‘I think I’m … Don Hector.’
‘Presumptuous of you, wouldn’t you say? Describe the Buick.’
‘It’s blue, the colour of the sky,’ I said, ‘it’s not new and has various damaged parts, a bit of rust, an AA badge on the grille, off kilter.’
Mrs Nesbit smiled again. She was looking at me, but her eyes were unseeing. What I was witnessing, she could not. She seemed more brightly coloured than the surroundings, and had a thin sparkly aura that ran all around her.
‘Tell me about your childhood.’
‘Pool from birth,’ I said, ‘insurance write-off. I wasn’t adopted on account of my noggin and biting off Gary Findlay’s ear.’
‘Not you – the other you. I want to know about Don Hector.’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I’m only dreaming I’m him.’
But there was something, as there was when I was Birgitta’s husband. Vague, nebulous, but there, crouching in the back of my mind like a perching osprey: on a kid’s trike when I was very young, going as fast as I could on the carpeted corridor of a large country house, trying to escape something – grief, I think.
‘I was on a trike,’ I said. ‘It’s a week past Springrise, and I can recall a sense of maternal absence. I can feel the loss.’
And I could, an angry lump of emptiness that wouldn’t leave my chest. The same sort of lump I felt at the Pool when prospective parents passed unblinking on their hurried way to the other kids, the ones not made distinctly and beautifully unique by a touch of asymmetry.
‘Good – you’re in. Now listen carefully. Is there a cylinder anywhere close by?’
‘What sort of cylinder?’
‘A wax cylinder.’
‘With music on it? There’s lots in the apartment.’
‘No; in the dream. We need the cylinder – and you need to find it. Explore the recesses of Don Hector’s mind.’
I looked around. The only thing in sight other than the oak tree and the picnic and the car was the Morpheleum, sitting on the horizon.
‘There’s a temple to Morpheus. About half a mile away.’
‘Good. Try and get there. Using the Buick offers the best chance, we’ve learned.’
‘You’ve tried it?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
I looked at the empty space between myself and the car. It was barely ten paces away, but as I watched, a hand surfaced momentarily between myself and the Buick, then sank out of sight.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘The hands?’
‘Yes, the hands. They’ll get me.’
‘They’ll always get you, Charlie. Trying to drive to the temple, not being able to. Anything to stop you finding the cylinder, stop you reaching the Morpheleum. But the cylinder is in there somewhere. The temple is a good start. The clock is running – I suggest you start driving, and fast.’
I elected to do as she said, but then noticed with a feeling of dread that the hands were not simply severed hands, but small hand-like creatures, the wrist domed over with skin like a healed stump, and not looking like part of a human at all. I put my own hand in my pocket, pulled out a rabbit’s-foot key ring and made a dash for the Buick.
I couldn’t run as fast as I wanted. I was weak, and my feet felt draggy. Within a few paces I could sense the hands grasp the hem of my trousers, and from here they started to climb my legs, making me heavier, impeding my progress. I made it to the car and tried to get in but the weight and volume of the hands made it impossible to move, let alone drive. I kicked and pushed and tore at the hands but even if I dislodged one, two more would stream out of the earth to take their place. I heaved myself into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition. The oil and generator lights flicked on and the car’s engine burst into life. Without a foot to work the clutch, I simply pushed the gear lever into first. The gearbox clunked, the car lurched and the engine stalled. I shouted as a wave of hands erupted from the soil, flowed into the car in a flood and covered my face and then dragged me outside. I had a fleeting glimpse of the shimmery Mrs Nesbit before I was pulled beneath the ground, the taste of soil in my mouth, the earth above me pressing heavily on my chest and a sense of enveloping darkness. I tried to yell but my mouth was full of dry soil and—
— a voice. But not Mrs Nesbit’s.
‘What are you still doing here?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’ll rephrase that: what in all that’s cold and dead and putrid are you still doing here?’
