‘I never like this part of the job,’ said Logan. In fact, no one enjoyed it as far as I could see – except the MediTechs themselves, who were finally going to do in the Winter what they had been preparing for all Summer. The redeployed, their limited usefulness over and physiologically unable to hibernate, were due to be parted out as soon as the recipients were in full hibernation. If nightwalkers were the unintended consequence of Morphenox, the free menial workers and transplantation possibilities were the unintended consequences of the unintended consequence. Screening had been carried out all Summer, and each Edward or Jane had the names of their intended recipients cold-branded on their various parts. Leg, face, fingers, organs – there wasn’t much that couldn’t be replaced. Something to do with the hibernatory state being especially conducive to non-rejection.

‘Never enough, eh?’ said one of the MediTechs, consulting a clipboard and the thirty or so individuals we had collected from their places of work. They stood there blankly, swaying gently from side to side until they were loaded into a mammoth-truck and carted away.

‘Doesn’t seem right somehow,’ I said, probably too loudly. Consul Thomas heard me.

‘You’ll not complain once you lose something to frost and want it replaced,’ she said, patting her arm, which I noted was a great deal paler than the rest of her, ‘and you will, eventually. You’re not part of the Winter until the Winter’s taken a part of you.’

*   *   *

On the fourth day before Slumberdown the local police conducted the seasonal handover of Jurisdiction, a ceremony that included the mayor, the Chief of Police and a large symbolic snowflake made of gingerbread and marzipan. I wasn’t there; someone had to answer the phones in the office and finish the ironing.

*   *   *

Two days after that, Beryl Cook nearly had a meltdown. And this is when Mrs Tiffen comes back into the story.

Oliver Tiffen goes hot

‘ . . . HotPots were replaced every thirty years whether they needed it or not, always during the early Summer. Exclusion zones were implemented and the work carried out by a team chosen by lottery from the over-sixty age group. Given that the average life expectancy was sixty-four, the effect of long-term radiation poisoning would be minimal. High risk emergency shutdown had their own workforce: The High Octanes  . . . ’

– from Seventeen Winters, by Winter Consul Lance Jones

We drove across the city at daybreak, the tracks of the Sno-Trac clean and sharp over a fresh fall of snow, the sky slate-grey. Only the thin trails of vapour rising from the numerous Dormitoria gave any clue that we were in a city of almost half a million people.