She breathed deeply, anticipating it, visualizing him being bundled off. The men would usher him into the hold of the ship, and he would saunter in arrogantly, showing off his pampered, glossy body, holding his head high in an attitude of adolescent disdain. He would probably turn, just at the moment before entering, and cast a piercing glance at whoever was in range, his amber eyes burning in the exquisite blackness of his fur. Then he would be gone. Gone.
Isserley had reached the boundary of Ablach’s farmland, fenced off from the cliffs and the steep paths down to the water. The gate was a massive construction of cast iron, half-petrified planks and wire mesh, hingeing on a couple of posts as thick as tree-trunks. The locks and hinges resembled, especially in the moonlight, unwieldy chunks of car engine welded to the wood. Fortunately, the farm’s previous owners had built a little wooden stepladder on either side of the gate, to save trouble for two-legged passers-by. Isserley scaled these little steps, three on either side of the gate, with clownish difficulty, thankful no-one could see her struggling. Any normal human could have leapt over.
On the other side of the fence, not far from the gate, a small herd of cows was camped on the narrow fringe of grassy earth between Ablach ‘s boundary and the cliff rim. They snorted nervously at Isserley ’s approach, the paler-coloured ones luminescing faintly in the gloom. A calf started to its feet, the glints in its eyes swirling like sparks off a fire. Then the entire herd roused itself, and retreated further along the boundary, making the utterly distinctive sound of countering hoofs and the heavy ploff of faeces.
Isserley turned to look back at the farm. Her own cottage was hidden behind trees, but the farmhouse stood exposed. Its lights were off.
Esswis was asleep, probably. Yesterday morning’s gruelling adventures had, she was sure, taken more out of him than he could have admitted to a woman. She pictured him stretched out on a bed just like hers, still wearing his ridiculous farmer clothes, snoring noisily. Tough man or not, he was much older than she was, and had toiled in the Estates for years before Vess Industries had fished him out; Isserley had been offered rescue after only three days. Also, he’d been operated on a whole year before her. Quite possibly the surgeons had done a worse job on him, experimenting with techniques they didn’t perfect until Isserley came under the knife. If so, she pitied Esswis. His nights could not be easy.
Isserley walked down the cattle path towards the beach, choosing her footing carefully on the steep slope. She got half-way, almost to the point where the gradient became gentler, then she paused. Sheep were grazing at the bottom, and she didn’t want to scare them off. She liked sheep more than any other animal; they had an innocence and a serene intentness about them that was worlds away from the brutish cunning and manic excitability of, say, vodsels. Seen in poor light, they could almost be human children.
So, Isserley stopped, half-way down the cliff, and finished her exercises there. With the cows dawdling uneasily somewhere above her head and the sheep grazing unperturbed below her, she assumed the correct positions, extending her arms towards the silvery horizon, then bending down to the shore of the Moray Firth, then tipping sideways, north towards Rockfield and the lighthouse, south towards Balintore and the denser populations beyond, then, finally, reaching up towards the stars.
After a long time repeating these actions over and over, she achieved a state of half-consciousness, mesmerized by the moon and the monotony, and persisted far longer than usual, becoming so limber in the end that her movements became graceful and fluid.
She might have been dancing.
Back in her cottage, still hours before dawn, Isserley found her mood darkening again. She loitered in her bedroom, bored and irritable.
She really would have to ask the men to fix up the wiring in this house, so she could have electric light. The steading had electric light, Esswis’s farmhouse had electric light; there was no reason why her cottage shouldn’t. In fact, come to think of it, it was quite amazing that her cottage didn’t – outrageous, even.
She tried to recall the circumstances of her coming to live here. Not the journey, certainly not what had happened in the Estates, but what had happened immediately upon arrival at Ablach Farm. What arrangements had been made? Had the men expected her to live under the steading with them, in their fetid burrows? If so, she would have knocked that idea on the head pretty smartly.
So where had she slept the first night? Her memories were as indistinct as the fused and blackened contents of an exhausted bonfire.
Perhaps she’d chosen this cottage herself, or maybe it had been suggested by Esswis, who’d had a whole year, after all, to become familiar with what was on the farm. All Isserley knew was that, unlike Esswis’s farmhouse, her cottage had been derelict when she’d moved into it, and of course it was still more or less derelict now.
But the electrical extension cord that snaked all the way through her house, connecting the television, the water heater and the outside lamp to a generator: who had organized that, and how grudgingly? Was this another example of her being exploited, used like a piece of brute equipment?
She strained to remember, then was embarrassed and slightly bewildered when she did.
The men – mainly Ensel, most likely, though she couldn’t recall any individuals – had fussed around her from the moment she arrived, offering to perform all kinds of miracles just for her. Ogling her in fascinated pity, they had ganged up to douche her with reassurance. Yes, they appreciated that what had been donngredients. ‘Sugar’, ‘milk powder’ ande to her by Vess Industries couldn’t be helped now, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They would make it up to her. They would make this cottage, this draughty near-ruin, a real home for her, a cosy little nest; she was a poor little thing, she must be so upset at how she had been… messed about with, yes, they understood all about that, I mean, look at Esswis, poor old bastard; but she was brave, yes, she was a plucky girl, and they would treat her as if there was nothing odd or ugly about her at all, for she and they were all the same under the skin, weren’t they?
She’d told them she wanted nothing from them, nothing.
She would do her job, they would do theirs.
To do her job properly, she would need a bare minimum of things provided for her: a light in or near the shed where the car was kept, running hot water, and one electrical connection to power a radio or some similar apparatus. For the rest she would be fine. She would take care of herself.
In fact, she’d spelled it out more crudely still, in case they were too stupid to take the hint: what she needed most was privacy. They were to leave her alone.
But wouldn’t she get lonely? they’d asked her. No, she wouldn’t, she’d told them, she’d be too busy. She had to prepare for a job whose complications and subtleties they couldn’t hope to understand. She had a lot of brain work to do. She would have to learn everything from first principles, or this whole thing would come falling down on all their heads. The challenges she was about to tackle couldn’t be mastered quite so easily as carrying bales of straw into a barn or digging holes beneath the ground.
Isserley paced her bedroom now, aware of the clock radio’s constant feeble flashing. Her footsteps rang loud and hollow against the bare floorboards; it was rare for her to be wearing shoes indoors unless she was on the point of leaving the house.
Irritably, she switched the television on again, even though she’d tried it once already since returning to the cottage and given up in annoyance.
Because it had been switched off so recently, the machine came back to life at once. The vodsel who, a few minutes ago, had been peering through binoculars at an assortment of brightly coloured underpants fluttering on a washing-line was now licking his lips and twitching his cheeks. Female vodsels had gathered under the line, reaching up to unpeg the garments. Inexplicably, the twine hung higher than they could easily reach, and they teetered on tiptoe, jumping like infants, their pink breasts quivering like jelly.