Early Riser

by Jasper Fforde

  – A Critique of Socialised Childcare, by Keith Pankhurst

  ‘I need to see Toccata,’ I said to Laura once I was back at the entrance lobby of the Wincarnis. ‘That’s the Consulate facing us, yes?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, so we pulled on our parkas and overboots. ‘I do filing over there for eight hours a week. Without it I’d be just another one of the sleep-shy. I like to pay my way.’

  ‘What’s the deal with Hooke?’ I asked as we stepped outside.

  ‘Best avoided. He used to work in Military Intelligence but was forced to resign due to his unbridled enthusiasm for “psychologically invasive interrogation techniques”. He’s basically a nasty bully who’s been given some authority – never a winning combination. Or,’ she added, ‘a totally winning combination. It’s a question of perspective.’

  ‘And Aurora?’

  ‘She runs hot and cold, same as Toccata. When it comes to HiberTech Security, the safe default position is to avoid all and everything in as aggressive a fashion as possible.’

  We walked past the statue that was positioned in the town square, moved up some steps until we were at the Consulate’s main door, and Laura punched some numbers in on the keypad. We entered the primary shock-gate, walked down a short corridor, then went through the secondary shock-gate and into the main chamber. The offices were identical in layout to the offices back in Cardiff – the same as everywhere, in fact. The only difference was that the room was partitioned about a quarter of the way in by a long counter that was piled with files, reports, SkillZero procedure manuals, fliers for state-registered winsomniacs and a large tear-off desk calendar that indicated there was one day until Slumberdown.

  Behind the counter was an open-plan office with a half-dozen desks, all of them stacked high with unfiled and forgotten paperwork, paper cups, old newspapers and general bric-a-brac. There were the usual half-dozen or so super-sensitive barographs across one wall, and across another was a plethora of missing persons posters. Some new, some old, some ancient.

  ‘Anyone over two seasons missing is logged as “Likely Carrion” and declared dead,’ said Laura, ‘but we keep the posters up as it helps to have human faces around, irrespective of who they were or their current status.’

  We stared at them for a moment.

  ‘We call it the “Wall of Lost Souls”,’ she added, then said, as I heard footsteps approaching: ‘Ah, Fodder.’

  I turned to find a powerfully-built man who was about two foot taller than me, probably weighed twice as much again and looked as though he could comfortably eat me for breakfast. He had crew-cut hair, half a left ear and eyes so dark his sockets seemed empty. His nose looked as though it had been broken at some point, healed unset, then broken, then healed again, then broken, then healed again. He carried a Thumper upon which was drawn a smiley face and the words ‘Have a Nice Day’, and sewn into the shock-vest was a D-ring. I’d not seen one before, but knew what it meant: once it was pulled, a pulse charge would detonate instantaneously. He’d be Consuling to the end – and if things got truly bad, he’d take as many Villains with him as he could. He was, in spirit rather than current profession, very much a soldier.

  ‘Fodder, this is Charlie Worthing,’ said Laura, ‘Deputy Consul.’

  I nodded respectfully and he stared at me without blinking.

  ‘I’ve not seen any transfer paperwork,’ he said after what seemed like an age.

  I told him that I was delivering a nightwalker, but on account of Continuity Protocol SX-70 was representing Chief Logan on an investigation.

  Laura and Fodder looked at one another, and I think I might have seen a glimmer of nervousness on Fodder’s otherwise impassive features.

  ‘Chief Logan is dead? How did that happen?’

  ‘Aurora thumped him backwards into a wall when he was about to execute me. He’d been farming nightwalkers,’ I added quickly by way of explanation, ‘and couldn’t trust me not to blab.’

  There was silence for a few moments.

  ‘Toccata will not be pleased,’ said Fodder, ‘not pleased at all – and I’m sure as shit I’m not going to be the one that tells her.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Laura. ‘Jonesy can do it – she can run the fastest.’

  ‘Is Toccata around?’ I asked. ‘I could tell her.’

