Early Riser

Over the hump

The train was soon wending its way north towards Sector Twelve, the smoke so thick from the fire valleys it seeped into the carriage like malevolent fog and made us all cough. Our discomfort was short-lived, however, as once past the limits of the Welsh coalfields the smoke cleared and we were once more steaming across a softly undulating landscape that was mostly frozen reservoirs, quarries and stunted oaks, all liberally draped with snow.

The pleasing view was the last thing on my mind. I was seated at one end of the carriage in a state of numbness. My fingers felt large and puffy and my chest so heavy and tight that I had to unbutton my jacket and loosen my shirt. I was having trouble swallowing and my heart didn’t seem to want to settle. Mrs Tiffen, oddly enough, was now playing ‘Delilah’. Seemed sort of apt, really. Not the lyrics themselves, but listening to Tom Jones while steaming up the valleys, even if on a bouzouki. After about ten minutes of trying to calm down and achieving it only to a limited degree, I set to work reassembling my Bambi, and had just finished when I heard a voice.

‘Mind if I join you?’

It was Aurora, and she sat without waiting for an answer.

‘I’d be dead without you,’ I said, ‘thank you.’

‘Oh, my pleasure,’ she said, as if she’d done nothing more than given me a Mars Bar or an unwanted ticket to the zoo. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘I’m worried that Toccata will throw a tantrum and do something weird. I think she really liked Logan, despite the fact that he was an arrogant twat.’

Oddly, I was unsure how I felt about all of this. The fallout would be dramatic, of course – you don’t kill one of the country’s leading Chief Consuls without someone asking questions – and although I’d liked and respected Logan, his association with a farming racket was, well, reprehensible – and he was about to execute me, so I couldn’t feel totally sorry he was dead. But I didn’t feel happy about it, either.

‘I’m not sure I’m really cut out for all this,’ I said.

She looked at me and smiled.

‘There are no heroes in the Winter, just lucky survivors. Besides, you passed your Graduation Assignment. You’re now a fully-fledged Winter Consul.’

The achievement seemed empty.

‘My mentor almost killed me and, without you, he would have. My input to Mrs Tiffen was minimal, at best. I hardly think that counts as a pass.’

‘The objective was achieved,’ she said with a smile, ‘and that’s pretty much all that matters, especially in the Winter. What did Logan want to see Toccata about?’

‘Something about blue Buicks and viral dreams.’

‘What a load of balls,’ said Aurora. ‘There’s no such thing as a viral dream.’

‘But—’

‘Why,’ she said, ‘do you have any evidence that there is a viral dream?’

I told her that Moody had muttered something about blue Buicks and Mrs Nesbit and the hands out to get him.

‘Moody the RailTec?’

I nodded.

‘And,’ I said, thinking of my training, ‘according to regulation SX-70 of the Continuity of Command directives, I will need to carry on Logan’s investigation – or at least, make some enquiries.’

‘About viral dreams? With Toccata?’

‘I guess so.’

She patted my hand.

‘Here’s some advice. Dump off Bouzouki Girl at Hibertech and get on the last train home. The Sector Twelve Winter Consuls are a bunch of vipers, especially Toccata. You don’t want to be mixed up with them.’

I’d heard this from several sources.

‘Is it true Toccata ate two nightwalkers to survive the Winter?’

‘Kept them alive until needed, I heard, and now has a taste for it. Anything else you remember about the two perps who were going to farm Bouzouki Girl?’

‘There were three suspects, not two.’

She stared at me with her single eye for a moment while the other moved around, seemingly of its own accord.

‘To the left, was she?’

‘He. A MediTech.’

‘That would explain it,’ she said, pointing to her useless eye, ‘I don’t see things too well on my left.’

She showed me a sketch on her notepad. It was, predictably, of half a face – Foulnap’s.

‘The man who took the nightwalker. This him?’

I nodded, and she placed the pad in her breast pocket.

‘Logan paused,’ I said after a moment’s thought, ‘like he didn’t want to kill you. Why was that?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Aurora, ‘but it was to your clear advantage that he did, and his clear disadvantage that he didn’t. Remember what I said: avoid the Winter Consuls in Sector Twelve – especially Toccata.’

She bade me goodbye, and wandered off down the carriage, leaving me to my thoughts. After half an hour or so the train stopped at Torpantu high station.

There was no movement of passengers or freight while the RailTecs set the brakes for the descent, and we were soon on our way again, first through a mile-long tunnel that cut the summit off the mountain, then past a weathered sign welcoming us to Sector Twelve and from there down a long incline at a measured pace. It had stopped snowing on this side of the ridge, and in the twilight I could just make out the shape of the mountains rising all around, their peaks draped in a soft blanket of snow. On the tighter bends the red glow of the locomotive five carriages ahead was clearly visible, and occasionally the train shuddered as the snowplough scythed its way through a drift while sparks from the funnel drifted past the windows like fireflies.

