Early Riser

The Wincarnis

There was still plenty of time until my train departed, so I headed into town to meet Moody, as we’d arranged. I took a right at a shuttered apothecary’s, then crossed a bridge upon which an inept driver had wedged an articulated lorry which was now frozen into the bridge by a concretion of snow and ice. Beyond this was a main square of modest proportions, empty aside from two parked cars, a post box, a phone box and a bronze statue on a sandstone plinth.

Ahead of me and overlooking the square was the Winter Consulate, a domed granite-faced bunker that appeared to have been designed by someone whose architectural taste lay chiefly in harbour breakwaters. The style was termed Ultra-Permanence, and reflected the fashion for public buildings that could withstand the damage of glaciers, earthquakes and even a marble-sized meteorite. It reflected the mood of the Northern Fed: here to stay.

To my right there was a newly refurbished flour mill, closed, and a public convenience beneath a town hall, also closed. Opposite me there there was a wool shop – open, curiously enough, and then a Co-op and Ottoman takeaway – again, closed. There were a few people around but no one seem to be dawdling. Mostly heads-down against the cold, faces hidden in hooded parkas.

The Wincarnis Hotel was to my immediate left, the name of the establishment relating to a brightly coloured enamel sign advertising Wincarnis Restorative Tonics high above the door. The Edwardian lady depicted on the panel peered out at the world with a cheery grin, oblivious to the ice and snow, the enamelled colours appearing inordinately bright in the dullness of the gas lamps.

I stepped inside the lobby and walked across to the reception desk, where there was a girl probably no older than sixteen sitting behind the counter. She wore a gingham dress under two buttoned cardigans, and her straight brown hair was cut neatly into a pudding bowl. She was poring over a stack of open books, and writing in a small neat hand in a child’s exercise book.

‘Welcome to the Wincarnis,’ she said in a cheery voice. ‘Haven’t seen you here before.’

‘Passing through,’ I said. ‘I was to meet Moody. He here?’

‘Nope, probably off somewhere muttering about Buicks and suchlike. What did you want to talk to him about?’

‘Buicks and suchlike.’

‘Figures,’ she said.

She had what looked like schoolwork spread across the counter in front of her.

‘Homework?’ I asked.

‘It’s actually my doctoral thesis,’ she said with a mildly offended air. ‘Evidential confirmation of previously considered legendary or nebulous forms within the Winterstate.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’m trying to prove the existence of Wintervolk.’

She might as well be attempting to prove unicorns or capture fairies in traps.

‘That’ll be tricky, don’t you think?’ I asked.

‘It’s borderline impossible.’

‘Because they don’t exist?’

‘Oh, they exist all right – it’s gathering evidence that’s hard. But I wagered a local bondsman they existed, and Jim Treacle, well, he does like a wager.’

‘What was the wager?’ I asked, expecting a dozen Topics or something.

‘Fifty grand.’

‘Fifty grand?’ It would take me twenty years to save up that sort of money. ‘Why so much?’

‘Long story. What do you make of this?’

She opened her satchel and took out a small box and then, with the utmost care, opened it to reveal a tiny hat, less than five centimetres across.

‘Behold,’ she said, ‘the headgear of a Tonttu, one of the Winter little people.’

I stared at it for a moment. The stitching was undoubtedly fine, but the material was less like leather and more like… plastic.

‘I think it’s from a Barbie,’ I said, ‘one of her Western outfits.’

‘Yes, I think so too,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The maker’s name is stamped on the inside. Look.’

She showed me, then repacked the hat and placed it back in her bag.

‘It’s important to collect evidence,’ she said, ‘even if disproved. That’s how science works. Being proved wrong and then advancing. If I’m proved wrong a lot, I must be making headway, right?’

‘Works for me,’ I said, ‘but the Wintervolk are just stories, right? To frighten children into good behaviour and the sleep-shy into bedding down?’

