‘There’s a rather nasty snack food,’ he was explaining, ‘that’s very popular in the Estates – very thin slices of a starchy tuber fried in fat and then dried to a crisp. Vess Incorporated has been flavouring these with some kind of vodsel by-product. The demand is phenomenal.’
‘Trash will eat trash,’ said Isserley, stretching to the skies again.
There was a hissing sound from outside the ship. Isserley and Amlis peered over the edge of the hull down into the steading, and watched Ensel and another man step out of the lift. The other two men gazed back at them across the empty expanse of concrete.
‘Just checking,’ called Ensel, his coarse voice reverberating hollowly against the metal walls, ‘to see if you were all right.’
‘I’m fine, Ensel,’ replied Isserley, barely acknowledging him. ‘And Mr Vess is quite safe.’
‘Uh… right,’ said Ensel. ‘Right.’ And without another word he turned tail and re-entered the lift, followed by his companion. Another hiss, and they were gone.
Amlis, at Isserley’s shoulder, spoke quietly.
‘Ensel really cares about you, you know.’
‘Well, he can go fuck himself with his own tail,’ said Isserley, and licked the icpathua cud back out of her cheek for further chewing.
Above their heads, it had started raining again, just lightly. Amlis looked up into the blackness, in wonder and puzzlement. The stars were gone; a haze had replaced them, and the luminous floating disc had moved almost out of sight. Droplets of water pattered against his fur, disappearing instantly into the dark smooth parts, glistening and trembling on his woolly white breast. Hesitantly, he reared up on his hind limbs, leaning back on his tail, and opened his mouth. Isserley had not seen his tongue before. It was as red and clean as the petal of an anemone flower.
‘Isserley,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Is it true about the sea?’
‘Mmm?’ She was enjoying the rain on her face; she wished it would pour down.
‘I heard the men talk about it,’ Amlis continued. ‘A body of water that sort of… lies right next to the land and stays there permanently. They’ve seen it in the distance. They say it’s vast, and that you go there all the time.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘It’s true.’
The aperture in the steading roof was starting to roll shut; Ensel had evidently decided she’d had quite enough fresh air.
‘And when I was letting those poor vodsels go,’ said Amlis, ‘even though it was pitch dark, I saw… what looked like… trees, except absolutely enormous, taller than this building.’ His plummy accent was pitiable now; he was like a child, trying to sum up the grandeur of the universe in the stilted language of the playpen.
‘Yes, yes,’ she smiled. ‘It’s all true. It’s all out there.’
The steading roof had been shut now, though; the outside world was gone.
‘Take me out to see it, please,’ Amlis said suddenly, his voice echoing faintly in the hangar.
‘Out of the question,’ she responded flatly.
‘It’s dark,’ he urged her. ‘We wouldn’t be seen.’
‘Out of the question,’ she repeated.
‘Is it vodsels you’re worried about? How dangerous can those dumb animals possibly be?’ he pleaded.
‘Very dangerous,’ she assured him.
‘To life and limb, or to the smooth running of Vess Industries?’
‘I don’t give a shit about Vess Industries.’
‘Then take me,’ he entreated. ‘In your vehicle. I’ll behave myself, I promise. I just want to look. Please.’
‘I said no.’
Minutes later, Isserley was driving slowly under the tangled bower of tree-branches, past Esswis’s farmhouse. The lights were on, as usual. Isserley’s car lights were off. She could see well enough by the light of the moon, and she didn’t have to bother with her glasses. Besides, she had travelled this path hundreds of times on foot.
‘Who built these houses?’ asked Amlis, squatting on the passenger seat, his hands on the edge of the dashboard.
‘We did,’ said Isserley evenly. She was pleased no houses were visible beyond the farm, and that her own decrepit cottage looked like something that might have been cobbled together from bits of stone and debris lying about. Of Esswis’s far grander dwelling she said: ‘That one was built for Esswis. He’s sort of my boss. He mends the fences, organizes the animal feed, that sort of thing.’
They passed close by Esswis’s house, close enough for Amlis to see the condensation-clouded windows, with their chunky wooden ornaments on the sills.
‘Who carved those?’
Isserley glanced at the sculptures.
‘Oh, Esswis,’ she said, automatically as they drove past. But the lie might, she suddenly realized, be the truth after all. Glowing, fading, in her mind’s eye was a row of driftwood shapes, whittled and honed to a skeletal elegance, frozen in balletic attitudes of torture, lined up side by side behind the double glazing. Maybe this was how Esswis filled the lonelier hours of winter.
Isserley drove through the open fields, where massive round hay-bales lay scattered like black holes in the horizon. One field lay fallow, the opposite one was lush with the dark secretive greenery of potatoes. Here and there, bushes and trees that served no agricultural purpose sprouted up towards the heavens, displaying hardy flowers or long fragile twigs, each according to its kind.
Isserley knew what Amlis must be feeling: here was plant life that did not need to be grown in tanks or grubbed out of chalky, slimy soil, but that grew straight up into the air like a gush of joy. Here was acre upon acre of tranquil fecundity, taking care of itself with no apparent help from humans. And he was seeing Ablach’s fields in winter: if only he could see what happened here in spring!
She drove very, very slowly. The path to the shore wasn’t designed for two-wheel-drive vehicles and she didn’t want to damage her car. Also, she was nagged by an irrational fear that a bump in the track might jolt her right hand off the steering wheel and she’d trip the icpathua toggle by mistake. Although Amlis wasn’t belted in and kept shifting around on the seat in his excitement, the needles might still get him.
At the great gate at the end of the Ablach path, not far short of the cliffs, Isserley stopped the car and turned off the engine. From here there was a clear view of the North Sea, which was silver tonight, under a sky whose eastern reaches were grey with advancing snow, while the west was still bright with the moon and stars.
‘Oh,’ said Amlis feebly.
He was in shock, more or less, she could tell. He stared straight ahead at the immense, impossible waters, and she stared at the side of his face, secure in the knowledge that he was unaware of her longing.
After a long time, Amlis was ready to ask a question. Isserley knew what it was going to be before he even opened his mouth, and answered him before he could speak.
‘That thin line of brightness there,’ she pointed. ‘That’s where the sea ends. Well, it doesn’t really end there, it goes on forever. But that’s where our perception of it ends. And above that: that’s where the sky begins. You see?’
It was almost cruelly poignant, but delightful too, the way Amlis seemed to regard her as the custodian of an entire world, as if it belonged to her. Which, perhaps, it did.
The terrible price she’d paid had made this world her own, in a sense. She was showing Amlis what could be the natural domain of anyone willing to submit to the ultimate sacrifice – a sacrifice no-one but she had dared to make. Well, she and Esswis. But Esswis rarely left his farmhouse. Too devastated, probably, by his disfigurement. The beauties of nature meant nothing to him; they were insufficient consolation. She, by contrast, kept pushing herself out there to see what there was to be seen. She exposed herself daily to the great impartial skies, glad to be consoled.