Jonesy
* * *
‘… Skill erosion due to hibernational mortality could be disastrous to complex manufacturing, infrastructure and management systems, so almost every job was devised with SkillZero protocols in mind. Anyone who achieved an 82% pass or higher in General Skills could run anything from a fast food joint to a Graphite Reactor …’
– Handbook of Winterology, 6th edition, Hodder & Stoughton
I didn’t recognise the voice, but figured it was a Deputy sent by Chief Logan to make sure I didn’t lapse into full hibernation, always a risk with first-time Winterers. I was grateful to be back in Cardiff. Spending my first assignment in Sector something-or-rather at the Sarah Whatsit Dormitorium hadn’t sounded like a huge barrel of fun, although I couldn’t as yet remember how I’d managed to get back.
On the Railplane, I expect.
‘You with me, Worthing?’
‘I’m with you,’ I croaked, my throat dry, my vocal cords stiff with disuse.
‘Truly?’
‘No.’
I felt myself groan. My head felt like mud, my eyes were gummed tight shut and I really only had one thought in my head: that I desperately, urgently, painfully wanted to go back to sleep.
‘There was a striped towel,’ I said, as memories started to return, firing randomly around inside my mind like lottery balls, ‘and a beach ball. A child, a girl, laughing. A woman in a swimsuit, a wrecked liner – the Argentinian Queen.’
‘It’s called Arousal Confusion,’ came the woman’s voice from the darkness. ‘You won’t know shit for a couple of minutes and you’ll talk utter bollocks.’
‘She took a Polaroid,’ I said, ‘and the orange-and-red parasol was of spectacular size and splendour.’
‘As I said,’ remarked the voice, ‘utter bollocks. Your mind has been dormant, and your memory is still remapping. Until it does, you’ll be all over the shop. Can you remember your name?’
I lay for a few minutes in the blackness, my eyes still gummed shut, and waited for my thoughts to gather.
‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said as soon as the fact popped into my head, ‘BDA26355F. I’ll be twenty-three on the ninth after Springrise and I’m resident at room five-oh-six at the Melody Black, Cardiff.’
‘Better, but still nonsense,’ said the voice, ‘but to go back to my initial enquiry: you told Laura and Fodder you were leaving on the last train. So: what are you still doing here?’
I had to think really hard. There had been talk about taking a Sno-Trac somewhere. Nope, it had gone again.
‘Okay,’ came the voice, ‘I think it’s time to draw back the curtains.’
She placed something damp in my palm and I gently massaged the hard sleep-crust that had sealed my eyes tight shut. I pulled at my top eyelid, the crust broke with an almost-audible snik, and in an instant my vision returned – garish and distorted to begin with, but as my long-dormant cortex kicked into life, the world pulled itself into some semblance of order.
I saw Clytemnestra first, exactly the same as I’d seen her last. But with Clytemnestra came the unwelcome news that I had not returned to Cardiff.
‘The Sarah Siddons,’ I sighed, ‘Sector Twelve.’
‘It grows on you like mildew and needy cousins,’ said a woman who was sitting on a chair next to the bed. ‘We call it “The Twelve” or more usually “The Douzey”. You may get to enjoy it. It’s not likely, but you might.’
She had mousy-brown hair cut short, was dressed in the off-white Wi
nter combat fatigues usually favoured by Consuls, Footmen and the military, and was looking at me with a bemused smile. She was either a very healthy forty or a horribly unhealthy twenty, had faintly Southern features and above her name badge wore a pair of silver storks. She carried a pair of Bambis on her hips and, like Fodder, had a D-ring sewn into her shock-vest.
‘Hello,’ I said, blinking away the gumminess from my vision.
‘I’m Vice-Consul Bronwen Jones,’ she said. ‘Everyone calls me Jonesy. Bit obvious for a nickname and I’m not dead keen on it. I wanted something more along the lines of “IceMaiden” or “BlackWidow” or “FrostCrumpet” but you don’t get to choose these things.’
‘FrostCrumpet?’
‘That was always a third choice,’ she admitted, ‘not my favourite either.’
‘I used to be called “Wonky”,’ I said, hoping to ingratiate myself with the thinnest of shared experiences, ‘I’m hoping that doesn’t stick.’
‘It will now.’
