Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Bring it on,’ she said, ‘you’re the Kiki.’

I pulled the trigger and Toccata went over like a ninepin. It was an audacious plan, sure, but right now I didn’t see any alternative. I needed to get us both into HiberTech to meet them head on, and there was only one person who could get us there. I swiftly climbed out of the shock-suit and then stared at Toccata with a sense of morbid fascination as she changed from one person to the other. Her unseeing right eye moved violently around in its socket, then, after some jerks, a quivering foot and some swearing, her eyes swapped: the left eye became the unseeing eye, and her right popped open.

‘Charlie?’ said Aurora, sitting up and looking around. ‘Is that you?’

‘It’s me.’

‘Where are we?’

‘The Siddons ,’ I said, feigning a quivering lip. ‘Thank goodness you’re here. Hugo Foulnap and his RealSleep nutjobs tried to kidnap me – I think they killed one of your agents up on the ninth.’ I gave out an award-winning sob. ‘You’ve got to help me.’

‘Everything’s all right now,’ she said in a soothing tone, taking my hand in hers. ‘I promise.’

It was lucky I did what I did when I did it. Six more HiberTech Security agents were through the door of the Siddons within a minute of Toccata turning into Aurora. She seemed curiously accepting of the fact that she was in different clothes in a strange place, but presumably she was used to this by now. While the HiberTech Security agents went up to the ninth floor to investigate, Aurora sat me down and quizzed me on what was going on.

‘Hooke and I were ambushed when he was taking me to safety at HiberTech,’ I explained, trying to make it all sound plausible. ‘He goes out in the Winter and vanishes, and I go to look for him and I find him, dead, but then I lose the line and make it to the – um – museum , and Danny Pockets is there, who is actually Hugo Foulnap, and he gives me all this bullshit about needing a cylinder and the dreams being projected into my head and we go to the Siddons because he’s convinced there’s a dream machine in 902 but then one of your agents killed Foulnap who is then killed in turn by… Toccata.’

Aurora looked around nervously.

‘She’s here?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘she left just before you arrived.’

Aurora frowned and her unseeing eye twisted and turned in its socket.

‘She keeps on doing that. Why does she keep on doing that?’

The last part of her sentence she delivered in an angry, almost frightened tone, and she gripped my arm so tightly it was painful.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Toccata’s up to something,’ she continued. ‘She wants to bring me down. Why would she want to bring me down?’

She glared at me dangerously.

‘I still don’t know.’

She stared at me some more and then seemed to relax.

‘Tell me more about the cylinder that Foulnap mentioned.’

‘I don’t know anything. He didn’t elaborate.’

One of her agents came downstairs and whispered in her ear.

‘So the Foulnap part of your story is correct,’ she said. ‘Do you know what he was doing in Sector Twelve? Something to do with RealSleep?’

I decided to just play dumb.

‘That’s above my intellect and pay grade,’ I said simply, staring at my feet. ‘I’m just a stranded Novice with narcosis, having bizarre dreams that I’m remembering backwards.’

She stared at me for a while longer.

‘Okay, then,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘we’ll debrief more at our leisure. The job at HiberTech still stands. Light duties until the narcosis clears. Up for it?’

I said I was, and after being checked for weapons I was ushered into a waiting Sno-Trac and driven across to HiberTech, the storm still raging, the small vehicle buffeted by a wind that on occasions seemed to blow in all directions at once. I sat in the back without a plan of any sort – I’d seen too many plans come to naught recently to have any hope that if I made one, all would be well. But if I’d learned anything from Logan, it was that plans often get in the way of a fast-moving incident-rich landscape, so better to have on-the-hoof flexibility – and objectives.

I so had objectives. And, as I said earlier, a couple of spare aces up my sleeve.

We bumped down the entrance slope to the underground car park and through the shock-gates to park, then made our way into the building by way of a service elevator and along a corridor.

‘This is the way to the Project Lazarus labs,’ I said, suddenly recalling the route. ‘What about the apartment facing the quad with the generous rations, abundant hot water and a nightwalker valet?’

‘All in good time,’ said Aurora. ‘There’s someone who needs to speak to you before you start to work for us. Orientation, I think HR call it.’

We moved through the door marked Project Lazarus , the lab unchanged since I’d been here last. We took several lefts and rights and walked through some swing doors, then found ourselves back in the circular room with eight corridors leading off towards the cells.

‘Wait here,’ said Aurora, and moved away.

I stood there for perhaps ten minutes, then, thinking that Birgitta might be somewhere near, started to look around. My eye caught sight of the door with the glass panel, behind which was the room that contained the barber’s chair and the copper device the shape of a traffic cone.

‘Curiosity doesn’t kill cats at all,’ came a familiar voice, ‘curiosity is the very bedrock upon which this institution is founded. You want to see more? Come and have a look.’

It was the Notable Charlotte Goodnight, and she appeared quite friendly. She opened the door and stepped inside, beckoning both me and Aurora to follow. Slightly wary, I complied. When I’d seen the room last, there had been a nightwalker on the table, but now the room was empty, the machine switched off and dead.

‘This is a Mk IX Somnagraph,’ explained Goodnight. ‘It can both record and play back dreams.’

‘You can record dreams?’ I asked, trying to sound surprised.

‘Indeed we can. There are five hundred of these in a converted dormitory down the hall. I’ll spare you the technical details, but we use them to redeploy nightwalkers by inducing simple dreams to overwrite their limited skills. The more Tricksy the nightwalker, the more complex the duties we can get them to do.’

‘If this is company orientation,’ I said, ‘it’s kind of a steep learning curve – shouldn’t you start with the photocopier and where the milk is kept?’

‘I don’t appreciate impertinence,’ said The Notable Goodnight, ‘but you are young, so I will overlook it this once. Where was I? Oh yes: while we have every confidence you will become a productive member of the company, we need to ensure that you understand what we do here, and how best policy can be implemented while still maintaining a morally correct framework.’

I didn’t say anything. Not much I could say, really.

‘We’re all small cogs, Charlie,’ continued Aurora, ‘even The Notable Goodnight here, but we only work in the big machine by meshing perfectly. And when I say big machine, I don’t mean the Ferch Llewelyn Dynasty, Europia or the Northern Fed, I mean the advancement of the human race. This is real progress, Worthing, above politics and corporate stock value. Do you understand?’