On another channel, several very serious-looking vodsels of mixed gender were sitting behind a desk, shoulder to shoulder. Above their heads, a long narrow electronic sign, like a toy version of the one near Kessock Bridge, was displaying a sequence of letters and spaces: 
‘R?’ ventured one of the vodsels.
‘No-o-o, I’m afraid not,’ purred an unseen voice.
Isserley’s car stood idling next to the shed, lit up by the lone tungsten lamp. She was cleaning out the car’s cabin, slowly and contemplatively, making each small action last. The sun was still a long way from coming, hidden behind the curve of the planet.
Isserley was kneeling beside her vehicle, leaning in through the open door. She was using the Ross-shire Journal as a groundsheet, to save the green velvety knees of her pants getting muddy. With the tips of her fingers she felt for the spilled chocolates and threw them one by one over her shoulder. Birds would eat them by and by, she was sure.
Suddenly, reminded, she felt weak and sick with hunger. She’d eaten nothing since the potato crisps yesterday afternoon, a little snow, and about a litre of warm water she’d drunk this morning straight from the shower stream. It was not nearly enough to keep a human being fuelled.
So strange, the way she never seemed to be aware she was hungry until she was ravenous, almost collapsing. An unfortunate idiosyncrasy, and a potentially dangerous one: she would have to be careful managing it. A routine was important, like eating breakfast with the men every morning before going out on the road – a routine which had been disturbed by Amlis Vess.
Breathing deeply, as if a few good mouthfuls of air might tide her over for a while longer, Isserley continued cleaning out her car. There seemed no end to the spilled chocolates; they had found hiding places in every cranny like rotund beetles. She wondered if her body would let her get away with eating some of them.
She picked up the box, which, along with the dog breeder’s gloves, she’d laid on the ground for burning later. Holding the cardboard rectangle up to the light, she squinted at its list of ingredients. ‘Sugar’, ‘milk powder’ and ‘Vegetable fats’ sounded safe enough, but ‘cocoa mass’, ‘emulsifier’, ‘lecithin’ and ‘artificial flavours’ had a chancy ring to them. In fact, ‘cocoa mass’ sounded positively lethal. Her gut-reflex queasiness was probably Nature’s way of telling her to stick to the foods that she knew.
But if she went into the steading to eat with the men, she might run into Amlis Vess. That was the last thing she needed. How long could she hang on? How soon might he go? She gazed at the horizon, yearning for that first glimmer of light.
Over the years, her reluctance to have more than the minimum necessary contact with men had made her very self-reliant, especially when it came to caring for her car. She’d already replaced the broken side-mirror, a job she would once have needed Ensel for. If she could just avoid trouble, she could keep this car forever without having to change it. It was made of steel and glass and plastic – why should it wear out? She put fuel in it whenever it needed it, oil, water, everything. She drove it slowly and gently, and kept it safe from police.
She’d got the new side-mirror from the already much cannibalized grey Nissan estate. A sad-looking carcass it was now, but there was no point being sentimental. The mirror fitted perfectly into her little red Corolla; all sign of the accident was expunged.
Isserley, still admiring the neatness of the surgery she’d performed, cleaned her little Corolla some more. Its engine was still idling, a well-oiled machine breathing aromatic gas into the raw air. She liked her car. It was a good car, really. If she took care of it, it wouldn’t let her down. Meticulously, Isserley wiped mud and grease off the foot pedals, tidied the glovebox, topped up the icpathua reservoir under the passenger seat with a sharp-nozzled flask.
Perhaps she could drive out to find an all-night garage somewhere, and buy herself something to eat. Amlis Vess would be gone very soon, probably within a day or two. It wouldn’t kill her, surely, to eat vodsel food for a day or two. Then he would be gone, and she could get herself back to normal.
She knew, however, that if she went out on the roads now there was a risk – remote but real – that some miserable lunatic of a hitcher would be out there too, thumbing a ride. And, knowing her, she would probably pick him up, and he would be totally unsuitable, and she would end up in the Cairngorms. She was like that.
The men always had a big breakfast, high in protein and starch. A dish piled high, steaming. Meat pies, sausages, gravy. Bread fresh out of the oven, cut in slices as thick as you liked. She always cut hers thin, and made sure the slices were neat and of even width, not like the deformed clumps the men hacked off for themselves. She usually had two of these, three at most, with gushu or mussanta paste. But today…
Isserley stood up and slammed the car’s door shut. There was no way she was going underground to be harangued by some pompous troublemaker while a bunch of Estate trash looked on, wondering if she would crack. Hunger was one thing, principles another.
She walked round to the front of her car and opened the bonnet. Leaning in, she surveyed the warm, strong-smelling, gently trembling engine. She confirmed that she had replaced, in its correct groove, the slender antenna of stainless steel with which she’d recently penetrated the oil tank and checked the level. Now, with a canister of spray from Donny’s Garage, she tended to the spark-plugs and the ignition cables. With her fingers she exposed the gleaming cylinder of liquid aviir, the one imported modification to this vehicle’s indigenous motor. The metal of the cylinder was transparent, and Isserley could clearly see the aviir inside, its oily surface tension vibrating in sympathy with the engine. This, too, was as it should be, though with any luck she would never have to use it.
She closed the bonnet and, on an impulse, sat down on it. The warm, vibrating metal gave her a pleasant sensation through the thin fabric of her trousers, and distracted her from the insistent rumbling in her stomach. On the horizon, a glimmer of sunrise defined the contours of the mountains. Right in front of her nose, a single snowflake spiralled down.
‘Isserley,’ said Isserley into the intercom.
The door of the steading rolled open immediately, and she hurried into the light. A whirl of snow, sharp as pine needles, followed her inside, as if sucked by a vacuum. Then the door rolled shut again, and she was out of the weather.
As she had expected, work was well underway in the hangar; two men were busy loading the ship. One was perched inside the hull, waiting for more glistening cargo to be handed up. The other was with the trolleys, which were by now piled high with pinky-red packages. A fortune’s worth of raw meat, all neatly parcelled into portions, swathed in transparent viscose, packed into plastic pallets.
‘Hoi, Isserley!’ The workman pushing the trolleys was stopping to greet her. Hesitating on her way towards the lift, she waved back, as perfunctorily as she could manage. Encouraged, the man allowed his little wheeled tower of pallets to roll to a standstill and ambled over to her. Isserley had no idea who he was.
No doubt she’d been introduced to each one of the men personally when she’d first arrived at the farm, but this one’s name escaped her now. He was stupid-looking, fat and squat – a full head shorter than Amlis Vess – and his fur reminded her of some dead thing drying out on the side of the A9, a wiry grey pelt made indistinct by car tyres and the elements. Into the bargain he had some sort of disgusting skin ailment that made half his face look like mouldy fruit. Isserley at first found it difficult to look at him directly, then, for fear of offending him and causing him to retaliate on her own disfigurement, she leaned closer to him and concentrated on his eyes.