None at all,’ said Bunty, ‘but they are mentioned in the Book of Harmony so presumably Our Munsell has a plan for them.’

→‘Any idea of its function?’ mused Celandine, as there were no flak towers in Dog-Leg-Lake.

→‘Impressive,’ said Celandine, but he was more interested in the flak tower. Since city, town and village layouts all conformed strictly to the Architectural Uniformity Protocols, towers randomly placed or anything at variance with the approved layout gave a unique identity, something of which East Carmine could be rightly proud.

→Lurid tales of lightning strikes where residents had their brains boiled inside their heads were the third most popular article in Spectrum magazine along with swan attack and Riffraff baby stealing. In truth, the crackletrap had only two attributes that were incontestable: it had cost a vast amount of communal cash merits in its construction, and was of no use to anyone at all.