Under the Skin

by Michel Faber

  ‘It will wash off,’ said Isserley frostily.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Ensel, cowed by her tone. He opened the door and the vodsel, poorly balanced, tumbled out like a sack of potatoes. Ensel leapt back in alarm, then snorted self-consciously and tried to rise above the mishap with panache. ‘Um … he’s a good one, isn’t he?’ he leered. ‘One of the best ever.’

  Isserley didn’t deign to respond, but threw open her own door and stepped out of the car. Ensel, already busy with the other men dragging the vodsel backwards, registered her approach with a puzzled squint.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he grunted as he struggled to lift his burden onto a wheeled pallet. The weave of the vodsel’s knitted jumper was very loose and almost useless as a grip-handle.

  ‘No,’ said Isserley. ‘I’m coming with you, that’s all.’

  She strode on ahead and leaned against the steading while the men staggered to catch up, pulling the pallet with the vodsel on it.

  ‘Uh … is there some problem?’ said Ensel.

  ‘No,’ said Isserley, calmly watching them bumble through the door at last. ‘I just want to see what happens.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Ensel, bewildered. The other men swivelled their heads to regard each other. Mutely they shuffled across the hangar floor, with Isserley walking beside them.

  At the lift, there was an even more embarrassing moment. Clearly, there was only enough room inside for the men and their burden, not for Isserley as well.

  ‘Um … you know there’s really not that much to see,’ simpered Ensel as he jostled with his companions inside the great drum.

  Isserley clawed off her glasses and hung them on the frayed neckline of her top, fixing Ensel with a steely glare as the lift began to seal itself shut.

  ‘Don’t start without me,’ she warned.

  * * *

  Isserley, standing alone in the dimly lit lift, allowed herself to be borne deeper and deeper into the earth. She passed the Dining and Recreation level, descended lower than the men’s sleeping quarters.

  As she sank through the well-oiled, frictionless shaft, she kept her eyes on the seam that would open when she reached Transit Level. Transit Level was three storeys below the ground. There was nothing lower than Transit Level except the vodsel pens themselves.

  She’d expected to feel uneasy, even panicky, going down so far. But when the lift stopped moving and the door slid open, all those arm’s-lengths below the ground, Isserley wasn’t aware of any nausea. She knew she was going to be all right. She was going to get what she needed.

  The Processing Hall was the largest of the linked maze of rooms that made up Transit Level. Its ceiling was high, its dimensions generous, its lighting fierce, leaving no corner in the slightest shadow. It was like an automobile showroom gutted of its contents and sparsely reappointed for more organic purposes. There was plenty of air, breezing out of the many air-conditioning grilles in the whitewashed walls. There was even a hint of marine tang to it.

  The hall was lined on three sides with long metal work-benches, unattended just now. Ensel and the other men, as well as Unser, the Chief Processor, were all gathered in the centre of the room, converged around a mechanical contraption Isserley knew must be the Cradle.

  The Cradle, constructed from pieces of farm equipment, was a masterpiece of specialized design. Its base was the cannibalized mechanism of an earthmover, welded to a stainless-steel drinking trough. Mounted on top, chest-high to a human, was a two-metre segment of a grain chute, artfully beaten into an amended shape so that its sharp edges were curled harmlessly in on themselves. Gleaming and elegant like a giant gravy boat, the chute was being tilted mechanically on its unseen fulcrum, assuming a perfectly horizontal position.

  The person adjusting the balance of the Cradle was Ensel, smug in his responsibility of personally assisting the Chief Processor; his two cronies were engaged in the less precise task of undressing the vodsel, lying nearby.

  Unser, the Chief Processor – or the butcher, as he still insisted on calling himself – was washing himself. He was a compact, wiry man, who would have been scarcely taller than Isserley if he’d been a biped. He had massive knobbly wrists, though, and powerful hands, which he was holding aloft as he squatted on his hindquarters next to a metal tub.

  He lifted his almost freakishly small, coarse-bristled head and sniffed the air, as if he was smelling the arrival of an unfamiliar scent – Isserley’s, not the vodsel’s.

