Despite their best efforts, the flesh of the vodsel’s back became snarled on the barbed wire, and they grunted with effort as they tried to free it with minimum damage. All the while, blood was leaking copiously onto the concrete path from the blasted head, whose shattered jaw dangled loose like a glibbery hinge of gore.
‘They’ ll clean up fine,’ muttered Esswis stoically.
The other vodsel was lighter, and Isserley almost did herself an injury in her effort to lift its torso over the fence without touching the wire.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Esswis. ‘You may regret it.’ But he strained himself too, reluctant to be shown up by a woman.
It was only when both vodsels were safely in the back of the Land-rover that Isserley and Esswis looked at each other and laughed. Retrieving these animals was a spectacularly messier business than either of them had imagined. A glutinous soup of cow shit was dripping down their clothes and arms, mingled with blood and earth. They even had smears of it on their faces, like military camouflage.
‘Three down,’ said Esswis, opening the passenger door for Isserley with a hint of new respect.
They did another circuit of the farm, finding nothing on the roads. Everything looked unrecognizably different from the previous time, because somewhere on the shore-side of Ablach, unseen below the cliffs, the sun was coming up from the sea. Darkness was evaporating minute by minute, revealing a sky promising to be clear and benign, as if to invite other motorists to take to the roads as early as possible. Sheep and cattle which had moved numberless and invisible all night were materializing into view; some beasts could be seen from a quarter of a mile away.
The last vodsel could easily be such a beast, if it only managed to get to the right place at the right time.
Driving back up the Ablach path, Esswis glanced beyond the fields, and noticed a fishing boat on the firth, drifting close to land. His fists tightened in mortification on the steering wheel; Isserley could guess he was imagining exactly the same thing she’d imagined before: a naked two-legged creature standing on the shore, frantically waving.
‘Maybe we should give you your trip to the seaside now,’ quipped Esswis awkwardly, trying to make light of his concession. And of course, his about-face was less humble than it seemed: if there was nothing to be found at the firth, he could act as if he’d merely indulged her in a waste of valuable time.
‘No,’ said Isserley. ‘I’ve got a feeling. Let’s do one more round of the perimeter.’
‘Your choice,’ he grunted, infuriatingly. The fault was already hers, then, for newspaper headlines that might readMONSTER FOUND BY FISHERMEN.
They drove in silence over Rabbit Hill. The passage of the car’s tyres back and forth over the concrete had dispersed the blood somewhat, diluting it with dirt, scuffing it into the cracks. Still it would need a good rinse, later.
If there was a later.
On the public road between the two Ablach tracks, Isserley leaned forward in her seat, her back crawling with sweat and the prickle of instinct.
‘There!’ she cried, as they crested the hill and barrelled down towards the junction.
In truth, no special powers of observation were needed. The junction was an exposed crucifix of roads, and in the very centre of it stood the vodsel. Its meaty body shone golden-blue in the sunrise, like a garish fibreglass tourist attraction, and, on hearing the vehicle’s approach from behind, it turned stiffly and lifted one arm, pointing sideways towards Tain.
Isserley reared up in her seat in a paroxysm of anticipation, but incredibly, when Esswis reached the junction, he didn’t stop. He just drove straight on, following the border of farmland towards the village of Portmahomack.
‘What are you doing?’ shrieked Isserley.
Esswis shied violently, as if she were clawing at him or trying to wrest his hands from the wheel.
‘There were headlights coming up the road from Tain,’ he growled.
Isserley tried to see, but the junction was already past and the Tain road hidden behind trees.
‘I didn’t see any headlights,’ she protested.
‘They were there.’
‘For God’s sake – how far away?’
‘Close! Close!’ shouted Esswis, bashing the steering wheel with one hand, immediately causing a dangerous swerve.
‘Well, don’t just keep driving,’ Isserley hissed. ‘Go back and have a look!’
