Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘I’ll be honest,’ I said, ‘I’ve nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it’s a dangerous nonsense.’

  ‘An unbeliever is but an opportunity,’ said Bob with an unrealistic level of optimism, ‘and a man surrounded by an abundance of opportunity is a rich man indeed. What brings you to Sector Twelve, Deputy? Are you here to … dream?’

  I realised who they were, then. They were the polar opposite to those of us on Morphenox: using illegally-obtained dream enhancers, they shunned the featureless blackness that was the Morphenox hibernation experience, and rode out the Winter on a chemically-induced froth of energy-sapping subconscious escapism. And, given the rules surrounding Winter Asylum, they could do it for free, with legally mandated food and shelter.

  Parasites, basically – of the worst sort.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, without much subtlety, ‘you’re dreamers.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Shamanic Bob with a faint smile, ‘but don’t be thinking we’re victims of our lifestyle, we’re here by choice. And believe you me,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘this is the place to score some D-Reem. One hundred per cent pure, uncut. We have a contact in HiberTech; we swap it kilo-for-the-gram with Tunnock’s Teacakes.’

  D-Reem was an escalator, a dream enhancer. Slang made it all cool and groovy, when actually it was all just monumentally dumb.

  ‘Do you dream, Deputy?’ he asked.

  It was an easy assumption I was on Morphenox. I didn’t dream. Or at least, nothing serious. Just the odd scrap during nightly nap.

  ‘I’ve not dreamed since I was in single digits,’ I said. ‘I’m okay with that.’

  ‘If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free – Morphenox muffles the mind and smothers the imagination.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘You should ride the dream train,’ continued Shamanic Bob with a smile, ‘pop an escalator and see what you’re missing. It’s the dark and dirty cousin of Morphenox, but there couldn’t be one without the other. It’s night and day, my friend, hope and despair, Eldon and Manning, darkness and light. We’re the flipside of sound slumbering, the crusty night-seepage you scrape off and sweep under the mattress.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I said, at the same time doubting my implied presumption that there was something to understand.

  ‘Do you know your Don Hector history?’ he asked with what passes for enthusiasm amongst his calling. ‘What the good doctor was doing for twenty years before he introduced Morphenox to the grateful masses?’

  Come to think of it, I didn’t. The story was that he spent two decades perfecting the drug; I’d not heard how he actually did it.

  ‘Morphenox was a fluke,’ said Shamanic Bob when I didn’t answer, ‘discovered wholly by chance.’

  I was going to ask him to expand upon that when Moody turned up. Unfortunately, not in a manner I’d hoped or expected. We were interrupted by a shout and I looked out of the café window, where I could see a naked Moody running towards where we sat, his coarse wintercoat standing hard up against the cold. He was wielding an axe and yelling ‘Blue Buick!’ at the top of his voice, and without pausing for a second swung the axe with all his might against the plate-glass window of Mrs Nesbit’s – a pointless gesture given that it would be certified to withstand torrential rain, gale-borne debris and an enraged mammoth. He scratched the toughened glass, but that was about it.

  ‘This isn’t a great advert for dreaming,’ said Shamanic Bob. ‘Moody has been riding the arse end of the reality slope for quite a few days now.’

  ‘I hope the Gronk lays eggs in your brain, Mrs Nesbit!’ he yelled, raising the axe to swing it again. ‘And they bury you alive!’

  Just then a man strode unhurriedly around the corner. It was Agent Hooke, all tall and gangly and with a face like leather. He was cradling a Thumper, but not the old-fashioned one of Lopez’s back at the John Edward Jones, it was the Mk VII – twice as powerful and available in matt black or nickel.

  ‘HiberTech Security,’ announced Hooke, standing thirty or so feet from the clearly confused RailTec. ‘Drop or you get dropped.’

  Moody turned to face him with a look of shock. It didn’t appear that he was fully awake, let alone able to follow simple instructions.

  ‘Blue Buick!’ he yelled, then turned to face me, and there was a flash of recognition.

