Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author, Page 2

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘did you hear that Ed Dweezle danced the Night Fandango?’5

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lucy, ‘I heard.’

  Dweezle always had trouble keeping weight on. We used to sneak him part of our food to help him out. I don’t know how he’d lasted three Winters on his own once out of St Granata’s, but it must have been expensive. Despite being dosed up to the gills on Morphenox he’d entered his fourth Hib way too light and run out of reserves three weeks short of Springrise. He’d nightwalked and been redeployed as a street-sweeper somewhere up north, then parted out eight months later.

  ‘Useful until death and beyond,’ said Lucy, ‘as the company likes to promote itself in slogans.’

  The company to which she referred was HiberTech, who made Morphenox, redeployed any nightwalkers that were suitable and then supervised the transplant potential of each. Their nightwalker policy was neatly – some said perfectly – vertically integrated. There was another slogan:

  Everything of use but the yawn.™

  I walked with Lucy from the lobby to the Great Hall.

  ‘I’m always uneasy about Pool reunions,’ she said. ‘On the whole the experience was good, but I didn’t like everyone.’

  ‘Rough with the smooth,’ I said.

  ‘Shits with the saints.’

  We mingled in the crowd and shook hands, hugged or nodded to the other poolers, strictly according to a sliding scale of respect and affection. Williams, Walter, Keilly, Neal, other Walter, other Williams and McMullen were all there and I greeted them warmly. I thought I should say something to Gary Findlay but he turned away on the pretext of more beer from the cooler as soon as he saw me. He and I hadn’t exchanged a word since we were twelve, the day his bullying stopped, the day I bit off his ear.6

  Older ex-residents whom I didn’t recognise were mingling freely with the rest of us, as the current residents did with us. Anyone who spent time at the Pool shared a bond, kind of like family. Actually, given the circumstances at the Sisterhood, many of us actually were family.

  Lucy walked over to pay her respects to the Senior Sisters, who were all sitting on the stage like seven duchesses, holding court. They were giggling foolishly at some small joke, their usual austerity tempered by the triple jollities of occasion, food and, for those not with child, the cheapest sherry that money can buy.

  ‘Our very own Lucy Knapp,’ said Sister Placentia as we approached, embracing Lucy but ignoring me as one would a stick of familiar furniture. ‘Tell me your news.’

  Lucy politely explained to them about her induction into HiberTech’s Fast Track Management Scheme whilst I stood to one side. Despite the often erratic levels of care, most of the sisters were generally okay. Without them, I’d have been nothing – infants with lesser conditions than mine were routinely left underweight heading into their first Winter. There were worse Pools than this one.

  ‘Fascinating, dear,’ said Sister Placentia once Lucy had concluded a potted history of what she’d been up to, ‘and what chance you could wangle us an Edward to assist in the kitchens?’

  ‘Next year’s model might be an improvement,’ said Lucy in a guarded tone. ‘I’ll see what I can do then.’

  Edward or Jane were the default names given to redeployed nightwalkers. With their cannibalistic tendencies reduced by timely snacks and the tattered remnants of their minds ingeniously rewired, they could do simple chores. Too simple, some said, to be useful domestically. The St Granata’s over in Port Talbot had an Edward that could wash up,7 but mostly they were used for strictly repetitive tasks like opening doors, pumping water and digging fields.

  ‘How’s it going, Wonk?’ came a voice in my ear so suddenly I jumped. It was Sister Zygotia, a particular favourite of mine, despite – or perhaps because of – her eccentricity. She had a fondness for peanut butter and anchovies, used to nail her bedroom door shut during the Winter ‘to guard against prowling Wintervolk’, then insist that puddings at St Granata’s be randomly laced with curry powder to ‘better prepare us for life’s inevitable disappointments’.

  ‘So-so,’ I said. ‘The budget for next year is a little tight but we should be all right, so long as the offset payments aren’t reduced and we eat meat only once a week.’

  ‘Good, good,’ she said in a distracted fashion, then put her hand on my shoulder and steered me to a corner of the hall.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news and all,’ she said, ‘but I am. You should know that Mother Fallopia got wind of your application to the Prudential and, well, she had words with their induction officer. Your application was … rescinded.’

