‘…Skill erosion due to hibernational mortality could be disastrous to complex manufacturing, infrastructure and management systems, so almost every job was devised with SkillZero protocols in mind. Anyone who achieved an 82% pass or higher in General Skills could run anything from a fast food joint to a Graphite Reactor…’
I didn’t recognise the voice, but figured it was a Deputy sent by Chief Logan to make sure I didn’t lapse into full hibernation, always a risk with first-time Winterers. I was grateful to be back in Cardiff. Spending my first assignment in Sector something-or-rather at the Sarah Whatsit Dormitorium hadn’t sounded like a huge barrel of fun, although I couldn’t as yet remember how I’d managed to get back.
On the Railplane, I expect.
‘You with me, Worthing?’
‘I’m with you,’ I croaked, my throat dry, my vocal cords stiff with disuse.
‘Truly?’
‘No.’
I felt myself groan. My head felt like mud, my eyes were gummed tight shut and I really only had one thought in my head: that I desperately, urgently, painfully wanted to go back to sleep.
‘There was a striped towel,’ I said, as memories started to return, firing randomly around inside my mind like lottery balls, ‘and a beach ball. A child, a girl, laughing. A woman in a swimsuit, a wrecked liner – the Argentinian Queen.’
‘It’s called Arousal Confusion,’ came the woman’s voice from the darkness. ‘You won’t know shit for a couple of minutes and you’ll talk utter bollocks.’
‘She took a Polaroid,’ I said, ‘and the orange-and-red parasol was of spectacular size and splendour.’
‘As I said,’ remarked the voice, ‘utter bollocks. Your mind has been dormant, and your memory is still remapping. Until it does, you’ll be all over the shop. Can you remember your name?’
I lay for a few minutes in the blackness, my eyes still gummed shut, and waited for my thoughts to gather.
‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said as soon as the fact popped into my head, ‘BDA26355F. I’ll be twenty-three on the ninth after Springrise and I’m resident at room five-oh-six at the Melody Black, Cardiff.’
‘Better, but still nonsense,’ said the voice, ‘but to go back to my initial enquiry: you told Laura and Fodder you were leaving on the last train. So: what are you still doing here?’
I had to think really hard. There had been talk about taking a Sno-Trac somewhere. Nope, it had gone again.
‘Okay,’ came the voice, ‘I think it’s time to draw back the curtains.’
She placed something damp in my palm and I gently massaged the hard sleep-crust that had sealed my eyes tight shut. I pulled at my top eyelid, the crust broke with an almost-audible snik, and in an instant my vision returned – garish and distorted to begin with, but as my long-dormant cortex kicked into life, the world pulled itself into some semblance of order.
I saw Clytemnestra first, exactly the same as I’d seen her last. But with Clytemnestra came the unwelcome news that I had not returned to Cardiff.
‘The Sarah Siddons,’ I sighed, ‘Sector Twelve.’
‘It grows on you like mildew and needy cousins,’ said a woman who was sitting on a chair next to the bed. ‘We call it “The Twelve” or more usually “The Douzey”. You may get to enjoy it. It’s not likely, but you might.’
She had mousy-brown hair cut short, was dressed in the off-white Winter combat fatigues usually favoured by Consuls, Footmen and the military, and was looking at me with a bemused smile. She was either a very healthy forty or a horribly unhealthy twenty, had faintly Southern features and above her name badge wore a pair of silver storks. She carried a pair of Bambis on her hips and, like Fodder, had a D-ring sewn into her shock-vest.
‘Hello,’ I said, blinking away the gumminess from my vision.
‘I’m Vice-Consul Bronwen Jones,’ she said. ‘Everyone calls me Jonesy. Bit obvious for a nickname and I’m not dead keen on it. I wanted something more along the lines of “IceMaiden” or “BlackWidow” or “FrostCrumpet” but you don’t get to choose these things.’
‘FrostCrumpet?’
‘That was always a third choice,’ she admitted, ‘not my favourite either.’
‘I used to be called “Wonky”,’ I said, hoping to ingratiate myself with the thinnest of shared experiences, ‘I’m hoping that doesn’t stick.’
‘It will now.’
She offered me her left hand for me to shake. Her right was mostly missing, and what remained had healed raggedly: Winter patch-me-ups always ended up looking worse.
