Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘I think so, ma’am, yes.’

‘Good. So why were you harbouring Birgitta? And don’t tell me simply because she can draw. We’re beyond all that now.’

I stared at her for a moment. When you’re in the hornet’s nest it’s probably better to act like another hornet, or, if you can, a bigger one. Dealing with Gary Findlay had taught me that.

‘I believe she’s still alive in there,’ I said, ‘processing thoughts and memories while trapped in a Dreamstate so deep it can’t be detected. I’ve heard of others, too,’ I added, ‘anecdotal stories that were enough to convince me.’

Goodnight and Aurora looked at one another.

‘You’re a keen observer,’ said the Notable, ‘which we like. And you’re right – we’ve known that for a long time. But muse on this: at the last count, Morphenox has saved over fifty million lives in Europia alone, yet created only twenty-five-thousand quasi-sentient nightwalkers. You’re too young to remember pre-Morphenox days, but life was a constant cycle of death, loss and stalled societal and technical development. This was never a war against the Winter, but against wastage – the lives that couldn’t and shouldn’t be lost. For the massive benefits of Morphenox, there would have to be victims.’

Aurora picked up the story.

‘We saw them more as the unsung heroes of the hibernatory revolution, unknowingly brave foot-soldiers, spearheading the fight against the horrors of the Winter to bring us victorious into the Spring. Those citizens, those nightwalkers, died honourably to make a better place for all of us.’

It was an understandable point, just not a very ethical one. The victims, the Nightwalkers, had no choice in the matter.

‘And Morphenox-B?’ I asked. ‘What about that?’

‘ Much more exciting,’ said Aurora. ‘The expense in manufacture was predicated on drug purity so nightwalker numbers were kept to an absolute minimum. But we were seeing it arse about face. More nightwalkers actually works for us. Cut a few corners in the manufacturing process and instead of a one-in-two-thousand likelihood of walking, Morphenox-B will give us one in every five hundred.’

‘With those figures, the nightwalker economy could be worth 4.2 billion euros to us within five years,’ continued Goodnight, ‘and will also be socially transformative: tedious and repetitive tasks will be given to workers who don’t know or care what they do and can work sixteen uncomplaining hours a day. Productivity will rise, costs will fall, food production will increase. And once their year is done, they get to be parted out and add immeasurable quality of life to thousands. True vertical integration, Worthing – everything of use but the yawn. I made up that slogan,’ she added proudly. ‘Sums it up well, doesn’t it?’

‘Best of all,’ said Aurora, ‘is that when Winter wastage falls, places like your joyous St Granata’s will actually cease to exist; the burden of endless childbearing a thing of the past. It’s win-win all the way down the line. But,’ she continued, ‘there is a very small fly in our very large ointment. The venerable Don Hector discovered a way to retrieve nightwalkers. He’s dead now, thank goodness, but he encoded it all on a cylinder which he then gave to someone connected to RealSleep. While that cylinder is at large, we are exposed, and we don’t like being exposed.’

They fell silent and stared at me expectantly.

‘You want me to agree with you,’ I said, ‘but I can’t. Nightwalkers are alive . And while they are, you have to do what you can to bring them back. And you can’t murder them, nor part them out. Not for any reason, no matter how noble you think it is.’

‘It’s so easy to be judgemental,’ said Goodnight in a patronising tone, ‘but you must understand that we’ve done too much good for too long to have our work sacrificed on the altar of short-term, wishy-washy, woolly-headed egalitarianism. The benefits of Morphenox-B far, far outweigh the drawbacks and we are here to ensure the most—’

‘—favourable outcome is enjoyed by the majority,’ I said. ‘I know. I hear that a lot. What about this: “If you can’t have change without injustice, then there should be no change”.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I can’t remember. Someone important. It’s annoying when that happens.’

‘The idealism of youth,’ she said with a dismissive snort. ‘We can’t fail, not now. We’re too big, too integrated into society. All that we’ve done. All that we can do. All that we will do.’

They stared at me without speaking for some moments.

‘So what do you want from me?’ I asked.

Goodnight stared at me for a moment, and then walked from the small room, beckoning us to follow.

‘I want you to meet someone.’

She led me across to cell 4-H. I guessed who was in there but looked through the peephole anyway. Birgitta was lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling. Her hands were drawing circles in the air; pretend pens on pretend paper.

‘What are you going to do with her?’

‘Nothing for the moment, but she’s a good candidate for retrieval, and we do conduct tests from time to time. How about if we were to retrieve Birgitta right now? In exchange for the cylinder? She’d never know anything had ever happened. She’d be missing a thumb, of course, but that could be explained away as rats or mould or something.’

I had to think very carefully on this one. I could have given them the cylinder, but I had a pretty strong feeling that once the cylinder was secured, anyone remotely attached to it would end up in the night pit covered by a spadeful of lime.

‘I don’t know where the cylinder is.’

The Notable Goodnight cocked her head on one side.

‘Then we could redeploy Birgitta instead,’ she said, ‘next on the list. She’s very Tricksy so might be able to manage simple data entry. The problem is, one in every hundred do not survive the redeployment procedure. I can’t say it will be Birgitta, but we might have some bad luck.’

The implication wasn’t lost on me. I was to play ball – or Birgitta died. But again, I had no guarantee that wouldn’t happen anyway.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ I said, ‘but I don’t have the cylinder.’

The Notable Goodnight stared at me again for a few moments.

‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?’

‘I probably would, actually,’ I said, ‘about some things – y’know, like personal stuff. But not about this.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s perfectly acceptable and understandable,’ replied Goodnight, suddenly coming over all sunny, ‘we just had to be sure, that’s all.’

She gave me a smile and then, the ‘orientation’ over, asked Aurora to show me where I would be staying.

It wasn’t too far from the labs, no more than a flight of stairs and along a corridor. The proximity, I guessed, was not so much based on convenience, but on technology. If they wanted to try to coerce me into the Dreamspace in order to use more invasive methods, they would need a few machines to do so.

Aurora showed me into the room and told me to make myself comfortable, and how I’d have to remain here until my security clearance was established.

‘We can’t have anyone from RealSleep infiltrating the facility, now, can we?’ she said with a laugh, ‘Reporting back to Kiki and whatnot.’

I told her no, of course not, that would be silly.

She wished me goodnight, the door closed and I heard a bolt being slid across. I stood for a moment, listening to her footsteps retreat on the polished wooden floor outside, then chucked my jacket over a chair-back and looked around.