The Skin Trader
by Matt Tighe
Auntie grunts as she heaves the last huge pot into place. A few wingnuts need tightening, but otherwise it's ready. She waves one hand in front of her face, trying to get the cloud of midges to give her some breathing space, but they barely react to her slow movements. It's this god-damn skin she is wearing. Thick, horny, mottled. She has skimped on the flexibility again, and it shows. She scowls. She should fix that. Customers, those that really need what she is offering, they don't want their skin to slow them down.
The spot she has found is down by the old river front. The market is huge, selling everything from local delicacies to semi-legal transports both on and off world. Strings of fission powered lights strung between the stalls twinkle against the dark indigo sky, and the air is full of market sounds, yells and calls and odd-canted music. This world boasts three moons, but they are all small, pitiful things. If she ignores them, she could be anywhere. The alleys of the smaller stalls meander almost aimlessly towards the water, and most of the shoppers have long since found what they need before they get close to the marshy water. It suits her. She plugs in the fission battery and then opens the pot. The goo inside is slowly swirling, on the edge of solidifying. She will have to cook it for a while before adding the colors and pumping it out on to the skintex expandable molds, but she doesn't really care. These ones are just for show, not the money makers.
She looks up as someone stops at the next stall, but she knows it will be days before a real buyer seeks her out. This woman is tall and willowy, wearing a pink and orange skin that is so thin and flexible Auntie can see her muscles and fascia underneath. A nice job, if you go for that sort of thing, but purely cosmetic. The pinkish woman glances at Auntie and then looks quickly away, sniffing delicately. Auntie twists her thick lips up into an open mouthed, breathy smile. This back water planet is like a thousand others. The people are uppity, and think they are so smart. And most of them are happy to ignore whatever stupid upheaval was going on. She doesn't remember the details, and she doesn't care. She follows the credits, and she can almost smell them here. She will just have to wait, like usual.
He comes at dusk. Auntie is stirring the goo idly with a broken stick, and watching the indigo sky. She has made some skins, thick, bumpy things, pouring them into molds and using the auto-stretcher to get them more or less to standard sizes before hanging them out for display. Of course no one wants them. The few who glance her way with what might be recognition in their eyes do not venture close. But like always, word carries, and like always, someone has come.
He wears a completely non-descript grey skin under his black one-suit. His eyes are pale and lifeless. They probably come with the skin, Auntie thinks. He fingers one of the skins.
"Pretty thick," he comments. Auntie says nothing. She knows what will come next. He drops the skin and pretends to look through the others.
"Tough enough to stop a standard fission rifle," he says, not looking at her. It is almost a question. Auntie says nothing, and the man goes back to fingering one of the skins.
"Can you do this mottling in brown and green?" he asks. She nods slowly. She has not got around to re-skinning herself, and her neck feels stiff and thick.
The man looks at her then, expressionless.
"DNA mixes?" he asks quietly.
