The feeding jingle rose an octave and a lurid schematic representation of the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum appeared on the screen accompanied by educational doggerel aimed at those four-year olds who might be interested in acquiring a smattering of knowledge of the moose-elk digestive process. "And don't forget the atrium!" it repeated as a finale and the anatomical quartet interrupted their can-can inspired wriggling as an amorphous shape entered screen right. Then the lights dimmed, Louise sank to her knees and her lateral door opened with an uncharacteristic thwump as if to say - that's as much as I can do for now. It had been explained to me that Louise ran on a hybrid nuclear fusion - photon to chloroform conversion - carbon fixation system, which I found too baffling to grasp, and that all her energy needs would be easily covered for the duration of the mission. This sudden failure of her power supply was an unexpected event for which I was in no way prepared; but I remained hopeful, as the title of the educational jingle led one to suppose that energy levels could be restored, besides, the opening of the lateral hatch was clearly an invitation that I was to alight and feed. I assumed that this mysterious task for which I was totally unprepared would be explained by Louise even in her semi-moribund state. The screen which had abruptly closed it's tour of an elk's forestomachs and mercifully deadened the ruminative mantras, flickered back into life - why, I kept asking myself, all this theatricality? Surely it would have been simpler to issue instructions - and a solitary crimson aubergine-shaped fruit was displayed with no indication of scale. It swelled to present a crimson slate on which a delicate disembodied be-ringed and lace-cuffed hand wrote, in an almost illegible curlicue decorated with neurotic flourishes that repeatedly sent it skidding out of the frame, one goji berry, at least that is how I interpreted the brief but elaborate communication that the hand then proceeded to obscure with a Mandelbrot set of flourish upon flourish upon flourish whose mesmerizing skill and detail threatened to render me as comatose as my fallen Louise . This helpful, yet uninstructive announcement then concluded with an audial squib - Support Greek goji berry growers now! before falling blank and silent to release me to the faint insect buzz of the heathered plateau. The afternoon sun had withered the older leaves which drooped like the hearts of humans crisped in the fire of unrequited passion. It was a silence unbroken by the thud of Dormicum-laden syringes. Very possibly I Am God's Daughter would have attributed Louise's gradual halt and subsidence to the accuracy of her marksmanship lamarckianly honed by generations of archer ancestors, a monarch with a missile is not to be rifled with. My emergence from the pod was fraught with some difficulties, I was by now sans guise of any sort save for my wellies, and a pair of rather full knickers - I had incautiously chosen purple glazed cotton embroidered with the Imperial Crown of India in naturally dyed bamboo thread as I had assumed that my underwear would receive minimum to zero exposure, and that this little jeu d'esprit would pass through the estate unobserved. My headscarf was missing, of course, along with my silver curls to become, I conjectured, the plaything of mangabeys, and my handsome hacking jacket and Shona skirt were probably even now providing nesting material for pack rats and weaver birds. I felt very exposed as I emerged into the afternoon light, now so pale as the declining photons bounced obtusely from the plain while the earth set into its long winter wobble, afraid that powerful binoculars trained on me from the prominence of a kame would immediately identify me as a member of the press and the dreaded estate helicopters would surround me. I took courage from the fact that I was able to stand and move with a certain ease and that the horizon around me was restricted. Louise had selected a convenient post-glacial depression in which to effect her feeding process, and while this meant that we were unobserved, which I had to consider as the principal benefit, it did have the negative possibility of a surprise discovery by silent-footed park rangers armed and nervous. A discovery that I could not relish in my present state. Louise, Sphinx-like, held her head as if gazing at an indefinitely remote singularity a posture uncharacteristic of the average unconscious, drug-hampered cervid. Her tongue was protruding as if in invitation and by standing on a convenient tuff I was able to conduct a cursive buccal-lingual inspection. The oral cavity seemed to be dry and the tongue itself inflexible. She had the appearance of an animal prepared for permanent exhibition in a natural history museum. There was a fixed but wild expression in her eye of a hunted creature in distress that was strangely consistent with her locked-into-eternity posture. As I stood there helplessly examining her impressive muscular hydrostatic extrusion and wondering if I should return to the pod and attempt to place her in browsing mode, a panel slid back in the blade and there, visible in a little drawer-like receptacle, was a single goji berry! My delight may well be imagined as even the most cursory knowledge of the flora of the Balmoral plateaux would preclude any hope of garnering so much as a single goji berry from the wild - though after my experience on Lochnagar I felt that there might be a serendipitous stumbling, a secret population revealed, had I but the time and the freedom to roam. As I removed the precious berry from its container a similar panel in the pharyngeal region opened and remained still. It was clear that I should place the goji berry directly into it, and yet I remained assailed by doubts. My action, apparently so simple