Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  I approached HiberTech with, I think, trepidation. It was hard to downplay the importance of Morphenox. Living through the Winter was now expected rather than a welcome bonus. Skill retention, lowered food consumption and the redeployment and transplant benefits were already reaping dividends in our post-gorge economic environment. The naturally slumbering Southern Alliance, once the equals of the Northern Fed, were now lagging behind in every single societal and fiscal measure you cared to mention. Any which way you looked at it, Morphenox was a winner – so long as you could earn the right to its use. If you could, all well and good. And if you couldn’t, well, heck: at least you had something to which you could aspire.

  The HiberTech facility was dark and quiet with no sign of anyone about. If it hadn’t been for the parade of gas lights illuminating the road up and out of the town, one might have thought it long abandoned. The sixty-acre complex, I knew, was surrounded on all sides by intentionally open and featureless countryside, and four watchtowers on the corners of the twenty-metre-high wall gave the lookouts a good view in all directions. The large double doors were of banded steel construction, with narrow loopholes to either side. There was a telephone bolted to one side of the entrance, and I picked up the handset, shook off the snow, pressed the ‘call’ button and introduced myself.

  ‘Deputy Consul Worthing, C, BDA26355F,’ I said, ‘delivering a nightwalker. Tiffen, L, HAB21417F.’

  ‘Hmm,’ came the voice, ‘we were expecting Logan, J, JHK889521M.’

  I told him that Logan had died and that under Continuity of Command Protocol SX-70 I was continuing his duties. There were more questions after this and eventually, seemingly satisfied, a guard unlocked the outer door and let us in. After the surrender of my Bambi we entered a large and expensively decorated reception lobby, with a domed ceiling, a grand staircase behind and several double-width corridors heading off into the complex. Facing the desk was a large stained-glass window of considerable opulence that told the story of HiberTech Industries, and on the wall was a large HiberTech logo that dwarfed the twin portraits of Gwendolyn XXXVIII and Don Hector. Also of note were two golf carts parked up with a nightwalker in each, staring blankly at the floor. This was surprising; driving a golf cart was well beyond the skill level of any redeployed that I’d seen. Incongruously, they had been given name badges. Some wag had named them Chas and Dave.

  ‘Welcome to HiberTech,’ said the security guard in a cheery manner. His name, I noted from his badge, was Josh. He wore a black uniform with the HiberTech logo stitched on the top pocket, and behind him there were framed certificates of the ‘HiberTech Reception Desk Employee of the Week’, which were all him. Either he was the only one, or he was the only one any good at it.

  ‘Always happy to have visitors,’ he continued. ‘I’m something of a visitor myself, being from Canada. You should visit. We have one hundred and forty-eight mountain ranges, but somehow we’re mostly known for our trees. Most of the country is trees, actually.’

  ‘I’d like to go,’ I said, ‘but isn’t it all a little, well, frozen?’

  ‘Only in a glaciated permanent snow ice-field and tundra-y sort of way. Oh, and let’s get any confusion sorted out: lacrosse, our true national game, is intentionally violent, whereas hockey is incidentally violent, and unless you’ve got time to spare, don’t ask me about counterfeit maple syrup. Goodness, is that a bouzouki?’

  ‘It is,’ I said, and Mrs Tiffen dutifully began to play ‘Delilah’. Josh handed me back my documents.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said. ‘Infiltrators from RealSleep are never far away. Ever met one?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘or at least, not that I know of: what do they look like?’

  ‘They look like everyone else. That’s the whole problem.’

  He stared at me for a moment, with his right eyebrow arched just higher than his left.

  ‘You look as though you’ve recently taken some bad karma.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I simply abhor Weltschmerz. What can I do to cheer you up?’

  I thought about Logan.

  ‘How are you at erasing poor life-changing decisions in a time-travelly sort of way?’

  ‘I can’t do anything about that, but perhaps I can ameliorate the pain it causes. Stop off on the way out and I’ll fix you one of my creations.’