She offered me her left hand for me to shake. Her right was mostly missing, and what remained had healed raggedly: Winter patch-me-ups always ended up looking worse.
A kettle started whistling somewhere and Jonesy got up and vanished into the next room while I stretched, my muscles quivering with the effort and instantly tightening into a crampy spasm. I tried several times to get up with varying levels of success, and could stand unaided by the time Jonesy reappeared with two mugs. It was hot chocolate, sweet and thick, and as I drank I felt my core temperature rise. The clouds in my head began to part more rapidly, and with this, unwelcome memories returned. Aurora had thumped Logan so hard he’d been embedded into a wall, I’d been marooned in Sector Twelve and was spending a few nights in the Sarah Siddons before I was to drive myself out. I also had an uncomfortable feeling that I might have dreamed myself back into the Gower from a memorable holiday when I was a kid, mixed up with several paintings and the artist whom I’d inexplicably named Birgitta, which was kind of odd as the only Birgitta I’d known was a bitey spaniel with smelly ears once owned by Sister Placentia.
All of this was worrying. Not the dream itself, which was undeniably enjoyable yet random nonsense, but the very act of dreaming. Only Sub-beta payscalers actually dreamt. If it got out that I was a dreamer, I would be finished socially and, worse, I’d have taken on the risks of the Winter Consul Service for nothing. Until I figured out what was what, no one could know.
I stretched my muscles and felt them cramp again almost instantly.
‘Take it easy to begin with,’ said Jonesy as she opened the shutters, ‘slow wins prizes.’
A grey light flooded the apartment. I sat up in bed, pushed back the bedclothes and had my third big shock of the morning.
I was thin. Really thin.
Jonesy raised an eyebrow.
‘Sailing a bit close to the wind?’ she asked, staring at my scrawny body. ‘It’s a brave or foolhardy person who heads into their first Winter without contingency. Don’t let Toccata find out. She takes reckless disregard of the BMI seriously. Actually,’ she added after a moment’s thought, ‘she kind of takes everything seriously. Even taking seriously she takes seriously.’
For the moment, Toccata’s opinion didn’t really matter. It would later – big time – but not right now. I had only one question.
‘What day is it?’
‘Slumberdown plus twenty-seven.’
‘What?’
‘Plus twenty-seven. You’ve been out four weeks.’
It took a moment or two for me to digest this fact. I looked at my alarm clock, which had stopped not long after I’d gone to sleep. Without it, I’d inadvertently tumbled down the slope into hibernation. It was embarrassing. Falling asleep on your first overwintering gig was strictly for amateurs.
‘So,’ said Jonesy, ‘let’s start again: what are you doing here?’
I explained about as quickly and truthfully as I could. That Aurora had saved me from Logan; that I’d spoken to Laura and Fodder in the Consulate; that I’d been marooned; had met up again with Aurora; was going to drive myself out; was allocated this room.
‘The next thing I know, you’re waking me up.’
‘Oversleep, did you?’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s not a good start.’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘not a good start at all. But why wake me now,’ I added, ‘why not four weeks ago?’
‘Your office in Cardiff,’ she said, ‘they called several times asking where you were as they need confirmation of Aurora’s account of what happened to Logan. We’d told them you’d departed on the last train, but when they insisted we look further four weeks later, that dope Treacle said he’d walked with you and Aurora in this direction. We did a sweep of the Domitoria, and there you were. You were lucky.’
She was right. If I’d only been carrying two weeks’ contingency instead of four I’d likely be dead right now.
‘Now,’ said Jonesy, ‘you need to explain everything to Toccata. She’s busy until one o’clock. Do you want breakfast?’
I nodded. She told me to keep stretching and then went back into the kitchen area. I moved to the end of the bed, grasped the bedstead and heaved myself to my feet. I paused, took a few steps, stumbled, regained my balance then walked unsteadily to the bathroom, where I relieved myself of something that smelled of overripe silage, looked like yacht varnish and felt as though it were burning a new way out.