I fed the dead woman half a dozen custard creams and she mercifully dropped off into Torpor, a welcome relief. I got up to stretch my legs and walked to the end of the carriage, where I found Moody. He was staring out of the window, deep in thought, and looked up when I stopped next to him.

‘I need to give you this,’ I said, handing him a piece of paper outlining the nature of the Debt I’d promised: who it was to, the date and my signature.

‘Tidy,’ he said, placing it in his top pocket. ‘Join me?’

I sat in a position from where I would be able to see if Mrs Tiffen went walkies or tried to chew the seats.

‘How did you get the Vacant back?’ asked Moody.

‘Just good old-fashioned grit, I guess.’

‘No, seriously,’ said Moody, who’d figured me out well, ‘how did you get her back?’

‘Aurora stepped in and saved the day.’

‘That figures,’ said Moody. ‘It also means you owe her. It’s not a good habit to get into during the Winter, owing people stuff.’

‘I owe you,’ I said.

‘True,’ he said, ‘and even that’s not to your best advantage. You heading back home once you’ve dropped off your nightwalker?’

‘Once I’ve spoken to Toccata about viral dreams.’

Moody jumped visibly and looked around the carriage. He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

‘I can tell you something about viral dreams,’ he said, ‘but later, privately. I’ll be in the Wincarnis. Easy to find – on the main square. Watch out for HiberTech, too. All that “Saviour of Humankind” stuff is utter tosh – HiberTech are in it only for the cash. Don Hector was always generally true to his ideals, but the others soon took his dream and turned it into a nightmare. And Project Lazarus will just make the whole thing worse.’

‘What is Project Lazarus?’

‘I’ll tell what little I know at the Wincarnis later. But be careful in Sector Twelve: there’s something contrary about it.’

‘Contrary?’

‘Unusual. Spooky. Y’know all those weird Winter legends and fables you hear about when you’re a kid? The Wintervolk?’

I knew exactly what he meant, and I’d been fascinated by them for years, not just by their oddness, but by their variety: from the Thermalovaurs that fed off your heat, to the Winter Sirens who called you from your bed with the promise of song and dance and dreamy bundles but left you dead of exhaustion and spent of all moisture. Of the Tonttu or little people, who crept into your room at night to steal your teeth, and cash, and toes. Also the Chancer, who could walk though walls and fed off your fat as you slumbered, leaving you an empty bag of bones, and the Gizmo that crept into your ear and laid eggs that hatched into worms that fed off your dreams.

They were all great fun, but if there was one particular favourite of mine, it was the Gronk. Feeding off the shame of the unworthy while folding linen and humming Rodgers and Hammerstein hits had a certain inspiring randomness about it.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard of the Wintervolk.’

He leaned forward, touched me on the knee and lowered his voice to a whisper.

‘They come true in the Twelve. They’re here, they’re real. Mid-Wales is the cradle of fable – forged in the dreaming minds of the sleepers.’

‘O-kay,’ I said. His narcosis was clearly well beyond just blue Buicks, severed hands and being buried alive.

‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘Porter Lloyd at the Siddons Dormitorium. Heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘He’s met the Gronk. Or at least, came close enough to touch.’

‘Go on.’

Moody cleared his throat.

‘There once was a Winterstockman named Ichabod Block who managed a farm outside Rhayder, near to where the ice-sheet turns from ice to meltwater, and there’s no habitation for miles around. It was said that Ichabod was a man of simple needs; that he was taciturn, and dissatisfied with his lot; that he had a wife named Maria and a daughter named Gretl. But they departed one afternoon to no one knows where a couple of years before and this made him moody, and introspective, and few would want to speak with him, or bear him in company.’

‘We had someone like that at the Pool,’ I said, thinking of Sister Contractia.[32]

‘One Winter,’ continued Moody, ‘Ichabod contacted an acquaintance of his named Lloyd to whom he was owed a life-debt of several years’ standing, and told him that he was being “vexed most troublesome” by Wintervolk. Lloyd had been a porter for a decade, so of the Winter’s horrors, there was little to frighten him. He considered Wintervolk simply old washermen’s tales, the unchallenged pub-chat of the hard-of-thinking.

‘“How do you know it’s Wintervolk?” asked Lloyd when they met.

‘“Last week the hiburnal elks had their antlers trimmed and six of the eighty-nine cow-mammoths had their coats brushed. And inside the house,” continued Ichabod, “the raisins were all picked out of the muesli, Gretl’s The King and I album was stolen and I found all the books on my shelves reordered.”

‘“Alphabetically?” asked Lloyd.

‘“No – by merit.”

‘“Ah”.’

