Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘That’s grounds for an investigation, certainly a reprimand, maybe even charges,’ I said, ‘against Toccata,’ I added, in case he misunderstood me. But Fodder shook his head.

  ‘You don’t understand. She’s harsh, but she’ll back up her team one hundred per cent. Besides, I’d already been warned three times.’

  ‘He had, you know,’ said Laura. ‘She’s very big on spelling, too. Often holds a surprise bee to try and catch us out. I got “Algonquin” wrong and she wouldn’t speak to me for two weeks.’

  ‘What did you want to know about anyway?’ asked Fodder.

  ‘Viral dreams. Something about a blue Buick.’

  Fodder stared at me for a moment.

  ‘Jonesy and I investigated this a couple of weeks back,’ he said, ‘but decided on no further action. There was this woman named Suzy Watson. Pleasant girl. Single, late twenties. She slept during the late Summer like Moody and Roscoe and awoke two weeks ago. Only this time she was different. Withdrawn, and haunted by a … haunted by a …’

  ‘… headless horseman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nightmaiden, Gronk, bondsmen, what?’

  ‘A dream,’ said Fodder.

  ‘Oh.’

  I’d never given dreams much consideration before, not having had one since I went on Juvenox aged eight. What was there to know, beyond that which was obvious? An anachronistic and outmoded pursuit that signified little and did nothing except sap one’s carefully accrued weight during hibernation.

  ‘She wasn’t on Morphenox?’ I asked.

  ‘No; they’re all Beta Ceiling payscale in Railway Infrastructure Support – they don’t qualify.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s contentious,’ said Fodder. ‘Anyway, she wakes up feeling off-kilter, complaining about this dream, and then instead of improving, she gets worse. She has the dream again, night after night, and before long it takes her over. She becomes withdrawn and suspicious, then starts to have waking hallucinations. Pretty soon it’s all she talks about and eventually, she goes into Mrs Nesbit’s and attacks random customers with a machete. She kills one guy and hospitalises two more. Someone calls us as it’s a sleep-related incident, and Toccata tells her to drop the machete. She doesn’t, so she thumps her.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘When Consul Toccata thumps, she thumps to kill.’

  ‘Is it true she eats nightwalkers just for fun?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s rumoured,’ said Laura, ‘and that she garnishes them with mint jelly to make them more appetising.’

  ‘After Suzy Watson, there was Roscoe Smalls,’ continued Fodder, ‘who babbled on about blue Buicks and boulders and Mrs Nesbit – then took the Cold Way Out. We found him huddled under the statue of Gwendolyn VII37 outside the museum, frozen solid. He’s still there. Then Moody got it. He had it worst of all.’

  ‘Hooke whacked him dead just now,’ I said. ‘He was yelling about Mrs Nesbit and blue Buicks. What did all that mean?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Fodder, ‘but to us it looked like a mixed bag of Sleepstate Paranoia, Hibernational Narcosis and Waking Night Terrors – probably fed by an escalating conversational feedback loop.’

  ‘Panicky Sub-betas are nothing new,’ said Laura. ‘One Winter it’s about heating, the next it’s about vermin, then dreams, then spiders, then someone thinks they’ve heard a nightmaiden or that the Gronk’s after them. That’s the problem with natural sleepers. They spook real easy, and once one of them has seen or heard something weird, they all have to. But common sense prevails: you can’t catch dreams.’

  I’d studied this phenomenon in the Academy. Panic could spread during the Winter like wildfire, especially amongst the Sub-beta payscalers, who were notorious chatterers. Feedback loops, echo chambers, circular reinforcement. All could play a part in escalating the utterly imaginary to the level of reality, sometimes with fatal consequences.

  ‘They all had a dream of such fearsome reality that it flooded from their subconscious and invaded their waking hours,’ said Fodder. ‘The dream grew, it took them over. It devoured them.’

  ‘I’m not being impudent or anything, but why was this deemed worthy of “no further action”?’

  ‘Yes, agreed, weird,’ said Fodder, taking no offence at my questioning, ‘but it wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, when it comes to weird stuff, viral dreams hardly make the Sector Twelve top ten.’

