Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Author:Michel Faber
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2010-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

8

ISSERLEY FUMBLED, AND found the switch. A flood of harsh light rushed to fill the compound from floor to ceiling, like a tide of seawater into a crevice.

‘Ugh,’ she groaned squeamishly. To be so far inside the earth was a nightmare come true.

‘A nightmare, yes?’ said Amlis Vess.

Isserley looked to him, scared and in need of comfort, but he meant the livestock, of course, not the claustrophobia – she could tell from that infuriating grimace of pity on his face. Typical man: so obsessed with his own idealism he was incapable of feeling empathy for a human being suffering right under his nose.

Isserley stepped clear of the lift, determined not to humiliate herself in front of him. A few moments ago, she’d felt like burying her face in the soft black fur of his neck, clinging to his perfectly balanced body; now she felt like killing him.

‘It’s just the stink of animals,’ she sniffed, eyes averted from him as he padded up to her side. The lift hissed shut behind them and disappeared.

In excavating this deepest of the levels, the men had burrowed out no more of the solid Triassic rock than they absolutely had to. The ceiling was less than seven feet high, and the accumulated steam of cattle breath hung in a haze around the fluorescent strips. The vodsel enclosures, a corona of linked pens all along the walls, took up almost the entire floor space; there was just enough room left down the middle for a walkway. In the cages to the left, the monthlings; to the right, the transitionals; at the deep end, against the far wall facing the lift, the new arrivals.

‘This is your first time, isn’t it?’ came Amlis’s voice.

‘No,’ she retorted irritably, unnerved by how closely he must be watching her body language.

She had, in point of fact, been here just once before, at the very beginning before there were any animals. The men had wanted to show her what they’d constructed in honour of her coming to the farm, all ready and waiting for her vital contribution.

‘Very impressive,’ she’d said, or words to that effect, and fled.

Now, years later, she had returned, with one of the world’s wealthiest young men at her side, because he wanted to ask her a question. ‘Surreal’ did not begin to describe the situation.

The cages were grimier and more cramped than she remembered; the wooden beams pitted and discoloured, the wire mesh soiled, masked in places with the dark putty of faeces and other unidentifiable matter. And of course, the livestock added stench and the looming density of flesh, the humid ambience of recycled breath. In all, there were more than thirty vodsels impounded here, which came as rather a shock to Isserley: she hadn’t realized how hard she must constantly be working.

The few remaining monthlings were huddled together in a mound of fast-panting flesh, the divisions between one muscle-bound body and the next difficult to distinguish, the limbs confused. Hands and feet spasmed at random, as if a co-ordinated response was struggling vainly to emerge from a befuddled collective organism.

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