‘Ghosts could be explained this way,’ said Laura, ‘and Wintervolk. An orphaned consciousness returning periodically using the power of another sleeper’s thoughts.’
At any other time I would have dismissed this as utter nonsense.
‘Lloyd thought the Gronk might be somehow related to Ichabod’s murdered daughter,’ I said.
‘I heard that too. Want to see a picture of her?’
‘Sure.’
She pulled open a filing cabinet, rummaged for a moment and then drew out a file. She flicked through the contents, eventually showing me a family photograph. It was of Rhosilli beach in the Gower, the Argentinian Queen behind, recently wrecked. A man, thin and weaselly and with a sour, cruel face, a woman, bluff and optimistic. And Gretl, the daughter, holding a beach ball. I felt a cold chill run up my back. Yesterday – even this morning – I would have dismissed it all as a retrospective memory remapping, but now I wasn’t so sure. It was the same child as the one in the Birgitta dream, the child with the gurgle of laughter. The same gurgle of laughter I’d heard before Lucky Ned was taken.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Laura. ‘You look kind of . . . ill.’
‘The Gronk’s real,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura, ‘that’s why I gave you the camera. To take a picture of her. The wager was always sound; it was only the evidence that was going to be a problem.’
‘I think she’s in my mind,’ I said quietly. ‘I saw her in the Dreamstate.’
‘That could mean she’s either protecting or stalking you,’ said Laura. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but there are plenty more unworthy than you. She’ll pluck the ripest fruit first. You may want to whistle “Some Enchanted Evening”* when she makes landfall, just to be safe.’
‘Good tip. Thanks,’ I said sarcastically.
‘You’re welcome.’
Laura tidied away the picture and made to leave as Fodder had said he’d take her around to look at some of the folded linen traps she’d set up. She gave me a cheery wave, told me to keep the Instamatic camera close by at all times, and departed.
I sat for a long time considering the Gronk, then went and made a cup of tea, sat with it until it grew cold, and searched the Sector Twelve Residents filing cabinet until I found Birgitta’s personnel file. Attached were her Spring & Autumn identity mug shots and the usual guff about hibernational intentions, National Insurance records and employment status – in her case ‘freelance’. Aside from a hefty fine for failing to properly register with OffPop and an ongoing investigation for potential childbearing evasion, there was little of note. And there was no mention of marriage, nor any link to Webster.
I replaced the file, had a thought, then pulled Webster’s file and stared at the contents curiously. Jonesy had pointed out that he and five others had either vanished or been made into nightwalkers, potentially because one of them was conducting some form of industrial espionage. And that got me to thinking that if one of them was claiming to be someone they weren’t, then their file – the one used to conduct background checks – would be fraudulent.
Webster’s name would have come back clean, but if he was an impostor, his likeness might very well show up a different result.
I unclipped the photograph from his file, attached it to a sheet of paper, wrote a request that purported to be from Toccata using a signature on another document I’d found, and sent it via fax to Central Records in Aber. I watched as the paper was slowly drawn into the machine. Sixty miles and a short time lag away it would be doing the same thing, only coming out.
As soon as it had vanished, a cold panic seized me. What was I doing? There was nothing to link Webster to, well, anything. A traitorous Don Hector mixed up with deep-cover Campaign for Real Sleep operatives battling to retrieve a missing wax cylinder existed only in my imagination. They were dreams. Fancies. Nonsense. Narcosis.
And even more stupidly, I’d just forged the Chief’s signature on an information request. A felony during the Summer, potential Frigicution in the Winter. I stared at the dormant fax machine forlornly, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I considered sending another fax countermanding the first, but thought that would probably make it worse.
But, I told myself optimistically, it was entirely possible Central Records were busy, and checking photographs could take days.
It took all of eight minutes. And I only knew that because I got a personal visit from Toccata, who arrived with Jonesy into the filing room. Toccata didn’t look very happy, but then she never looked very happy.
‘Well, Gronk’s dung in a piss-pot,’ said Toccata as soon as she saw me moving in a guilty fashion away from the fax machine, ‘I should have known it was you.’
I defaulted to stout denial, as Sister Placentia had done when eighteen empty gin bottles were found under her bed.
‘I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.’
Toccata raised an eyebrow. Oddly, over her non-seeing eye.
‘Then let me enlighten you: I just got a call from Central Records, thanking me for the very interesting picture I sent to be identified. I was surprised about the call, Wonky. Do you know why I was surprised?’
‘I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘Because I never sent any picture ID request, and that must be me having a serious memory lapse, because it had my signature on it.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘really?’
‘Yes, really. Then they asked me who the man in the picture identified himself as, because they’ve been after him for twelve years and he’s on their Campaign for Real Sleep watch list. And you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I couldn’t answer that question, either. Because I hadn’t sent it and didn’t know what they were talking about. Isn’t that totally weird?’
‘Very weird – but I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Jonesy picked up the actual fax that I had carelessly left on my desk and showed it to Toccata, then to me.
‘You are so busted,’ said Jonesy with a smile. ‘I think you’d better tell us everything.’
