Early Riser

Orientation

It was lucky I did what I did when I did it. Six more HiberTech Security agents were through the door of the Siddons within a minute of Toccata turning into Aurora. She seemed curiously accepting of the fact that she was in different clothes in a strange place, but presumably she was used to this by now. While the HiberTech Security agents went up to the ninth floor to investigate, Aurora sat me down and quizzed me on what was going on.

‘Hooke and I were ambushed when he was taking me to safety at HiberTech,’ I explained, trying to make it all sound plausible. ‘He goes out in the Winter and vanishes, and I go to look for him and I find him, dead, but then I lose the line and make it to the – um – museum, and Danny Pockets is there, who is actually Hugo Foulnap, and he gives me all this bullshit about needing a cylinder and the dreams being projected into my head and we go to the Siddons because he’s convinced there’s a dream machine in 902 but then one of your agents killed Foulnap who is then killed in turn by… Toccata.’

Aurora looked around nervously.

‘She’s here?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘she left just before you arrived.’

Aurora frowned and her unseeing eye twisted and turned in its socket.

‘She keeps on doing that. Why does she keep on doing that?’

The last part of her sentence she delivered in an angry, almost frightened tone, and she gripped my arm so tightly it was painful.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Toccata’s up to something,’ she continued. ‘She wants to bring me down. Why would she want to bring me down?’

She glared at me dangerously.

‘I still don’t know.’

She stared at me some more and then seemed to relax.

‘Tell me more about the cylinder that Foulnap mentioned.’

‘I don’t know anything. He didn’t elaborate.’

One of her agents came downstairs and whispered in her ear.

‘So the Foulnap part of your story is correct,’ she said. ‘Do you know what he was doing in Sector Twelve? Something to do with RealSleep?’

I decided to just play dumb.

‘That’s above my intellect and pay grade,’ I said simply, staring at my feet. ‘I’m just a stranded Novice with narcosis, having bizarre dreams that I’m remembering backwards.’

She stared at me for a while longer.

‘Okay, then,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘we’ll debrief more at our leisure. The job at HiberTech still stands. Light duties until the narcosis clears. Up for it?’

I said I was, and after being checked for weapons I was ushered into a waiting Sno-Trac and driven across to HiberTech, the storm still raging, the small vehicle buffeted by a wind that on occasions seemed to blow in all directions at once. I sat in the back without a plan of any sort – I’d seen too many plans come to naught recently to have any hope that if I made one, all would be well. But if I’d learned anything from Logan, it was that plans often get in the way of a fast-moving incident-rich landscape, so better to have on-the-hoof flexibility – and objectives.

I so had objectives. And, as I said earlier, a couple of spare aces up my sleeve.

We bumped down the entrance slope to the underground car park and through the shock-gates to park, then made our way into the building by way of a service elevator and along a corridor.

‘This is the way to the Project Lazarus labs,’ I said, suddenly recalling the route. ‘What about the apartment facing the quad with the generous rations, abundant hot water and a nightwalker valet?’

‘All in good time,’ said Aurora. ‘There’s someone who needs to speak to you before you start to work for us. Orientation, I think HR call it.’

We moved through the door marked Project Lazarus, the lab unchanged since I’d been here last. We took several lefts and rights and walked through some swing doors, then found ourselves back in the circular room with eight corridors leading off towards the cells.

‘Wait here,’ said Aurora, and moved away.

I stood there for perhaps ten minutes, then, thinking that Birgitta might be somewhere near, started to look around. My eye caught sight of the door with the glass panel, behind which was the room that contained the barber’s chair and the copper device the shape of a traffic cone.

‘Curiosity doesn’t kill cats at all,’ came a familiar voice, ‘curiosity is the very bedrock upon which this institution is founded. You want to see more? Come and have a look.’

It was the Notable Charlotte Goodnight, and she appeared quite friendly. She opened the door and stepped inside, beckoning both me and Aurora to follow. Slightly wary, I complied. When I’d seen the room last, there had been a nightwalker on the table, but now the room was empty, the machine switched off and dead.

‘This is a Mk IX Somnagraph,’ explained Goodnight. ‘It can both record and play back dreams.’

‘You can record dreams?’ I asked, trying to sound surprised.