Esswis pulled the car in beside Petley’s Farm and executed a three-point turn, except in half a dozen points or more. Isserley sat helpless and frantic in the passenger seat, unable to believe what was happening to her.
‘Hurry up!’ she whined, shaking her inward-turned fists under her chin.
But Esswis seemed to have discovered caution all of a sudden, and drove slowly and carefully back to the junction, stopping just short of it, behind the cover of trees. Through the foliage, they could both clearly see the vodsel, still standing upright and expectant on the asphalt. No evidence of any other vehicle was visible anywhere.
‘There was definitely a car coming,’ insisted Esswis, grimly pedantic. ‘As close as Easter Farm.’
‘Maybe it turned in to Easter Farm,’ suggested Isserley, trying not to scream. ‘It is inhabited, you know.’
‘Still, the odds against—’
‘For God’s sake, Esswis,’ squealed Isserley. ‘What’s wrong with you? He’s right there! Let’s get moving!’
‘How are we going to get him in the car?’
‘Just shoot him.’
‘It’s daylight now, on a crossroads. A car could come along any moment.’
‘So shoot him before a car comes.’
‘Anyone sees us shooting him, or chucking him into the car, and we’re finished. Even a pool of blood would do it.’
‘Anyone picks him up, we’re finished, too.’
They were locked in a grotesque impasse for several seconds, as the sun shone in on them through the filthy windscreen and an almost unbearable stink of shit began to steam off both their bodies. Then Esswis revved the car, launched it with a lurch, and drove up to the crossroads.
The vodsel took a couple of shambling steps forward to greet their arrival. It lifted one of its arms and again pointed towards Tain, straining to erect a blueish thumb on its swollen paw. At close range they could see it was nearly dead with cold, swaying on pulpy feet in a vegetative trance of determination.
Still, the sight of a vehicle slowing to a stop brought a glimmer of sentience back to its eyes. Its mouth twitched, too stiff with cold and overfeeding to smile, but still the thought was there.
Esswis reached over to the back seats, groping for the shotgun, which had slipped onto the floor. The vodsel stumbled painfully to the car.
‘Forget the shotgun,’ said Isserley, and she twisted around, opening one of the back doors.
The vodsel bowed its head, heaved its body into the car, and collapsed in exhaustion across the seats. Isserley, grunting with effort, pulled the door shut with one hooked finger.
‘Four,’ she said.
Back at the steading, Esswis barely had time to speak his name into the intercom before the aluminium door rolled open. Four men jostled in the widening gap, their snouts straining out anxiously, their legs pawing the concrete.
‘Did you get them? Did you get them?’ they cried.
‘Yes, yes,’ growled Esswis exhaustedly, and motioned to the Land-rover.
The men piled out into the bright air, breathing a locomotive row of steam on their way to help with the cargo. Esswis and Isserley didn’t go with them, but remained standing in the doorway, as if to block the view of any trespassers who might stray by. There was, after all, a foreign cargo ship nestled inside the building. It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be mistaken for a tractor.
Isserley watched the men wrench open a side door of the Land-rover, and saw the swollen, bloody legs of the last vodsel flop out like a pair of giant salmon. She looked away. The barn walls were brilliant whi
te in the sun, making the yellow tungsten light inside look dim and sickly.
Suddenly Esswis slumped slightly where he stood, as if something had come loose inside his shoulders, and he leaned against the steading wall, his hairy hand trembling under the skull-and-crossbones sign.
‘I’m going home,’ he sighed.
Isserley couldn’t tell, from his hunched back, how far-reaching a statement this was supposed to be. But evidently Esswis meant his farmhouse, and he shambled off towards it.
‘What about your vehicle?’ Isserley called after him.
‘I’ll come and fetch it later,’ he groaned without turning.
‘I’ll drive it to your place, if you like,’ she offered.
Still walking, still not turning, he raised one arm and let it drop wearily. Isserley couldn’t tell if this was a gesture of thanks or discouragement.
