‘Hoi, Isserley,’ he said again, as if the effort of coming up with this much of their shared language was too good to waste.
‘I thought I’d better have a meal,’ announced Isserley in a businesslike tone, ‘before I start work. Is the coast clear?’
‘The coast?’ The mouldy man squinted at her in confusion. His head turned unconsciously in the direction of the firth.
‘I mean, is Amlis Vess safely out of the way?’
‘Oh yeah, he don’t bother us,’ drawled the mouldy man in an accent twice as thick as Ensel’s. ‘He just stays down in the food hall, or down in the vodsel pens, and we get on with the loading up here, no problem.’
Isserley opened her mouth to speak, couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘He won’t do nothing now,’ the mouldy man assured her. ‘Yns and Ensel take it in turns to watch him. He basically just hangs around and talks crap. He don’t care if nobody’s got a clue what he’s on about. Goes and talks to the animals when the humans get sick of him.’
Just for an instant Isserley forgot that the vodsels were tongueless, and was alarmed at the thought of them communicating with Amlis Vess, but she calmed down when the mouldy man laughed coarsely and added, ‘We says to him, “Do the animals talk back to you, then?’”
He laughed again, a despicable whinny tainted by half a lifetime in the Estates. ‘Funny bastard, good for killing the boredom,’ he winked in summation. ‘We’ll want him back when he’s gone.’
‘Well, maybe… if you say so,’ grimaced Isserley, making a break for the lift. ‘Excuse me, I’m starving.’
And she was away.
Amlis Vess was not in the food and recreation hall.
Isserley verified this, by casting one more glance across the sterile, low-ceilinged barracks, then resumed breathing.
The hall, though large, was a simple rectangle, crudely excavated without nooks or recesses, and containing little except for the low dining tables; there was nothing big enough to hide a tall man with strikingly beautiful markings. He simply wasn’t here.
Though the hall itself was empty, the long low bench outside the kitchen was already laid with bowls of condiments, tureens of cold vegetables, tubs of mussanta, loaves of newly baked bread, cakes, pitchers of water and ezziin, large plastic trays of cutlery. A divine smell of roasting was coming out of the kitchen.
Isserley pounced on the bread and cut herself two slices, which she spread liberally with mussanta paste. Pressing them into a sandwich, she started eating, pushing the food past her insensate lips into her yearning mouth. Mussanta had never tasted so delicious. She swallowed hard, chewing energetically, impatient to cut more bread, spread more paste.
The smell from the kitchen was intoxicating. Something much better than usual was cooking in there, something more adventurous than potato in fat. Admittedly Isserley was rarely here when the cooking was being done; she often took her meals cold after the cook had left and most of the men had already eaten. She’d pick at leftovers, trying to look inconspicuous, concealing her distaste at the smell of cooling fat. But this smell today was something else.
Still clutching her sandwich, Isserley edged up to the open door of the kitchen and peeked inside, catching a glimpse of the great brown back of Hilis, the cook. A notoriously sharp-sensed character, he was aware of her presence immediately.
‘Fuck off!’ he yelled cheerfully, before he’d even turned around. ‘Not ready!’
Embarrassed, Isserley made to retreat, but as soon as Hilis swung round and saw who she was, he threw out a singed and sinewy arm in conciliation.
‘Isserley!’ he cried, smiling as broadly as his massive snout allowed. ‘Why must you always eat that crap? You break my heart! Come in here and see what I’m about to serve!’
Awkwardly she ventured into the kitchen, leaving the offending sandwich on the bench outside. Ordinarily, no-one was permitted in here; Hilis was protective of his gleaming domain, beavering away in it alone like an obsessed scientist in a humid and luridly lit laboratory. Oversized silver utensils hung all over the walls like the tools in Donny’s Garage, dozens of specialized implements and gadgets. Transparent jars of spices and bottles of sauce on the shelves and workbenches added some colour to the metallic surfaces, though most of the actual food was stashed away inside refrigerators and metal drums. Hilis himself was unarguably the most vividly organic thing in the kitchen, a thickly furred, powerfully built bundle of nervous energy. Isserley barely knew him; she and he had exchanged perhaps forty sentences over the years.
‘Come on, come on!’ he growled. ‘But watch your step.’
The ovens were inside the floor, so that a human could tend to the food without overbalancing. Hilis hunched over the biggest of them, looking down through the thick glassy door into the glowing recess. Gesturing urgently, he invited Isserley to do the same.
She knelt next to him.
‘Look at that,’ he said with pride.
Inside the oven, shimmering in an orange halo, six spits rotated slowly, each loaded with four or five identical cuts of meat. They were as brown as freshly tilled earth, and smelled absolutely heavenly, sizzling and twinkling in their own juices.
‘Looks good,’ admitted Isserley.
‘It is good,’ affirmed Hilis, lowering his twitching nose as close to the glass as he could short of touching. ‘Better than what I’ve usually got to work with, that’s for sure.’
Everyone knew this was a sore point with Hilis: the best cuts of meat were always reserved for the cargo ship, and he was allotted the poorer-quality mince, the necks, offal and extremities.
‘When I heard old man Vess’s son was coming,’ he said, basking in the oven’s orange glow, ‘I assumed I’d be free to put on something special for a change. I wasn’t to know, was I?’
‘But…’ frowned Isserley, puzzling over the delay between Amlis’s arrival and these wonderful steaks revolving in the oven now. Hilis interrupted her, grinning.
‘I had these steaks marinating for twenty-four hours already before the mad bastard even arrived! What was I going to do? Rinse ’em off under the tap? These little fuckers are perfection, I tell you, they are absolute bloody perfection on a skewer. They are going to taste fucking unbelievable!’ Enthusiasm was making Hilis hyperactive.
Isserley stared down at the roasting meat. Its aroma was pushing through the glass and floating straight into her nostrils.
‘You’re smelling it, aren’t you!’ Hilis proclaimed in triumph, as if he was responsible for conjuring up something that had, against all odds, managed to penetrate her pathetically tiny, surgically mutilated nose. ‘Isn’t it glorious!’
Isserley nodded, dizzy with desire.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Hilis, unable to keep still, paced around his kitchen in tight circles, fidgeting and fussing.
‘Isserley, please,’ he implored her, transferring a prong and a carving knife back and forth from hand to hand. ‘Please. You’ve got to have some of this. Make an old man happy. I know you can appreciate good food. You hung around with the Elite when you were a girl, that’s what the men say. You didn’t grow up eating garbage like these dumb goons from the Estates.’