Isserley looked down at him, as he grinned back at her with decayed teeth and a glisten of gravy on his snout. Yet despite her distaste, she understood all of a sudden that he was harmless, an impotent drudge, a slave, a disposable means to an end. Imprisoned underground, he was living out an existence scarcely better than what he would have known if he’d stayed in the Estates. To be brutally honest, all these men were falling apart, hair by hair and tooth by tooth, like over-used pieces of equipment, like tools bought cheap for a job that would outlast them. While Isserley roamed the airy spaces of her unrestricted domain, they remained trapped below the barns of Ablach, labouring mindlessly, grubbing in tungsten-lit gloom, breathing stale air, eating whatever offal was too gross to be of value to their masters. Amid much fanfare about escape and pioneering, Vess Incorporated had simply dug them out of one hole and buried them in another.
‘I’m sure there could be some changes made around here,’ Isserley said, ‘without needing a visit from Amlis Vess to justify them.’
This caused more guttural murmurings, meaningless insurrections mumbled by creatures without hope. Only one man spoke up.
‘There’s a rumour Vess Incorporated wants bigger shipments,’ said Ensel. He was eating a mash of green vegetable from a dish, and washing it down with fresh water rather than the ezziin favoured by the others. Isserley realized, with a pang of pity, that he was trying to take care of himself, to keep up some sort of standard. Perhaps, all this time, he’d been saving himself for her, conscientiously discouraging his fur from falling out, fur that was the colour of unrinsed potato and the texture of … of an old anorak hood.
‘I’m sure Vess Incorporated would love us all to work harder,’ she remarked.
Everyone ate in silence for a while.
You shouldn’t have taken the red-haired one, thought Isserley again.
It’s over
.
She grimaced, and disguised the grimace by biting into her bread. Don’t be so gutless, she chided herself. In a week, it’ll all be forgotten.
As the food dwindled, disappearing serve by serve, its individual smells waned and were replaced by a rising fug of male sweat and fermented alcohol. It was an atmosphere almost guaranteed to inspire disgust in Isserley, but today she was able to rise above it. In fact, she actually began to relax as it sank in that the men who were here now were the only ones she would need to confront. Unser, whom she’d dreaded running into so soon after her disgrace, was nowhere to be seen and the food was vanishing fast. Hilis was absent, too, as he always was by the time the meal was laid out. That was good: that suited her.
She should never have allowed herself to be led into his kitchen, looking back on it now; Hilis had tried to get too intimate with her, had carried on as if they were two of a kind. She wasn’t anybody’s kind – the sooner he understood that, the better it would be for both of them. As for Unser, he’d humiliated her when she was at her most vulnerable, the bastard. She wished she could wipe him off the face of the planet, for having abused his power like that. It was just as well he wasn’t showing his face.
Mealtime was drawing to a close; one of the men had wandered off already, and others were licking and slurping the inner reaches of their bowls and pitchers. Isserley’s relief about Hilis and Unser turned, at last, to curiosity – where were they? Then it dawned on her that it must be all a matter of hierarchy and privilege. Unser and Hilis were a cut above these brawny specimens littered around the dining hall; probably the two of them ate together in some cosy retreat – enjoying a better class of food too, no doubt. What were the two of them feasting on? She’d like to know. Those sealed supply crates that came with every monthly shipment: was it really just stuff like serslida and mussanta in them, or were there secret luxuries she never got to sample? And what about the way Vess Incorporated conveyed its messages to her via Esswis, despite the fact that everything revolved around her? Men and their little power games! She’d tackle these inequalities soon enough.
Isserley spread another slice of bread and mussanta, then helped herself to a bowl of the same green vegetable Ensel had chosen. She was determined always to go off well-fuelled from this day onwards, to make sure she never again succumbed to the humiliating helplessness of hunger far from home. She drank water by the cupful and felt her stomach swelling inside her.
‘We hear another woman might be coming,’ blurted the mouldy-faced man, then sniggered awkwardly under Isserley’s glare.
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ she advised him.
Blinking, the mouldy-faced man went back to his pitcher of ezziin, but Ensel wasn’t so easily cowed.