  ‘You’ll visit the blue Buick and Mrs Nesbit will harangue you, too,’ he shouted, ‘tell her nothing and whatever you do, don’t leave the rocks or the hands will get you!’

  And he raised the axe, turned, and charged at Hooke.

  Whump

  My ears popped as a doughnut-shaped pressure wave erupted from the front of Hooke’s weapon and caught Moody full in the chest. I saw the pattern of a Tudor rose blossom on his chest hair before the secondary shock wave lifted him off his feet and propelled him backwards across the square into the unyielding stone of the town hall. There was a wettish thud and he fell into a lifeless heap on the ground; the compacted snow melted into water by the momentary pressure change to reveal cobbles and half an iron inspection cover. In a split second the pressure had normalised and the water instantly refroze as gin-clear ice, locking Moody’s body to the ground. In the Winter, warmth is only ever a transitory commodity.

  Hooke broke open the weapon, ejected the spent cell and replaced it with another from his pocket.

  A movement caught my eye. It was Aurora running around the corner, weapon at the ready. She threw up her hands when she saw what had happened.

  ‘You bloody idiot!’ she yelled when she saw Moody’s body. ‘What happened to good old-fashioned proportionality?’

  ‘I was well within my rights, Aurora,’ said Hooke in an unrepentant tone. ‘Moody was endangering my life and that of others. The law permits me to use reasonable force in such circumstances.’

  He said it in the same sort of tone you might use to describe your favourite brand of butter.

  ‘We need our infrastructure support staff,’ said Aurora in an exasperated tone, ‘even the deranged ones. Who’s going to bring the rail network out of mothballs to meet the Springrise schedule? You?’

  There followed an argument in which claims and counterclaims were issued, insults traded, demotions hinted. But ultimately, with little to no headway.

  Within a few minutes other security agents had arrived, presumably alerted by the Thumper’s pressure signature, which would have every barograph spiking within a mile. It was only then that Aurora spotted me in the window and walked over.

  ‘Deputy Worthing,’ she said as she walked into the café, Hooke by her side, ‘how’s the viral dreams investigation going?’

  ‘One of your agents just killed my star witness.’

  ‘It was self-defence,’ said Hooke. ‘You saw him run at me with an axe.’

  ‘Did he?’ asked Aurora.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I see you’ve met our resident parasites,’ said Hooke, who had been looking around the café. ‘Good evening, Shamanic Bob.’

  ‘Good evening,’ said Bob with a defiant smile. ‘Come to wish us all a slow death?’

  ‘You read me like a book,’ said Hooke. ‘Spooky. But let’s face facts: you are the most loathsome of spongers.’

  ‘That’s Mr Loathsome Sponger to you,’ said Shamanic Bob, his defiance not wavering in light of Hooke’s insults, ‘and I know my rights. You’re private security, not Winter Consulate. You have no jurisdiction over me.’

  But ever cautious, presumably on account of his dreaming habit, he decided to leave anyway.

  ‘We’ll talk again,’ said Shamanic Bob to me, although it was unlikely. My train was due out soon. But despite what little I knew of HiberTech, I was intrigued by what he’d said about Morphenox being a fluke.

  ‘Liars and schemers all,’ said Hooke. ‘Did you lend him any money?’

&n
bsp; ‘No,’ I said, ‘but you should probably know they’re scoring D-Reem from somebody in HiberTech.’

  ‘It troubles us not one jot,’ said Hooke. ‘One less sleep-shy is one less mouth to feed.’

  ‘I’m really sorry you weren’t able to talk to Moody,’ said Aurora, trying to move the conversation on and nodding towards where the security agents outside were using a heat gun to free Moody from the ice. They weren’t very good at it; I could smell the singed hair from within the café. ‘Mr Hooke was employed for his ruthless adherence to HiberTech’s well-being, so subtlety isn’t really his strong suit. Do you accept my apology?’

  ‘Yes, I guess.’