  ‘Where’s Toccata on the list?’

  ‘Five or six. Shrimp, will you run Deputy Worthing off a copy of the report?’

  Laura nodded and trotted off, a bounce in her step.

  ‘Thanks for telling me all that,’ I said, conscious that Consulates were under no obligation to share information. ‘Did Toccata think there was anything in viral dreams?’

  ‘She said she thought they were narcosis-induced night terrors, as did we.’

  ‘So why do you think Toccata contacted Logan about it?’

  Fodder shrugged.

  ‘You’d have to ask her – which I don’t recommend. She might have wanted to intrigue Logan to get him out here, or just to piss off Aurora. The pair of them have a complicated relationship. Do you like marshmallows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, and offered me one from a bag.

  Laura returned with the report, which wasn’t large, and marked, as Fodder had said, ‘No Further Action’. It wouldn’t be much of an epitaph for Moody, I thought.

  I thanked them both and was buzzed out of the shock-gates to make my way back to the railway station. It had started to snow once more, but lazily – large flakes spinning slowly down out of the darkness.

  The thawed and refrozen area where Moody had met his end was now covered by a light smattering of snow, and already someone had partially mended the crack on the window of Mrs Nesbit’s with some silicon filler. I hurried on past, my time in Sector Twelve mercifully almost at an end. The Winter was wilder than I’d thought, and everything I had learned from the Consuls in Cardiff and the Academy had been pretty much overturned. There were the rules we were taught, and there were the rules we did our job by. The two were related, but as distant cousins rather than siblings. I needed to be back as a Novice, in Cardiff, doing laundry and photocopying. Away from HiberTech, RealSleep, Sector Twelve, Aurora, night-terrors and dreamers.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. There was another shock in store when I reached the station. The platform was empty. The Cardiff train had gone.

  Marooned

  * * *

  ‘… The Campaign for Real Sleep or “RealSleep” were a bunch of dangerous disruptionists, hell bent on upsetting the delicate balance of the nation’s hibernatory habits – or an unjustly-banned hibernatory rights group. It depends on your point of view. Not that it mattered. Support of a financial, material or spiritual nature was punishable by life imprisonment …’

  – To Die, Perchance to Sleep? – the Rise and Fall of RealSleep, by Sophie Trotter

  I tried to dispel my panic with denial.

  ‘The Merthyr train,’ I said to the stationmaster when I found her in a tiny office that smelled of coal-smoke, old socks and baking, ‘just gone for coal and water or something, yes?’

  She looked at me, then at an oversized pocket watch she carried in her undersized pocket.

  ‘I let it go fifteen minutes early,’ she said in a curt manner. ‘They were in a hurry to get back through the Torpantu.’

  ‘You said I had two hours.’

  ‘I misspoke. But you can always take the next train. It’s at Springrise plus two, 11.31, all stops to Merthyr, light refreshments available, off peak, Super Saver not valid – but no bicycles.’

  ‘I can’t wait sixteen weeks. I need to be back home now.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you delayed the train in Cardiff. There’s a moral in this story, my friend. Piss around with our timetables, and we’ll piss around with yours. Enjoy your stay in the Douzey. You’ll lik
e it here. No wait, hang on, my mistake – you won’t. If luckless circumstance, Villains, Toccata, cold or Wintervolk don’t get you, the poor food almost certainly will.’

  And she smiled.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so instead told her where to go and what to do with herself when she got there – a futile comment and she and I both knew it – then walked outside the station and stood in the gently falling snow, clenching and unclenching my fists as I tried to make sense of what had just happened. I wanted to find something to kick, but there was little around that wouldn’t have been hard and unyielding and ultimately painful, so I just stood there, seething quietly, the snow gathering silently on the shoulders of my greatcoat, like great big crystallised tears.

