Under the Skin (21 page)

It was almost cruelly poignant, but delightful too, the way Amlis seemed to regard her as the custodian of an entire world, as if it belonged to her. Which, perhaps, it did.

The terrible price she’d paid
had
made this world her own, in a sense. She was showing Amlis what could be the natural domain of anyone willing to submit to the ultimate sacrifice – a sacrifice no-one but she had dared to make. Well, she and Esswis. But Esswis rarely left his farmhouse. Too devastated, probably, by his disfigurement. The beauties of nature meant nothing to him; they were insufficient consolation. She, by contrast, kept pushing herself out there to see what there was to be seen. She exposed herself daily to the great impartial skies, glad to be consoled.

In time, a flock of sheep walked single-file along the fringe of cliff at Ablach’s boundary. Their fleeces glowed in the moonlight, their black faces almost invisible against the tenebrous gorse.

‘What are those?’ marvelled Amlis, his nose almost squashed against the windscreen.

‘They’re called sheep,’ Isserley told him.

‘How do you know?’

Isserley thought fast.

‘That’s what they call themselves,’ she said.

‘You speak their language?’ he goggled as the creatures trotted past.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘A few words.’

He watched them, every last one of them, his head moving closer and closer to Isserley’s as he followed their slow progress out of his experience.

‘Have you tried using them for meat?’ asked Amlis.

Isserley was dumbfounded. ‘Are you serious?’

‘How do I know what you people have got up to?’

Isserley blinked repeatedly, fumbling for something to say. How could he even
think
of such a thing? Was it a ruthlessness that linked father and son?

‘They’re … they’re on all
fours
, Amlis, can’t you see that? They’ve got fur – tails – facial features not that different from ours …’

‘Listen,’ he began testily, ‘if you’re going to eat the flesh of a living creature …’

Isserley sighed; she yearned to just place her forefinger against his lips and quieten him.

‘Please,’ she implored, as the last of the sheep vanished into a tunnel of gorse. ‘Don’t spoil this.’

But, typical man, he was not to be dissuaded from wrecking the perfection of the moment; he only chose a different tack.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve talked to the men quite a lot.’

‘What men?’

‘The men you work with.’

‘I work alone.’

Amlis took a deep breath; began again.

‘The men say you’re not yourself.’

Isserley snorted contemptuously. This would be Ensel he had in mind. Ensel, all mange and scars and swollen balls, spilling his guts to the visiting big shot. Man-to-man confessions.

Sensing the poison of hatred trickling back into her system, she was sad, almost ashamed: what a relief it had been to be without it, if only for a little while! Could this little cud she’d been chewing really have such a placating effect? She turned to Amlis, and smiled awkwardly.

‘Have you got any more … uh …’ Don’t make me say the word, she thought.

Amlis handed her another sprig of icpathua, from the clump he’d brought along.

‘The men are saying you’ve changed,’ he said. ‘Has anything bad happened to you?’

With his gift to her still in her hand, Isserley did her best to keep her bitterness in check.

‘Oh, the odd stroke of bad luck, from time to time. Wealthy young men promising they’ll take care of me, then standing by as I get sent down to the shithole. My body being carved up. That sort of thing.’

‘I mean just recently.’

Isserley leaned her head back against the seat, adding the icpathua to what she still had in her mouth.

‘I’m fine,’ she sighed. ‘I have a difficult job, that’s all. It has its ups and downs. You wouldn’t understand.’

On the horizon, a cloud of snow was gathering with great speed. She knew he hadn’t a clue what it was, and cherished this knowledge.

‘Why not quit?’ he suggested.

‘Quit?’

‘Quit. Just stop doing it.’

Isserley rolled her eyes up to heaven, or the ceiling of her car. The upholstery of that ceiling was, she noticed, in some decay.

‘I’m sure Vess Incorporated would be most impressed,’ she sighed. ‘Your old man would send me his personal best wishes, I’m sure.’

Amlis laughed dismissively.

‘You think my father is going to come all the way out here and bite you in the neck?’ he said. ‘He’ll just send somebody to take your place. There are hundreds of people begging for the chance.’

This was news to Isserley – horrifying, sickening news.

‘That can’t be true,’ she breathed.

Amlis went quiet for a moment, as he tried to find his way safely through what had opened up between them: the jagged traps of her grief.

‘I don’t for a moment want to minimize what you’ve suffered,’ he said carefully, ‘but you must understand there are rumours back home about what this place is like – the skies, the visibility of the stars, the purity of the air, the lushness of everything. There are even stories about giant
bodies of water – about how they go on and on for‘(he laughed)’a mile at a stretch.’