  ‘Good. I have a few questions for you. Is that okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She pulled a photograph out of her breast pocket and laid it on the counter. The picture depicted a man in his forties, fairly nondescript, thinning hair, holding an iguana.

  ‘Know this person?’ she asked.

  ‘Never seen him.’

  ‘This is Hugo Foulnap. The only Hugo Foulnap. An accountant, he nightwalked twelve years ago and was parted out the same Winter. The Hugo Foulnap in the hotel room wasn’t Hugo Foulnap at all.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, unsure where she was going with this or what she wanted me to do. ‘Why is he holding an iguana?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s relevant. What do you think they were going to do with Mrs Tiffen?’

  ‘She was going to be farmed.’

  ‘Foulnap actually said that?’

  ‘Not specifically, but it was fairly obvious.’

  ‘Did he mention Kiki?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Foulnap say anything that suggested he was with the Campaign for Real Sleep?’

  ‘Nothing I can think of,’ I said, but then added without really thinking, ‘If you suspected he was with the Campaign, why didn’t you arrest him?’

  I knew it was impertinent the moment I’d said it, but it wasn’t Aurora who reacted, it was Hooke.

  ‘You’ve got some lip on you. Any more of that and I’ll rearrange your face – although from the look of you, someone has already tried.’

  He smirked at a joke that he thought was both funny and original, something in which he was entirely wrong on both counts.

  ‘Then maybe you could arrange it for me and help us all out,’ I said, having weathered far worse insults over the years. The interaction with Gary Findlay had been the turning point. He’d made fun of my looks for years but me biting off his ear was dubbed ‘wholly disproportionate’. Mother Fallopia was bound by full disclosure policy after the event, and once I had ‘Biter’ on my record even the more sympathetic adopters hurried on past.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Aurora, ‘is there something unusual about Worthing’s face?’

  It suddenly struck me that she only saw the left-hand side of things – witness her curious half-sketch and not seeing the MediTech – so she might not see the wonky side of my head at all.

  ‘I have a congenital skull deformity,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she replied, leaning over to try and see, and I think failing, ‘then that makes Mr Hooke’s comments entirely uncalled for – you’re to apologise.’

  ‘I apologise unreservedly, ma’am,’ he said in a bland monotone.

  ‘Not to me, you clot,’ said Aurora, nodding her head in my direction.

  ‘Oh,’ he muttered, then turned to me and gave a fulsome if strained apology, adding that if I so wished I could make fun of the fact that he had lost his left testicle in a ‘freak accident involving a revolving door’ with no risk of retaliation either now or in the future.

  I declined, and he took a step back.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Aurora. ‘Hooke is particularly suited to thinking up imaginatively terrifying interrogation techniques, and sometimes forgets himself. Okay,’ she added, picking up the photo, ‘we’re done. You have the thanks of HiberTech Industries for the safe delivery of the cabbage – and if you see any of the people from that hotel room I’d like you to contact HiberTech Security immediately. Yes?’

  I told her I most assuredly would, but privately I was thinking that all I wanted to do was to speak to Chief Toccata, get home and then have nothing to do with Sector Twelve ever again. Aurora offered me her hand to shake and then pulled me into the Deep Winter embrace, her breathing husky and close to my ear. I could feel the flat of her thighs against mine, the hardness of the Bambi across her chest.

  ‘Good luck, Charlie,’ she said, her breath smelling of coffee, banana milk and Mintolas, ‘I have the strongest feeling you’re going to be a really good Consul.’

  She released me and I turned and headed towards the exit. I checked my watch. My train was due to depart in forty-eight minutes.

  Consulate and Fodder

  * * *

  ‘… The Fraternity-Community-Fertility social policy was borderline obsolete now that Winters were becoming increasingly survivable. But the Pool’s redistribution, child-matching and charitable policies were firmly entrenched. It wasn’t so bad if you were cute, but any pooler who’d spent even ten minutes as “remaindered” would have the whole petting zoo banned in a heartbeat …’

  – 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.’