Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

I took the Bambi from my holster, noted my hand was shaking, replaced it and retraced my steps to the elevator lobby, where I paced back and forth, pondering whether high ideals actually were a luxury – something to aim for, rather than to try and attain on my first Winter. I could walk away now, tell Logan I couldn’t find her, and that would be it. I could start my career properly, alive and having learned an important lesson.

I pressed my forehead against the cold doors of the elevator. Sister Zygotia had been a harsh critic and guardian – and, yes, a terror with a scrubbing brush at bath time – but had always maintained that one followed the course of honesty and righteousness, no matter what. If I walked away now it wouldn’t be the start of my career, it would be the end.

I paused to gather my thoughts, drew my Bambi again, and then, with a hard knot of fear and nausea in the pit of my stomach, walked back down the corridor. I stopped outside Foulnap’s room, and with shaking hand unlocked the door with my Omnikey and let it swing open.

Foulnap was on the phone. The medic I’d followed was to one side, and looked startled when he saw me. Sitting on a chair was a third man of Nordic appearance who had a fresh bite mark on his cheek. When he saw me, Foulnap ignored the Bambi I was pointing at him and simply told the person on the other end of the line that ‘There was a f—ing moron trying to piss in his pocket’ and he’d call them back.

‘By all that’s pointlessly brave, Worthing, is that you?’

He seemed more impressed than worried.

‘You can do this,’ I said, voice quavering.

‘I can do this?’ echoed Foulnap in a relaxed manner. ‘Then what are you here for?’

‘I was talking to myself ,’ I said with a croak. ‘What I meant was that you can’t do this.’

I could see my hands tremble and felt a cold sweat crawl up my back. Foulnap was right. I was a f—ing moron. I should have just walked away.

‘That’s much clearer. So: why can’t I do this?’

‘Because—’

Whump

I’d not been paying attention. Foulnap had drawn and triggered his Bambi in less time than it took me to realise that he could. I barely had time to register the shock wave rippling in the air before I was lifted from the ground and thrown backwards into a chair that had been placed next to the door, reducing it to matchwood. I fell to the floor stunned, my head spinning from where it had thumped into the wall just next to the light switch.

‘Lobster,’ said Mrs Tiffen from the bathroom.

My vision returned to reveal Foulnap standing over me with a look of annoyance. He relieved me of my weapon, then shook his head sadly.

‘That’s the thing about good advice,’ he said. ‘It’s really a lot better to heed it.’

Foulnap’s colleague, the one with the bite mark on his cheek, rose and pulled a weapon of his own from a holdall. Only it wasn’t a hand weapon, it was the twenty-KiloNewton Thumper, normally used for riot control and punching pressure-holes in snowstorms. Deputy Consul Klaar had been repeatedly pummelled with something like this outside Nightgrowls. She’d liquefied internally under the shock waves and by the time we found her she’d leaked out, pooled in the footwell and frozen solid. They’d taken her to the morgue with the floor mats still attached.

Foulnap helped me sit up and I touched my mouth where it was bleeding.

‘Believe it or not, I was as green as you when I started out,’ he said in a gentle voice, pulling my lower eyelid down to peer at the whites of my eyes, a simple way to check if there was any lasting shock damage, ‘full of dazzlingly good intentions but as stupid as the Winter is long.’

He stared at me for a moment, then pushed the slide release pin on my Bambi, twisted the vortex chamber and drew the Venturi tube backwards. In an instant the weapon was in five pieces. He poured the components into my pocket with a metallic rattle, then dropped the power cell in last as if to punctuate the gesture.

‘I tell you what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘You’re completely unimportant and a very, very small fish, so I’m going to throw you back. It’s win-win: you don’t have to die, and I don’t have to kill you. Do we have a deal? It goes without saying that you’ll not speak of this.’

I stared up at him. I could feel the taste of blood in my mouth, and my head ached badly. But through the lens of abject failure, my next course of action was suddenly brought into a sharp and painfully illogical focus. If I couldn’t leave with Mrs Tiffen, I wasn’t going to leave at all. My career ended right here, in the fire valleys north of Merthyr, defending someone who wasn’t able to care that I was trying to save her from a fate that she could never be troubled about. Perhaps that was what being a Winter Consul was all about. Defending the inalienable rights of the unaware.

‘There’s no deal,’ I said, my voice cracking, my mouth dry with fear. ‘Mrs Tiffen comes with me. And yes, it goes without saying we’ll forget this ever happened.’

Foulnap stared at me in disbelief and I exhaled and opened my mouth. Shock damage can be lessened if airways are open. But that didn’t happen.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ came a voice from behind me, at the door.

It was Logan. I suddenly felt unassailably relieved – so much so that I actually felt tears well up in my eyes. I was safe.

Only I wasn’t. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit.

‘It’s not my fault, Jack,’ said Foulnap. ‘I thought you said your new Novice would be a pushover?’

‘I may have underestimated Worthing’s sense of intestinal fortitude,’ conceded Logan, staring at me with a sense of respect, I think. ‘This is all my fault; I never should have let Charlie even attempt to search for Mrs Tiffen.’

I closed my eyes and felt a tremor of fear. Logan had a different tone to his voice. I realised now why I’d taken it this far; I somehow knew Foulnap didn’t have murder in him. But Logan did. He would have called ahead to Foulnap to pluck Mrs Tiffen from my grasp on our way through to give him some deniability. He and Foulnap would be in the farming scam together. It would all have gone according to plan, too – except for me.

‘Maybe we can trust the Novice,’ said the man with the Thumper, who seemed to have changed his tune. ‘I didn’t sign up to all this in order to start killing Consuls.’

‘I’m with Lopez on this one,’ said Foulnap, giving a name to the third man in the room.

‘We can’t risk any of us being discovered,’ said Logan. ‘Besides, Aurora’s in town.’

Lopez and Foulnap exchanged nervous looks.

‘She is?’ said Foulnap. ‘How did she get wind of us?’

‘We don’t know that she did. I’ll deal with Worthing, you deal with Mrs Tiffen. Get up, Charlie.’

I climbed unsteadily to my feet and he gestured for me to leave the room.

‘You should have listened to me earlier,’ he said as we padded around the circular corridor, ‘and just let it all go.’

We stopped outside the elevators and Logan pressed the call button.

‘Can I ask a favour?’

‘What?’

‘Will you tell Sister Zygotia where my body is?’

‘You’re being overdramatic, Worth—’

Bing .

The bell sounded and the elevator doors opened to reveal Aurora, who looked about as surprised as I’d seen anyone for a while, and her hands instantly went to draw her Bambis. Logan had the advantage and swung his weapon in her direction. He had a clear shot, could have thumped her dead there and then – but he paused.

What happened next seemed to occur with treacly slowness: I dropped to the floor as the twin pressure waves [31] Seasoned practitioners of pulse weapons used two in unison to more accurately and dangerously focus the vortex rings. In the hands of the unskilled, however, death and serious injury were never far away. that erupted from Aurora’s weapons plucked at my clothes like a rush of wind before impacting on Logan’s chest; I heard every atom of air expelled from his lungs with a crack, then saw him blown at incredible speed into the wall opposite with a sound like a log falling on wet leaves.