He said no more for a while, waiting for her to be ready. She was leaning back in her seat, her eyes falling shut. In the moonlight, her damp eyelids were silvery and intricately patterned, like the leaf he had admired in the steading.

She
is
beautiful, he thought. In her own strange, strange way.

Eventually, Isserley spoke again.

‘Look, I couldn’t just quit,’ she pointed out. ‘My job provides me with a home … food …’ She struggled to come up with more.

Amlis didn’t wait. ‘The men tell me you basically live on bread and mussanta paste as it is,’ he said. ‘Ensel says you seem to live mostly on thin air. Are you telling me there’s nothing growing in this world you couldn’t survive on? And nowhere you could make a home for yourself?’

Isserley gripped the steering wheel angrily.

‘Are you suggesting I live like an animal?’

They sat in silence for a long time, while the snow-clouds gathered on the firth and then drifted over the farm. Isserley, taking surreptitious glances at Amlis, noted that his awe and excitement were now tinged with unease: the unease of having hurt her, the unease of what was happening above him. To his inexperienced eyes, the snow-clouds no doubt resembled the noxious smogs of home, the kind that were sometimes so foully toxic that even the Elite were forced underground.

‘Are … are we going to be all right?’ he asked at last, just as the moon was being extinguished by the swirling grey haze.

Isserley smirked. ‘No adventure without risk, Amlis,’ she chided him.

Snowflakes began to whirl through the air, careering wildly, trembling, spiralling, diving against the windscreen. Amlis flinched. Then a few flakes blew in through the open passenger window, settling on his fur.

Isserley felt him shudder next to her, smelled a new odour on him. It was a long time since she’d smelled human fear.

‘Relax, Amlis,’ she purred serenely, ‘It’s only water.’

He pawed nervously at the alien substance on his breast, then murmured in wonder as it melted between his fingers. He looked at Isserley as if she had organized this whole display herself; as if she had just up-ended the whole universe for him, in case it might charm him for a moment.

‘Just watch,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk. Just watch.’

Together they sat in Isserley’s little car as the sky unburdened its load. Within half an hour all the land around them was dusted with white, and a brilliant crystalline lather was climbing up the windscreen.

‘This is … a miracle,’ Amlis said at last. ‘It’s as if there’s another sea, floating in the air.’

Isserley nodded eagerly: how intuitively he understood! She had often thought exactly the same thing herself.

‘Just wait till the sun comes up! You won’t believe it!’

Something happened in the air between them then, something molecularly disturbing.

‘I’m not going to see it, Isserley,’ Amlis said sadly. ‘I’ll be gone by then.’

‘Gone?’

‘I’m leaving tonight,’ he said.

Still she seemed unable to grasp what he could possibly mean.

‘The ship,’ he reminded her, ‘is leaving in a couple of hours. I’m going to be on it, of course.’

She sat very still, taking the information in.

‘It’s not like
you
to do what you’re told,’ she joked feebly, after a while.

‘I
need
to get back home,’ explained Amlis, ‘to talk about what I’ve seen here. People need to be told what’s being done with their blessing.’

Isserley laughed harshly. ‘So it’s Amlis the Crusader,’ she sneered, ‘bringing the light of truth to the whole human race.’

He grinned, hurt twinkling in his eyes. ‘You’re a cynical creature, Isserley. Listen, if it’s easier for you to digest, you could say I’ve got no ideals really. You could say I just want to go back and annoy the hell out of my father.’

She smiled wearily. The snow had almost completely obscured the windscreen by now; she would have to shift it soon, or she’d start feeling claustrophobic.

‘Parents, eh?’ griped Amlis awkwardly, trying to maintain a fragile bridge between them. ‘Fuck ’em.’ The vulgarism sounded forced and self-conscious coming from him; he’d misjudged his tone, lost his grip a little. And, shyly, he reached across and laid a hand gently on her arm.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it would be very easy to get seduced by this world. It’s very, very … beautiful.’

Isserley lifted her arms up to take hold of the steering wheel. His hand slipped off her as she found the ignition unerringly in the gloom. The engine thrummed into life, the headlights came on.

‘I’ll drive you back to the steading, then,’ Isserley said. ‘Time’s getting away.’

*
*
*

Back at the steading, the great aluminium door was open a crack, and Isserley could see Ensel’s snout already poking through. He’d have been sweating, she could well imagine, all through the hours of Amlis’s absence; he was probably on guard duty. Let’s see him come out now and tell her that this catch of hers was the best ever, the little creep.

Ensel stayed right where he was, however, waiting.