Charlie Webster
‘ . . . The Josephine III was built on the Clyde and launched in 1936. After a long career plying the North Atlantic route she was sold to a Southern shipping line and renamed the Argentinian Queen. Captured while blockade-running in 1974, she was consigned to Newport to be scrapped in 1982. Her tow parted during delivery and she was swept onto Rhosilli beach . . . ’
– Wrecks of the Gower – Welsh Tourist Office
‘So before I even start getting to work on you,’ said Toccata, ‘whose details are about to come back via the fax?’
There didn’t seem much point in lying – they’d find out soon enough.
‘You’ll know him as Charles Webster.’
‘Webster the orderly at HiberTech?’
I nodded, and Jonesy and Toccata looked at one another. They were surprised, or perhaps shocked, or perhaps both. I could feel my eye start to puff up where Toccata had hit me earlier, but resisted the urge to touch it.
The fax machine began to hum and we waited without speaking until the message had fed out of the printer. Jonesy picked it up before I could see and showed it to Toccata.
‘How did those idiots at HiberTech Security miss this?’ said Toccata. ‘They let a known RealSleep agent right into the heart of their organisation.’
‘That’s actually quite amusing,’ said Jonesy.
‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Toccata, and they both stared at me for some time in silence.
‘Can you feel that empty pause, Wonky?’ said Toccata. ‘It’s where you tell us why you were investigating Charles Webster. How you knew he wasn’t who he said he was. Let’s hear it.’
It felt like I was in front of Mother Fallopia, being harangued about some dumb prank we’d
played back at the Pool. I knew one thing, though: I couldn’t tell them I’d seen it all in a dream.
‘Because,’ I began, ‘Birgitta had said she was married to someone named Charlie and I was trying to figure out . . . figure out . . . think, think . . . probate.’
‘Probate?’
‘Yes, probate. Who to give all her paintings to when she died.’
Toccata stared at me, her one eye unblinking. It was a heavy stare like treacle, which seemed to pour heavily down my neck and pool in my armpits.
‘What are you, her executor or something?’
‘It’s a hobby,’ I said, ‘sort of like that TV programme where they look for relatives who have been left stuff. What’s it called?’
‘Heir Hunters?’
‘That’s the one. Heir Hunters.’
‘You’re lying again,’ said Toccata, ‘but I’ve no idea why. Birgitta married to Webster, you say?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, flushing a deep shade of crimson.
Jonesy had pulled her file as I had been stammering out my pathetic attempt to extricate myself from the jam.
‘If they were,’ she said, ‘it was off grid – which might point towards her being Campaign for Real Sleep, too. He must have been made of pretty stern stuff to not give her up, and Hooke must have gone seriously to town to reduce him to little more than a nightwalker.’
‘Hooke’s an animal,’ agreed Toccata. ‘No one I know has ever withstood a prolonged Dreamspace attack.’
I think I knew that, too, through the memory I shared with Webster: that Birgitta had been RealSleep too, and that, yes, Webster didn’t give her up and instead of legging it off-sector she had stayed, her cover burned, in a scuzzy out-of-the-way corner of nowhere, waiting for an instruction that might never come out of loyalty to the cause she loved. Hoping, perhaps, to make a difference if the need arose.
‘Okay, then,’ said Jonesy, turning to Toccata, ‘but what do we do?’
Toccata sucked her lip and tapped the fax that had just come in.
‘They’ll probably have cc-ed this to HiberTech Security,’ she said, ‘but unlike us, they don’t know Webster’s connection to Birgitta.’
‘We should check her room,’ said Jonesy, ‘in case there is anything incriminating to be found there.’
The words didn’t register at first. I had to ask her to say them again.
‘I said,’ she repeated in a testy fashion, ‘that we should check Birgitta’s room. It might throw up something of interest.’
It would throw up a lot more than just something of interest. It would throw up Birgitta, exactly where I’d left her: clean and tidy and fed and oh-so-obviously harboured.
‘Any objections, Wonky?’
I tried to look like the sort of person who wasn’t about to be professionally, legally and socially destroyed before the hour was out.
‘Me? None at all.’
‘I can’t make up my mind about you,’ said Toccata, staring at me intently, head on one side, her lone eye unblinking. ‘Most Novices we get are either burned-out ex-military with a thousand-yard stare, gung-ho idiots or saddos who might as well have Kill Me Now printed on their forehead. You’re not any of those. But I can’t figure out if you’re a clever person pretending to be thick, a thick person pretending to be clever, or just a chancer stumbling through the Winter without any sort of plan or thought at all.’
‘Can I vote for option “C”?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
‘But one thing we do know,’ added Toccata, ignoring me, ‘is that we can’t let you out of our sight.’
‘Ah,’ I said; my only plan – running away when their backs were turned, but details not yet worked out – was now tattered and broken. ‘Can I ask a question?’
‘A question?’ said Toccata. ‘Of course – actually, no. Be quiet and do as you’re told or I’ll make good on the tongue-coming-out promise. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.’
* * *
* * *
In less than a minute I was driving Jonesy towards the Siddons in the falling snow, Toccata having elected to stay in the Consulate. The light was muted by the coming storm, and aside from the occasional street light that glowed a yellowy-orange, the sky had an angry blackness about it. I was fifteen minutes away from arrest, and no amount of talking would get me out of the charges that would undoubtedly follow.