  I stood in a marinade of my own self-pity for ten minutes or so until the chill made me shiver, and more practical matters took precedence: survival. I moved to the top of the station footbridge to get a better sense of the local geography. The town was not located specifically around the town square as I had first supposed, but strung out in a line that began at HiberTech on the hill behind me, then stretched along a main road that headed off to the north-west, where forty or so Dormitoria rose in ranks on the opposite slope of the shallow valley, two or three miles distant. The only lights showing were the lanterns over the porters’ lodges, and the gas lamps that illuminated the connecting roadway. There was almost no sound, and it already felt like midwinter, even though it was still officially Autumn for another twenty-nine hours.

  ‘Worthing?’ came a voice below me. ‘What the hell are you still doing here?’

  Below me was Aurora. She was alone, and buttoned up against the cold. It was, I confess, a relief to see her.

  ‘They let the train go early,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  I walked down from the footbridge to where she was waiting for me.

  ‘I’d upset the stationmaster when I delayed the train in Cardiff,’ I explained. ‘Sort of payback.’

  ‘That’s annoying,’ she said, ‘but not unexpected. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was going to go back to the Consulate and see if they could get me out.’

  ‘Probably not the wisest of moves, especially as you’ll have to justify your actions to Toccata at some point. I know it was me that pulled the trigger, but you got into this situation because you insisted on retrieving Bouzouki Girl. While a brave act, it could be seen as reckless, and, well, you did disobey orders and a Chief Consul ended up dead.’

  It didn’t sound good when she said it like that.

  ‘One who was involved in illegal activity.’

  ‘I wish things were that simple,’ she said, ‘but when Toccata’s involved, logic becomes somewhat … mutable.’

  She stared at me for a moment.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is kind of my fault, so I’ll wangle you a Sno-Trac and you can drive yourself to Hereford; the Winter network Railplane38 goes from there. The road is flagged all the way, so pretty easy to navigate. But don’t go in the dark as Villains have been active recently – I’ll find you a bed for a night. Sound okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘sounds very okay. Thank you.’

  She gave me a smile that was really very charming.

  ‘Okay, then. Now, if you don’t mind swapping anonymity for squalor, there’s space in the Sarah Siddons, where you can crash for a couple of days in case the weather’s no good tomorrow. It’s a Beta Pay Ceiling Dormitorium so you’ll be slumming it with natural sleepers, but it’s warm and dry and vermin-free, which is more than can be said for the Howell Harris. They had rats in there a couple of years back, and three residents were eaten. It was kind of funny, actually, given the inflated rates they charge. What do you say?’

  ‘What you suggest,’ I said, glad that I at least had a plan of sorts – and, more importantly, shelter.

  Aurora said the walk would do us good, so we started off down the road towards the gaggle of Dormitoria at the other end of town, our voices muffled, our breath showing white in the sharp air. The low rooftops of the surrounding houses were smooth-capped with snow that looked as though it had been sculpted from polystyrene foam, and a noise limit sign close by read 55 decibels,39 a level of hush that would be unworkable in Cardiff. We only started making arrests above 62dB40 these days, and even a momentary spike beyond 75dB41 was hardly regarded as criminal.

  ‘I’m really sorry about Mr Hooke being such an arse,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t my choice, but sometimes you have to work with what you’re given.’

  We both turned as we heard a noise behind us. It was the drowsy I’d seen earlier in the Wincarnis, shuffling through the snow. She was swathed in large and expensive badger-furs that would have looked a lot better – and fresher – when they were on the badger.

  ‘Good evening. Zsazsa,’ said Aurora, ‘have you met Deputy Worthing?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘delighted.’

  She gave me a welcoming smile instead of an embrace, then turned back to Aurora.

  ‘Tell Mr Hooke from me that I don’t do non-sleepy-fun-freebies, and if he persists on asking me to recite Ozymandias pro bono, I’ll punch him in the eye.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ she said.

  ‘Good of you,’ said Zsazsa, and she shuffled off into the gathering gloom, stumbled on a hidden kerbstone, swore, then moved on.

  ‘Why does Zsazsa look so familiar?’ I asked once she was out of earshot.

  ‘She was the third Mrs Nesbit, the one between Gina Lollobrigida and Brenda Klaxon.’