‘I’m taking a broader approach to the traditional definition of “existence” or even “proof”,’ she said, ‘but I may have more luck here than anywhere else: the Gronk, Thermalovaur and Gizmo are pretty much only ever connected to Mid-Wales, and of those, the Gronk is pretty much brand new – the first mention of it was only twenty years ago, over near Rhayder.’

‘Ichabod and the cold water tank?’

‘That’s the one.’

I told her that Moody had said the area was known as the cradle of fable.

‘With good reason,’ she replied, ‘and I think the Gronk is due to return – to feed on the shame of the unworthy.’

‘Rich pickings here, I take it?’

She rolled her eyes.

‘She’ll be totally spoiled for choice in the Twelve. Bondsmen and part-time Consul Jim Treacle is my choice if the Big G comes to call, but on the Burden of Guilt stakes, he probably doesn’t even come close to some of the oddballs kicking around. There’s Jonesy, who lost sixty soldiers under her command, Toccata who is barely herself half the time, Fodder is definitely hiding something and most of the porters here have suffered fatal losses, probably through boredom or incompetence. But my money’s on the Twelve’s very own one-man obnoxs-a-thon, Deputy Hooke. I’m Laura Strowger, by the way.’

‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

We shook hands rather than Winter embraced; you don’t with kids unless they’re family.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘good luck on your hunt for the Gronk.’

She thanked me and returned to her work, and I walked through to the Mrs Nesbit’s café, a good-sized room of plain rustic decor: oak beams, half-panelled walls, antique copper pans and with two large windows that looked out on to the square. There was a drowsy and a potential client sitting in a cosy alcove near the crackling log fire, discussing Impressionist painters, the usual precursor to assisted slumber. From there she might move on to literature, poetry, the lute, and – failing all that – more intimate means. Few needed to. Given the traditionally high level of drowsying skill, most clients were unconscious somewhere between Dylan Thomas and Longfellow with a few lasting as far as W. H. Auden. Lutes rarely even came out of their cases.

The drowsy’s eyes had the vacant, deeply-fatigued look of a winsomniac; someone who hadn’t been to the nourishing abyss of slumber for years. She looked oddly familiar, and appeared to be in her sixth decade – and that was unusual, because serial overwinterers rarely made it past their fourth. Stupidly, I raised my hand and waved in recognition, and she, expressionless, did the same.

The remaining occupants of the lounge were winsomniacs, perhaps a dozen or so. They were sprawling rather than sitting, and oozed a sense of unexcited apathy. A pair were playing chess using lightweight pieces, several were reading books, but most were simply dozing, eyes and mouth partially open, saliva dribbling down their cheeks. They languidly swivelled their eyes towards me as I walked in, then just as languidly swivelled them back and carried on with what they were doing, which was the quiet side of almost nothing.

‘Welcome to Mrs Nesbit’s,’ said the winsomniac closest to me. He was dressed in long hessian robes, open sandals and wore dried Spring flowers entwined in his beard. He had green-rimmed spectacles and a kindly, pious face wrinkled into folds by sleepless Winters and the elements.

‘Hullo,’ I said, breaking the one rule of engaging with the sleep-shy: don’t.

He introduced himself as Shamanic Bob.

‘Deputy Consul Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

‘Passing through?’

‘Yes; here to meet with Moody.’

‘You’ll get more sense from lichen. What’s with your head?’

Unlike talking to The Notable Goodnight, where I needed to be polite, this was an answer I could have fun with.

‘It’s the final stages of an excruciatingly painful and incurable genital wasting disease. Luckily, it’s only spread by skin contact. Sorry, I should have said that before I shook your hand. Remiss of me – apologies.’

Shamanic Bob smiled.

‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I think I deserved that.’

‘Yes, I think you did.’

He stood up, moved forward and drew me into the Winter embrace. The last time I’d been hugged by a shaman was about a decade before, and little had changed. He smelled of dry hessian, mould and biltong. He was also bony. Really bony. Like a sack of pickaxe handles. After we’d stood there for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep, we parted.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ he said. ‘We stock Nesbit Budget Grind. What it lacks in taste it makes up for in adaptability. Mixed into a paste it makes a very resilient tile grout.’