This done, I stepped into the shower to wash the gammy night-crust from my wintercoat, and while I did so, I thought about the painter. Oddly, the dream had not been a faint jumble of broken images softened into broad ambiguity by the fog of sleep, but as strong and as real as anything that actually had happened: the trip up here, Logan’s death, Foulnap – even the flailing nightwalker on the operating table at HiberTech and the shiny wetness of the cobbles where Hooke had whacked Moody.
Once I’d soaped and scrubbed twice I ran a number-two clipper through my felted hair and dumped the tangled mass in the bin. I stopped frequently to stretch the gnawing stiffness from my limbs, and once I’d combed all over to remove the lice eggs, eight night-worms and a half-dozen hook-daddies, I stood under the gloriously hot water50 and tried to push down a sense of rising panic and failure. After ten minutes and with no positive thoughts about my current predicament, I stepped out, gazed at my scrawny body in the mirror, then clipped my nails short, felt my teeth for any telltale signs of decay or looseness, and slipped on a pair of Suzy’s jogging trousers and a T-shirt. I then went to the window to peer at the Winter, something I’d never witnessed before.
The landscape was utterly without colour. A grey overcast stretched to the mountains, the town and country draped in white, the hard edges of the buildings rounded and softened by the heaps of accreted snow. There was barely any movement; the only sign of life was half a dozen dog-head buzzards wheeling tightly over some waste ground behind the Siddons.
‘They’ll be circling the landfill,’ said Jonesy, who had arrived by my side. ‘We dumped a couple of winsomniacs up there a few days ago; things aren’t freezing as quickly so the scent carries.’
‘The thaw?’ I asked.
‘No, just the end of a milder spell. There’s worse weather on the way – a pretty big one in a couple of days: fifty below freezing, they say. The porters will be pulling the rods in preparation. We’ll want to be inside when it hits. Breakfast is ready.’
We sat down at the table. There was everything: bacon, beans, two kippers, buttered toast, mushrooms, sausage and sauté potatoes. Despite the joyous bounty of the spread, everything was either long-life, tinned or dry-packed. Nothing is fresh in the Winter, they say – except the wind.
We tucked in; Jonesy had made almost the same size for herself.
‘This is nice,’ she said.
She looked at me and smiled, then patted my hand in an oddly affectionate manner, and left hers resting on mine. It was her tattered hand, all livid scar tissue and string-sized stitch marks. I didn’
t move my hand away through not wanting to offend, so waited until she moved her hand to pass me the salt, and then elected to keep my hands off the table in future.
‘It’s sort of like being long-partnered,’ she added.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Sort of like being long-partnered,’ she repeated, ‘sitting here together, enjoying our retirement and sharing a sense of past histories together, a warm and cosy sense of familiarity.’
The alarm bells started ringing.
‘I’m … not sure I follow you. Retirement sounds nice, but hardly realistic.’
‘That’s the whole idea. Since Consuls rarely die of old age, I thought we could have our fond dotage now, while we still can. We could meet up after work, and just kind of sit together in companionable silence. You might darn a sock and make comments from time to time while I read, and you could say “Yes, dear”, or “That’s interesting” when I say something intelligent you don’t understand. We could even play Cluedo, but only if I can be Miss Scarlett and not the murderers.’
‘That’s not quite how Cluedo works,’ I said, and she frowned, so I gave her a quick run-down on the rules while we ate.
‘You seem very expert,’ she said, which was hardly a word I’d use – Cluedo isn’t that complex.
‘Sister Zygotia used to play it with us at the Pool,’ I said.
Not many people talked about the Pool. But now that we were, Jonesy was curious.
‘Were you there long?’
‘Last one out.’
‘What was it like?’
Pools, like meals, terriers and promises, all varied in quality – there were Pools barely suitable for livestock and there was the highly desirable Wackford & Co. with branches in Paris, London and New York.
‘Any institution has room for improvement,’ I said, ‘but on the whole I think it was okay – I just stayed there too long. Look,’ I added, ‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful or anything, but I’d be a lot happier just heading off home, straight back to Cardiff.’
‘No can do, Wonky. Toccata wants to see you, so that’s what’s going to happen. Pass the ketchup.’
Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author Page 17