‘From the scraps of information available to us,’ continued Foulnap, ‘we think Don Hector discovered an improved Morphenox-C that didn’t generate nightwalkers at all. By then, the redeployment and transplant industries were booming, and HiberTech management really weren’t interested. We figure he decided to go public with what he knew, recorded nightwalker extraction protocols on the cylinder and was trying to get it out until his death – and beyond.’

We all fell silent. If Don Hector had tried and failed to make all this public, I wasn’t sure how any of us lesser mortals could do it.

‘So HiberTech beamed Don Hector’s dream into our heads to try and find out what he did with the cylinder?’

‘That’s about the tune of it.’

‘So where did the Birgitta dream come from?’

They scratched their heads.

‘We’re really not sure. Dream induction is more of an art than a science. Even Thomas Edison was a little confused by it – and it was also professionally devastating for him, as he couldn’t find a useful way to bring the invention to market.’

‘One last question,’ I said, my head beginning to spin. ‘Where does Dreamspace come into all of this?’

Foulnap and Dr Gwynne exchanged looks, but it was Foulnap who spoke.

‘To initiate a Dreamspace, you must record a target dream on a Somnagraph and then play it back simultaneously to as many people as you wish to interact with in that target dream.’

‘It would be like finding yourself in the Mrs Nesbit tearoom scene during the movie Brief Encounter,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘and while Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson bang on about how frightfully, frightfully hard it is to justify their feelings for one another, you interact with all the other Dreamspacers in the tearooms. But Howard and Johnson’s dialogue carries on unchanging in a continuous repetitive loop.’

‘Shamanic Bob said the problem was about knowing what was real and what wasn’t,’ I said, ‘because when you merge the real and the fantasy, you can never quite define the boundaries.’

‘That’s true,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘but Dreamspace was also highly dangerous. Psychotic episodes, reality distortions, paranoia, death.’

‘Far too dangerous for civilians,’ added Foulnap, ‘but the risk wasn’t an issue when used militarily. If detainees suffered a devastating neural collapse after interrogation, the official line was “so what?”’

‘Hooke told me that it was Aurora who was the expert at in-dream interrogation, but was keeping it quiet.’