‘That’s very kind, thank you.’

‘The machine’s up there, and while you’re about it, make one for me. Anyone else?’

There was weak assent from the entire room. Enthusiasm was a dirty word to winsomniacs. I walked across to the bar and made a large cafetière of coffee, then placed it on a central table. The winsomniacs made weak and ineffectual attempts to help themselves, so I handed them around. The sleep-shy were like that. Always getting other people to do stuff for them.

‘On the house,’ said Shamanic Bob as I handed him a coffee, then took one myself. It tasted like coal-tar soap mixed with charcoal and rust.

‘Are you a follower of The Book of Morpheus, Worthing?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be honest,’ I said, ‘I’ve nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it’s a dangerous nonsense.’

‘An unbeliever is but an opportunity,’ said Bob with an unrealistic level of optimism, ‘and a man surrounded by an abundance of opportunity is a rich man indeed. What brings you to Sector Twelve, Deputy? Are you here to… dream?’

I realised who they were, then. They were the polar opposite to those of us on Morphenox: using illegally-obtained dream enhancers, they shunned the featureless blackness that was the Morphenox hibernation experience, and rode out the Winter on a chemically-induced froth of energy-sapping subconscious escapism. And, given the rules surrounding Winter Asylum, they could do it for free, with legally mandated food and shelter.

Parasites, basically – of the worst sort.

‘Oh,’ I said, without much subtlety, ‘you’re dreamers.’

‘Correct,’ said Shamanic Bob with a faint smile, ‘but don’t be thinking we’re victims of our lifestyle, we’re here by choice. And believe you me,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘this is the place to score some D-Reem. One hundred per cent pure, uncut. We have a contact in HiberTech; we swap it kilo-for-the-gram with Tunnock’s Teacakes.’

D-Reem was an escalator, a dream enhancer. Slang made it all cool and groovy, when actually it was all just monumentally dumb.

‘Do you dream, Deputy?’ he asked.

It was an easy assumption I was on Morphenox. I didn’t dream. Or at least, nothing serious. Just the odd scrap during nightly nap.

‘I’ve not dreamed since I was in single digits,’ I said. ‘I’m okay with that.’

‘If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free – Morphenox muffles the mind and smothers the imagination.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘You should ride the dream train,’ continued Shamanic Bob with a smile, ‘pop an escalator and see what you’re missing. It’s the dark and dirty cousin of Morphenox, but there couldn’t be one without the other. It’s night and day, my friend, hope and despair, Eldon and Manning, darkness and light. We’re the flipside of sound slumbering, the crusty night-seepage you scrape off and sweep under the mattress.’

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I said, at the same time doubting my implied presumption that there was something to understand.

‘Do you know your Don Hector history?’ he asked with what passes for enthusiasm amongst his calling. ‘What the good doctor was doing for twenty years before he introduced Morphenox to the grateful masses?’

Come to think of it, I didn’t. The story was that he spent two decades perfecting the drug; I’d not heard how he actually did it.

‘Morphenox was a fluke,’ said Shamanic Bob when I didn’t answer, ‘discovered wholly by chance.’

I was going to ask him to expand upon that when Moody turned up. Unfortunately, not in a manner I’d hoped or expected. We were interrupted by a shout and I looked out of the café window, where I could see a naked Moody running towards where we sat, his coarse wintercoat standing hard up against the cold. He was wielding an axe and yelling ‘Blue Buick!’ at the top of his voice, and without pausing for a second swung the axe with all his might against the plate-glass window of Mrs Nesbit’s – a pointless gesture given that it would be certified to withstand torrential rain, gale-borne debris and an enraged mammoth. He scratched the toughened glass, but that was about it.

‘This isn’t a great advert for dreaming,’ said Shamanic Bob. ‘Moody has been riding the arse end of the reality slope for quite a few days now.’

‘I hope the Gronk lays eggs in your brain, Mrs Nesbit!’ he yelled, raising the axe to swing it again. ‘And they bury you alive!’