A kettle started whistling somewhere and Jonesy got up and vanished into the next room while I stretched, my muscles quivering with the effort and instantly tightening into a crampy spasm. I tried several times to get up with varying levels of success, and could stand unaided by the time Jonesy reappeared with two mugs. It was hot chocolate, sweet and thick, and as I drank I felt my core temperature rise. The clouds in my head began to part more rapidly, and with this, unwelcome memories returned. Aurora had thumped Logan so hard he’d been embedded into a wall, I’d been marooned in Sector Twelve and was spending a few nights in the Sarah Siddons before I was to drive myself out. I also had an uncomfortable feeling that I might have dreamed myself back into the Gower from a memorable holiday when I was a kid, mixed up with several paintings and the artist whom I’d inexplicably named Birgitta, which was kind of odd as the only Birgitta I’d known was a bitey spaniel with smelly ears once owned by Sister Placentia.
All of this was worrying. Not the dream itself, which was undeniably enjoyable yet random nonsense, but the very act of dreaming. Only Sub-beta payscalers actually dreamt. If it got out that I was a dreamer, I would be finished socially and, worse, I’d have taken on the risks of the Winter Consul Service for nothing. Until I figured out what was what, no one could know.
I stretched my muscles and felt them cramp again almost instantly.
‘Take it easy to begin with,’ said Jonesy as she opened the shutters, ‘slow wins prizes.’
A grey light flooded the apartment. I sat up in bed, pushed back the bedclothes and had my third big shock of the morning.
I was thin. Really thin.
Jonesy raised an eyebrow.
‘Sailing a bit close to the wind?’ she asked, staring at my scrawny body. ‘It’s a brave or foolhardy person who heads into their first Winter without contingency. Don’t let Toccata find out. She takes reckless disregard of the BMI seriously. Actually,’ she added after a moment’s thought, ‘she kind of takes everything seriously. Even taking seriously she takes seriously.’
For the moment, Toccata’s opinion didn’t really matter. It would later – big time – but not right now. I had only one question.
‘What day is it?’
‘Slumberdown plus twenty-seven.’
‘What?’
‘Plus twenty-seven. You’ve been out four weeks.’
It took a moment or two for me to digest this fact. I looked at my alarm clock, which had stopped not long after I’d gone to sleep. Without it, I’d inadvertently tumbled down the slope into hibernation. It was embarrassing. Falling asleep on your first overwintering gig was strictly for amateurs.
‘So,’ said Jonesy, ‘let’s start again: what are you doing here?’
I explained about as quickly and truthfully as I could. That Aurora had saved me from Logan; that I’d spoken to Laura and Fodder in the Consulate; that I’d been marooned; had met up again with Aurora; was going to drive myself out; was allocated this room.
‘The next thing I know, you’re waking me up.’
‘Oversleep, did you?’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s not a good start.’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘not a good start at all. But why wake me now,’ I added, ‘why not four weeks ago?’
‘Your office in Cardiff,’ she said, ‘they called several times asking where you were as they need confirmation of Aurora’s account of what happened to Logan. We’d told them you’d departed on the last train, but when they insisted we look further four weeks later, that dope Treacle said he’d walked with you and Aurora in this direction. We did a sweep of the Domitoria, and there you were. You were lucky.’
She was right. If I’d only been carrying two weeks’ contingency instead of four I’d likely be dead right now.
‘Now,’ said Jonesy, ‘you need to explain everything to Toccata. She’s busy until one o’clock. Do you want breakfast?’
I nodded. She told me to keep stretching and then went back into the kitchen area. I moved to the end of the bed, grasped the bedstead and heaved myself to my feet. I paused, took a few steps, stumbled, regained my balance then walked unsteadily to the bathroom, where I relieved myself of something that smelled of overripe silage, looked like yacht varnish and felt as though it were burning a new way out.
This done, I stepped into the shower to wash the gammy night-crust from my wintercoat, and while I did so, I thought about the painter. Oddly, the dream had not been a faint jumble of broken images softened into broad ambiguity by the fog of sleep, but as strong and as real as anything that actually had happened: the trip up here, Logan’s death, Foulnap – even the flailing nightwalker on the operating table at HiberTech and the shiny wetness of the cobbles where Hooke had whacked Moody.
