Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

I told him yes – and that Hooke had been taken by the Gronk on the way to HiberTech while I’d sought refuge out in the Cambrensis .

‘A lot of Gronk this evening. Who was the mystery girl from HiberTech?’

‘An old friend of mine from the Pool back in Swansea. She was on one of HiberTech’s Fast Track Management schemes. It didn’t work out for her.’

‘They rarely do.’

Foulnap stared at me for a moment, deep in thought.

‘Why did you leave the Cambrensis in this weather, Worthing?’

‘To come and see you.’

‘For?’

‘Answers.’

He stared at me again, trying to make up his mind.

‘That’s the hardest thing about all this,’ he said, ‘knowing who to trust. Can I trust you?’

‘Can I trust you ?’ I said in return. ‘When we met in Cardiff you were attempting to farm a nightwalker.’

‘Were we? Were we really?’

‘Yes, I…’

My voice trailed off. I’d been so convinced of that particular narrative I’d never for one moment stopped to reappraise the situation. About Mrs Tiffen, and Foulnap not wanting her to go to HiberTech, then Jack Logan cajoling and threatening me to simply drop it.

They weren’t going to farm Mrs Tiffen at all – they were trying to protect her. My legs suddenly felt so weak I had to sit on a handy chair. Logan had told me to forget all about Mrs Tiffen, and I, the naive fool that I was, drunk on good intentions, ignored him – and he died. Not at my hand, but certainly because of my intransigent stupidity. I closed my eyes and felt the heavy burden of guilt fall across my shoulders. I had a feeling it wouldn’t lift for a long time, if at all. The Gronk had been circling me for a while now. If Ned Farnesworth and Hooke were the starter and main, I was to be the dessert. Perhaps she’d spared me so I could discover my unworthiness all on my own, and self-season my soul with the tangy taste of guilt. Perhaps the Gronk took my finger to mark me out, like choosing lobsters in a tank. Perhaps that’s what Gronks do.

‘Was Logan going to kill me?’ I asked. ‘When he was walking me out of the John Edward Jones back in the fire valleys?’

Foulnap sat down next to me and laid a hand on my arm.

‘He would’ve explained it all to you on the train to Sector Twelve, and trusted you’d come across. No one who figures out HiberTech’s criminality ever stays long with the status quo. It was just our dumb luck that Aurora chanced along when she did.’

‘So Logan was RealSleep?’

‘More than that – he was Kiki.’

‘Shit.’

‘It’s annoying and tragic and a waste,’ said Foulnap once I’d digested this particular nugget, ‘but you don’t come out so bad in all of this – you were simply trying to do the right thing with an incomplete understanding of the situation.’

‘That’s very generous, but I should have listened to you both.’

‘Agreed,’ said Foulnap, ‘but perhaps we should have seen you for what you were earlier, and brought you into our confidence. We just don’t know who to trust.’

I ran my fingers through my hair. Sector Twelve had lived up to its reputation.

‘So,’ I said finally, ‘what would you have done with Mrs Tiffen if not farmed her?’

‘The more complex tricks they can do, the less complete the neural collapse, the easier it might be to effect a retrieval. We’ve not managed it yet, but it can be done.’

I asked him how he knew and he showed me his left thumb, or rather, he didn’t show me his thumb – it was missing.

‘For five weeks I was a nightwalker,’ he said. ‘I returned because I’d been dumped, but against HiberTech’s strict policy, I’d not been thumped. I woke up with a spade of lime over me in the landfill. I think we live inside our deepest memories when hibernating, with cyclical returns to the upper Dreamstate to maintain a connection with the mind. Morphenox suppresses this link and, on rare occasions, damages it so severely that it locks the victim in the lower Dreamstate. When I was a nightwalker the only thing I really felt were the dreams. Loud, expansive, overpowering, like I was trapped in deep memory loops – with the real world appearing to me as vague and nebulous as long-forgotten dreams in the real world. I didn’t remember anything too specific as regards what I’d been doing when a deadhead, but I have a pretty good idea: I passed a human tooth two days after waking, complete with a gold filling. First time I’d ever turned a profit taking a dump.’

He paused.

‘But that’s enough about me. Why do HiberTech want you so badly?’

He’d trusted me, so it was time for me to trust him.

‘Because I’ve been Active Control first person – both Don Hector and Webster – and I know where the cylinder is.’

Foulnap raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re shitting me?’

‘No, I am certainly not shitting you.’

‘Then you’d better come with me.’

We walked out of the warmroom and down the corridor towards the central atrium, where the Airwitzer was for the moment abandoned. I could hear the storm rattling the heavy shutters, and a low moan was emanating from where the wind blew across the downpipes on the roof. We took the main stairs upwards, then a left on the top corridor towards a sign marked ‘conservation’. Foulnap stopped at a door, rapped twice, muttered the password ‘Fresh Water Walrus’ and I heard a draw-bolt pulled back.

I recognised the man who opened the door. It was the medic from back at the John Edward Jones in Merthyr, the one who wore scrubs and smelled of antiseptic and whose aunt wasn’t his aunt. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

‘Charlie is a friendly,’ said Foulnap.

‘Yeah? Last time we met a good man died.’

‘A misunderstanding. Charlie’s been Active Control first person.’

‘You’re kidding?’ said the medic, his manner abruptly changing from suspicion to curiosity.

‘Nope,’ said Foulnap. ‘Don Hector and Webster.’

The medic stepped closer and peered at me intently.

‘We don’t know anyone who’s been Active Control and is still sane,’ he said. ‘What was it like?’

‘More real than real,’ I said, ‘all the senses ramped up to eleven. I can see why the dreamers want it. Better than life. Or at least, better than their life.’

The medic mouthed ‘wow’ and stared at me some more.

‘This is Dr Theophilus Gwynne,’ said Foulnap, stepping in. ‘He was, until his tragic, untimely and very faked death three years ago, a junior member of HiberTech’s Sleep Sciences Division.’

‘Then you know all about Project Lazarus?’

‘Actually, I was very junior,’ he admitted, ‘logging data mostly, equipment maintenance, tea, bit of laundry, cooking, that sort of thing.’

‘We found out about Project Lazarus yesterday,’ said Foulnap, ‘and quite by chance.’

‘So, what is it?’

‘One moment,’ said Dr Gwynne, making safe a booby-trap detonation device on the door that was attached to not a single Golgotha but two . Unlike Fodder’s, these looked to be live.

Dr Gwynne and I Winter embraced; he smelled of burned-out electric motors, pear drops and solder. Once we’d parted I took a step inside the room and looked around. The ceiling was ornate plaster, and the wooden panelling and glass-fronted cabinets suggested use as a library in days gone by. There was a fireplace at one end, long disused, and most of the floor space was taken up by machines liberally festooned with blinking lights, knobs, dials and switches. Sitting on a bar stool in the middle of it all was a nightwalker doing probably the most complex tricks I’d ever seen with a yo-yo. She looked vacant enough, but was connected to the machine by a series of wires glued to pads on her head. When she yo-yoed, the trace on the oscilloscopes jumped and danced.