Just then a man strode unhurriedly around the corner. It was Agent Hooke, all tall and gangly and with a face like leather. He was cradling a Thumper, but not the old-fashioned one of Lopez’s back at the John Edward Jones, it was the Mk VII – twice as powerful and available in matt black or nickel.

‘HiberTech Security,’ announced Hooke, standing thirty or so feet from the clearly confused RailTec. ‘Drop or you get dropped.’

Moody turned to face him with a look of shock. It didn’t appear that he was fully awake, let alone able to follow simple instructions.

‘Blue Buick!’ he yelled, then turned to face me, and there was a flash of recognition.

‘You’ll visit the blue Buick and Mrs Nesbit will harangue you, too,’ he shouted, ‘tell her nothing and whatever you do, don’t leave the rocks or the hands will get you!’

And he raised the axe, turned, and charged at Hooke.

Whump

My ears popped as a doughnut-shaped pressure wave erupted from the front of Hooke’s weapon and caught Moody full in the chest. I saw the pattern of a Tudor rose blossom on his chest hair before the secondary shock wave lifted him off his feet and propelled him backwards across the square into the unyielding stone of the town hall. There was a wettish thud and he fell into a lifeless heap on the ground; the compacted snow melted into water by the momentary pressure change to reveal cobbles and half an iron inspection cover. In a split second the pressure had normalised and the water instantly refroze as gin-clear ice, locking Moody’s body to the ground. In the Winter, warmth is only ever a transitory commodity.

Hooke broke open the weapon, ejected the spent cell and replaced it with another from his pocket.

A movement caught my eye. It was Aurora running around the corner, weapon at the ready. She threw up her hands when she saw what had happened.

‘You bloody idiot!’ she yelled when she saw Moody’s body. ‘What happened to good old-fashioned proportionality?’

‘I was well within my rights, Aurora,’ said Hooke in an unrepentant tone. ‘Moody was endangering my life and that of others. The law permits me to use reasonable force in such circumstances.’

He said it in the same sort of tone you might use to describe your favourite brand of butter.

‘We need our infrastructure support staff,’ said Aurora in an exasperated tone, ‘even the deranged ones. Who’s going to bring the rail network out of mothballs to meet the Springrise schedule? You?’

There followed an argument in which claims and counterclaims were issued, insults traded, demotions hinted. But ultimately, with little to no headway.

Within a few minutes other security agents had arrived, presumably alerted by the Thumper’s pressure signature, which would have every barograph spiking within a mile. It was only then that Aurora spotted me in the window and walked over.

‘Deputy Worthing,’ she said as she walked into the café, Hooke by her side, ‘how’s the viral dreams investigation going?’

‘One of your agents just killed my star witness.’

‘It was self-defence,’ said Hooke. ‘You saw him run at me with an axe.’

‘Did he?’ asked Aurora.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose so.’

‘I see you’ve met our resident parasites,’ said Hooke, who had been looking around the café. ‘Good evening, Shamanic Bob.’

‘Good evening,’ said Bob with a defiant smile. ‘Come to wish us all a slow death?’

‘You read me like a book,’ said Hooke. ‘Spooky. But let’s face facts: you are the most loathsome of spongers.’

‘That’s Mr Loathsome Sponger to you,’ said Shamanic Bob, his defiance not wavering in light of Hooke’s insults, ‘and I know my rights. You’re private security, not Winter Consulate. You have no jurisdiction over me.’

But ever cautious, presumably on account of his dreaming habit, he decided to leave anyway.

‘We’ll talk again,’ said Shamanic Bob to me, although it was unlikely. My train was due out soon. But despite what little I knew of HiberTech, I was intrigued by what he’d said about Morphenox being a fluke.

‘Liars and schemers all,’ said Hooke. ‘Did you lend him any money?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but you should probably know they’re scoring D-Reem from somebody in HiberTech.’

‘It troubles us not one jot,’ said Hooke. ‘One less sleep-shy is one less mouth to feed.’

