Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘One moment I was curling up for sleep at Port Talbot,’ explained one, ‘and the next I’m wandering around the icy wastes of Sector Twelve, wrapped in gold Dralon curtains.’ One woke up on a slab about to be parted out, and another said that she had been, as far as she was aware, ‘asleep for five years, and in that time was looked after by my husband until he was drowned in a HotPot overheat. I knew nothing of this,’ she added, ‘until I came to be seated in a golf cart at HiberTech.’

There were many physical marks of their time walking: myriad scratches, frostbite, missing fingers and in some cases malnutrition or even wrongnutrition: a nightwalker who didn’t want to be named had two pounds of carpet underlay removed from their stomach, along with parts of a car tyre, seventeen buttons – all blue – and the partially digested skulls of three cats. But of psychological after-effects, there seemed to be mercifully few: almost all of the awakees described the experience as akin to hibernation, which is technically what it was, but with vague, half-forgotten dreams of what they might have been doing, and a lingering affection for raw tripe and undercooked pork.

The most notable awakee was the singing and dancing star Carmen Miranda who despite her advanced years, would go on to spearhead the campaign for a government inquiry into the potentially dangerous side effects of Morphenox.

‘Despite considerable research, we’ve absolutely no idea how and why this occurred,’ said The Notable Goodnight in a rare television appearance four weeks after the Awakening, ‘and although we may theorise that historically other nightwalkers may also have been potentially recoverable, we have no evidence one way or the other. Obviously, we are delighted by this unprecedented event, are currently conducting considerable research into the issue, will be cooperating fully with the inquiry and have withdrawn Morphenox from the marketplace.’

It was pretty much as expected, really.

The numbers were too great for HiberTech to hide what had happened. As it was, well-engineered corporate surprise, orchestrated bafflement, faux delight, suitable soul-searching and feigned contrition won the day. The story dominated the headlines at Springrise for almost a month before they moved on to more pressing matters, such as updated wastage targets, chilling new evidence for a planet-wide runaway climatic ‘snowball’ effect and, of course, the Albion’s Got Talent odds-on favourite: a pug dressed as a clown who can bark ‘The Lambeth Waltz’.

I met up with Toccata at the Wincarnis three days after Aurora was taken by the Gronk. She’d already tendered her resignation as both head of the Consul Service and HiberTech Security.

‘I can’t pretend to be two people for ever,’ she said, ‘and it’s impossible to hide the fact that I do now actually need to sleep.’

‘What’s that like?’ I asked.

‘It’s… glorious .’

Unable to feign the curious eye movements of her previously split personality, Toccata had taken to wearing an eyepatch that she simply switched when she took on a different persona.

‘Do you think anyone suspects anything?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Too much going on. And although it could be beneficial for me to stay on at HiberTech from a RealSleep espionage point of view, I have no recollection of anything Aurora got up to, so it would only be a matter of time before I was rumbled. I’m putting it about that I need to retire on mental health grounds. I don’t think anyone’s surprised, and quite a few people are actually quite relieved.’

Shamanic Bob brought our coffees and we waited until he had departed before continuing our conversation. Toccata had woken that night over at HiberTech, and while feigning to be Aurora, specifically ordered that I not be killed as I had ‘helped out considerably’ and that the nightwalkers were no longer scheduled for retirement. She got me out of HiberTech the following morning when the storm had abated, but not before I had gone to sleep again – and dreamed, big time.

The thing is, you don’t need a Somnagraph when you have a helpful entity like the Gronk to take you into the deep dreams of nightwalkers, don’t need a cylinder from Don Hector when you came second in the Swansea Town Memory Bee with six hundred and forty-eight random words – taking precisely six minutes to recite – memorised after only two readings. Back in the Cambrensis , before I went to see Foulnap in the museum, I played the cylinder twelve times to memorise it, each time with the nightwalkers gathering behind the door. I kind of figured HiberTech would squeeze the location of the cylinder out of me, and it’s always good to have a back-up, just in case. I’ll never know for sure, but I think Jack Logan had planned something like this all along. Perhaps not with the Gronk, but certainly regarding my memory.

‘Where will you go?’ I asked Toccata. ‘In retirement, I mean.’

‘I have a house on the Gower,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to visit me every year. Last two weeks in August. I don’t have many friends.’

‘Neither do I.’

So I did, every year until she died eighteen years later, of natural causes. Sometimes we walked to the abandoned lighthouse at the end of Whiteford Sands, sometimes to Oxwich Point, where we paused at the oddly shaped tree before we made our way down to the sea and then along the coastal path to Port Eynon for fish and chips. On the last day I spent with her every year we made a point of going to the Mumbles Pier for cockles and laver bread on toast with thick-cut bacon and a large mug of tea, all consumed outside, the gulls scavenging for scraps. [65] I strongly recommend that you do, too.

We sometimes saw Birgitta and Charles down at Port Eynon, where they now live. She paints and he looks after their daughters. I only spoke to Birgitta once, two weeks after Springrise when they were both preparing to leave Sector Twelve for good.

‘Hello, Deputy Worthing,’ she said when I opened my door one morning. I’d stayed in the Siddons . I kind of liked it there and had formed an attachment to Clytemnestra.

‘It’s Charlie,’ I said, trying hard not to stare. The return of Charles had lifted the melancholy I had seen in her earlier. I was still in love with her and would remain so for many years, but I think that was Webster’s love, carried over from his dream. If I was getting only half of what he felt, they would be happy as none other.

She asked me if I still had the painting she did of me, and could she have it back. I said that was fine, which saved me five hundred euros, and when she came in to fetch it, I asked her if she recalled anything from when she was a nightwalker.

‘I remember being under a car,’ she said, thinking hard, ‘and in the tub having my hair cut off. Other than that, zilch.’

She stared at me with her penetrating violet eyes, then held up her hand with the missing thumb.

‘I was reported retired, but someone decided I was worth keeping and spared me. I was also looked after in my room at the Siddons . I owe a Debt to someone. Do you know anything about that?’

I wanted to tell her what I felt, and what I’d done, and what I’d risked to keep her safe and just how close it had all been, but that would have only complicated matters. And to be honest the love that had kept her safe was her husband’s, channelled through me. It was his triumph as much as anyone’s.

‘I shouldn’t tell you this,’ I said, ‘but your thumb was entered into the books by Jonesy. She’s no longer with us, but I have a feeling that she might have had something to do with it. We all owe her a lot. I found this in her stuff. I guess it belongs to you.’