A shocked expletive in her native language came from near the Land-rover: the men had found the messier specimens jammed into the back. Isserley wasn’t interested in their qualms; she and Esswis had done their best to retrieve the animals in one piece – what did they expect?
To spare herself the men’s complaints, and to avoid offering to help them carry the carcasses in, she slipped inside the steading to search out the true cause of all the trouble: Amlis Vess.
The barn’s echoing ground level was empty of movable things, apart from the great black oblong of the transport ship parked directly under the roof hatch. Even the token farm equipment that was usually littered about in case of government inspection had been removed for unimpeded loading. At this time of the month – all things being well – the men would already be busy packing the goods into the ship, but Isserley could smell that nothing had been done today.
In one corner of the barn stood a massive steel drum, seven feet tall and at least five in diameter, embossed with a rusted and faded image of a cow and a sheep. A brass tap beckoned out of its side; Isserley twisted the handle and the drum opened up for her, a concealed seam parting smoothly like a vertical eyelid.
She stepped inside, the metal enclosed her, and she was on her way underground.
The lift opened its door automatically when it reached the shallowest level, the workers’ kitchen and recreation hall. Low-ceilinged and harshly lit like a motorway service station, it was a utilitarian eyesore that always, always smelled of fried potatoes, unwashed men, and mussanta paste.
Nobody was there, so Isserley let herself be taken down further. She hoped Amlis Vess wasn’t hiding in the deepest levels, where the killing and processing was done; she had never been there and didn’t wish to see it now. It was no place for a claustrophobic.
The lift stopped again, this time at the men’s living quarters – the most likely place (now that she thought about it) for Amlis Vess to be. Isserley had only once visited here, when she’d first arrived at Ablach Farm. She’d never found a reason to revisit its musty warren of clammy maleness: it reminded her of the Estates. She had a reason now, though. As the door parted its metal veils, Isserley braced herself for an angry confrontation.
The first thing she saw was Amlis Vess himself, standing startlingly close to the lift. She hadn’t expected him to be so close; it was as if he was about to step inside with her. But he kept perfectly still. In fact, everything seemed to keep perfectly still: time appeared to have stopped, without a qualm, for Isserley to take Amlis in, her mouth open to spit abuse. Her mouth stayed open.
He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
Unsettlingly familiar in the way that famous people are, he was also utterly strange, as if she had never seen him before; the half-remembered images from the media had conveyed nothing of his attraction.
Like all of Isserley’s race (except Isserley and Esswis, of course) he stood naked on all fours, his limbs exactly equal in length, all of them equally nimble. He also had a prehensile tail, which, if he needed his front hands free, he could use as another limb to balance on, tripod-style. His breast tapered seamlessly into a long neck, on which his head was positioned like a trophy. It came to three points: his long spearhead ears and his vulpine snout. His large eyes were perfectly round, positioned on the front of his face, which was covered in soft fur, like the rest of his body.
In all these things he was a normal, standard-issue human being, no different from the workman standing behind him, watching him nervously.
But he was different.
He was almost freakishly tall, for one thing. His head was at the level of her breast; were he to be surgically made vertical, as she had been, he would tower over her. Wealth and privilege must have excused him from the typically stunted growth of Estate males like the one who was guarding him now; he was like a giant, but slender with it, not massive or lumpish. His colouring was unusually varied (gossips sometimes suggested it wasn’t natural): dark brown on his back, shoulders and flanks, pure black on his face and legs, pure white on his breast. The fur was impossibly lustrous, too, especially on his chest, where it was thicker, almost straggly. In musculature he was lean, with just enough bulk to carry his large frame; his shoulder-blades were startlingly prominent under their satiny layer of fur. But it was his face that was most remarkable: of the males Isserley worked with, there was not one who didn’t have coarse hair, bald patches, discolorations and unsightly scarring on the face. Amlis Vess had a soft down of flawless black from the tips of his ears to the curve of his throat, as if lovingly tooled in black suede by an idealistic craftsman. Deeply set in this perfection of blackness, his tawny eyes shone like illuminated amber. He breathed, preparing to speak.