‘I’m really sorry you weren’t able to talk to Moody,’ said Aurora, trying to move the conversation on and nodding towards where the security agents outside were using a heat gun to free Moody from the ice. They weren’t very good at it; I could smell the singed hair from within the café. ‘Mr Hooke was employed for his ruthless adherence to HiberTech’s well-being, so subtlety isn’t really his strong suit. Do you accept my apology?’

‘Yes, I guess.’

‘Good. I have a few questions for you. Is that okay?’

‘Sure.’

She pulled a photograph out of her breast pocket and laid it on the counter. The picture depicted a man in his forties, fairly nondescript, thinning hair, holding an iguana.

‘Know this person?’ she asked.

‘Never seen him.’

‘This is Hugo Foulnap. The only Hugo Foulnap. An accountant, he nightwalked twelve years ago and was parted out the same Winter. The Hugo Foulnap in the hotel room wasn’t Hugo Foulnap at all.’

‘Ah,’ I said, unsure where she was going with this or what she wanted me to do. ‘Why is he holding an iguana?’

‘I don’t think it’s relevant. What do you think they were going to do with Mrs Tiffen?’

‘She was going to be farmed.’

‘Foulnap actually said that?’

‘Not specifically, but it was fairly obvious.’

‘Did he mention Kiki?’

‘No.’

‘Did Foulnap say anything that suggested he was with the Campaign for Real Sleep?’

‘Nothing I can think of,’ I said, but then added without really thinking, ‘If you suspected he was with the Campaign, why didn’t you arrest him?’

I knew it was impertinent the moment I’d said it, but it wasn’t Aurora who reacted, it was Hooke.

‘You’ve got some lip on you. Any more of that and I’ll rearrange your face – although from the look of you, someone has already tried.’

He smirked at a joke that he thought was both funny and original, something in which he was entirely wrong on both counts.

‘Then maybe you could arrange it for me and help us all out,’ I said, having weathered far worse insults over the years. The interaction with Gary Findlay had been the turning point. He’d made fun of my looks for years but me biting off his ear was dubbed ‘wholly disproportionate’. Mother Fallopia was bound by full disclosure policy after the event, and once I had ‘Biter’ on my record even the more sympathetic adopters hurried on past.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Aurora, ‘is there something unusual about Worthing’s face?’

It suddenly struck me that she only saw the left-hand side of things – witness her curious half-sketch and not seeing the MediTech – so she might not see the wonky side of my head at all.

‘I have a congenital skull deformity,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she replied, leaning over to try and see, and I think failing, ‘then that makes Mr Hooke’s comments entirely uncalled for – you’re to apologise.’

‘I apologise unreservedly, ma’am,’ he said in a bland monotone.

‘Not to me, you clot,’ said Aurora, nodding her head in my direction.

‘Oh,’ he muttered, then turned to me and gave a fulsome if strained apology, adding that if I so wished I could make fun of the fact that he had lost his left testicle in a ‘freak accident involving a revolving door’ with no risk of retaliation either now or in the future.

I declined, and he took a step back.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Aurora. ‘Hooke is particularly suited to thinking up imaginatively terrifying interrogation techniques, and sometimes forgets himself. Okay,’ she added, picking up the photo, ‘we’re done. You have the thanks of HiberTech Industries for the safe delivery of the cabbage – and if you see any of the people from that hotel room I’d like you to contact HiberTech Security immediately. Yes?’

I told her I most assuredly would, but privately I was thinking that all I wanted to do was to speak to Chief Toccata, get home and then have nothing to do with Sector Twelve ever again. Aurora offered me her hand to shake and then pulled me into the Deep Winter embrace, her breathing husky and close to my ear. I could feel the flat of her thighs against mine, the hardness of the Bambi across her chest.

‘Good luck, Charlie,’ she said, her breath smelling of coffee, banana milk and Mintolas, ‘I have the strongest feeling you’re going to be a really good Consul.’

She released me and I turned and headed towards the exit. I checked my watch. My train was due to depart in forty-eight minutes.