Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘It’s an honest place to sleep. The soft rasp of natural snoring is comforting, like rain on a tin roof. Morphenox dulls the subconscious,’ he added, ‘and steals your dreams. I like to dream.’

‘And do you?’

‘Every night, always the same. The Ottomans used to hit us with their Gigawatt Highrollers. I’m in the forward OP in a six-by-six Bedford softside, reporting on incoming size and velocity. There’s no moisture so the pulse rings are visible only as faint ripples in the hot air, a couple of hundred yards wide. I report on a stonker that’s coming our way but it’s faster and tighter than the rest, and by a thousand yards out it starts to cone. By the time it reaches me the torus has a spin so tight that implosive collapse is inevitable. No time to run – pointless anyway – and then my eardrums burst and I’m waking in the sand, alone, with the sun already overhead and the Bedford upside down two hundred yards away. I’ve lost my foot and most of my clothes and part of my skin is blasted off. Worst of all, I can feel the moisture leaching out of my body. My eyes crisp over, my tongue feels like leather, my skin blisters and then cracks, like mud on a dry lake bed.’

‘You want to dream that?’

‘It stops me dreaming about the really unpleasant stuff. Nightmares are catharsis; they purge the mind to make the day bearable.’

‘Oh,’ I said, not wanting to think what his other dreams might be. ‘Do you dream of anything else? Like… blue Buicks, for instance?’

He turned to look at me with a quizzical expression.

‘We looked into what Moody and the others claimed,’ said Fodder. ‘Personally, I’ve dreamt nothing, but then I live on the eighteenth floor; it’s the ninth floor of the Siddons that’s full of bad dreaming.’

He was right, come to think of it: everyone who had dreamed of the blue Buick seemed to have come from the ninth.

We continued on the journey, Fodder pointing out places of interest. Which Dormitorium was which, why I should avoid the porter at the Captain Mayberry , where the electrical sub-station, phone exchanges and cold refuge points were situated. He imparted the knowledge without fanfare, and occasionally punctuated the observations with local lore: a serial sneak thief here, an incident with Lucky Ned’s gang there – and shockingly, the harbouring undertaken by Olaf Yawnersson, who kept two Tricksy nightwalkers alive for almost three years.

‘He did the honourable thing when we discovered them hidden in his basement,’ said Fodder. ‘But despite considerable investigation he left no evidence of his depraved acts. The Cold Way Out was probably the best thing for him.’

But most of all, Fodder told me to memorise the town precisely. ‘Your aim,’ he said, ‘is to know Sector Twelve like the swirls on your own wintercoat, and be able to navigate the streets when a combination of blizzard, gale-strength winds and darkness reduces visibility to zero – without the fixed line.’

‘Without?’

‘It’s the first thing Villains would cut. Rely on the line, and you’ll be utterly lost without it.’

As if to demonstrate the wisdom of his statement, there was a sudden squall that reduced visibility to less than ten feet. I instinctively moved closer to Fodder, who, instead of clipping on to the line as Winter Best Practice dictated, simply extended his baton and used that to feel his way. He put out a hand for me to hold and I did so, his massive hand both warm and surprisingly soft.

To navigate through the town we used the gas lamps, each one a useful beacon to focus upon before pushing on to the next. They were burning even though it was still day, the light-valves fooled by the heavy overcast. There was a gas lamp by the ornate iron gates outside the museum, and the small tongue of flame flickered as gasps of cold air found their way into the lamp-head.

‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Fodder, pausing briefly to stare admiringly at the wavering light, the railings, the stonework and statue draped in snow.

‘Sort of desolate,’ I said, ‘in a magnificent kind of way.’

‘A beauty that both preserves and kills,’ he murmured thoughtfully, then pointed towards the museum, which we could see only as a grey shape in the snowstorm.

‘Danny Pockets is in there,’ said Fodder. ‘His specific job is to defend the building against intruders. Dull, but essential.’

‘Communal Food Store?’

‘Bingo. Winter pantry is under considerable strain due to the winsomniacs, and any theft would spell disaster. Let’s go and have a look.’

We passed through the iron gates and walked around the statue of Gwendolyn VII, which looked considerably larger up close – about the size of a coach – then crossed the soft unbroken expanse of white in front of the museum. Fodder led us to the side entrance and tugged at the bell-pull.

‘Who is it?’ came a crackly man’s voice from the intercom.

‘Llewelyn the not-last-as-it-turned-out,’ said Fodder, waving at the viewing lens above the door.

The lock clunked and Fodder looked around cautiously before pulling open the heavy steel door. We stepped inside and closed the outer door before ringing the bell to signal Pockets to open the inner. Once through the cork-lined doors and out of our coats and boots we padded up the corridor past glass cases, suits of armour, works of art and a stuffed sabre-tooth tiger that was, boasted the label, the fifth from extinction when it was hit by a bus near Boughrood.

We turned the corner to the central atrium. Sitting beneath the ornately painted dome and marble-inlaid foyer was a military-spec Airwitzer of considerable size and power. To one side of the weapon was a half-empty crate of military-spec thermalites, a couple of Golgothas and a desk with a red telephone and a clockwork barograph. But more pertinent to me was the figure sitting behind the cannon.

It was Hugo Foulnap. He was sitting in the triggerman’s position, and staring at me with the look of someone who had just been reminded of an old and hugely disliked acquaintance. He was fresh in my mind from less than a day before, but to him we’d crossed swords four weeks ago. Hibernation has a contracting effect upon time.

He put a finger to his lips as soon as Fodder wasn’t watching, and out of curiosity and a certain nervousness, I decided to play along.

‘This here is Danny Pockets,’ said Fodder, ‘not usually part of the crew but on loan from Sector Eighteen.’

We both nodded a greeting and embraced in an awkward manner. Fodder didn’t notice, or if he did, he made no sign of it.

Foulnap was pretty much the same as I’d seen him last, aside from a healed cut above his left eye that looked self-stitched, and longer hair, which he had tied back in a ponytail. He was dressed in a cumbersome Mk III shock-suit that looked – along with the Airwitzer – as though it should be displayed in the museum rather than defending it. I’d trained in the use of shock-suits and found them hot and restrictive. Most preferred to not wear one and just use the extra mobility to get out of trouble. Me, I’d prefer to not be in the trouble at all, shock-suit or no.

‘You take Pantry Defence very seriously,’ I said, nodding towards the vortex cannon. Anyone without suited protection was a trigger-pull away from resembling goulash.