None but the Wintervolk would be so eccentrically daring.

The plan was simple: Porter Lloyd was to stand guard outside Ichabod’s barn from sunset to sunrise, seated upon a leather armchair.

‘Ichabod wanted to use him as Volkbait?’ I asked.

‘He did that,’ replied Moody, ‘for porters are by long tradition eunuchs, and the Wintervolk are known to favour those who are physically lesser. Ichabod, however, was hiding ten yards away and upwind, behind several bales of hay, Thumper at the ready, eager to despatch whatever made an appearance. Porter Lloyd was to stay awake, ready to raise the alarm.’

I noticed that several of the other passengers in the train had stopped talking and were leaning in, listening to the story.

‘But sleep was impossible,’ continued Moody. ‘Porter Lloyd sat there wide awake, ears straining in the inky blackness, the only light the faint glimmer from a sky bright with the stars of a Winter night. Not a sound punctuated the darkness. Not a rustle, nor even a broken twig, nor even the grunt of a spooked mammoth. Lloyd pulled his parka up around him, and thought of his life, his failings, his aspirations, and the fact that he couldn’t get the tune of “The Lonely Goatherd”[33] out of his head.’

Moody stopped speaking for a moment, took a sip from his hip thermos, then continued.

‘As the grey dawn pushed the night behind it and the world once more stirred to wakefulness, Lloyd suddenly jerked awake. He had slept for the past two hours and had been woken by a cry from Ichabod. Two words, quite clear, with no meaning he could discern. He yawned and stretched and called out. But of answer, there came none, and upon investigation he found Ichabod’s Thumper, the safety off but undischarged – and all his clothes, neatly folded on the ground, and still inside one another like Russian dolls. His socks were lining his shoes, his braces still buttoned up outside his shirt, a small pile of teeth fillings next to his watch.’

‘He’d gone?’ said one of the other passengers.

‘Vanished. Lloyd called the Consuls but they gave up after three days, having found nothing but his hat wedged high in an oak two miles away. They concluded that he had suffered a night terror, lost his mind and fled. A new stockman was brought in to replace Ichabod, his disappearance a mystery.’

‘What were the two words he spoke?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

‘He said: “Oh Gronk”, with a – a sort of a sigh of tired realisation.’

There was silence in the railway carriage, the air heavy with a sense of dread and wonder. The Gronk was a recent addition to the range of Wintervolk, and I’d not heard about her first appearance. I glanced out of the window. We had reached the bottom of the incline, and were steaming along the shores of a frozen reservoir that boasted a stone dam and Gothic straining tower. I turned back to Moody. I knew the story wasn’t over.

‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ I asked, and Moody nodded.

‘The replacement Winterstockman noticed that the taste of the water turned sour over the coming weeks so he made his way up the vertical ladder and through a loft hatch that was barely two foot square. They found Ichabod in the cold water tank, complete except for a missing little finger.’

Moody paused for dramatic effect.

‘The Consuls concluded suicide, and that Ichabod might have had an “inexplicable desire to cement Wintervolk legend”. But Porter Lloyd had more than doubts. When searching for Ichabod he noted that the house was tidy, the washing done, the beds made up, South Pacific[34] playing on the gramophone. There was even a Lancashire hotpot on the stove, a note on the lid in a small, spidery hand.’

‘What did it say?’ asked one of the other passengers.

‘It said: “Not enough oregano”.’

‘He could have folded the clothes and cleaned and cooked himself,’ said another passenger, peering around the seat back, ‘and put on the record. Like the Consuls said, to perpetuate the legend.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Moody, ‘but Ichabod wasn’t a tidy man – and more a Rice/Lloyd Webber sort of person.’

I had only a single question.

‘Was Ichabod unworthy?’

Moody looked at all of us in turn.

‘He wasn’t the only one they found in the water tank. There were the bones of his wife and ten-year-old daughter who he’d previously maintained had walked out on him eight years before.’

Moody concluded his story, his small audience murmured appreciatively, and as tradition dictates, gave him food as a tip. Within a minute he had half a Mars Bar, eight wine gums, a small bar of nougat and a Murray Mint.

‘We’ll meet later in the Wincarnis,’ he said, leaning back to have a nap, ‘and I’ll tell you all about the blue Buick – and HiberTech.’

I returned to my seat, where Mrs Tiffen was still safely in Torpor. We stopped briefly at Talybont to drop off a power worker, and whilst at the halt the RailTecs reset the brakes and pretty soon we were off again, but now more easily, the line clear, and with good speed.

We crossed a river cocooned in ice and snow, then passed through an abandoned junction, the platforms and station buildings covered in snow and ice. The train travelled on for another half-hour until with a gentle hiss and a muted squeal of the brakes we drew to a halt.

My outward journey was over.