With headscarf and Haselblad I set off for the north to scotch those preposterous notions once and for all; but here I must reaffirm my self awareness of a situation that held within itself the seeds of self confirmation. If I could not believe in the concealed presence of a space vehicle, I would not be able to see it even if it were the size of the whole of Aberdeenshire. Consequently, much against my principles, I had to assume, until the investigation was completed, that my subject was guilty, that she disposed of technology beyond our dreams, and that such an extraordinary creature still needed the relatively primitive security of an interstellar, or maybe intergalactic, spaceship hull constructed of a material able to survive in our own, perhaps hostile atmosphere. My tendency was to believe that she was many steps beyond such pedestrian concepts and that an armoire or ample chaise longue or duchesse brisŽe could be used to conceal the advanced yet simple apparatus capable of streaming our monarch anywhere within the confines of the known universe.
Louise was to be transported under the aegis of our sponsors, Winged Worlds the mortuary giant, in our modified pantechnikon van but with the company's most popular slogans adorning the body of the vehicle: "the pupal case of the soul anywhere anytime!" "Difficulty coffin up? Go urn!" to give the impression that we were out on a regular coffin run in the Cairngorms. "We take the coffin from a mere cadaver cask to a new experience for the living. Sarcophagus with Internet and video link connection for those whose wish is to have the lost loved one forever beside them." And one or two polemical phrases popular in the trade: "Stop flensing now!" and "I'm for virtual anatomy!" I should add here that our sponsors insisted that Louise should give utterance to these slogans at intervals of not more than 25 minutes, and for this purpose I was to depress a button coloured sugar pink for slogan.
We decided that it would be prudent to approach Lochnagar, or Beinn Chiochan as it is more ruggedly known, from the north. Our main concern was to avoid Munro baggers as the local hillwalkers are known, especially at the debarkation moment when Louise would be at her most vulnerable and I would be directing proceedings in my headscarf, tweeds and wellies without the comforting camouflage of my trompe l'oeil. An early start was essential, though in country districts those dawn moments are a type of rural rush hour and the inexplicable appearance of armed young men bent on guarding local protected species was something we had taken into account. We were to claim to be delivering coffins in an area widely struck by a form of arctic wasting disease, the unlikely carrier being Bombus polaris so similar to our own dear bumble bee, and that this drastic manifestation of the dangers of global warming was top secret.
My heart was in my mouth as I mounted Louise. It was something of a struggle to adjust my wellies to the pedal controls, and when the manual control panel lit up I was alarmed at the palette range presented. So many colours and such subtle variations! Louise's internal voice was a warm rhotic Torontan, very feminine, caressing, soothing, designed to allay panic and maintain a link in the mind of the listener with the wild open spaces of Canada where once Louise's ancestors had roamed just as they must have done in the Cairngorms. Sugar pink was flashing insistently, as I was afraid it would, and I was forced to allow Louise to utter her first death sentence, as I called them: "A grave is a serious matter!" just that and no more. Her external voice, at least her human external voice, came to me rather muffled. I thought I could detect a slight Scottish brogue and speculated that she might treat her listeners, of whom I hoped there would only be HM herself, to some choice Gaelic phrases. In response I depressed the violet vocal calls button, perhaps a tad too heavily for she uttered a bellow that must have been heard at the mungo's head and the field crew jumped back, I had a good view of them as my flank entrance flap was still raised, as one being. I pressed the separate controls to seal the command pod, mercifully these were individually marked colour-independent switches labelled rather amusingly in Latin, and tested my visual controls. For the sake of convenience Louise's optical input was displayed on a fluorescent high definition screen which allowed me to get a much better view of my surroundings than if I were dependent on her orbitally mounted detectors, which were anyway connected directly to my Hasselblad. Cautiously I put her into a soft amble, by lightly touching the amber diode, made a slight adjustment to her neck and head with a joy stick that lay conveniently near my right hand, tested a light head shake for the sake of verisimilitude and turned her towards the shoulder of the mountain.
Louise was performing magnificently under difficult conditions. Her radar showed no large life forms, the dread hill walkers, in the immediate vicinity, merely a few examples of nesting dotterels which were likely to take evasive action at her approach. The distant cries of the capercaillie, audible as if within the pod, gave me an exciting taste of the highlands. I really began to feel that I was at the start of an adventure, an ancient saga, that could take me from this world to another, like Erik the Red or Freydis in Vinland. My first important decision was to take her off the regular track and place her in browsing mode on a suitably remote, but I hoped level, area away from humans where I could do a data check and quick assessment of the route, maybe even releasing an entomological drone. This was when I first began to realise how inadequately I was prepared for the obstacles that were to present themselves on my fascinating quest. I suppose that a real moose has a natural sense of terrain and avoids sudden trenches and disparities in levels. Louise seemed to be quite undisturbed by such anomalies and continued ambling with one pair of legs at full stretch and the other pair in a cramped crawl position that must have made her look like a circus animal on leave. I tentatively depressed dark orchid 1 in her vocal range, and her blue browsing diode only to be agitated by her vertiginous lurch forward, I hadn't realised we were standing on a heathery ledge, and sharp, piercing cries which sounded like an infant being fed feet first into a garden shredder. She then began tearing at the vegetation and I soon found myself covered in a shower of rare bryophytes. This was the result of a design fault that had been overlooked. We had unanimously decided that Louise must appear to eat rather than simply rend the flora in front of her and leave a wake of mutilated plant life behind her. I cannot now think how we could have overlooked her entire digestive process and how we had not anticipated that the luckless controller would be subjected to such a flurry of coarsely ripped damp foliage while trying to wrestle with her controls. While I could still see what I was doing I made to open the lateral hatch, this is operated very like an aircraft door by releasing a catch and allowing a hydraulic system to swing the door open so that it lies flush with the haunch. My first attempt merely shut her down, a potentially lethal state as my life support systems would also have been curtailed and I was plunged into pitch darkness for a few seconds before the emergency back up came on. The power lapse had at least suppressed Louise's browsing, but I knew that I would only have a moment in which to de-browse her and open the lateral door. I was in danger of being suffocated and any hopes of tracking HM while meditatively selecting a leaf or two from a convenient tree had receded into the distance. As soon as power was restored the sugar pink diode sprang into life, it overrode any other function so I was forced to submit to Louise's continued browsing as the Caledonian verbaliste spoke: "surprise your friends with an exotic funeral, immersion in molten lava plus a weekend in Hawaii comes at a surprisingly affordable $50,000." I thought she would never stop. "No need for expensive-to-maintain mausoleums. Become one with earth's geological future and minimise your carbon footprint! Vaporize your loved ones now!" At last! There was not a moment to lose, Louise's appetite was insatiable, far beyond that of any normal Giant Elk. I knew that unless she could be stopped, she would burst. 4