  She wasn’t the Mrs Nesbit I knew when I was a kid, obviously, but knowing all the old Nesbits was like knowing every actor who ever played Jane Bond, especially the solitary male one, something that was quite controversial at the time.42

  ‘How on earth did she end up here?’ I asked.

  ‘Four ill-advised marriages and some truly appalling financial advice.’

  The actress playing the folksy homespun icon of the food giant in all the TV ads was periodically regenerated to great fanfare and publicity. Former Mrs Nesbits usually went on to a career in celebrity endorsements, book deals and then either panto or politics – sometimes both – which made it all the more unusual that Zsazsa LeChat, to give her her full name, had ended up eking out a living as a drowsy in the fringe sectors.

  ‘The fixed line will save your life in a blizzard,’ said Aurora as we walked on, indicating the cable that was running through eyelets bolted to a succession of white-painted posts by the side of the road. ‘All the arrows point to the main square, so if you get lost the default option is to go back there and start again.’

  ‘Useful to know,’ I said.

  We passed a yard selling trailers with an ancient BP sign outside and there chanced across a man leaning against a lamp-post. He was wrapped up against the cold in a Woncho, a poncho made of heavy Welsh blanket, and was smoking a long corncob pipe that was a good three decades out of fashion, and six refills past replacement.

  ‘Walking to the other end of town?’ he asked.

  Aurora said we were, and the stranger said he’d join us, as there was ‘safety in numbers’.

  He introduced himself as Jim Treacle, bondsman and part-time Consul. He was a youngish man with dark hair, and delicate features. He coughed twice, smiled, and then clasped my outstretched hand to pull me into the Winter embrace. He smelled of mouldy string, liquorice and ink.

  ‘Welcome to the Douzey,’ said Treacle with a weak laugh, ‘where leaving is the best part of visiting, and staying is the worst part of anything.’

  He coughed again, a deep, rattly death-knell of a cough. I’d heard it from winsomniacs, but never for very long.

  ‘Have you been overwintering long, Mr Treacle?’ I asked as we walked on.

  ‘Twelve years,’ he said, ‘but only in this godforsaken hole for four. I’d underwritten some bad Debts and took a bribe – it was a tiny one, actually, blown all out of
proportion – and, well, it was here or prison. I chose prison, obviously, but the judge overruled me. Said prison wasn’t harsh enough.’

  ‘This is more harsh than prison?’

  ‘The food’s better, I grant you, but it’s the fringe unbenefits that make this place so hideous. I’ve experienced almost every terror in the last four years. A run-in with Lucky Ned’s gang, near-starvation, frostbite, irate debtors, Toccata in a rage, and a massed nightwalker attack.’

  ‘That’s only frightening in a languid sort of way, you big baby,’ put in Aurora. ‘They don’t move so fast, and if they’re well fed, not dangerous at all.’

  ‘It’s the look they give you,’ he said, with a shiver, ‘full of vacant malevolence.’

  ‘I heard you have a wager going with Laura,’ I said.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ he replied with an unpleasant smirk, ‘on the existence of the Gronk.’

  ‘The wager is as good as won,’ said Aurora. ‘There is no Gronk; the Wintervolk are merely myths – stories for children and idiots.’

  ‘I think something weird is going on,’ I said, as I’d heard a few Gronk stories over the years. ‘Six years ago on the line just south of the Torpantu, a four-man maintenance crew were taken on a moonless night without a button or a zip being undone. No one saw hide nor hair of them again. Their underclothes, shirts, belts and fleeces were still inside their overalls – and folded.’

  ‘The clothes in my bureau are folded,’ said Treacle. ‘It doesn’t mean the Gronk lives in the utilities.’

  They’d been taken, the story went, because they were unworthy. All four had been found guilty of physical trespass and were freeworking until prison at Springrise.

  ‘I heard,’ I said, ‘the Gronk teases the shame from you, and then, right at the moment when you realise the crushing enormity of your actions and how nothing could ever be right again, she draws out your soul. They say that when you expire your shame and guilt are expunged and the burden of your sins is removed. You go to your maker forgiven, and pure.’

  ‘What a load of old tosh,’ said Treacle.