  ‘Uhr-rhum,’ he said. It was the language of neither humans nor vodsels. He was simply clearing his throat.

  Isserley had stepped out of the lift, and it had closed behind her. She waited to be challenged or greeted. The men did neither, carrying on with their activities as if she was invisible. Ensel rolled a small metal trolley of shiny instruments into Unser’s reach. The two cronies undressing the vodsel were huffing and puffing with effort, but the sound was smoothed over somewhat by the music all around.

  Real music, human music, was being piped into the hall by loudspeakers nestled in the walls. Soft singing and the strumming of instruments imparted a reassuring flavour of home, a pervasive smell of melodies half remembered from childhood. They hissed and hummed soothingly.

  The men had already managed to pull off the new arrival’s fleecy jumper and were struggling with the rest. The pale flesh was wreathed in many layers of clothing, like layers of cabbage or radish. There was less actual vodsel inside than Isserley had thought.

  ‘Careful, careful,’ muttered Unser as the men scrabbled clumsily at the vodsel’s ankles to remove tight woollen socks. An animal’s shanks were close to where its faeces would fall once it was in the pens; any lacerations would be liable to fester.

  Panting from exertion, the men finished their task, tossing the last tiny garment on top of a pile. All these years, Isserley had always been handed the vodsels’ clothing and personal effects in a bag, just inside the steading door; this was the first time she’d seen how that bag came to be filled.

  ‘Uhr-rhum,’ said Unser again. Using his tail for balance, he waddled up against the Cradle on his hind legs, still holding his arms aloft. His arms were shiny black, as black as Amlis’s, in contrast to the rest of his fur, which was grey. However, this was only because his arms had just been washed right up to the shoulders, and the fur was saturated with water, slicked flat.

  He looked sharply at Isserley, as if noticing her presence only now.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he demanded, squeezing the fur on his forearms a bit smoother still with his encircling hands. Drops of water pattered on the floor at his feet.

  ‘I … just came to watch,’ said Isserley.

  The Chief Processor’s suspicious glare burned into her; she realized she was hunching over, her arms folded over her breasts, trying to look as human as possible.

  ‘Watch?’ Unser repeated in bemusement as the men struggled to lift the vodsel off the floor.

  Isserley nodded. She was only too well aware that she had avoided coming here for four years, had only ever spoken to Unser in the dining hall. She hoped he would at least have noticed, from their rare conversations, that she respected him, even feared him a little. He, like her, was a true professional.

  Unser cleared his throat again. He was always clearing his throat; he had a disease, the men said.

  ‘Well … keep well back,’ he advised her gruffly. ‘You look as if you’ve been crawling through the muck.’

  Isserley nodded, and took a step backward.

  ‘OK,’ said Unser. ‘Put him on.’

  The vodsel’s lolling body was flopped onto the Cradle, then turned to face the fluorescent ceiling. His limbs were arranged neatly, his shoulders fitted snugly into a special shoulder-shaped indentation which had been sculpted into the metal of the chute. His head came to rest on the lip of the chute, his loose red hair dangling just above the great metal trough.

  Throughout all this the vodsel, though placidly flexible, made not the slightest movement himself
, except for the autonomic squirming of his testes inside the shrinking scrotal sac.

  When the body had been arranged to Unser’s satisfaction and the tray of instruments pushed against the edge of the Cradle, the butcher began his task. Balancing on his tail and one hind leg, he lifted his other hind leg up to the vodsel’s face and hooked two fingers of his foot into the vodsel’s nostrils. An upward tug pulled the animal’s head right back and opened its mouth wide. Pausing only to make sure of his balance, Unser flexed his free hands. Then, from the tray beside him, he selected one silver tool shaped like an elongated letter q, and another shaped like a tiny sickle. Both of these instruments were immediately inserted into the vodsel’s mouth.

  Isserley strained to see, but Unser’s big wrists and the twisting motion of his fingers obscured the view as he carved out the vodsel’s tongue. Blood began to gurgle out onto the vodsel’s cheeks as Unser turned to drop his tools on the tray with a clatter. Unhesitatingly he snatched up an electrical appliance resembling a large star-point screwdriver and, squinting with concentration, guided it into the vodsel’s mouth. Flashes of light glowed through the gaps in Unser’s nimble fingers as he searched out the incontinent blood vessels and fried them shut with a crackling buzz.