Isserley reached across Amlis’s body to open the passenger side door, the mechanism of which was defeating him. Her forearm brushed momentarily against his fur, and she smelled the warm flesh underneath. The door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air and feathery snowflakes.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Amlis asked.

‘I have my own place to go to,’ Isserley told him. ‘And I’ve got work in the morning.’

One last time he locked eyes with her, a flash of antagonism sparking between them. Then:

‘Take care of yourself,’ he muttered, lowering himself out of the car onto the white ground. ‘There’s a voice inside you. Listen to what it says.’

‘It says fuck off,’ she said, but she was smiling crookedly, and crying too.

He padded through the snow, towards the door which was rolling open for him.

‘I’ll come back sometime,’ he called, turning his head over his shoulder as he walked. Then, grinning: ‘If I can get transport, of course.’

Isserley drove to her cottage, parked the car in the garage, walked herself into the house. Since she’d last been home, mysterious trespassers had slipped some glossy leaflets under her front door. An assortment of vodsels far too puny to make the grade wanted her to vote for them in an election;
Scotland’s future was at stake and the power lay in her hands. There was also a note from Esswis, which Isserley did not attempt to read. Instead, she went straight to bed, covered her naked body in blankets, and wept and wept for hours.

The little numbers on her depleted digital clock had stopped flashing altogether, but she estimated it was about four in the morning when the transport ship finally launched itself with its characteristic groan.

Afterwards, she listened to the roof of the steading rolling shut. Then, soothed by the music of the waves playing in the stillness of Ablach, she rocked herself to sleep.

FOLDING HER ARMS
across her breasts, palms on shoulders, and closing her eyes, Isserley allowed herself to slip under the water. Giving the sorely punished muscles and bones of her neck permission to let her head go, she felt her hair swirl up towards the surface as her heavy little skull sank like a stone. The world disappeared into darkness, and the familiar sounds of Ablach Farm were swallowed up into a numb aquatic murmur.

The rest of Isserley’s body sank more hesitantly than her head, at first trying out a new centre of gravity, attemping to float, before it too descended towards the bottom. Bubbles leaked out of her ears and nose. Her mouth was slightly open, not breathing.

After a minute or two, she opened her eyes. Through the shimmering water and the waving seaweed of her hair, she could see a glow of sunlight, distorted, like a distant glimpse of an open door at the end of a dark corridor. As her lungs began to hurt, this light began to dilate, then throb in rhythm with her labouring heartbeat. It was time to come up for air.

Pushing up from the bottom, she splashed through the surface with her head and shoulders, gasping fresh oxygen, wiping her streaming hair back from her face, blinking and snuffling. Her vertebrae shifted and clicked, a sickening gristle sound trapped deep inside the flesh, as the weight settled back on her shoulders.

In the world outside the water, the sunlight had ceased to shimmer and pulsate: it shone through the soiled window of the bathroom, warm and constant. The nozzle of the shower was lit up like a lamp, and ceiling cobwebs luminesced like wisps of sheepswool caught on a barbed-wire fence. The ceramic top of the toilet cistern was almost too bright to look at, so Isserley let her eyes rest on its waxy torso. The pale blue letters tattooed there,
ARMITAGE SHANKS
, were as incomprehensible as ever, despite Isserley’s years of learning the language. The hot-water tank gulped and belched, the way it always did when Isserley had a bath instead of a shower. At her feet, the rusted brass taps gurgled and hissed. The green plastic bottle of shampoo said
EVERYDAY USE
. Everything was back to normal. Amlis Vess was gone, and she remained, and it was already tomorrow. She should have known from the beginning that it would end like this.

Isserley leaned her head back, resting the base of her aching skull on the ceramic lip of the bath. On the ceiling directly above the tub, the pus-coloured paint hung in intricate shards and blisters, eroded by years of steam. Several coats of paint, like thin geological layers, had been penetrated by this attrition. It was the closest thing Isserley had yet found, in this world, to the landscape of her childhood. She lowered her eyes.

Her body was invisible below the reflective surface of the water, except for the tips of her toes and the curves of her breasts. She stared down at those alien mounds of flesh, easily imagining them as something other than what they were. Marooned like this in the sunlit water, they reminded her of rocks in the ocean, revealed by the tide. Stones on her chest, pushing her down. Amlis Vess had never seen her without these artificial tumours bulging out of her; would never know that she had once had a smooth breast worthy of his. Hard and sleek, with glossy auburn fur which men could hardly keep themselves from stroking.

She closed her eyes tightly, enduring the exquisitely unpleasant sensation of water trickling out of her mutilated ears. As if taking advantage of this lapse in vigilance, a dribble of scalding water leaked abruptly from the hot tap onto her left foot. Isserley hissed in surprise, and clenched her toes into a fist. How strange, she thought, that such tiny, trivial discomforts could still matter, when Amlis was gone and she was ready to die.

