Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘I’m sorry if you liked her,’ said Lucy, ‘but Project Lazarus brings a whole new meaning to the word importance.’

Hooke picked himself up, touched a finger to his bleeding nose, shook his head and then found his weapon. He reloaded it and looked at Lucy and me in turn, then outside at Jonesy, who was still moving weakly on her back in the snow.

‘Put her out of her misery,’ said Lucy. ‘We’d expect the same courtesy from her.’

‘It’s time you were blooded,’ said Hooke. ‘Do it yourself if you’ve the stomach.’

She glared at him.

‘Oh, I’ve the stomach,’ said Lucy, and took Hooke’s Bambi from him.

I started to say something. A warning, I think. Lucy noticed, stopped and stared at me.

‘What is it?’

I stared back at her for a moment.

‘It’s nothing.’

She strode across to where Jonesy’s form was lying in the snow outside, then leaned over and placed the Bambi to Jonesy’s head. I turned away as Jonesy detonated the pulse charge, a heavy concussion that blew the snow and tattered remnants of the curtains back into the lobby. When I looked back outside, there was only a refrozen circle of clear ice on the ground, about the size of an ornamental fountain.

‘Well, shit ,’ said Hooke, following my gaze, ‘that’s a loss.’

‘I liked her,’ I said, referring to both of them, I think.

‘No,’ retorted Hooke, ‘I was talking about my staff protection bonus.’

He then looked at me, and presumably misconstrued my lack of decisive action or intervention in any of this as tacit approval of his intentions to take me to HiberTech.

‘Well now, Worthing,’ he said, switching his attention to Birgitta, ‘wouldn’t have marked you as a harbourer. Porter, put this deadhead somewhere safe, and make sure she’s looked after.’

I asked Hooke in something of a daze if we should wait until the blizzard had abated, but he told me that the sooner I was safe inside HiberTech, the better it would be for him. He walked away and I, in a confused and shocked daze, followed.

I followed Hooke behind the line he had strung from his Sno-Trac and we climbed aboard, all the while buffeted by the blizzard. The wind had risen, the snowfall was heavier, and the temperature was dropping by the minute. It was dark by now and in every other circumstance, we would not be venturing out.

Hooke wound in the cable, shut the rear door then climbed past me and started up the engine. But instead of troubling with the high beams which would have been useless in the blizzard, he instead switched on the H4S and waited while the screen warmed up. The outside temperature gauge was now indicating minus twenty-four Celsius and still falling. Any porter worth his salt right now would be going Full Rods Out on the HotPots.

‘Lucy killed Jonesy,’ I said in a quiet voice.

‘Other way round, kiddo – Jonesy killed Knapp. But the good news is we lost one each, so at least Pinky and Perky will have less to squabble over.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To safety,’ he said. ‘Recent events have proved that you’re not safe in Sector Twelve with Toccata kicking around. Once you’re with us, we can figure out what’s going on, and if you want, you can accept that job Aurora was talking about.’

‘So I’m not a prisoner?’

‘Goodness me, no,’ he replied with perhaps not quite the tone of veracity in his voice he’d hoped for, ‘you can leave whenever you want.’

I looked outside at the cold and the snow. Somehow leaving wasn’t really an option right now.

The circular H4S screen in the centre of the Trac’s panel was now glowing an unearthly shade of green; the radar returns from the surrounding topography displayed as green specks on the screen, refreshed every second by the sweep of the scanner. It would give us more than enough information to navigate, although at greatly reduced speed. Clearly visible was the Dormitorium exit road, part of the Siddons and, closest of all, Jonesy’s Sno-Trac. I could see the shape of the vehicle less than twenty feet away on the screen, but when I looked outside there was nothing but a wall of swirling snow.

Hooke said something vague about ‘returning to base with Worthing’ on the shortwave, then popped the Sno-Trac into gear and we moved off. I was annoyed with myself because Jonesy had been a far better friend than I realised. She’d had answers, and so had Toccata, whom I’d also underestimated. I briefly thought of opening the rear door of the Sno-Trac and making a run for it, but going out in blizzards was like consorting with drowsies, borrowing from bondsmen or poking an already-enraged mammoth with a sharpened stick: don’t. Just don’t . But despite everything, there was a plus point: HiberTech had placed some sort of value on me. As long as I had value, I was safe. And if I was safe, then so was Birgitta. Sort of.

The odd thing was, I didn’t feel anything about Lucy at all. It wasn’t that our friendship meant nothing, nor did I feel that I had, by omission, led her to her death. There was just a certain numbness, as though I’d known all along that she really only looked after herself. Mother Fallopia and the Sisterhood would be distraught, but philosophical. People die in the Winter; it’s what it’s there for.

Hooke concentrated on the journey, the route clear on the glowing H4S, while outside the storm buffeted the small vehicle. In this way we passed slowly back down the drive from the Siddons , took a left, then after what seemed like an age, the right turn at the billboard.

‘So,’ I said, thinking about Hooke’s reputed enthusiasm for invasive interrogation techniques, ‘I heard you used to be with military intelligence.’

‘Regretfully not,’ he said, ‘more’s the pity. I would have liked to have served my country in that manner, but no. We put it about that it was me, but it was actually Aurora.’

I should have been more surprised than I was.

‘Until her retirement, she was the best they had. Just went into the dreaming subject’s mind and took what she wanted. I was her assistant for a time and had a go at dream incursions, but it’s hard to know what’s real and what isn’t. I left it up to her. We all did.’

‘What’s on this cylinder?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but if I were to hazard a guess, about the most impor—’

The Sno-Trac lurched to a halt. I looked up and could see nothing but blizzard through the windscreen. Hooke flicked the ranging knob on the H4S and adjusted the gain.

‘What is it?’ I whispered.

‘There,’ he said, pointing at the glowing dots on the screen. Not more than ten yards away in the middle of the road was a strong radar return. Something that shouldn’t be there. I’d driven this way with Jonesy an hour before, and the road had been clear.

‘Winsomniacs on the move… but now not moving?’ I suggested.

Hooke shook his head.

‘They’re lazy, not stupid.’

‘Could be womads who got caught out.’

This was unlikely, but possible. Winter Nomads had been known to move in clutches of twenty or more to conserve heat, usually covered by a yurt with caribou skirts to stop the outer walkers’ legs from freezing. If things got bad they just downed the yurt with them in it, lit the fire, wrapped themselves in skins and huddled.