  ‘Clearly, you don’t know Toccata, and no, she’s off-duty.’

  ‘It’s probably important enough to interrupt her break,’ I persisted.

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. And besides, if she thinks you were in any way to blame for Logan’s death, well, I don’t much care for your chances.’

  ‘C’mon,’ I said, having always thought the stories about Toccata were overblown, as was almost everything in the Winter, ‘she can’t be that volatile.’

  ‘She punched me in the eye so hard she detached my retina,’ he said, ‘and all I did was place the preposition at the end of the sentence.’

  ‘That’s grounds for an investigation, certainly a reprimand, maybe even charges,’ I said, ‘against Toccata,’ I added, in case he misunderstood me. But Fodder shook his head.

  ‘You don’t understand. She’s harsh, but she’ll back up her team one hundred per cent. Besides, I’d already been warned three times.’

  ‘He had, you know,’ said Laura. ‘She’s very big on spelling, too. Often holds a surprise bee to try and catch us out. I got “Algonquin” wrong and she wouldn’t speak to me for two weeks.’

  ‘What did you want to know about anyway?’ asked Fodder.

  ‘Viral dreams. Something about a blue Buick.’

  Fodder stared at me for a moment.

  ‘Jonesy and I investigated this a couple of weeks back,’ he said, ‘but decided on no further action. There was this woman named Suzy Watson. Pleasant girl. Single, late twenties. She slept during the late Summer like Moody and Roscoe and awoke two weeks ago. Only this time she was different. Withdrawn, and haunted by a . . . haunted by a . . . ’

  ‘ . . . headless horseman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nightmaiden, Gronk, bondsmen, what?’

  ‘A dream,’ said Fodder.

  ‘Oh.’

  I’d never given dreams much consideration before, not having had one since I went on Juvenox aged eight. What was there to know, beyond that which was obvious? An anachronistic and outmoded pursuit that signified little and did nothing except sap one’s carefully accrued weight during hibernation.

  ‘She wasn’t on Morphenox?’ I asked.

  ‘No; they’re all Beta Ceiling payscale in Railway Infrastructure Support – they don’t qualify.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s contentious,’ said Fodder. ‘Anyway, she wakes up feeling off-kilter, complaining about this dream, and then instead of improving, she gets worse. She has the dream again, night after night, and before long it takes her over. She becomes withdrawn and suspicious, then starts to have waking hallucinations. Pretty soon it’s all she talks about and eventually, she goes into Mrs Nesbit’s and attacks random customers with a machete. She kills one guy and hospitalises two more. Someone calls us as it’s a sleep-related incident, and Toccata tells her to drop the machete. She doesn’t, so she thumps her.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘When Consul Toccata thumps, she thumps to kill.’

  ‘Is it true she eats nightwalkers just for fun?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s rumoured,’ said Laura, ‘and that she garnishes them with mint jelly to make them more appetising.’

  ‘After Suzy Watson, there was Roscoe Smalls,’ continued Fodder, ‘who babbled on about blue Buicks and boulders and Mrs Nesbit – then took the Cold Way Out. We found him huddled under the statue of Gwendolyn VII* outside the museum, frozen solid. He’s still there. Then Moody got it. He had it worst of all.’

  ‘Hooke whacked him dea
d just now,’ I said. ‘He was yelling about Mrs Nesbit and blue Buicks. What did all that mean?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Fodder, ‘but to us it looked like a mixed bag of Sleepstate Paranoia, Hibernational Narcosis and Waking Night Terrors – probably fed by an escalating conversational feedback loop.’

  ‘Panicky Sub-betas are nothing new,’ said Laura. ‘One Winter it’s about heating, the next it’s about vermin, then dreams, then spiders, then someone thinks they’ve heard a nightmaiden or that the Gronk’s after them. That’s the problem with natural sleepers. They spook real easy, and once one of them has seen or heard something weird, they all have to. But common sense prevails: you can’t catch dreams.’

