‘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