‘After all those years we spent together,’ said Jonesy, finally finding something to say as we drove past the wrought-iron gates to the museum, ‘you might have taken me into your confidence. Just shows that even when you pretend to think you know someone, you actually don’t pretend to know them at all.’
‘Can we have a break on the whole invented histories deal?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely not. For one thing the only way through the Winter is continuity, and for the other, I don’t back out of a long and happy make-believe union just when things start getting rocky.’
A squall hit the Sno-Trac and the vehicle seemed to shake down to its smallest rivets. I instinctively throttled back to a slow crawl, and increased the speed of the wipers.
‘This is nasty,’ I said, attempting to distract myself from Birgitta’s impending discovery, ‘a blizzard.’
‘This isn’t a blizzard,’ she replied, ‘this is just crystallised water with a smattering of wind. When you open the door and know that going out is certain death, that’s a blizzard.’
We continued on, the weather steadily worsening until by the time we had pulled up outside the Siddons, the visibility was down to less than ten yards.
‘Are we in a blizzard now?’
‘Nope,’ said Jonesy, ‘but we take precautions as if we were. You’re leading.’
I broke a light-stick, clipped it to my coat, then moved to the back of the Sno-Trac and grasped one end of a steel cable that fed off a drum mounted near the rear exit and attached it to the loop on my belt. I pulled down my goggles and opened the door, allowing the wind and weather to blow inside. I paused and climbed out but it wasn’t a time to dally; I let go of the vehicle and stepped out into the blinding void.
I’d practised this many times in a fog chamber – there was one the size of two football pitches at the Academy – but doing it for real was quite different: the noise and wind-blown snow added a raucous hostility that I hadn’t expected, and despite the lack of visibility in a fog chamber, it doesn’t have the disorientating effect of the snow constantly moving about you. I held my hand out in front of me and walked in the direction in which I hoped the Siddons would lie.
It took thirty-two-and-a-half paces to reach one of the statues that adorned the entrance. I was close enough to see it was a sleep-nymph, and I moved to the right until I found the door, then transferred the cable to the hefty eyelet bolted to the masonry. I tugged the cable twice, waited for Jonesy to emerge from the swirling emptiness, and once we were inside I shut the front door against the blizzard. The noise and wind ceased abruptly and the snowflakes, released from their wind-borne activity, floated gently to the floor.
Porter Lloyd and two cadaverous-looking winsomniacs were holding blankets and mugs of hot chocolate when we opened the inner door. Only they weren’t waiting for us.
‘Oh,’ said Lloyd, ‘Worthing. Thanks for the custom. Most grateful.’
‘Custom?’
He pointed to the door of the Winterlounge, where I could see several winsomniacs warming themselves around the coal fire. Shamanic Bob was amongst them and waved a weak greeting. They must have left almost the moment I told them about the blue Buick dream.
‘How many?’
‘Eight have checked in out of the thirty-two who left the Wincarnis,’ replied Lloyd, ‘and the way things are looking, I won’t expect many more. That was quite ruthless, if you don’t mind me saying. Didn’t expect it of you.’
It was a surprise to me,
too.
‘I never expected them to move across in this.’
Jonesy, however, was not in a stop-and-chat sort of mood.
‘Consulate business, Mr Lloyd. We’ll see ourselves up.’
She headed off towards the paternoster lift. I thought of waiting in the lobby, but other than stealing her Sno-Trac and running off into the blizzard – again, details not yet fully worked out – I couldn’t see any plan of action. Perhaps I could brazen it out.
‘You’re a dark horse,’ said Jonesy as the lift took us slowly upwards, the pipes gurgling ominously. ‘You’ve just ethically thinned twenty-four winsomniacs. Happy with yourself?’
‘No, not really – but I thought everyone hated them?’
‘We do,’ she said, ‘or we say we do. But a life’s a life, and all this bunch want to do is dream away their years in relative happiness. It’s not criminal, it’s a mental sleep issue. How did you get them to move?’
‘I told Shamanic Bob about the Active Control blue Buick dream washing around the Siddons.’
She turned and stared at me, brows knitted.
‘Who said the Buick dream was Active Control?’
‘Dunno,’ I said, suddenly realising I’d said too much, ‘I just heard.’
She stared at me some more, and her manner seemed to change.
‘I don’t know whether you’re lying or not, Wonky. But if there’s any Active Control dreaming going on in the Siddons, that changes everything.’
‘It does?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does. Active Control can only be initiated by HiberTech using a Somnagraph, and the only reason they’d want to undertake dream control experiments in the Siddons is . . . well, nothing good.’
We stepped off the paternoster at the ninth and walked along the corridor, the only illumination the glimmer that seeped down the light wells, while outside the storm heaved and sighed around the building.
Jonesy unlocked the door to Birgitta’s apartment and stepped inside, sweeping her flashlight around the room. I remained outside, heavy with nausea. I’d reconciled myself to Birgitta’s discovery by now, and my thumping heart had been replaced by a hot sense of utter dejection.
Early Riser Page 34