‘Indeed we can. There are five hundred of these in a converted dormitory down the hall. I’ll spare you the technical details, but we use them to redeploy nightwalkers by inducing simple dreams to overwrite their limited skills. The more Tricksy the nightwalker, the more complex the duties we can get them to do.’

‘If this is company orientation,’ I said, ‘it’s kind of a steep learning curve – shouldn’t you start with the photocopier and where the milk is kept?’

‘I don’t appreciate impertinence,’ said The Notable Goodnight, ‘but you are young, so I will overlook it this once. Where was I? Oh yes: while we have every confidence you will become a productive member of the company, we need to ensure that you understand what we do here, and how best policy can be implemented while still maintaining a morally correct framework.’

I didn’t say anything. Not much I could say, really.

‘We’re all small cogs, Charlie,’ continued Aurora, ‘even The Notable Goodnight here, but we only work in the big machine by meshing perfectly. And when I say big machine, I don’t mean the Ferch Llewelyn Dynasty, Europia or the Northern Fed, I mean the advancement of the human race. This is real progress, Worthing, above politics and corporate stock value. Do you understand?’

‘I think so, ma’am, yes.’

‘Good. So why were you harbouring Birgitta? And don’t tell me simply because she can draw. We’re beyond all that now.’

I stared at her for a moment. When you’re in the hornet’s nest it’s probably better to act like another hornet, or, if you can, a bigger one. Dealing with Gary Findlay had taught me that.

‘I believe she’s still alive in there,’ I said, ‘processing thoughts and memories while trapped in a Dreamstate so deep it can’t be detected. I’ve heard of others, too,’ I added, ‘anecdotal stories that were enough to convince me.’

Goodnight and Aurora looked at one another.

‘You’re a keen observer,’ said the Notable, ‘which we like. And you’re right – we’ve known that for a long time. But muse on this: at the last count, Morphenox has saved over fifty million lives in Europia alone, yet created only twenty-five-thousand quasi-sentient nightwalkers. You’re too young to remember pre-Morphenox days, but life was a constant cycle of death, loss and stalled societal and technical development. This was never a war against the Winter, but against wastage – the lives that couldn’t and shouldn’t be lost. For the massive benefits of Morphenox, there would have to be victims.’

Aurora picked up the story.

‘We saw them more as the unsung heroes of the hibernatory revolution, unknowingly brave foot-soldiers, spearheading the fight against the horrors of the Winter to bring us victorious into the Spring. Those citizens, those nightwalkers, died honourably to make a better place for all of us.’

It was an understandable point, just not a very ethical one. The victims, the Nightwalkers, had no choice in the matter.

‘And Morphenox-B?’ I asked. ‘What about that?’

‘Much more exciting,’ said Aurora. ‘The expense in manufacture was predicated on drug purity so nightwalker numbers were kept to an absolute minimum. But we were seeing it arse about face. More nightwalkers actually works for us. Cut a few corners in the manufacturing process and instead of a one-in-two-thousand likelihood of walking, Morphenox-B will give us one in every five hundred.’

‘With those figures, the nightwalker economy could be worth 4.2 billion euros to us within five years,’ continued Goodnight, ‘and will also be socially transformative: tedious and repetitive tasks will be given to workers who don’t know or care what they do and can work sixteen uncomplaining hours a day. Productivity will rise, costs will fall, food production will increase. And once their year is done, they get to be parted out and add immeasurable quality of life to thousands. True vertical integration, Worthing – everything of use but the yawn. I made up that slogan,’ she added proudly. ‘Sums it up well, doesn’t it?’

‘Best of all,’ said Aurora, ‘is that when Winter wastage falls, places like your joyous St Granata’s will actually cease to exist; the burden of endless childbearing a thing of the past. It’s win-win all the way down the line. But,’ she continued, ‘there is a very small fly in our very large ointment. The venerable Don Hector discovered a way to retrieve nightwalkers. He’s dead now, thank goodness, but he encoded it all on a cylinder which he then gave to someone connected to RealSleep. While that cylinder is at large, we are exposed, and we don’t like being exposed.’

They fell silent and stared at me expectantly.

‘You want me to agree with you,’ I said, ‘but I can’t. Nightwalkers are alive. And while they are, you have to do what you can to bring them back. And you can’t murder them, nor part them out. Not for any reason, no matter how noble you think it is.’

