Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

We found Mrs Tiffen in the bedroom, surrounded by packing cases of food. She was well nourished, but utterly vacant – Oliver Tiffen had been harbouring his wife since she turned nightwalker. She clacked her teeth at us, then launched into a lively rendition of ‘Help Yourself’ on the bouzouki.

‘Plays it well, doesn’t she?’ said Logan.

It wasn’t unusual for nightwalkers to display skills dredged up from the tatters of their memory. Most knew a few words and could do a trick of some sort, even as mundane as finding their way to the shops or tuning a wireless. A very few, however, could do quite extraordinary things, like ice-skate and play Canasta. Mrs Tiffen was one of these, or, in the parlance of nightwalkers, ‘Tricksy’. Rumour had it the more advanced redeployed – the Edwards and Janes, for instance – were based on these individuals. More upstairs to rewire, apparently.

‘Your husband just drowned under twenty tons of boron slurry,’ said Logan to Mrs Tiffen, ‘but he fulfilled his duty without fuss or drama. If you could be proud of him, you would be.’

Mrs Tiffen didn’t react and just continued to play the bouzouki.

‘Why go to all this trouble keeping her?’ I asked as we stared at the woman, who seemed healthy enough, if a little pale in her demeanour. ‘And to volunteer yourself so young for High Octane and such a potentially gruesome death?’

In answer, Logan passed me the envelope Oliver Tiffen had given him before he went down into the HotPot chamber. The letter was not long.

Despite appearances to the contrary, my wife is not dead, and is still trapped deep inside herself. It would be too much to hope you will look after her, but I would be grateful if she were neither parted out, nor redeployed.

‘It’s a fairly common belief,’ said Logan, retrieving the letter, ‘but understandable given the strong emotions at stake.’

‘Will you do as he suggests and retire her?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Logan, deep in thought, ‘I’m going to take her to Sector Twelve to be redeployed. It’s a good excuse to look in on Toccata and see what she wants.’

Logan told me to consult Bradshaw’s Railway Guide and I found it was possible to get to Sector Twelve and out again before Network Winter shutdown.

‘What do you want me to do while you’re away?’ I asked.

‘You’re coming too, Worthing. It will be good for your training.’

‘It will?’ I said somewhat doubtfully.

My reluctance was easily explained: Talgarth, the principal town of Sector Twelve, was the largest centre of population in an area otherwise noted for its emptiness, and high proportion of womads and Villains. Roads were impassable during the Winter and food resupply impossible. Not a place you’d want to get stranded. Not a place you’d actually want to be . [25] In the Winter, I mean. In the Summer, it’s gorgeous. Hiking, swimming, cycling, good food – and friendly people.

The rehousing of the Beryl Cook ’s residents was completed by the time we had to head off on the train, five hours later. HiberTech don’t take all Tricksy nightwalkers, so I’d filled in the paperwork and faxed off the request, and had a reply within ten minutes: deliver her to Sector Twelve in all haste.

‘May I ask a question?’ I said as we sat waiting for the train at Cardiff Central. Mrs Tiffen was sitting next to us, playing the increasingly ironic ‘Help Yourself’. Nightwalker transportation wasn’t rocket science: just keep them well fed. They only get troublesome when they get hungry; and when they get really hungry, they get really troublesome.

‘Go ahead.’

‘What does Toccata want you to help her with, and who’s Aurora?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘I’m thinking perhaps they’re both part of the same one.’

He looked at me and smiled.

‘Very… astute. Here it is: that call from Toccata was about a viral dream that’s been sweeping around Sector Twelve. Ordinary, level-headed people are seemingly having a dream about a blue Buick, then going nuts. Psychotic episodes, trying to kill people, screaming about severed hands and oak trees, being buried alive, stuff like that. She wanted my opinion.’

‘Buicks, severed hands, oak trees and being buried alive?’

‘It’s a dream , Charlie, it’s not meant to make sense. Did you cover viral dreams when you were at the Academy?’

‘We only covered dreams as part of Module 6A: “The Physiology of non-Morphenox slumber”.’ [26] ‘Gorge and hope’, as it was known.

No one thought there was any need to teach any more: a dream is just the subconscious mind attempting to form a narrative from a jumble of thoughts, facts and memories and did nothing but sap the resources that led us healthily to the Spring.

‘And Aurora?’

‘Head of Security at HiberTech. A shit of the highest order. She and Toccata don’t get along. Actually, it’s worse than that; they loathe one another. When it comes to HiberTech/Consul politics and Sector Twelve, there is just one rule: avoid.’

‘Aurora,’ I murmured, ‘the goddess of the dawn.’

‘The goddess of trouble,’ said Logan, climbing to his feet as our train arrived at the station, ‘but I’d said I’d help out.’

I took a compartment with the bouzouki-playing Mrs Tiffen, fed her a bar of nutty nougat and, thus sated, she began to play. ‘Help Yourself’ on the bouzouki once again. Logan was less tolerant of bouzouki than I, so went and sat in first class.

Mrs Tiffen and I were joined by a woman who turned out to be the Winter actor, and the train left the station. I didn’t yet know it, but accompanied by a woman of no dreams, I was on the way to meet the woman of my dreams.

The Winter thespian had listened intently as I told her how I’d gone from Assistant House Manager at St Granata’s to Winter Consul Novice in an afternoon. I didn’t name Jack Logan as my mentor, but she’d understood the discretion. I hadn’t told her about Toccata’s stories regarding viral dreams owing to operational security, nor Mother Fallopia’s unkindness, this time out of misplaced loyalty, but I told her all about the Beryl Cook overheat and Oliver Tiffen’s sacrifice, which seemed to strike a chord.

‘A brave man,’ she murmured. ‘Anyone close to you ever tripped the Night Fandango?’

‘There was Sister Oesterious at St Granata’s,’ I replied. ‘She’d been taken off to be thumped and dumped in the local pit only they hadn’t hit her hard enough and she turned up three days later covered in fish-heads, old cabbage leaves and soggy newspaper. Looking back it seems kind of darkly comical, her lumbering in through the front gates with everyone screaming. Mother Fallopia was made of sterner stuff and retired her properly with a rounders bat behind the bike sheds. Lucy Knapp had nightmares for a week, but in general I think everyone was okay about it. What about you? Know anyone who nightwalked?’ She rubbed her temple thoughtfully.

‘My husband, Geoffrey. We met when performing as the front and back halves of a pantomime horse, and bonded over the “equestrian gavotte”. It’s a tricky dance to synchronise, especially as I had done the decent thing and took the rear half.’