‘What if they do send someone, though?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’d make a big difference to your life wouldn’t it? The way it’s been till now, it must get lonely for you sometimes. All that territory to cover, and just you to cover it.’
‘I manage,’ said Isserley evenly.
‘There’s nothing like friendship, though, is there?’ Ensel persisted.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ warned Isserley.
She was out of the dining hall and back on the surface within two minutes.
Mist was rolling in from the invisible horizon as she drove her car onto the A9. The road itself was still clear enough, but the fields on either side were already half lost, silos sinking into the fog, cows and sheep meekly allowing themselves to be swallowed up. A tide of white haze lapped at the grassy shores of the motorway. This is another thing Amlis would have killed to see, Isserley thought. The clouds coming down to earth. Pure water floating through the air like smoke.
There were a million things Amlis would never experience, privileged though he was, beautiful and unscarred though he was. He was a prince returning home, but his kingdom was a slag-heap compared to Isserley’s own domain. Even the Elite, sheltered from the worst of the ugliness, were like prisoners in opulent cages; they would live out their lives without even imagining the beauty that Isserley saw all around her every day. Everything they devoted themselves to was sealed indoors: money, sex, drugs, outrageously expensive food (– ten thousand liss for a fillet of voddissin!). All to distract them from the awful desolation, the darkness, the putrefaction, lying in wait for them just outside the thin skin of their homes.
Here in Isserley’s own private world, that was all reversed. What went on inside the houses – mere specks under the vast sky – was insignificant; the dwellings and their inhabitants were like tiny shells and shrimps nestling on the seabed under an ocean of pale blue oxygen. Nothing that happened on the ground could ever compete with the grandeur of what happened above. Amlis had glimpsed this, had stolen an incredulous look at the sky for a few hours, and then had to let it go; she had made a sacrifice, and had gained the whole world forever.
No-one else must ever come here, she told herself.
In the distance, a hitcher stood on her side of the road, gesturing hopefully to whoever she might prove to be. She slowed down, to take a good look at him. Behind her, another car revved its engine and tooted its horn, impatient to pass. She ignored it. It could complain all it liked, as long as it left this hitcher alone until she’d made up her mind.
The hitcher was big, dressed in a suit without a raincoat over the top, and bareheaded. He wasn’t bald: in fact, he had a halo of grey hair fluttering in the breeze. He was standing right next to the sign that said
P
, reassuring drivers that he wouldn’t be any bother to stop for. That was about as much as Isserley was able to take in, what with the other car tooting and growling behind her.
Passing the hitcher, she veered into the parking area to allow the angry vehicle its way through. Of course the hitcher thought she was pulling over for him, but it was too soon for Isserley to make such a commitment; she wasn’t going to make any more mistakes. As soon as the coast was clear, she accelerated back onto the road, and the hitcher, who’d shambled into a half-run towards her car, slumped to a standstill as she left him in the pall of her exhaust.
On the second approach, passing by on the opposite side, she noted that he was quite shabbily dressed. The clothes themselves were of good quality – he was wearing a dark-grey suit with a light-grey pullover underneath – but they had a greasy sheen, and hung like loose hide on his hulking frame. The slits of his coat pockets sagged open like extra orifices, the knees of his trousers were baggy and pale, the hand that waved limply at the passing traffic looked dirty. But what was he like inside?
He turned to look at her car as she passed, because there was so little traffic on either side of the road. If he recognized her as the driver who’d almost stopped for him a minute ago, he gave no sign; his face was a stoical mask, hard and wrinkled. Isserley had to admit he wasn’t the most impressive specimen she’d ever seen. He was getting a bit old; his hair was grey, he had a taupe beard with flecks of silver in it, he didn’t stand very upright. He had plenty of muscle on him, but a fair bit of fat too. Among vodsels, he was no Amlis Vess, that was for sure, but he wasn’t an Yns, either. He was average.
On the third approach, she decided to take him. Why not, after all? What difference would it make in the end? What right did Vess Incorporated have to make her task more difficult than it already was? If they had their way, she would be vetting the inhabitants of the entire world, endless millions of them, rejecting almost every single one, in an insane search for perfection. It was time they realized what was really out there. This hitcher was what was really out there.
