On the rust-mottled ledge of the bath, three different bottles of shampoo stood ready. Together, they had cost exactly five pounds at the Arabella Service Station. Isserley picked up her favourite and squirted the pale green syrup over her hair. Then she squirted more of the stuff over her naked body and, lavishly, down into the sodden heap of clothing at her feet. With one foot she pushed the squelching pile over the plughole to allow the water level in the tub to rise.
She washed her hair carefully, rinsing it over and over. Her hair had always been her best feature, back home. A member of the Elite had once told her that with hair like hers it was out of the question she could possibly be destined for the New Estates: a cheap and fatuous compliment, in retrospect, but thrillingly encouraging at the time. She’d felt as if her passage into a bright future was a matter of physical inevitability, a lush and glossy birthright everyone could see at a glance, and a lucky few could stroke admiringly.
So little of it was left now that she couldn’t bear to cherish it anymore. Most of it would never grow back again, the rest was just a nuisance.
She stroked the skin of her shoulders and arms, checking if she needed to shave again just yet. Her palms, slippery with lather, detected the soft stubble, but she decided she could get away with leaving it for one more day. Lots of females had a bit of hair on them, she’d discovered. Real life wasn’t at all like the smooth images celebrated by magazines and television. Anyway, nobody would see it.
She lathered up her breasts and rinsed them, with distaste. The only good thing about them was that they prevented her seeing what had been done to her down below.
Redirecting the shower nozzle, she turned her attention to the clothes, which now swirled in a shallow pool of sudsy grey water. She trampled them, rinsed them, trampled them some more, then wrung them out in her powerful claws. They would dry out, eventually, in a square of sunlight shining through her bedroom window, or, if that failed, on the back seat of her car.
It was after midday when Isserley finally drove out of the farm. The sun which had been so golden in the morning was barely visible now; the sky had turned slate-grey and hung swollen with undischarged snow. The likelihood of finding any hitch-hikers on the roads, let alone suitable ones, was slim. Yet she was in the mood to do some work, or at least get away from all the fuss she knew was still going on below ground.
On her way past the main steading, she noticed a most unusual sight: Esswis perched on a large wooden stepladder, a tin in one hand and a brush in the other, painting the stone walls white.
Isserley slowed the car to a stop near the foot of the ladder and looked up at Esswis. She was already wearing her glasses and so he wasn’t all that clear, distorted by the glare of the sun. It occurred to her to take her glasses off for a moment, but that seemed impolite, given that Esswis was wearing his.
‘Ahl,’ she said, squinting up, not knowing if she’d done the right thing in stopping.
‘Ahl,’ he replied, as taciturn as the farmer he was supposed to be. Perhaps he was wary of their native language being spoken out in the open, even though there was no-one else around to hear it. Paint dribbled off the end of the brush he was holding, but, apart from frowning, he did nothing about it, as if Isserley’s greeting were some sort of mishap which must be stoically endured. He was wearing overalls and a cap, and paint-spattered green Wellingtons whose secret interiors had taken almost as long to design as Isserley’s shoes.
All things considered, he’d got off more lightly than she had, Isserley felt. He had no breasts, for a start, and more hair on his face.
She waved at the task he was busy with. Only a fraction of the building had been whitened.
‘Is this in honour of Amlis Vess?’ she asked superfluously.
Esswis grunted.
‘Quite a fuss,’ ventured Isserley. ‘Not your idea, surely?’
Esswis scowled and looked down at her in disgust.
‘Fuck Amlis Vess,’ he pronounced, very distinctly, in English, and then turned to continue painting.
Isserley wound up her window and drove on. One by one, feathery snowflakes started spiralling down from the sky.
IT WAS AS SHE was crossing a concrete tightrope, high up in the air, that Isserley admitted to herself that she absolutely did not want to meet Amlis Vess.
She was driving towards the midpoint of the Kessock Bridge, gripping the steering wheel in anticipation of fierce side-winds trying to sweep her little red car into space. She was acutely conscious of the weight of the cast-iron undercarriage beneath her, the purchase of the tyres on the bitumen – paradoxical reminders of solidity. The car might have been protesting how heavy and immovable it was, in its fear of being moved.
You-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou! jeered the atmosphere.
At intervals along the bridge were trembling metal signs depicting a stylized net inflated by the thrust of a gale. This, like all traffic symbols, had been a meaningless hieroglyphic to Isserley when she’d first studied it, long ago. Now it appealed directly to her second nature, and made her seize hold of the wheel as if it were an animal desperate to break free. Her hands were locked tight; she imagined she could see a heartbeat pulsing between the knuckles.
And yet, when she muttered under her breath that she would not let herself be pushed off course, no, not by anything, it wasn’t the side-winds she was thinking of, but Amlis Vess. He was blowing in from somewhere much more dangerous than the North Sea, and she could not predict the effect he’d have. Whatever it turned out to be, she certainly wouldn’t be able to negate it just by keeping a tight grip on her car’s steering wheel.
She was past the mid-point now, minutes away from the Inverness end. Burring slowly forwards in the outer lane, she flinched every time a faster vehicle roared past her; the wind pressure would drop away suddenly, then swing back with a vengeance. To her left, the air was swirling with seagulls, a chaos of white birds endlessly falling towards the water, then hovering just above the firth, sinking gradually, as if caught in sediment. Isserley returned her attention to the distant outskirts of Inverness, and tried to force herself to tread harder on the accelerator. Judging by her speedometer, she wasn’t succeeding. You-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou! cried the wind all the rest of the way.
Cruising safely off the bridge at the far end, she hugged the slow lane, tried her best to breathe deeply and unclench her hands. The pressure had died down almost at once; she could drive normally, function normally. She was on terra firma now, in control, blending in perfectly, and doing a job only she could do. Nothing Amlis Vess thought or said could change that: nothing. She was indispensable.
The word troubled her, though. Indispensable. It was a word people tended to resort to when dispensability was in the air.
She tried to imagine herself being dispensed with; tried to imagine it honestly and unflinchingly. Perhaps some other person would be prepared to make the same sacrifices she and Esswis had made, and take her place. She and Esswis had been desperate, in their different ways; might not other people be equally desperate? It was hard to imagine. No-one could be as desperate as she had been. And then, anyone new to the job would be inexperienced, untested. With mind-boggling amounts of money at stake, would Vess Incorporated take such a risk?
Probably not. But it was difficult for Isserley to draw much comfort from this, because the thought of being genuinely indispensable was troubling too.
It meant that Vess Incorporated would never let her go.
It meant that she would have to do this job forever. It meant that a day would never come when she could enjoy the world without worrying about the creatures crawling on its surface.
All