Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

It was a surprise to me, too.

‘I never expected them to move across in this .’

Jonesy, however, was not in a stop-and-chat sort of mood.

‘Consulate business, Mr Lloyd. We’ll see ourselves up.’

She headed off towards the paternoster lift. I thought of waiting in the lobby, but other than stealing her Sno-Trac and running off into the blizzard – again, details not yet fully worked out – I couldn’t see any plan of action. Perhaps I could brazen it out.

‘You’re a dark horse,’ said Jonesy as the lift took us slowly upwards, the pipes gurgling ominously. ‘You’ve just ethically thinned twenty-four winsomniacs. Happy with yourself?’

‘No, not really – but I thought everyone hated them?’

‘We do,’ she said, ‘or we say we do. But a life’s a life, and all this bunch want to do is dream away their years in relative happiness. It’s not criminal, it’s a mental sleep issue. How did you get them to move?’

‘I told Shamanic Bob about the Active Control blue Buick dream washing around the Siddons .’

She turned and stared at me, brows knitted.

‘Who said the Buick dream was Active Control?’

‘Dunno,’ I said, suddenly realising I’d said too much, ‘I just heard.’

She stared at me some more, and her manner seemed to change.

‘I don’t know whether you’re lying or not, Wonky. But if there’s any Active Control dreaming going on in the Siddons , that changes everything.’

‘It does?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does. Active Control can only be initiated by HiberTech using a Somnagraph, and the only reason they’d want to undertake dream control experiments in the Siddons is… well, nothing good.’

We stepped off the paternoster at the ninth and walked along the corridor, the only illumination the glimmer that seeped down the light wells, while outside the storm heaved and sighed around the building.

Jonesy unlocked the door to Birgitta’s apartment and stepped inside, sweeping her flashlight around the room. I remained outside, heavy with nausea. I’d reconciled myself to Birgitta’s discovery by now, and my thumping heart had been replaced by a hot sense of utter dejection.

Jonesy popped her head back outside the door.

‘Come and help me search,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing unusual in here that I can see.’

‘There isn’t?’ I asked, quickly adding, in a less surprised voice: ‘I mean, there isn’t?’

‘No. Why, what were you expecting me to find?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied, wondering if Birgitta had escaped, been taken by Lloyd or – outside chance – had simply been a hallucination, part of the narcosis. Intrigued, I followed her into Birgitta’s apartment.

‘Oh, hang on a mo,’ said Jonesy, ‘I lied when I said there was nothing unusual in here. There’s Birgitta. And she’s alive, missing a thumb. Care to explain?’

There was a sudden, nasty, hollow silence. Birgitta was sitting on the bed, staring blankly around, her food finished, several sketches lying on the bed. I couldn’t see what they were at this distance. Perhaps more of my – our – dream. Don’t know. Didn’t matter. Not any more.

‘Good Lord,’ I said with inexpertly wrought mock-surprise. ‘That’s… incredible. She must have – I don’t know – escaped from the pit behind the Siddons .’

‘Oh, please ,’ said Jonesy. ‘Can’t you see the game’s up? You’re making things worse, if that’s possible – which it isn’t.’

‘It happened once down at the Pool,’ I said, still in some sort of continuous denial feedback loop. ‘Sister Oesterious. They didn’t hit her hard enough. Covered in fish heads when she came back, she was – and the same with Carmen Miranda, of course.’

It was an off-the-cuff remark as I didn’t have a strategy, I was just flanneling wildly in the vague hope that providence would deliver me from my current dilemma.

Which it kind of did.

‘Carmen Miranda?’ said Jonesy, suddenly looking concerned.

‘Yes,’ I said, seizing on the initiative. ‘You said you’d thumped her, but I saw her wandering down the road. She had a fruit hat on and a gown and everything.’

‘Always a star,’ mused Jonesy, ‘when did you see her?’

‘This morning.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking out of the window, where there was little to see but a wall of whirling snowflakes, ‘perhaps her homing instincts will have kicked in. Now: I want your badge and your Bambi.’

‘Look,’ I said, handing them over, ‘if we’re talking due process: yes, I thought I’d retired Birgitta, but if Miranda’s still alive then this sort of thing happens. Besides, what evidence do you have that I am anything but an innocent party in all this?’

‘Let me see,’ said Jonesy. ‘First, you’re an exceptionally bad liar. I mean exceptionally . Transparent, almost. Second, you— no, we’ll skip reasons two to seven, because reason eight is quite enough all on its own: Birgitta drew this of you.’

She held up one of Birgitta’s sketches. It was me, with her, here in the bathroom of her apartment. She had drawn it from memory, but it might easily have been from life. The picture was of me washing her hair while she sat naked in the tub, just before I’d given up her long black tresses as a lost cause and cut them off. In the picture, Birgitta didn’t look vacant, she looked frustrated. Perhaps that’s what her inner emotion was right now.

I felt my eyes well up as the true and utter uselessness of the position became clear, and how poorly I had fared in my efforts to keep her safe. I’d protected her for the grand total of nineteen hours and seventeen minutes.

Not even a single day.

‘Can you explain this?’ said Jonesy, showing me the sketch again.

‘It’s not what it looks like.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘You know what it looks like to me?’ she said. ‘It looks like someone tending to someone else’s needs. Someone who can’t look after themselves. It looks a lot like empathy, Wonky. What say you?’

‘What?’

‘Empathy. Big on empathy, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, surprised by her understanding, ‘that’s exactly what it is. Empathy.’

‘I love you, Charlie,’ said Birgitta.

‘She’s not dead,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I couldn’t kill her because she’s still in there. It’s not a neural collapse brought on by Morphenox – which, yes, I did supply her with – it’s a state of displaced consciousness. She can process memories.’

‘I can see that,’ said Jonesy, staring at the sketches, ‘and it’s not the first I’ve seen.’

‘I love you, Charlie.’

‘I have to answer or she repeats herself,’ I said. ‘I love you, Birgitta.’

Birgitta relaxed, and began to sketch again. Jonesy looked at me, then at Birgitta.

‘How long were you thinking of keeping her?’

I shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Until Springrise, I guess. I didn’t really have a plan, more an objective. Events move fast in the Winter,’ I added, remembering what Logan had told me, ‘and you need flexibility to ensure the plan doesn’t get in the way of the goal. Am I under arrest?’

‘You are,’ she said, ‘in order to remain under our protection.’

‘It’s that important?’

‘It’s crucial. I don’t know of a single Tricksy nightwalker who can do what Birgitta can do. The Notable Goodnight will be especially interested.’

‘So that’s why we’re taking her to HiberTech?’

‘No, that’s why we’re not taking her to HiberTech.’

‘You’re going to thump her?’

‘No, we don’t do that.’

‘What about your sixty-three nightwalker retirements? What about Glitzy Tiara and Eddie Tangiers?’