In the rusty soap dish hooked onto the side of the bathtub lay several new razor blades wrapped in cardboard. She unsheathed one of them, flicking the cardboard away. Reaching down to the grimy tiled floor, she picked up the mirror she’d brought downstairs with her. She held it above her, angled it to get the best light, looking herself straight in the face.

She tried to see herself as a vodsel might.

Even at a glance, she found it difficult to believe how much she had let herself go. It seemed like only a few days ago that she’d last done what was necessary to push herself across the dividing line into bestiality; it must have been much longer ago than that. What a bizarre sight she must have been to the vodsels who’d seen her recently. It was a good thing, really, that the last couple were safely out of circulation, because she had to admit she didn’t pass muster now; her fur was growing back everywhere except in the places that were so severely scarred or artificial that nothing could grow there. She looked almost human.

Her hairline was barely discernible anymore; downy fuzz covered her forehead and connected up with the thicker fur on her brows. Her lower eyelashes had almost ceased to be defined as such, merging with the stubble on her cheeks, brown stubble that was softening as it grew. Her shoulders and upper arms were lined with a tentative fleece of auburn.

If Amlis Vess had stayed a little longer, he would have seen something of why men from the Elite had always promised her that they would keep her where she belonged, that they would put in a good word for her when the time came, that they would make sure she was never sent where a girl as beautiful as her should never be forced to go. It would be a crime against nature, one of them had told her once, as he stroked her flank, straying inwards towards the soft genital slit.

Isserley wielded the razor blade with great care. She’d dabbed shampoo onto her cheeks, but because the fur went right up to the rims of her eyelids, she must be careful not to push the soapy froth onto her eyeballs. Her eyes were sore enough from having to wear glasses so much of the time. And, of course, from weeping over Amlis, and life in general.

With delicate, tender scrapes, she shaved the fur off her face, leaving a few wisps for eyelashes. She tried to stop frowning, to make her forehead smooth as she dragged the razor across it. With every scrape she rinsed the blade in the bathwater; soon her fur was floating all around her, borne on a flotilla of shampoo scum.

When she was finished, Isserley picked up the mirror again and examined herself. A droplet of watery blood was trickling down her forehead; she wiped it away before it could run down into her eye. It would heal in a minute.

Instead of a straight hairline, windscreen-style, she’d given herself a slight V-shape, as a sort of experiment. She’d seen it on vodsels sometimes and thought it looked quite attractive.

The rest was straightforward. Unsheathing a fresh blade, she shaved her arms and legs, her shoulders, her feet. With a grunt of effort she swivelled her arms behind her back and shaved there, one hand angling the mirror, the other wielding the blade. Her abdomen needed only a few touch-ups; the scarred flesh from her amputated teats was dimpled and tough, like the torso of a lean, well-muscled vodsel who kept away from alcohol and fatty feed. The tangle of knotted flesh between her legs she didn’t touch or examine; it was a lost cause.

The water had gone cold around her, and looked like a pond stagnant with brown algae. She stood up and gave herself a quick blast of hot water from the shower nozzle to flush off the loose fur. Then she stepped out of the tub onto the cold tiles, next to her shabby little pile of discarded clothes. Grasping them in her toes, she tossed them into the bath and pushed them under the water, which was instantly filthy.

Amlis Vess was gone, and there was nothing to do but go to work.

The midday news came on the television while she was doing her exercises. For the first time in years, it had some relevance to her.

‘A search is under way for missing Perthshire man, William Cameron, ‘said a concerned female voice, as the grubby screen in Isserley’s bedroom displayed a picture of the red-maned, knitted-jumper vodsel she’d picked up days before,’ who was last seen attempting to hitch-hike home from Inverness on Sunday.’ A different photograph replaced the first, this one showing the vodsel relaxing in front of a caravan, hugging between his legs a sleepy-eyed female with thick glasses. Two chubby toddlers, out of focus, were frozen in the extreme foreground, wide-eyed with surprise at the camera flash. ‘Police say there is as yet no evidence of any connection between Mr Cameron’s disappearance and the murder of Anthony Mallinder on Sunday.’ The red-mane and his family were extinguished and a grainy image of the monstrous baldhead in yellow overalls was superimposed, instantly making Isserley’s flesh creep. ‘They acknowledge, however, a possible connection with the disappearance of German medical student Dieter Genscher, last seen at Aviemore.’ The disturbing sight of the baldhead was mercifully replaced by a snapshot of a harmless-looking vodsel Isserley couldn’t recall seeing before. Then, after what seemed like only a fraction of a second, there was some high-quality film footage of the A9, the camera mounted low on the ground, to show the passing cars from the perspective of a hitch-hiker.