  He was already busy sluicing out the vodsel’s mouth with a suction pump by the time the smell of burning flesh had permeated the air. The vodsel coughed: the first real evidence that, far from being dead, it was suffering from nothing more serious than icpathuasi.

  ‘That’saboy,’ murmured Unser, tickling the Adam’s apple to make the creature swallow. ‘Uhr-rhum.’

  As soon as he was satisfied with the state of the animal’s mouth, Unser turned his attention to the genitals. Taking up a clean instrument, he sliced open the scrotal sac and, with rapid, delicate, almost trembling incisions of his scalpel, removed the testicles. It was a much more straightforward job than the tongue; it took perhaps thirty seconds. Before Isserley had registered what had happened, Unser had already cauterized the bleeding and was sewing the scrotum closed with an expert hand.

  ‘That’s it,’ he announced, tossing the needle and thread onto the tray. ‘Finished. Uhr-rhum.’ And he looked to his guest.

  Isserley blinked back at him across the room. She was having a lot of trouble keeping her breathing under control.

  ‘I didn’t … realize it would all … be over so soon,’ she admitted hoarsely, still crouching and cringing. ‘I was expecting … a lot more … blood.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Unser assured her, combing his fingers through the vodsel’s hair. ‘The speed minimizes the trauma. After all, we don’t want to cause unnecessary suffering, do we? Uhr-rhum.’ He allowed himself a faint smile of pride. ‘A butcher has to be a bit of a surgeon, you know.’

  ‘Oh, it’s … very impressive,’ complimented Isserley miserably, shivering and hugging herself all the while, ‘the way you do it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Unser, dropping back onto all fours with a groan of relief.

  Ensel had made the Cradle tip sideways, and the other men were already hauling the vodsel off it, manoeuvring the body back onto the pallet so it could be rolled to the lift.

  Isserley bit her insensate lips to stop herself crying out with frustration. How could it be over so soon! And with so little violence, so little … drama? Her heart was hammering in her chest, her eyes were stinging, her fingernails were clawing holes into her clenched fists. She had a need for release raging inside her, swollen to explosion point, and yet the vodsel’s ordeal was over; he was already on his way to join his kind down in the pens.

  ‘Don’t drag his feet over the fucking step,’ exclaimed Unser irritably as the men dragged their burden into the lift. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times!’

  He cast a knowing glance at Isserley, as if to acknowledge that she, of all people, should have a pretty accurate idea of how many times he could have scolded the men in this way. ‘OK, hundreds maybe,’ he conceded.

  The lift closed with a hiss. Isserley and Unser were alone in the big room with the Cradle and the smell of burning.

  ‘Uhr-rhum,’ announced Unser as the silence grew awkward. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  Isserley clutched herself tightly, keeping it all in.

  ‘I was just … wondering,’ she said, ‘Are you … are there any … any monthlings still to be … processed?’

  Unser trotted over to the vat of water and plunged his arms into it.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’ve done as many as we need to.’

  The agitation of water harmonized with the music issuing from the loudspeakers.

  ‘You mean,’ said Isserley, ‘there aren’t any others that are ready?’

  ‘Oh, there is one left,’ said Unser, extracting his arms and shaking the excess water aside with vehement flicks. ‘But he’ll keep. He can go next time.’

  ‘Why can’t he go this time?’ pursued Isserley. ‘I’d love to see’ – she bit her lips again – ‘to see the way you do it. The end product.’

  Unser smiled modestly as he dropped back onto all fours.

  ‘The usual quota has been loaded, I’m afraid,’ he remarked with the merest hint of regret.

  ‘You mean,’ persisted Isserley, ‘there’s no room in the transport ship for more?’

  Unser was looking down, examining his hands, lifting them from the wet floor one at a time.

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty room, plenty room,’ he replied pensively. ‘It’s just that … uhr-rhum … well, They’ (he rolled his eyes heavenwards) ‘are expecting a certain amount of meat, you know. Based on what we usually deliver.If we put any more in, they might expect us to deliver the same amount next month, you see?’