She pulled over into the same parking area as before, gently tooting her horn in case he was afraid of being fooled a second time. Raindrops began to spatter on the windscreen as he walked towards her; within the few seconds it took him to reach the passenger door, a downpour was setting in.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, as he swung into the car next to her, a rumpled grey mass with a grim head screwed into the shoulders.
‘Nowhere fast,’ he said, staring straight ahead.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, acknowledging her with a faint smile, though his bloodshot eyes were humourless. ‘Thanks for stopping. Carry on, carry on.’
She looked him quickly up and down. As well as being shabby, his suit was covered in loose hair – not his own, but black and white. His own hair had been cut severely in the past, and the basic shape of the design could still be seen, but all around the old edges, a moss of more recent hair had sprouted: a wiry thicket on his neck, wayward fuzz on his jaws, and then the bristles which covered virtually all his flesh from his cheeks to the grubby collar of his pullover.
‘But where do you want to go?’ insisted Isserley.
‘I don’t really care,’ he said, an edge of irritability poking through his dull monotone. ‘Know any exciting places? I don’t.’
Isserley tried to listen to her instincts, to judge if there was any danger in him. Strangely, she couldn’t detect anything. She gestured to the seatbelt, and his brawny hands, whose nails were black with grime, fumbled for the clasp.
‘Take me to the moon, how’s that?’ he suggested testily. ‘Take me to Timbuktu. Take me to Tipperary. It’s a long way, they say.’
Isserley looked away from him, puzzled. The rain was pelting down. She flipped the toggles for the windscreen wipers and the indicator.
Even as he was strapping himself in, the hitcher was thinking there was still time to change his mind. What on earth was the point of going through with this? Why not just get right out of the car, go right back where he’d come from, and keep his … his
poison
to himself? There was something so sick about doing this day after day, going out on the road and seeing if he could trap some poor sucker into giving him a lift. Then, as soon as he had a captive audience, of course he would let them have it, right in the guts, right between the eyes, always the same thing. Why do it? Why? He never felt any better afterwards – worse, usually. The drivers who picked him up felt worse, that’s for sure – if they were able to feel anything at all. What a way to treat people who were only trying to do a good turn!
Maybe he’d behave differently with this one, because she was a girl. Getting picked up by a female was pretty rare, especially such a young one. She looked like she’d suffered, too, in her short life: she hadn’t had it easy. Pale, sitting stiffly, trying to put on a brave face. He’d seen it before. Too much too young. Tits on display to show she wasn’t ready to give up being sexy yet, but the rest of her beaten and worn down, prematurely old. Did she have two screaming toddlers waiting for her at her parents’ place? Was she some sort of addict? A prostitute struggling to find an alternative way of making ends meet? The skin of her scrawny clenched hands was dry and scarred. He couldn’t see her face now, but at a glimpse it had seemed like a battleground of bitter experience. God, if only he could spare her what he was going to put her through – make a superhuman effort to keep it all in. But fat chance. He’d let her have it like all the others. Until something happened to make him stop. Until, finally, it was all over.
He could see her little nose, sniffing, poking out from behind the curtain of her hair. She was sniffing him, all right. They all did. It had begun.
‘I’ll open a window, shall I?’ he offered wearily.
Isserley flashed an awkward smile, embarrassed at being caught out.
‘No, no, it’s raining,’ she protested. ‘You’d get wet. I – I don’t really mind the smell, actually. I was just wondering what it is.’
‘It’s dog,’ he said, staring straight ahead of him.
‘Dog?’
‘Pure aroma of dog,’ he affirmed. ‘Essence of spaniel.’ He clenched his fists against his thighs, and agitated his feet against the floor; Isserley noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. Grunting repeatedly as if being teased with a sharp implement, he grimaced into his lap, then suddenly asked, ‘Are you person or a cat person?’
Isserley thought that one over for a minute.
‘Neither, really,’ she said, still unsure of her footing in this bizarre conversation. She racked her brains to retrieve what little she knew on the subject of cats and dogs. ‘I don’t know if I could take good care of a pet,’ she admitted, noting another hitcher on the next hill, wondering if she’d made a mistake choosing this one. ‘It sounds complicated, from what I’ve heard. Don’t you have to keep pushing a dog off your bed, to show him who’s boss?’