Isserley continued her exercises as the news progressed to other things: huge herds of starving vodsels in a foreign country, the misbehaviour of a singer who wasn’t John Martyn, sporting events, weather. Driving conditions were likely to be quite good, if the forecast was accurate.

Exercise and the sun beaming in through the window had dried her hair. She appraised herself in her little mirror, frowning. Her fresh black top – the freshest-looking of the ones in her wardrobe – was a little frayed. Still smart, but a little frayed.

You shouldn’t have taken that red-haired vodsel, she said to herself, suddenly. William Cameron.

Pushing the thought away, she tried to return her attention to the matter at hand. Where was she supposed to get more clothes? Donny’s Garage didn’t sell clothes. For years, she’d resisted the temptation to wear items of clothing she’d come by in the course of her work, fearing that they would be recognized as belonging to individual vodsels, but maybe …

You shouldn’t have taken him, she told herself again. You’re slipping. It’s over.

Her trousers were fine, the green velvet glossy and clean. A bit patchy on the seat, perhaps, but no-one ever saw that, all being welL Her shoes were polished and seemingly indestructible. The cleavage of her bosom glowed in the sunlight like something from the cover of a vodsel magazine. The tiny cut on her hairline had healed already; she picked the crust off, and it didn’t resume bleeding. She ran her fingers through her hair, all ten fingernails securely in place. She breathed deeply, sucking the cool clean air through her nostrils, keeping her spine straight. Outside her window, the earth’s atmosphere was bright and blue, obscuring the eternities of space beyond.

Life goes on, she insisted to herself.

On her way out of the house, she found the note from Esswis, which she’d forgotten all about. By the looks of it, it had been lying under her door for days. She held its damp and faded text up to the light. Esswis’s tortuous scrawl didn’t make things any easier, but one thing was immediately clear: this wasn’t a personal letter. He was merely passing on a message from Vess Incorporated, which, because Esswis was Isserley’s superior, had been conveyed to him first.

As far as Isserley could decipher, Vess Incorporated was wondering if there was any possibility she could bring in a few more vodsels than usual. Twenty per cent more per annum would be fine. If there was any difficulty, the Corporation could send someone to help her out. In fact, it was seriously considering sending someone anyway.

Isserley folded the note into a pocket of her trousers, even though she hadn’t read it all. Vess Incorporated would have to learn that it couldn’t fuck with her like this. She would send them a little message on the next transport ship. In the meantime, she would think about what changes needed to be made to her working life.

Isserley’s arrival in the dining hall caused much guttural murmuring among the men. They obviously hadn’t expected her to reappear so soon after her humiliation, but that was because they were stupid and understood nothing. Wouldn’t they just love to have had a bit longer to gossip about her! What a stir her breakdown and her expulsion from the Processing Hall must have made in their stagnant little world! How the legend would have grown if she’d hidden away for days in her cottage, paralysed with shame, until at last she was so weak with hunger she was forced to crawl down to them! Well, she refused to give them the satisfaction. She would tough it out, show them what she was made of.

She cast her eyes disdainfully over the entire herd of them. Compared to Amlis Vess, they were scabrous grotesques, pea-brained savages. She should never have felt shame about her own deformity; she was no uglier than they were, surely, and infinitely better bred.

‘Is the high-quality meat all gone?’ she enquired, rummaging among the pots and bowls on the serving tables. The memory of her one little taste of the divine marinated steak that Hilis had prepared in honour of Amlis was suddenly haunting her.

‘Sorry, Isserley, it’s in here,’ said the squinty one with the mouldy face whose name she always forgot. He patted his mangy, distended belly and wheezed with laughter.

Isserley beamed pure contempt at him. They ought to feed you on straw, she thought, then turned her back and busied herself with her old standby of bread and mussanta paste. Better to eat that, bland though it was, than take a risk with the blistered fatty sausages and limp wedges of pie: there was no telling what sort of trash was in them.

‘Plenty of pie,’ somebody assured her.

‘No thanks,’ she smiled insincerely, as she leaned against one of the benches, ignoring offers to sit down on the floor with this man or that. Holding one hand under the thinly pasted bread to catch any crumbs that might fall, she began to eat, staring over the men’s heads, planning her day.

‘That fancy meat sure was good,’ recalled Yns the engineer, then, sniggering, quipped: ‘We’ll just have to get a few more visits from Amlis Vess, won’t we?’