  I had to admit I wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t feel good. Frustration has a smell of its own, like hot toffee mixed with sun-dried mud. I looked at Sister Zygotia, who said she was sorry, and I told her it was fine, really, and I was then relieved to be called away in order to help deal with Sister Contractia, who was taking her door bouncer duties a little more enthusiastically than anyone thought necessary. Sister Contractia liked a good brawl so it took ten minutes to calm her down, sweep up the broken teeth, placate the six people she’d just taken on and clean out the cut above her eye. When I got back, Lucy Knapp was telling everyone about her first overwintering gig at HiberTech, and how she’d actually seen a Winter solstice. She showed us the single brass star pinned to her blouse to prove it.

  ‘Did you get sleep-deprivation narcosis?’ I asked, parking my frustration in the back of my mind, where it sat with good and ancient company.

  ‘Once you’ve shifted your sleep cycle to the late Summer it isn’t so bad,’ said Lucy, ‘but the first season up can be cruel. The only upside was that while you’re freezing to death, getting eaten or being press-ganged into domestic service, you could be hallucinating that you were on the Gower Peninsula, sipping mock-banana daiquiris8 while watching the sun go down from the Worm’s Head Bar & Grill.’

  Lucy wasn’t the only one to overwinter from the Pool, just the most recent. Another Poolmate named Billy DeFroid had been inducted into the Winter Consul Service three years before, and everyone was full of praise up until the moment he was eaten by nightwalkers who had gone pack in Llandeilo. He’d fared better than most. The average life expectancy for a Novice on their first Winter ‘boots in snow’ was barely six weeks. The Winter wasn’t a forgiving place; little wonder newbies spent their first Winter doing paperwork safely indoors.

  ‘So, Lucy,’ I said, ‘tell us about the narcosis.’

  ‘Quite … challenging to begin with,’ she said. ‘I thought my legs were made of chocolate. The colder it got, the more brittle they became. I was worried that if any nightwalkers turned up I wouldn’t be able to get away.’

  ‘I’ve had dreams like that,’ said Maisie Rogers who had wandered over, ‘running but not being able to escape.’

  Dreams. No one who was anyone had dreams. Those of us with access to Morphenox happily traded our subconscious hibernational activity for a dramatic drop in stored energy requirements. Morphenox removed the ability to dream, but in exchange gave us increased survivability. For the first time in human history, an individual could realistically expect to live through the Winter. ‘Morphenox’, another advertising slogan went, ‘brings you the Spring’. An addendum might read: ‘but only if you have the luck, cash or social position to be granted its use’.

  ‘You don’t need to wear the whole dreaming deal as a badge of honour,’ scolded Megan who had joined us.

  We all nodded agreement. Most people who were forced to forgo the pharmaceutical means to ease themselves through the Winter stayed quiet. It was like wearing a big hat with ‘3rd Class Citizen’ written all over it.

  But Maisie, to her credit, was unabashed.

  ‘I’m not ashamed,’ she said indignantly, to groans and rolled eyes from all of us, ‘and I won’t be made to feel ashamed. Besides, dreams are fun and random and at least this way I never get to be a nightwalker, lumbering around the Winter, eating beetles and curtains and
people and stuff and then ending my days as a spare parts inventory.’

  ‘If you become a Vacant you don’t know you’re one,’ I pointed out, ‘that’s the tragedy and the blessing – no brain, no torment.’

  There were, inevitably, a few downsides to Morphenox: a shocking headache, some fearful hallucinations – and for every two thousand users, one would arise from hibernation as a nightwalker. The 50 per cent of citizens granted Morphenox were the same ones who might end up as drooling subhumans with severe personal hygiene issues and a dismaying penchant for cannibalism. Irrespective, everyone thought it was a risk worth taking.

  There was a sudden commotion as the food arrived. We all joined an orderly queue, the conversation rising in pitch with the sense of joyful anticipation. As we waited for the sisters, children and underweight to be fed first, we chatted about what daft idea self-styled ‘sleep extreme’ guru Gaer Brills was promoting to fashionable sleepers, and inevitably, who was going to win Albion’s Got Talent.

