In time, a flock of sheep walked single-file along the fringe of cliff at Ablach’s boundary. Their fleeces glowed in the moonlight, their black faces almost invisible against the tenebrous gorse.
‘What are those?’ marvelled Amlis, his nose almost squashed against the windscreen.
‘They’re called sheep,’ Isserley told him.
‘How do you know?’
Isserley thought fast.
‘That’s what they call themselves,’ she said.
‘You speak their language?’ he goggled as the creatures trotted past.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘A few words.’
He watched them, every last one of them, his head moving closer and closer to Isserley’s as he followed their slow progress out of his experience.
‘Have you tried using them for meat?’ asked Amlis.
Isserley was dumbfounded. ‘Are you serious?’
‘How do I know what you people have got up to?’
Isserley blinked repeatedly, fumbling for something to say. How could he even think of such a thing? Was it a ruthlessness that linked father and son?
‘They’re… they’re on all fours, Amlis, can’t you see that? They’ve got fur – tails – facial features not that different from ours…’
‘Listen,’ he began testily, ‘if you’re going to eat the flesh of a living creature…’
Isserley sighed; she yearned to just place her forefinger against his lips and quieten him.
‘Please,’ she implored, as the last of the sheep vanished into a tunnel of gorse. ‘Don’t spoil this.’
But, typical man, he was not to be dissuaded from wrecking the perfection of the moment; he only chose a different tack.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve talked to the men quite a lot.’
‘What men?’
‘The men you work with.’
‘I work alone.’
Amlis took a deep breath; began again.
‘The men say you’re not yourself.’
Isserley snorted contemptuously. This would be Ensel he had in mind. Ensel, all mange and scars and swollen balls, spilling his guts to the visiting big shot. Man-to-man confessions.
Sensing the poison of hatred trickling back into her system, she was sad, almost ashamed: what a relief it had been to be without it, if only for a little while! Could this little cud she’d been chewing really have such a placating effect? She turned to Amlis, and smiled awkwardly.
‘Have you got any more… uh…’ Don’t make me say the word, she thought.
Amlis handed her another sprig of icpathua, from the clump he’d brought along.
‘The men are saying you’ve changed,’ he said. ‘Has anything bad happened to you?’
With his gift to her still in her hand, Isserley did her best to keep her bitterness in check.
‘Oh, the odd stroke of bad luck, from time to time. Wealthy young men promising they’ll take care of me, then standing by as I get sent down to the shithole. My body being carved up. That sort of thing.’
‘I mean just recently.’
Isserley leaned her head back against the seat, adding the icpathua to what she still had in her mouth.
‘I’m fine,’ she sighed. ‘I have a difficult job, that’s all. It has its ups and downs. You wouldn’t understand.’
On the horizon, a cloud of snow was gathering with great speed. She knew he hadn’t a clue what it was, and cherished this knowledge.
‘Why not quit?’ he suggested.
‘Quit?’
‘Quit. Just stop doing it.’
Isserley rolled her eyes up to heaven, or the ceiling of her car. The upholstery of that ceiling was, she noticed, in some decay.
‘I’m sure Vess Incorporated would be most impressed,’ she sighed. ‘Your old man would send me his personal best wishes, I’m sure.’
Amlis laughed dismissively.
‘You think my father is going to come all the way out here and bite you in the neck?’ he said. ‘He’ll just send somebody to take your place. There are hundreds of people begging for the chance.’
This was news to Isserley – horrifying, sickening news.
‘That can’t be true,’ she breathed.
Amlis went quiet for a moment, as he tried to find his way safely through what had opened up between them: the jagged traps of her grief.
‘I don’t for a moment want to minimize what you’ve suffered,’ he said carefully, ‘but you must understand there are rumours back home about what this place is like – the skies, the visibility of the stars, the purity of the air, the lushness of everything. There are even stories about giant bodies of water – about how they go on and on for‘(he laughed)’a mile at a stretch.’
He said no more for a while, waiting for her to be ready. She was leaning back in her seat, her eyes falling shut. In the moonlight, her damp eyelids were silvery and intricately patterned, like the leaf he had admired in the steading.
She is beautiful, he thought. In her own strange, strange way.
Eventually, Isserley spoke again.
‘Look, I couldn’t just quit,’ she pointed out. ‘My job provides me with a home… food…’ She struggled to come up with more.
Amlis didn’t wait. ‘The men tell me you basically live on bread and mussanta paste as it is,’ he said. ‘Ensel says you seem to live mostly on thin air. Are you telling me there’s nothing growing in this world you couldn’t survive on? And nowhere you could make a home for yourself?’
Isserley gripped the steering wheel angrily.
‘Are you suggesting I live like an animal?’
They sat in silence for a long time, while the snow-clouds gathered on the firth and then drifted over the farm. Isserley, taking surreptitious glances at Amlis, noted that his awe and excitement were now tinged with unease: the unease of having hurt her, the unease of what was happening above him. To his inexperienced eyes, the snow-clouds no doubt resembled the noxious smogs of home, the kind that were sometimes so foully toxic that even the Elite were forced underground.
‘Are… are we going to be all right?’ he asked at last, just as the moon was being extinguished by the swirling grey haze.
Isserley smirked. ‘No adventure without risk, Amlis,’ she chided him.
Snowflakes began to whirl through the air, careering wildly, trembling, spiralling, diving against the windscreen. Amlis flinched. Then a few flakes blew in through the open passenger window, settling on his fur.
Isserley felt him shudder next to her, smelled a new odour on him. It was a long time since she’d smelled human fear.
‘Relax, Amlis,’ she purred serenely, ‘It’s only water.’
He pawed nervously at the alien substance on his breast, then murmured in wonder as it melted between his fingers. He looked at Isserley as if she had organized this whole display herself; as if she had just up-ended the whole universe for him, in case it might charm him for a moment.
‘Just watch,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk. Just watch.’
Together they sat in Isserley’s little car as the sky unburdened its load. Within half an hour all the land around them was dusted with white, and a brilliant crystalline lather was climbing up the windscreen.
‘This is… a miracle,’ Amlis said at last. ‘It’s as if there’s another sea, floating in the air.’
Isserley nodded eagerly: how intuitively he understood! She had often thought exactly the same thing herself.
‘Just wait till the sun comes up! You won’t believe it!’
Something happened in the air between them then, something molecularly disturbing.
‘I’m not going to see it, Isserley,’ Amlis said sadly. ‘I’ll be gone by then.’
‘Gone?’