Once I’d soaped and scrubbed twice I ran a number-two clipper through my felted hair and dumped the tangled mass in the bin. I stopped frequently to stretch the gnawing stiffness from my limbs, and once I’d combed all over to remove the lice eggs, eight night-worms and a half-dozen hook-daddies, I stood under the gloriously hot water[50] and tried to push down a sense of rising panic and failure. After ten minutes and with no positive thoughts about my current predicament, I stepped out, gazed at my scrawny body in the mirror, then clipped my nails short, felt my teeth for any telltale signs of decay or looseness, and slipped on a pair of Suzy’s jogging trousers and a T-shirt. I then went to the window to peer at the Winter, something I’d never witnessed before.
The landscape was utterly without colour. A grey overcast stretched to the mountains, the town and country draped in white, the hard edges of the buildings rounded and softened by the heaps of accreted snow. There was barely any movement; the only sign of life was half a dozen dog-head buzzards wheeling tightly over some waste ground behind the Siddons.
‘They’ll be circling the landfill,’ said Jonesy, who had arrived by my side. ‘We dumped a couple of winsomniacs up there a few days ago; things aren’t freezing as quickly so the scent carries.’
‘The thaw?’ I asked.
‘No, just the end of a milder spell. There’s worse weather on the way – a pretty big one in a couple of days: fifty below freezing, they say. The porters will be pulling the rods in preparation. We’ll want to be inside when it hits. Breakfast is ready.’
We sat down at the table. There was everything: bacon, beans, two kippers, buttered toast, mushrooms, sausage and sauté potatoes. Despite the joyous bounty of the spread, everything was either long-life, tinned or dry-packed. Nothing is fresh in the Winter, they say – except the wind.
We tucked in; Jonesy had made almost the same size for herself.
‘This is nice,’ she said.
She looked at me and smiled, then patted my hand in an oddly affectionate manner, and left hers resting on mine. It was her tattered hand, all livid scar tissue and string-sized stitch marks. I didn’t move my hand away through not wanting to offend, so waited until she moved her hand to pass me the salt, and then elected to keep my hands off the table in future.
‘It’s sort of like being long-partnered,’ she added.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Sort of like being long-partnered,’ she repeated, ‘sitting here together, enjoying our retirement and sharing a sense of past histories together, a warm and cosy sense of familiarity.’
The alarm bells started ringing.
‘I’m… not sure I follow you. Retirement sounds nice, but hardly realistic.’
‘That’s the whole idea. Since Consuls rarely die of old age, I thought we could have our fond dotage now, while we still can. We could meet up after work, and just kind of sit together in companionable silence. You might darn a sock and make comments from time to time while I read, and you could say “Yes, dear”, or “That’s interesting” when I say something intelligent you don’t understand. We could even play Cluedo, but only if I can be Miss Scarlett and not the murderers.’
‘That’s not quite how Cluedo works,’ I said, and she frowned, so I gave her a quick run-down on the rules while we ate.
‘You seem very expert,’ she said, which was hardly a word I’d use – Cluedo isn’t that complex.
‘Sister Zygotia used to play it with us at the Pool,’ I said.
Not many people talked about the Pool. But now that we were, Jonesy was curious.
‘Were you there long?’
‘Last one out.’
‘What was it like?’
Pools, like meals, terriers and promises, all varied in quality – there were Pools barely suitable for livestock and there was the highly desirable Wackford & Co. with branches in Paris, London and New York.
‘Any institution has room for improvement,’ I said, ‘but on the whole I think it was okay – I just stayed there too long. Look,’ I added, ‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful or anything, but I’d be a lot happier just heading off home, straight back to Cardiff.’
‘No can do, Wonky. Toccata wants to see you, so that’s what’s going to happen. Pass the ketchup.’
‘There isn’t any.’
‘Yes,’ she said with a mournful expression, ‘we watered it down and told the winsomniacs it was tomato soup.’
We fell silent for a moment, but Jonesy, I realised, was never quiet for long. She liked to chatter in order, I think, to fill the dead air, and the Winter was full of dead air. I learned that she was a first-generation settled Guestworker, an outsider of mixed-hemisphere parents. Her mother had been an Argentinian maid who had fallen in love and slept over. Scandalous at the time, but little thought of today.