  Isserley pressed her hands to her breast, trying to calm the hammering of her heart. There was just too much padding in the way.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she assured Unser, her voice tight with urgency. ‘I … I can bring in more vodsels. No problem. There’s lots of them around just now. I’m getting better at the job all the time.’

  Unser stared at her, frowning, puzzled, obviously not knowing what to make of her.

  Isserley stared back, half dead with need. The parts of a woman’s face she could have used to plead with him, to implore him without words, had all been removed or mutilated. Only her eyes remained. They shone brightly as she gazed unblinking through space.

  Minutes later, on Unser’s instruction, the last of the month-lings was brought into the Processing Hall.

  Unlike the paralysed newcomer who’d preceded him, this one did not need to be carried. He walked upright, meekly, led by two men. In fact, he hardly needed to be led; he shuffled his massive pink self forwards as if in sleep. The men merely nudged him with their flanks whenever he seemed about to stumble or deviate. They accompanied him: that was the word. They accompanied him to the Cradle.

  The swollen rigidity of his bulk was such that when he had reached the Cradle and was pushed off-balance, he tipped right over like a felled tree, falling backwards onto the smooth receptacle with a fleshy thwump. He looked surprised as his own elephantine weight carried him down the slippery slope of the chute; all the men had to do was guide his progress so that his shoulders came to rest in the designated hollows.

  Isserley had edged closer, aching to see his face. The porcine eyes twinkling in his bald head were too small to read from a distance. At all costs she must not miss what was to be written there.

  The monthling’s eyes were blinking rapidly; a frown was forming on his dome-like forehead. Something was going to happen to him which might be beyond his capacity to stoically endure. He had come to rely on his own bulk, his own indifference to discomfort. Now he sensed he was about to be taken out of his depth. Anxiety was growing in him, searching for expression somewhere among the cells of his fully crammed physiognomy.

  Sedated though he was, the vodsel struggled, but not with the men who were holding him; rather, with his own memory. It seemed to him he’d seen Isserley
somewhere before. Or perhaps he merely recognized she was the only creature in the room who looked anything like him. If anyone was going to do anything for him, it would have to be her.

  Isserley edged forward further still, allowing the vodsel to focus on her. She, too, was trying to place him in her memory. His eyelashes, the only hairs remaining on his head, were remarkably long.

  So intently was the vodsel striving now to retrieve his memory of Isserley that he seemed not to notice something being lowered towards his forehead that resembled the nozzle of a petrol pump, attached to the base of the Cradle by a long flexible cable. Unser touched the metal tip of the instrument to the unwrinkled flesh of the vodsel’s brow, and squeezed the handle. There was an almost imperceptible dimming of the lights in the building. The vodsel’s eyes blinked just once as the current travelled through his brain and down the filament of his spine. A subtle plume of smoke curled up from a darkening smudge on his brow.

  Unser yanked the chin up to expose the neck. With two graceful flicking motions of his wrist, he slashed open the arteries in the vodsel’s neck, then stood back as a jet of blood gushed out, steaming hot and startlingly red against the silvery trough.

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Isserley involuntarily. ‘Yes!’

  Even as her cry was still ringing out in the Processing Hall, all activity had already stopped dead. A terrible silence fell, made worse by a lull in the piped music. Nothing moved except the unstoppable gush of blood from the vodsel’s gaping neck, the frothy liquid glimmering and seething, immersing the vodsel’s face and head, swirling his eyelashes in the tide like sprigs of seaweed. The men – Unser, Ensel and the others – stood frozen. Their eyes were all turned on Isserley.

  Isserley cringed so low that she was almost falling forward. She was clenching and unclenching her hands in an agony of frustrated anticipation.

  The point of Unser’s knife was hovering over the vodsel’s torso; Isserley knew that the next action must surely be to slit the animal open from neck to crotch, peeling the flesh aside like the front of a pair of overalls. She stared longingly at the knife as it hung in the air for a long moment. Then, devastatingly, Unser withdrew it and allowed it to fall onto the tray.