  ‘Creations?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Josh scribbled me out a visitor’s pass, then had me sign a form on a clipboard as I looked about curiously. There were a few people moving around the corridors, but they walked in an unhurried manner, and no one was talking. Although busy, the facility was eerily silent.

  ‘Is it usually this quiet?’ I asked.

  ‘Management think that idle chitter-chatter distracts the mind from creative thought,’ he said, while selecting the best lemon out of a dozen he had below the counter and fetching a food mixer from a cupboard. ‘Do you play Scrabble?’

  ‘I once laid “Bezique” on the triple for two hundred and twenty-eight points.’

  I’d stopped playing soon after. You’d have to, really. Every rack I’d pulled from then on was loaded with crushing disappointment.

  ‘Wow,’ said Josh, ‘you will so take the pants off us. We meet in the Wincarnis most mornings, between ten and midday. Join us.’

  I told him I was leaving on the next train.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘Well, another time. You can wait in that room over there, and holler if you need anything. Don’t forget to stop by on the way out.’

  The waiting room was painted in light hospital green, and contained only unbreakable chairs and faded posters on the wall. The largest was published by OffPop and depicted the twelfth Mrs Nesbit, looking winsome and mumsy and proclaiming that there were ‘cash bonuses for baby production beyond lawful allocation’. More welcoming were a couple of Welsh Tourist Board posters. One was advertising the local area with the now-universal slogan ‘Visit Wales – Not Always Raining’ and the second of Rhosilli beach, the wreck of the Argentinian Queen stranded high on the shore, with the inviting and unassailably true slogan:

  There will always be the Gower

  There was also the smell of hospitals about the place, a mix of paint, bleach and fresh laundry. I fed Mrs Tiffen two gherkins and a packet of stringy cheese and she began playing ‘Delilah’ again, but more quietly, as though the gravity of the surroundings called for it.

  About ten minutes later a woman walked around the corner, deeply absorbed in a report. She had short hair and small, pointed features. Very like Lucy Knapp, which was hardly surprising, as it was Lucy Knapp.

  ‘Lucy—?’

  ‘Hey, Charlie,’ she said with a grin, ‘heard you were heading our way.’

  I got up and gave her a hug.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m on placement to the Advanced Redeployment Unit as part of the HiberTech Fast Track Management Scheme. Amazing work they’re doing.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Chief Consul Logan?’

  ‘He died. Well, sort of killed, actually – by Aurora.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘He was going to kill me.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill you?’

  ‘It’s a long story, and not one I’m proud of.’

  ‘Tell me when you’re ready. Is that her trick?’ she asked, pointing to Mrs Tiffen, who was still playing ‘Delilah’.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Impressive. Your Bouzouki Girl will be useful R&D; Project Lazarus involves the enhanced redeployment of nightwalkers to serve the community in far better ways than they do already.’

  ‘So there is a Project Lazarus,’ I said. ‘What about Morphenox-B?’

  ‘I can neither confirm nor deny,’ she said with a smile, ‘and just in case you missed it, the paperwork you signed at reception was a Non-Disclosure Agreement. If you whisper a word about anything you see in here, then Mr Hooke – did you meet Mr Hooke?�
�

  I nodded.

  ‘… is tasked to enforce compliance, and I’ve a feeling that’s not something anyone might cherish. There’s a story going round that he once took on a starving Arctic badger – and won.’

  ‘That’s not so impressive.’

  Arctic badgers were notoriously bad tempered, but still no larger than a medium-sized dog. I’d not like to tackle one, but suitably armed, I’d probably be okay, give or take a missing finger or eye.

  ‘When he was four,’ said Lucy. ‘He’s womad stock; Oldivician, I think. Part of his midwinter freezerthon.’36

  ‘Okay, that is very impressive.’

  ‘So the story goes. C’mon, let’s get you both over to “B” Wing.’