‘I joined the Service after several tours in the Ottoman,’ she said, then fell silent for a moment. ‘Lost some people out there under my command,’ she said, ‘lost some good people.’
‘Is that why you’re in Sector Twelve?’ I asked.
‘It’s all about payback, I think,’ she said, as if not fully sure herself. ‘Could have retired, but working under Toccata is never dull. Besides, I may actually do some good. It’s not risk-free, but honourable conduct rarely is.’
Once breakfast was done, Jonesy said she had some errands to run and she’d meet me at midday to go and see Toccata.
‘You could make up some really good “Do you remember whens”,’ she said, ‘reminiscences of our early life together, y’know?’
‘Yes, I suppose I could.’
‘Try now.’
‘I’m not good at off-the-cuff invent—’
‘Did you like your breakfast? The one I made for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s hear the story of how we met.’
She stared at me in a dangerous fashion. The breezy, chatty Jonesy was really only one part of her – the saner part.
‘Okay, then,’ I said, trying to think of something original and failing, ‘we were – um – cast as… the front and back halves of a pantomime horse.’
‘Trippy,’ said Jonesy, more intrigued than I’d hoped, ‘and why would that have happened?’
‘Part of a… Winter talent show?’
‘Good.’
‘We don’t get along at first—’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because you insisted I was the back half?’
‘Totally plausible. Carry on.’
‘But because the show must go on and the “equestrian gavotte” requires synchronised footsteps, we sort of forget our differences, practise together in private and then emerge victorious… and in love.’
‘Brilliant,’ she said, beaming all over.
‘Really? I thought it sounded particularly corny.’
‘The best relationships always begin like a bad rom-com in my experience. I’ll find a tartan travel rug and a picnic set for the Sno-Trac,’ she added, now quite enthused by the whole idea. ‘You’re washing up breakfast, but you can argue with me about it if you want – sort of like “I did it last time”.’
‘You made breakfast,’ I said, ‘it would only be fair.’
‘Well, okay,’ she said, mildly disappointed.
Jonesy got up, pulled on her coat and opened the front door.
‘I’ve left a basket of food on the kitchen counter. I’ll meet you outside at midday.’
She then wished me a pleasant day, told me to not force my first shit out as I’d definitely regret it, and that there was a package outside in the corridor.
‘Thank you,’ I said to her retreating form as she moved along the curved corridor, and she waved a hand without looking back.
The parcel was large and flat and wrapped in brown paper and string. I brought it inside, cut the string with my pocket knife to find it was a painting, a portrait, of me. I rested the painting on the bookcase, then stepped back.
It was the picture I had commissioned from the painter. But it wasn’t wholly original. It was the same painting I had seen in her studio four weeks before, the one of her faceless husband. But it was no longer her husband and no longer naked. It was me, with my features and a black one-piece swimsuit painted over. She’d even added white pumps over his previously naked feet, and a blue-and-white striped towel for me to sit on.
There was something very disturbing about the painting. It wasn’t because she had recycled a canvas of her obviously-missed husband for a stranger she barely knew, but this: she’d painted me on the Gower, as in my dream, and, more bizarrely, it looked for all the world as though she had painted me from her viewpoint, there on the beach. In the dream she had said she loved me, and this was a painting of me, hearing her say it. Which sort of defied logic: it should have been the other way round. Reality, then dream. I stared at the painting for a good ten minutes, trying to figure it out, but getting nowhere. In any event, I thought the likeness was good. I now owed her five hundred euros, which on reflection was money I could ill afford, but at least it would give me an opportunity to talk to her again.
I walked around the room several times, managed two press-ups and sat for a while on the bed feeling fatigued and itchy, then fetched the portrait of me and placed it next to Clytemnestra, in order to soften her psychopathic glare. I then went and made myself some tea, had another shower, and stared out of the window.
After an hour of this I grew bored and restless so decided to go and see Porter Lloyd. I pulled on my uniform, threw my bag around my shoulder and departed, but stopped at the painter’s door as I walked around the corridor. I scribbled a note of thanks and my address so she could invoice me come Springrise, and was going to pop it through the letterbox when I stopped. The name under the bell was Birgitta, and I felt a sudden pang of confusion. I hadn’t known her name. She’d not told me. I’d heard it in the dream. I took a deep breath, supposed that I must have seen it without registering it, and, still confused, walked downstairs.