Suddenly, the metal door slid shut between them, as if drawing curtains on the spectacle. Only now did Isserley realize that several seconds had passed, and that she had failed to step out of the lift. The door sealed itself and Amlis was gone; the floor moved gently underneath her.
The lift was descending further, towards the Processing Hall and the vodsel pens – exactly where Isserley didn’t want to go. Peevishly, she banged on the up button with the palm of her hand.
The lift came to a stop, and its doors twitched, as if about to open, but they managed no more than a centimetre or two before the cabin lurched back upwards towards the surface. A whiff of dank animal smell had entered; nothing more.
Back on the men’s level, the lift opened again.
Amlis Vess had moved back a little from the door, closer to the workman guarding him. He was still beautiful, but the few moments’ separation from him had given Isserley a chance to regain her grip on her anger. Good-looking or not, Vess was responsible for a juvenile feat of sabotage which had just put her through hell. His appearance had startled her, that’s all: it meant nothing. She’d expected him to have no presence except as the perpetrator of a wickedly foolish act; he wasn’t quite so anonymous, and she had to adjust.
‘Oh good; I thought you’d decided against us,’ Amlis Vess said. His voice was warm and musical, and terribly terribly upper-class. Isserley seized hold of the frisson of resentment it caused in her, and hung onto it resolutely.
‘Spare me the witty comments, Mr Vess,’ she said, stepping out of the lift. ‘I’m very tired.’
Deliberately, pointedly, she turned her attention to the other man, whom she belatedly recognized as Yns, the engineer.
‘What do you think, Yns?’ she said, happy to have remembered his name in time to use it. ‘Is it safe to take Mr Vess back up to ground level?’
Yns, a swarthy old salt of heroic ugliness, bared his stained teeth awkwardly and made fleeting eye contact with Amlis. Plainly the two men had had ample opportunity to talk during the vodsels’ adventure outside, and had come to appreciate the artificial absurdity of their captor—captive relationship.
‘Um … yeah,’ grimaced Yns. ‘Nothing else he can do now, is there?’
‘I think Mr Vess should come up to ground level,’ Isserley said, ‘and have a look at what the men are carrying in.’
Without taking her eyes off Aml
is Vess, she twisted one arm backwards and pressed the button summoning the lift. In doing so, she winced in unexpected pain, and could tell he saw her wince – damn him. So rare were her opportunities to exploit her natural multi-jointedness, so careful was she always to move with the crude hinge-like motions of the vodsels, that she was seizing up. Wouldn’t he just love to know what her body could and couldn’t do!
The lift arrived, and Amlis Vess obediently walked inside. His bones and muscles moved subtly under his soft hide, without swagger, like a dancer. He was probably bisexual, like all rich and famous people.
Noting that the cabin wasn’t big enough for three, Amlis Vess looked to Isserley, but she made it clear that he and Yns should go first, and she would follow. She tried to convey, in her stance, a wary, fastidious disgust, as though Amlis Vess were some huge animal that might soil her, just now when she was too tired to clean herself.
As soon as the lift ascended, she felt sick, as if the earth had closed over her and she was inhaling a miasma of spent breath. It was how she expected to feel, though, and she counselled herself to hang on. Being underground was always a nightmare for her, especially a place like this. You’d almost need to be a lower life form not to go insane.
‘Come on,’ she whispered, longing to be rescued.
When at last they were all standing together in the steading – Isserley, Amlis Vess, and five of the farm workers – a solemn and surreal sight had been arranged before them. The vodsels had been carried into the barn; first the live one, then the three gory carcasses. Actually, the live one wasn’t alive anymore; Ensel had given it a cautionary dose of icpathua on the way in, which seemed unfortunately to have stopped the creature’s overtaxed heart.