  ‘Sleeping in trees wrapped in hessian smeared in goose fat on BMI minimum,’ said Lucy, in answer to the Gaer Brills question. ‘It’ll be raining hipsters all Winter.’

  In answer to the Albion’s Got Talent question, none of us had a clue after last year’s surprise winner – Bertie, a sou’wester-wearing dachshund who could tap dance – so the conversation soon changed to a subject currently in the news: tackling a recent upturn in Winter mortality. Moderates suggested baby drives and cash incentives to tackle the increased wastage, while the hardliners favoured barren-shaming, removing all bearing exemptions and axing Child Offset Schemes. Although the population was holding steady against Winter losses, occasional troughs in the childbearing demographic could still cause panic, and right-wing hardliners loved a good panic.

  ‘I heard that lowering the minimum childbearing age would cure the wastage issue in a stroke,’ said Megan.

  ‘It would mean redefining the definition of a child,’ said Lucy, ‘and I’m not so sure that’s either desirable or possible.’

  ‘We could always boost the gender ratio to 70:30,’ I said.

  ‘Mucking around any more with the numbers is a seriously bad idea,’ said Lucy. ‘I have enough trouble finding a decent date as it is.’

  ‘I say freeze the vast government subsidies awarded to HiberTech,’ announced Maisie in her best revolutionary tones, ‘and instead of using it to permit Morphenox for the few, establish a workable strategy to ensure that all citizens attain target BMI come Slumberdown. We shouldn’t embrace Hibernational elitism, we should embrace Uniform Sleep for all – it’s fair and just, would increase survivability, lower wastage – and ultimately release the burden of childbearing.’

  We all instantly hushed. It was the central tenet and long-stated aim of the once highly respected opposition but now strictly illegal pressure group the Campaign for Real Sleep. They believed that real sleep was the one true sleep, that a pharmacological solution to wastage was morally and fiscally unsustainable, and that humans needed to dream for long-term health.9 It was a brave or foolhardy person who publicly espoused their views, or even opened up the question for debate. Maisie, on the face of it, was probably brave rather than foolhardy.

  ‘The subsidies are spent chiefly on research to ensure that one day all Hibernation is under the protective shell of Morphenox,’ said Lucy defensively. ‘Don Hector was a genius, but even he had limitations – we’ll get there eventually.’

  ‘We only know that because your chums at HiberTech tell us,’ replied Maisie, ‘it’s a mechanism of social compliance. Don Hector didn’t make us free, he initiated a class distinction between fair sleeping and foul. We should all be a global hibernating village, equal in sleep, equal in dignity.’

  There was an intake of breath. It was the mission statement of the Campaign for Real Sleep, a sort of rallying cry.

  ‘We shouldn’t be having this conversation,’ said Lucy, suddenly becoming a lot more serious. ‘I could get into serious trouble for not reporting you – and Don Hector was a great man who has saved millions through Morphenox.’

  ‘My dormetologist told me there was a new formulation heading our way,’ said Megan, ‘Morphenox-B. What’s the deal with that?’

  ‘And I heard something about Project Lazarus,’ I said, my curiosity overcoming my sense of caution.

  ‘If the HiberTech rumour mill could be harnessed,’ said Lucy after a few moments of exasperated silence, ‘we’d have free power for ever.’

  ‘You didn’t answer Megan’s question,’ said Maisie.

  Lucy and Maisie glared at one another dangerously and Lucy’s eyelid quivered. I liked her a lot, but she was a loyal HiberTech person, through and through. I think it was an employment entry requirement.

  ‘I don’t have to answer Megan’s question,’ she said, slowly and deliberately.

  The exchange was interrupted by some sort of commotion near the door. The guests were parting to let some people through, and that meant one of two things: a celebrity or someone relevant. Or, as it turned out, both.

  There were two of them, conversing politely. One was our own Mother Fallopia, tall, elegant, austere, and with a habit so black she looked like a nun-shaped hole in the air. Next to her was a tall man dressed in the white quilted combat fatigues of a Winter Consul. He had a Gold Solstice Star pinned to his lapel that indicated he had seen at least twenty Winters, wore twin walnut-handled Bambis holstered across his chest and carried with him a sense of quiet dignity. He was dark, tall, and had matinee idol good looks. He also looked a little like Euan, Sian, Maisie, Daphne, Billy and Ed Dweezle – but there was a good reason for that.

