Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘neither do I.’

I thought for a moment, then said: ‘Something odd happened.’

‘What?’

‘The Notable Goodnight wandered past.’

‘And?’

‘She knew my name. She met me once, four weeks ago. Is she good with names?’

‘She barely knows mine,’ said Toccata, ‘why would she remember you? Make an impression?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘As I said,’ murmured Toccata, ‘something about you has interested HiberTech. It’ll be an opportunistic exploitation, or my name’s not Toccata.’

We climbed into the command car and drove slowly back down towards the town. I was in Sector Twelve only because of Aurora. First by letting the train go, then finding me an apartment on the ninth floor of the Siddons , then not checking back or telling anyone I was there. The meeting in the Siddons basement that morning might have been contrived, too, in order for her to come over all chummy and helpful.

‘Permission to speak, ma’am?’

‘Go on.’

‘Why do you think HiberTech are interested in me?’

She stared at me with her one good eye for several seconds.

‘I have no idea, Wonky. But believe me, it won’t be anything trivial.’

I went and found Jonesy as soon as we got back.

‘Let me guess,’ she said, ‘Aurora wasn’t anywhere to be found?’

‘Not hard to figure. Can I ask you something?’

‘Shoot.’

I took Charles Webster’s missing persons flier from my back pocket and showed it to her.

‘So?’

‘He’s up at HiberTech, redeployed as one of their golf-cart drivers.’

‘And?’

‘He’s a missing person, yet turns up at HiberTech?’

She looked at me, then at the flier, then led me towards the records office, which was situated at the far end of the Consulate.

‘These are the Sector Twelve files,’ she said as we walked in. ‘Every person who ever arrived, every person who ever left. The ones who died, the ones who married, the ones who had children. Hibernation records, work records, special skills register, schools records, fertility reports, genetic screening, Dormitoria, car, dental and food records. The lot. Hang on a tick.’

She rummaged for a moment in a large and very battered grey filing cabinet, and then handed me Webster’s file. His address was the Cambrensis , room 106, his job HiberTech ‘Medical Orderly Grade II’. There was a copy of his birth certificate, several references from the Thomas Carlyle Dormitorium in Sector Fifty-eight North, a General Skills certificate pass confirmation and letters of recommendation from his previous employments as a bus driver, aquarium maintenance engineer and insurance salesman. There was also a ‘Partial Death’ certificate – HiberTech had logged him as having been delivered to their Sleep Sciences Division twelve weeks after he went missing.

‘He was signed across to The Notable Goodnight by Agent Hooke,’ I said, reading a copy of the chain-of-possession document. ‘Is that unusual?’

‘Not really,’ said Jonesy.

There was nothing about being married to Birgitta, but then I didn’t really expect there to be. Beyond my dream, the only evidence they might be the same person was that they both vanished, and could have the same first name. That was it. I sighed. Webster was just a guy I’d picked to clothe the empty face in my dream, nothing more, nothing less. He might not even have said ‘Gower’ at all – just a mumble, an artefact briefly bubbling to the surface.

‘Happy?’ said Jonesy.

‘It’s just my mild narcosis,’ I said, ‘overactive imagination. Oh, and I think you should probably know if you’re planning to bundle with Fodder: when we Winter embraced, he kissed me very gently on the ear.’

‘Yeah, I heard he does that.’

I yawned, and then apologised.

‘You’re looking tired,’ said Jonesy. ‘It’s best to take it easy the first couple of days. Come with me.’

I followed her out of records and into the office, where we found Fodder balancing a hunting knife on the tip of his finger.

‘Hey, Fod,’ said Jonesy, ‘will you show Wonky around town before nightfall? You both live at the Siddons , so it makes sense to end up there.’

‘Delighted,’ said Fodder.

‘You may want to keep an eye out for intruders,’ added Treacle, who was at the front desk. ‘We’ve had a couple of reports of a possible incursion of people or creatures unknown at the far end of town.’

I felt the cold wind slice into my exposed skin as we stepped outside. It had shifted around to the north and already flurries of snow were portending a heavier fall some time within the next forty-eight hours. Fodder, instead of taking one of the Sno-Tracs parked outside, strode off on foot.

‘No transport?’ I asked, following close behind.

‘Where practical I walk,’ he replied. ‘Once cocooned in a Sno-Trac, the senses are numbed. Out on the fringes you need a feel for the air, the wind, the environs. The Three Vs can strike at a moment’s notice.’

‘The Three Vs?’

‘Villains, Vacants and Volk. Hear that?’

We stopped. I listened intently but all I could hear was the faint whisper of ice crystals blowing across the drifts.

‘No.’

‘ Exactly . There’s nothing there. But one day there will be – and you want to sense it or them before you can see them – or they can see you.’

‘I understand,’ I said, ‘you think there are Volk?’

‘I’ve seen some weird stuff,’ he said, ‘but nothing that makes me think the Gronk exists – which is a shame. I’d like Laura to win her bet.’

We trudged on, the snow swirling around us, the visibility barely thirty feet, the daylight dull, soft and directionless. Fodder put on a knitted hat shaped like a penguin, which looked faintly ridiculous. He might or might not have known this, but I’m firmly convinced no one in their right mind would point it out.

‘Treacle said something about an intruder report.’

‘We get them from time to time, but if it had been a credible sighting Jonesy would have made more of a hoo-hah. Megafauna are too smart to be out, but Winter nomads have been known to move through. We leave them be, and even scavengers are not particularly disliked, so long as they don’t enter buildings. Villains are something else entirely: no rules outside their own society and a strange mix of violent ruthlessness, decorum and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. There’s been an uneasy truce these past three years with Lucky Ned.’

‘What were the terms?’

‘Exclusion zones. We don’t go on to their patch if they don’t come on ours. It means admitting that there are areas that are no-go in Mid-Wales, but Toccata can work with that, she says.’

Fodder lapsed into silence and we joined the long straight road that led towards the gardens and the museum, the only sound the breath of our exertions and our feet as we tramped through the snow. I had a thought.

‘You have the right to Morphenox but don’t use it, do you?’

‘Is it that obvious that I don’t?’

‘You live in the Siddons ,’ I said, ‘a Sub-beta payscale Kipshop – but you’re a Consul. I put two and two together.’