  I’d studied this phenomenon in the Academy. Panic could spread during the Winter like wildfire, especially amongst the Sub-beta payscalers, who were notorious chatterers. Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.

  ‘They all had a dream of such fearsome reality that it flooded from their subconscious and invaded their waking hours,’ said Fodder. ‘The dream grew, it took them over. It devoured them.’

  ‘I’m not being impudent or anything, but why was this deemed worthy of “no further action”?’

  ‘Yes, agreed, weird,’ said Fodder, taking no offence at my questioning, ‘but it wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, when it comes to weird stuff, viral dreams hardly make the Sector Twelve top ten.’

  ‘Where’s Toccata on the list?’

  ‘Five or six. Shrimp, will you run Deputy Worthing off a copy of the report?’

  Laura nodded and trotted off, a bounce in her step.

  ‘Thanks for telling me all that,’ I said, conscious that Consulates were under no obligation to share information. ‘Did Toccata think there was anything in viral dreams?’

  ‘She said she thought they were narcosis-induced night terrors, as did we.’

  ‘So why do you think Toccata contacted Logan about it?’

  Fodder shrugged.

  ‘You’d have to ask her – which I don’t recommend. She might have wanted to intrigue Logan to get him out here, or just to piss off Aurora. The pair of them have a complicated relationship. Do you like marshmallows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, and offered me one from a bag.

  Laura returned with the report, which wasn’t large, and marked, as Fodder had said, ‘No Further Action’. It wouldn’t be much of an epitaph for Moody, I thought.

  I thanked them both and was buzzed out of the shock-gates to make my way back to the railway station. It had started to snow once more, but lazily – large flakes spinning slowly down out of the darkness.

  The thawed and refrozen area where Moody had met his end was now covered by a light smattering of snow, and already someone had partially mended the crack on the window of Mrs Nesbit’s with some silicon filler. I hurried on past, my time in Sector Twelve mercifully almost at an end. The Winter was wilder than I’d thought, and everything I had learned from the Consuls in Cardiff and the Academy had been pretty much overturned. There were the rules we were taught, and there were the rules we did our job by. The two were related, but as distant cousins rather than siblings. I needed to be back as a Novice, in Cardiff, doing laundry and photocopying. Away from HiberTech, RealSleep, Sector Twelve, Aurora, night-terrors and dreamers.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. There was another shock in store when I reached the station. The platform was empty. The Cardiff train had gone.

  Marooned

  ‘ . . . The Campaign for Real Sleep or “RealSleep” were a bunch of dangerous disruptionists, hell bent on upsetting the delicate balance of the nation’s hibernatory habits – or an unjustly-banned hibernatory rights group. It depends on your point of view. Not that it mattered. Support of a financial, material or spiritual nature was punishable by life imprisonment . . . ’

  – To Die, Perchance to Sleep? – the Rise and Fall of RealSleep, by Sophie Trotter

  I tried to dispel my panic with denial.

  ‘The Merthyr train,’ I said to the stationmaster when I found her in a tiny office that smelled of coal-smoke, old socks and baking, ‘just gone for coal and water or something, yes?’

  She looked at me, then at an oversized pocket watch she carried in her undersized pocket.

  ‘I let it go fifteen minutes early,’ she said in a curt manner. ‘They were in a hurry to get back through the Torpantu.’

  ‘You said I had two hours.’

  ‘I misspoke. But you can always take the next train. It’s at Springrise plus two, 11.31, all stops to Merthyr, light refreshments available, off peak, Super Saver not valid – but no bicycles.’

  ‘I can’t wait sixteen weeks. I need to be back home now.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you delayed the train in Cardiff. There’s a moral in this story, my friend. Piss around with our timetables, and we’ll piss around with yours. Enjoy your stay in the Douzey. You’ll like it here. No wait, hang on, my mistake – you won’t. If luckless circumstance, Villains, Toccata, cold or Wintervolk don’t get you, the poor food almost certainly will.’