seemed at the same time to be totally unnecessary. What system that could drive a machine to so accurately mimic the gait and behaviour of an extinct mammal would need such a manual adjustment? I stood motionless though rather insecurely balanced with the goji berry held sensitively yet securely between thumb and forefinger wondering at the workings of this extraordinary creature. At last, and only moments before I tumbled to hoof level, where the precious berry might well have been lost among the tangle of stalks and stems, there to be carried off by ants before it could be retrieved, I reverently placed the diminutive fruit within the receptacle so evidently prepared for it. Instantly the tongue withdrew, Louise snapped her jaws together and as I fell amongst the heather I caught a glimpse of her eye, once again brilliant with the sheer joy of living. I was certain that the reginal eye would be trained on the spot where her quarry had gone down - how the roles had been reversed from my original plan! The interviewer hunted by his subject! The undercover reporter on the run in the belly of a giant herbivore! Gone the hushed commentary, the silent hoofed approach unseen though exposed to view as the moose and I crept up on the lonely monarch spilling her thoughts aloud in the shade of an old grey apple tree as I streamed to base the scoop of the year. Instead of which I was swinging naked, except for some rather questionable underwear, a padded bra, I have to confess it at last (the clasp was composed of an interlocking thistle and rose, a gallant touch that I felt must be omnipresent in HM's Caledonian wardrobe), the remains of my blouse and those sparkling wellies. I was beginning to resemble an ageing cross dressing Europa being carried off, who knew where, by an elk, whose identity flirted with a novel type of borderline transgender behaviour that had more, I believed, to do with appearance than sexuality, that was becoming momentarily more capable of taking its own decisions. And this disturbing thought grew on me as soon as I was in position in the pod. I had scarcely fastened my harness and raised my eyes to the screen, when Louise sprang to her feet with an elk hoot of joy that left me bewildered. She positively soared out of our post glacial hideaway, pranced on her fore hooves kicking her heels, then executed a type of disco dance leaning first to the left and thrusting out her starboard limbs in a rhythmic pulse and then hopping right port symmetrically reproducing step and mood, driven by her response to unseen and unsensed particles, the debris, I could not help but feel, of an exploding stellar body that was fortunately remote. Whatever it was that controlled her it was no longer I. Even the sugarpink diode ignored me and Louise embarked on an unauthorized in-depth analysis of the fauna and flora of the grave which seemed to be exclusively scientific. Her sponsors had thrown commerce to the winds. Ahead of us lay the great wall of ancient pine forest. Louise, with antler extension on full, was careering towards it, sometimes gathering her hooves together and making little springs from side to side as in her disco response to the joy of living, sometimes leaping skywards to execute tango steps in the air, as our momentum carried us remorselessly forward. The light was beginning to lower, surely it was way past tea time. Our schedule presented a serious mismatch with our current coordinates and such unentered forests were no place to be in the gloaming. As we breached the forest wall I could just detect the soft fold of her antlers against her hide. I no longer even attempted to issue instructions and if Louise had gone into browse mode, a condition which I momentarily dreaded, there would have been nothing I could have done to prevent her. She maintained her speed, somehow anticipating the great columns of this natural pillared hall with that effortless confidence that informed her every movement. At times she would strike out laterally with all four hooves and send us ricocheting from one trunk to another, whether this was to avoid irregularities in the forest floor or was a calculated route of shortest length, I no longer cared to enquire. Louise was best left to her own devices. At this rate, I calculated, our ETA in the castle park would coincide with the serving of savouries to the distinguished diners, a quieter moment after the bustle of the main courses, when appetite would be appeased and reflex dulled. There was something easeful in my abandonment of all responsibility, a great mental throwing up of hands, which was not reflected in my physical stance. I clung to my overhead bars raising and swinging my body as best I could to avoid being slung against walls of the pod. When I considered the forestial leagues ahead I knew to anticipate an extensive pummelling for, despite Louise's agile haste, time and distance, in this grove worthy of Uccello's brush, were twin torturers of pod-slung passengers such as I. I believe I would have lost consciousness if Louise had not abruptly halted in her squirrel-like passage. There ahead of us loomed a heavy duty security fence , self-proclaimed impassable and deadly, the warden of an inner sanctum that held we knew not what, it rose to the height of eight ells and stretched intimidating and as impassive as the Great Wall of China for as far as the eye could see from east to west. As we stood there, Louise absorbing a stream of data, I nonplussed by this unlooked for hurdle, a stag-beetle in blundering nuptial flight droned past us, a soothing melancholy creature rocking comfortingly on its crepuscular course. There was a blinding flash, a pitiful column of smoke and this charming representative of the family Lucanidae was no more. A timely Jungian warning against ill-considered decisions, but what I thought was inconsequential to Louise. 5
