Under the Skin

Isserley, a woman of striking and unsettling appearance, spends her days driving a battered red Toyota Corolla along the A9 highway through the Scottish Highlands, searching for male hitchhikers with large, muscular builds. She is extremely short, with enormous eyes magnified behind thick glasses, oversized hands, and conspicuously large breasts displayed in a low-cut top. She always drives past a hitchhiker on first sight, doubles back to assess him, then stops only if he meets her criteria. Her method is practiced: she draws hitchhikers into conversation, probes for whether anyone will miss them, and, when satisfied, flips a toggle on the steering wheel that triggers hidden needles in the passenger seat. The needles inject a paralyzing substance called icpathua, rendering the hitchhiker unconscious. She then disguises him with a blond wig, spectacles, and an anorak before driving him to Ablach Farm, a remote coastal property where male workers help her unload the body.

The novel gradually reveals that Isserley is not human. She belongs to an alien species that refers to Earth's people as "vodsels," a term denoting livestock. Ablach Farm is a front operated by Vess Incorporated, a powerful corporation from Isserley's home world. Beneath the farm's steading lies a vast underground complex where captured hitchhikers are processed into meat, an extraordinarily expensive delicacy called voddissin that is shipped monthly by cargo vessel back to the aliens' planet. The farm's public-facing manager, Esswis, is another surgically altered alien who poses as a reclusive Scandinavian landowner. The underground workforce consists of male laborers recruited from the New Estates, overcrowded subterranean slums on the home world.

Isserley was destined for those slums before she volunteered for radical surgical transformation: her tail was amputated, her sixth fingers removed, her spine restructured for upright walking, her fur permanently shaved, and artificial breasts grafted onto her altered body. The procedure left her in chronic pain, and her glasses, which contain only thick windowpane glass, are part of her disguise. She lives in a derelict cottage on the farm, isolated from the male workers and haunted by grief over what was done to her body.

The early chapters establish Isserley's routine and the risks of her work. She picks up a recently divorced hitchhiker heading to Glasgow who has an ex-wife and children but no contact with them; she drugs him and delivers him successfully. The next day she lets a sharp-eyed local whelk seller go because he is too well-connected, then narrowly avoids disaster with a volatile young hitchhiker whose friend, working at a nearby road construction site, waves at their car. A flashback reveals that years earlier Isserley prematurely drugged a hitchhiker whose disappearance prompted a public search by his wife and parents, nearly exposing the operation. She later captures a German backpacker traveling alone through Britain, an ideal target because no one knows his whereabouts. Ensel, the lead farmworker who shows consistent attentiveness toward Isserley, compliments the catch.

Tension escalates with the announcement that Amlis Vess, the rebellious son of Vess Incorporated's owner, is arriving at the farm. Isserley dreads meeting him because he will see her disfigured body with the fresh shock of someone from home encountering her for the first time. The workers frantically clean and paint the steading in preparation.

Amlis arrives during the night and promptly releases four vodsels from the underground pens. These are monthlings, captives who have been mutilated, fattened, and held for months in preparation for slaughter. Isserley and Esswis spend the predawn hours hunting the escaped creatures across the farm. Esswis shoots three; the fourth, standing naked at a crossroads at dawn, climbs voluntarily into the back of their vehicle.

When Isserley descends underground and encounters Amlis for the first time, she is stunned by his beauty. He is tall and sleek, covered in lustrous black and white fur, walking on all fours like all unaltered members of their species, with pointed ears and golden eyes. She confronts him about releasing the vodsels, pointing to their frostbitten bodies as proof that Earth's environment would have killed them. Amlis counters that she was planning to kill them herself. Shaken, Isserley retreats.

Over the following days, Isserley's grip on her routine fractures. Distracted by thoughts of Amlis, she nearly dies when her car drifts into oncoming traffic. That evening she picks up a large bald hitchhiker who pulls a knife and forces her off the road. The icpathua needles fail to penetrate his thick overalls. He sexually assaults her. When he leans close to examine her scarred body, Isserley plunges her fingers into both his eyes, blinding him, and escapes. In shock, she drives to a jetty at Tarbat Ness and sits motionless in her car for roughly a day and a night, watching the sea, half-willing the tide to take her.

Back at the farm, Amlis persuades Isserley to accompany him to the vodsel pens. Despite her severe claustrophobia, she follows. Among the captives, a recently arrived man writes the word "MERCY" in the dirt, deliberately forming the letters upside down so they read correctly from the other side of the wire mesh. Amlis asks what the marks mean. Isserley claims ignorance, knowing that acknowledging the vodsels' capacity for language would undermine the operation's moral foundation.

Later, Isserley insists on watching the processing of a new capture for the first time. Unser, the Chief Processor, performs the tongue removal and castration with practiced efficiency. Isserley then persuades Unser to bring in the last remaining monthling for full slaughter. When the creature's throat is slit, Isserley screams involuntarily, her hands clawing the air. The men, horrified, restrain and remove her as she loses consciousness from claustrophobic terror.

She wakes inside the transport ship, where Amlis has arranged for the roof hatch to be opened so she can see the sky. In an emotionally charged conversation, he reveals that voddissin costs roughly ten thousand liss, a unit of his world's currency, per fillet, equivalent to a month's worth of water and oxygen for an ordinary person. He urges Isserley to quit, telling her hundreds of people are volunteering to take her place. This devastates her, as she believed her sacrifice was unique. She drives him to the cliffs in darkness; he is overwhelmed by the ocean, the sheep, and the falling snow. Before departing on the transport ship, Amlis tells Isserley he can see past her disfigurement to the person beneath. She replies with profanity but is smiling and crying.

After his departure, Isserley watches a television news report linking the disappearances of several hitchhikers and reporting the death of her attacker. She picks up one more hitchhiker, a ruined businessman who sleeps in his van with his dog and tells her life is worthless. She drugs him despite her own distress. When Ensel delivers his habitual compliment, Isserley screams at him. She finds a note from Vess Incorporated demanding 20 percent more vodsels per year and requesting a female vodsel with intact eggs.

Isserley spends a final night pacing her cottage. At dawn she burns the businessman's clothes, keeps his pullover for its illusion of fur against her skin, and frees his dog. She drives past the turn-off to Ablach Farm without taking it, committing irrevocably to leaving. She hides her car by a loch for three days, surviving on raw vegetables.

When she returns to the road, she picks up a frantic young man whose girlfriend is in labor, agreeing to drive him five miles. Her car hits a patch of frost and crashes into a tree. Isserley regains consciousness to find her legs crushed and her spine likely shattered. A passing motorist stops and leaves to call an ambulance. Alone, Isserley contemplates the aviir, a cylinder of volatile liquid connected to a dashboard button that Yns, one of the farm's engineers, installed as a self-destruct mechanism capable of atomizing the car, her body, and the surrounding earth. She reflects that her atoms will mingle with the atmosphere, becoming part of the snow, the rain, and the sky. She reaches for the button and says, "Here I come."