  And she smiled.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so instead told her where to go and what to do with herself when she got there – a futile comment and she and I both knew it – then walked outside the station and stood in the gently falling snow, clenching and unclenching my fists as I tried to make sense of what had just happened. I wanted to find something to kick, but there was little around that wouldn’t have been hard and unyielding and ultimately painful, so I just stood there, seething quietly, the snow gathering silently on the shoulders of my greatcoat, like great big crystallised tears.

  I stood in a marinade of my own self-pity for ten minutes or so until the chill made me shiver, and more practical matters took precedence: survival. I moved to the top of the station footbridge to get a better sense of the local geography. The town was not located specifically around the town square as I had first supposed, but strung out in a line that began at HiberTech on the hill behind me, then stretched along a main road that headed off to the north-west, where forty or so Dormitoria rose in ranks on the opposite slope of the shallow valley, two or three miles distant. The only lights showing were the lanterns over the porters’ lodges, and the gas lamps that illuminated the connecting roadway. There was almost no sound, and it already felt like midwinter, even though it was still officially Autumn for another twenty-nine hours.

  ‘Worthing?’ came a voice below me. ‘What the hell are you still doing here?’

  Below me was Aurora. She was alone, and buttoned up against the cold. It was, I confess, a relief to see her.

  ‘They let the train go early,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  I walked down from the footbridge to where she was waiting for me.

  ‘I’d upset the stationmaster when I delayed the train in Cardiff,’ I explained. ‘Sort of payback.’

  ‘That’s annoying,’ she said, ‘but not unexpected. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was going to go back to the Consulate and see if they could get me out.’

  ‘Probably not the wisest of moves, especially as you’ll have to justify your actions to Toccata at some point. I know it was me that pulled the trigger, but you got into this situation because you insisted on retrieving Bouzouki Girl. While a brave act, it could be seen as reckless, and, well, you did disobey orders and a Chief Consul ended up dead.’

  It didn’t sound good when she said it like that.

  ‘One who was involved in illegal activity.’

  ‘I wish things were that simple,’ she said, ‘but when Toccata’s involved, logic becomes somewhat . . . mutable.’ />
  She stared at me for a moment.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is kind of my fault, so I’ll wangle you a Sno-Trac and you can drive yourself to Hereford; the Winter network Railplane* goes from there. The road is flagged all the way, so pretty easy to navigate. But don’t go in the dark as Villains have been active recently – I’ll find you a bed for a night. Sound okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘sounds very okay. Thank you.’

  She gave me a smile that was really very charming.

  ‘Okay, then. Now, if you don’t mind swapping anonymity for squalor, there’s space in the Sarah Siddons, where you can crash for a couple of days in case the weather’s no good tomorrow. It’s a Beta Pay Ceiling Dormitorium so you’ll be slumming it with natural sleepers, but it’s warm and dry and vermin-free, which is more than can be said for the Howell Harris. They had rats in there a couple of years back, and three residents were eaten. It was kind of funny, actually, given the inflated rates they charge. What do you say?’

  ‘What you suggest,’ I said, glad that I at least had a plan of sorts – and, more importantly, shelter.

  Aurora said the walk would do us good, so we started off down the road towards the gaggle of Dormitoria at the other end of town, our voices muffled, our breath showing white in the sharp air. The low rooftops of the surrounding houses were smooth-capped with snow that looked as though it had been sculpted from polystyrene foam, and a noise limit sign close by read 55 decibels,* a level of hush that would be unworkable in Cardiff. We only started making arrests above 62dB* these days, and even a momentary spike beyond 75dB* was hardly regarded as criminal.

  ‘I’m really sorry about Mr Hooke being such an arse,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t my choice, but sometimes you have to work with what you’re given.’

  We both turned as we heard a noise behind us. It was the drowsy I’d seen earlier in the Wincarnis, shuffling through the snow. She was swathed in large and expensive badger-furs that would have looked a lot better – and fresher – when they were on the badger.