  She beckoned me out of the waiting room and clapped her hands twice. Both golf-cart drivers looked up with the languid heavy-headed motion typical of a nightwalker, and she pointed at the one who’d been named Dave, who drove slowly up to us and stopped. He then simply sat there, waiting, staring at the wall above and to the right of us.

  Lucy gestured for me to get myself and Mrs Tiffen on board, then sat herself.

  ‘We’re trying to extend the redeployed nightwalker skill set beyond sorting spuds and opening doors,’ she said, ‘but it’s all very much in the Beta-testing stage at the moment – which is why we don’t let them off-facility. It’s company policy to always have a jam sandwich and a box of almond slices when you’re in a golf cart with them. Despite their skills, they do still get a little bitey when hungry.’

  Lucy told the driver where we were headed and we were off with a screech of tyres. There followed a singularly hair-raising trip of narrowly missed obstacles and recklessly negotiated blind corners with only the beeping of the warning siren to assist any pedestrians out of our path. Dave seemed to have only a cursory interest in his task, and throughout much of the journey stared at my arm as a dog might stare at a bone.

  Lucy told me I would be meeting The Notable Goodnight, so to mind my manners.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  My surprise was easily explained: The Notable Charlotte Goodnight was the only surviving member of ‘The HiberTech Five’, the close-knit team that had been with Don Hector during the development of Morphenox. Goodnight had been a sixteen-year-old chemistry prodigy when she joined the team, and had personally perfected Juvenox for the under-twelves. When Don Hector died, she was the logical choice to lead the company.

  ‘What did Mother Fallopia say when you told her you were leaving?’ asked Lucy as we hurtled along.

  ‘She said that I was an ungrateful little shit, I’d be dead less than a week into the Winter, and if I had a known grave, she’d come and dance on it.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Words to that effect.’

  ‘You still did the right thing.’

  We drove through a self-opening door which led into another long corridor, but this one open to the elements on one side. I’d seen aerial pictures of the facility and knew it was constructed much like a college around a quadrangle, but here the quad was a twelve-acre area of trees, shrubs and even a stream that, were it not frozen solid, would have risen in one corner, tumbled through rocks and gullies and cascaded down a waterfall before it vanished with a gurgle at the opposite corner.

  ‘The entire facility was originally designed as a four-thousand-bed sanatorium for those suffering Hibernatory Narcosis,’ said Lucy, following my gaze, ‘but it was handed over to Don Hector and his team as his research bore more and more fruit. By the time they had developed a workable version of Morphenox, the whole site had been given over to hibernatory research: how more citizens might hope to survive it, how we might need less of it, and how to better handle the mental and physical issues surrounding early rising.’

  ‘It’s very impressive,’ I said.

  ‘It should be,’ replied Lucy. ‘HiberTech’s mission statement is to forever rid humans of the debilitating social and economic effects of hibernation.’

  ‘It’s a bold promise.’

  ‘HiberTech always think big. We’re here.’

  The golf cart screeched to a halt outside a door marked ‘Project Lazarus’.

  ‘Have-a-nice-day-enjoy-your-stay-at-HiberTech,’ said Dave, repeating the words as though he’d learned them phonetically.

  Lucy unlocked the door by way of a keypad and after several rights and lefts and another pair of swing doors, we found ourselves in a circular room with desks, chairs and filing cabinets. Radiating out from this circular chamber were eight corridors, and off these were secure cells, perhaps twenty or so to each corridor. I could hear noises – murmurings and bangings – along with the distinctively unpleasant odour of unwashed nightwalker. A little way down the corridor a male nurse with a rubber apron was hosing down a cell, the soiled water running into a central drain.

  I stood there, looking around, one hand on Mrs Tiffen’s elbow. To my right was a door with a glass panel, and, curiosity getting the better of me, I moved closer and peered in. A nightwalker dressed in a pale green jumpsuit was strapped to what looked like a barber’s chair. Directly above him was a curious copper device the shape of a traffic cone but six times larger, the pointy end about an inch from the subject’s forehead. Behind the operating table a pair of technicians were working on several large machines that were covered in gauges, buttons, dials and four large screens. The technicians were saying something, but it was muffled by the thick glass set into the door.

  ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat?’

  I turned. It was The Notable Goodnight.

  She was older than she looked in the publicity pictures, but to my guess on the cusp of her seventh decade. A well-exercised mid-season weight, she had unblinking blue eyes and was dressed in a starched white uniform that seemed to exude no-nonsense efficiency. She stared at me with thinly disguised disdain.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, embarrassed at being caught snooping, ‘sorry.’

  ‘Well, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Do you know what curiosity did to the cat?’

  ‘It killed it, I guess.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Killed it,’ I said in a louder voice.

  ‘Exactly. The meaning is quite clear, of course—’

  She stopped, thought for a moment, then turned to Lucy.

  ‘Lucy, dear, why did curiosity kill the cat?’

  Lucy had been reading Mrs Tiffen’s file but looked up abruptly as her name was spoken.

  ‘Oh – er, the context of the saying remains obscure, ma’am, but the idiomatic meaning is quite clear.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Goodnight, ‘couldn’t have put it better myself. An idiom. Our work here is unpalatable but necessary for the greater good. In idiomatic terms … Lucy?’

  ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs?’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘Isn’t that … proverbial rather than idiomatic?’ I asked.

  They both stared at me for a moment.

  ‘Lost interest and moving on,’ said Goodnight. ‘Where’s Chief Logan?’

  ‘Aurora killed him.’

  ‘For kicks and giggles?’

  ‘Does she kill people for kicks and giggles?’

  ‘You don’t get to ask questions, Consul. Does Toccata know Logan is dead?’

  ‘I’m guessing probably not yet,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Who’s going to tell her?’ I asked.

  ‘Not me,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Nor me,’ said The Notable Goodnight, still staring at me. ‘What’s the deal with your head?’

  I was taken aback by her directness, and put out a hand to touch the right side of my face, which bowed inwards and had a left-handed twist to it, which caused my right eye to sit lower than my left by about the width of an eyeball-and-a-half. To me and my friends and the sisters it was just me and unworthy of comment – indeed, not even noticed – but from the
general public’s reactions I could gauge the societal view was somewhere between intriguing and what the physiotypical term ‘unsightly’.

  ‘It’s a congenital skull deformity,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said dismissively, making me think her interest was entirely from a medical curiosity point of view. ‘Not calcitic, then?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Bad luck on you,’ she said. ‘We’ve been working on reducing and even reversing the effects of calcium migration.’

  ‘I don’t see this as bad luck,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘I’m really not interested.’

  And without warning she stuck an open safety pin into Mrs Tiffen’s forearm. A spot of crimson welled up. I was the only one that flinched; the dead woman didn’t even blink.

  ‘The sight of blood upset you, Consul?’ asked Goodnight. ‘Misplaced empathy will get you killed.’

  ‘With the greatest respect, ma’am, I thought that was curiosity.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what killed the cat,’ said Goodnight after a moment’s thought. ‘Curiosity … about empathy.’

  She looked at Lucy, hoping for semantic assistance, but Lucy just shrugged.

  ‘Okay, then,’ said The Notable Goodnight, passing me her clipboard. ‘Sign on the dotted line.’

  ‘Do you get many?’ I asked, taking the clipboard. ‘Vacants that do really good tricks, I mean?’

  The Notable Goodnight looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘We don’t give out stats,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Long-time company policy,’ said The Notable Goodnight as I signed the custody form. ‘RealSleep like to use our own stats to hang us, so we don’t release them – facts can really confuse people. But in answer to your question, we had a Tricksy once named Dorothy who could translate anything you said into Morse code. We renamed her “Dot the dash”. We redeployed her as a switchboard operator and in tests she could work seven-day, sixteen-hour shifts with only one break for toilet and dinner of thirty minutes. Now that’s productivity for you – don’t you agree?’