‘It’s so easy to be judgemental,’ said Goodnight in a patronising tone, ‘but you must understand that we’ve done too much good for too long to have our work sacrificed on the altar of short-term, wishy-washy, woolly-headed egalitarianism. The benefits of Morphenox-B far, far outweigh the drawbacks and we are here to ensure the most—’

‘—favourable outcome is enjoyed by the majority,’ I said. ‘I know. I hear that a lot. What about this: “If you can’t have change without injustice, then there should be no change”.’

‘Who said that?’

‘I can’t remember. Someone important. It’s annoying when that happens.’

‘The idealism of youth,’ she said with a dismissive snort. ‘We can’t fail, not now. We’re too big, too integrated into society. All that we’ve done. All that we can do. All that we will do.’

They stared at me without speaking for some moments.

‘So what do you want from me?’ I asked.

Goodnight stared at me for a moment, and then walked from the small room, beckoning us to follow.

‘I want you to meet someone.’

She led me across to cell 4-H. I guessed who was in there but looked through the peephole anyway. Birgitta was lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling. Her hands were drawing circles in the air; pretend pens on pretend paper.

‘What are you going to do with her?’

‘Nothing for the moment, but she’s a good candidate for retrieval, and we do conduct tests from time to time. How about if we were to retrieve Birgitta right now? In exchange for the cylinder? She’d never know anything had ever happened. She’d be missing a thumb, of course, but that could be explained away as rats or mould or something.’

I had to think very carefully on this one. I could have given them the cylinder, but I had a pretty strong feeling that once the cylinder was secured, anyone remotely attached to it would end up in the night pit covered by a spadeful of lime.

‘I don’t know where the cylinder is.’

The Notable Goodnight cocked her head on one side.

‘Then we could redeploy Birgitta instead,’ she said, ‘next on the list. She’s very Tricksy so might be able to manage simple data entry. The problem is, one in every hundred do not survive the redeployment procedure. I can’t say it will be Birgitta, but we might have some bad luck.’

The implication wasn’t lost on me. I was to play ball – or Birgitta died. But again, I had no guarantee that wouldn’t happen anyway.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ I said, ‘but I don’t have the cylinder.’

The Notable Goodnight stared at me again for a few moments.

‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?’

‘I probably would, actually,’ I said, ‘about some things – y’know, like personal stuff. But not about this.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s perfectly acceptable and understandable,’ replied Goodnight, suddenly coming over all sunny, ‘we just had to be sure, that’s all.’

She gave me a smile and then, the ‘orientation’ over, asked Aurora to show me where I would be staying.

It wasn’t too far from the labs, no more than a flight of stairs and along a corridor. The proximity, I guessed, was not so much based on convenience, but on technology. If they wanted to try to coerce me into the Dreamspace in order to use more invasive methods, they would need a few machines to do so.

Aurora showed me into the room and told me to make myself comfortable, and how I’d have to remain here until my security clearance was established.

‘We can’t have anyone from RealSleep infiltrating the facility, now, can we?’ she said with a laugh, ‘Reporting back to Kiki and whatnot.’

I told her no, of course not, that would be silly.

She wished me goodnight, the door closed and I heard a bolt being slid across. I stood for a moment, listening to her footsteps retreat on the polished wooden floor outside, then chucked my jacket over a chair-back and looked around.

The apartment was spacious, warm and in good order. Two rooms, carpeted, all mod cons. Oddly, I kind of missed Clytemnestra and the charming grottiness of Siddons 901. I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower and checked my collection of bite marks in the mirror, only one of which seemed to have an infection. I squeezed the pus from the wound, cleaned it with some vodka I’d found in the mini-bar and then changed all the dressings. I had a shower, found a bathrobe, climbed into bed and considered my position. The default plan was to simply stay awake as long as I could and deny HiberTech my sleeping mind, but on reflection that might not be the best strategy. I would eventually fall asleep after two days or more, but I’d be in a poor state to resist what they had planned. The best idea would be to go to sleep now, while I was still strong, my mind unmuddied by fatigue.

So I switched off the light and stared at the ceiling, trying to get to sleep. It took an hour to do so. I felt the room darken, there were a couple of flashes, an all-consuming glossy darkness, and—