  ‘Wow,’ said Lucy, impressed like the rest of us – indeed, possibly everyone there. ‘It’s … Jack Logan.’

  Jack Logan

  * * *

  ‘… of all the Winter Service Industries, the Winter Consul was the most dangerous. Few who joined expected to last out the decade, yet recruitment was never much a problem. You didn’t find the job, they said, it found you. No-one ever who entered the Winter voluntarily wasn’t trying to leave something behind …’

  – Twenty by Seven Solsti and Counting, by Consul ‘Rock’ McDozer

  Most Consuls sought only anonymity outside the Winter, but a few courted the limelight for one reason or another. ‘Wildcat’ deLuth over in Sector Nine East was renowned for her capacity for capturing nightwalkers alive – four hundred and sixty-two consigned to the redeployment centres, a record unlikely to be beaten; ‘Tangy’ Schneider of Sector Nineteen outraged public decency by living with a Winter Nomad when off-duty, and Chief Consul Toccata of Sector Twelve was suspected of resorting to Winter cannibalism more enthusiastically than was considered acceptable or, indeed, necessary.

  Jack Logan, by comparison, was the clean-cut, acceptable face of the Consul Service. Sure, there were stories of overzealousness and an eye to commercial exploitation but his record spoke most loudly. The Newport/Port Talbot/Cardiff Region had consistently the lowest levels of wastage, HotPot overheat, Villain incursion and nightwalker outrages of anywhere in Wales. He was genetically Tier One, too – rumour had it that he could charge eye-popping siring fees, but to his credit, didn’t.

  Logan nodded greetings as he passed, briefly made eye contact, and signed autographs on scraps of paper that were offered to him. We knew he was a long-time patron of St Granata’s, but he rarely attended social events.

  The initial excitement over, we shuffled along the food queue and picked out some corn on the cob that oozed butter, then helped ourselves to rice and chicken. Large portions, too. It seemed almost thrillingly extravagant.

  ‘What’s Jack Logan doing here?’ asked Brian, who was behind the counter, serving the food. ‘Not the usual, I’m guessing.’

  ‘He’s giving Mother Fallopia her twenty-eighth Silver Stork,’ said Gary Findlay, who was three places farther up in the queue.

  ‘Well deserved,’ said Brian.

  Brian had been the venerable sist
er’s twelfth Silver Stork and Gary and Lucy her joint eighteenth. The Sisters of Perpetual Gestation took their pledge seriously. The record was Sister Vulvolia over in Sector fifty-one, with thirty-four. All but nine survived their first Winter and each of them from different sires – but then Sister Vulvolia had a good eye,10 and took the need for genetic variation seriously.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Lucy, picking out a drumstick, ‘d’you think Logan will be performing this afternoon?’

  It was always possible. Those in the military or law enforcement agencies often had a second career acting out their Winter adventures. Logan’s performances were quite sophisticated, with fake snow and wind machines. Once, he featured a real live nightwalker, but that was stopped when he got loose and went on a rampage in the dress circle. A tragic affair, although if it had been the stalls I don’t think anyone would have minded.

  Once we had stuffed ourselves quite stupid and mopped up the oil and juices with bread rolls, we sat down to get ready for an equal volume of pudding in an hour or two, followed by biscuits and candy floss two hours after that. Anyone who hadn’t consumed at least five times their usual calorific intake might be deemed not taking the whole ‘bulk up’ issue seriously.

  We talked some more, catching up on news. What ex-poolers were up to, who had died, then a long procession of do-you-remember-whens that seemed to have become less shocking and more amusing with the passage of time: about Donna Trinket’s accident – always a perennial favourite – or when Betty Simcox was nearly buried alive during a prank that went wrong, or when Joplin set fire to herself in a prank that went about as well as anyone had expected – and then, as always, how Dai Powell vanished on his sixteenth birthday and returned on his twentieth, and no one knew where he’d been.