extracts from Chapter 2 of Skins, a novel in progress
© 2008, Terence Kuch
[Our story so far: Ron, Cléanthe (Clé), and Roslyn (Ros), escaping from the Caregivers, have entered a large bazaar where they believe they will not be found. Chapter 2 is told by Ros.]
We wandered the narrow angular lanes, making sure not to lose each other in the crowd, browsed the booths and crafts. People grew silent at our approach, stared, muttered in their throaty language. Most of the men were smoking. We approached one of the booths. A woman in a grey scarf showed Cléanthe a small, clever biomachine that walked a few paces on command, nodded its head and turned around when it heard the words “Zafir, haf!” The woman suggested three hundred of the local currency. Clé declined to counter. The small machine looked at Clé, open-mouthed with disappointment. The three strolled away, leaving behind biotronic sounds of weeping.
We looked at more curiosities: music that played itself; perfectly formed food-cubes that set themselves out to eat, then fed on themselves if no one came for the Fresserei; strange, weak, listless inbred striped or splotched mammals. In one dim booth, a few pieces of precisely woven cloth. The shop attendant said proudly “all machine made, all machine made.”
Ron asked her what the cloth was made of, but the only words she seemed to know in our language were “all machine made, all machine made,” and prices: one thousand local, she said. Ron declined. The woman persisted: “three hundred.” A few people gathered, frowned with what seemed to be resentment. Ron walked away. Clé tossed her head and followed him, then I, hurrying along as the people followed. After a while they seemed to lose interest in us, gradually dispersed.
In another booth Clé tried on a necklace, a cheap thing, shades of grey; but it glowed when Clé put it around her neck. “It likes you!” the old woman of the booth remarked, smiling and showing teeth the color of black pearls just yanked from the oyster. The necklace warmed and brightened noticeably, attached itself more firmly to Clé’s neck.
“I don’t think I want this,” said Clé, starting to pull it loose. The necklace gave her a slight but unmistakable shock.
“Now I really don’t want this!” she said, trying harder to take it off. The necklace grew additional ornaments; a few of the older ones changed color.
“It’s trying to please you!” the old woman said.
Ron tried to pull the necklace away from Clé’s neck. “Stop it; you’re tearing my skin!” Clé protested. Ron looked helplessly at the old woman.
“Four thousand for the magic word,” she said.
“Fine,” said Ron. “Grue,” said the woman. Instantly the necklace cooled and loosened. Clé jerked it off her neck, threw it down on the counter.
“But,” the old woman added, “now that you’ve bought it, it will be a good friend. I very strongly suggest,” she winked several times, “you take it with you. But if you don’t it will come after you, slowly you know it has no legs, must slither along like a snake and it’s slow going especially if it gets tangled in the horses’ hooves; but it will find you. It will find you.” She sat back on her stool.
“I think we should take it,” Ron said to Clé.
They paid and left the booth.
#
They strolled the maze of bazaar corridors. One lane contained nothing but engineered animals, nothing left in its natural state, all artificial. The booth attendants looked proudly on their masters’ creations.
“Even you,” one said, after he ascertained that the three of us were from the final century, “you have done this, too. Cattle good for nothing but to be eaten, too clumsy any more to defend themselves from wolves; cats smaller than the gods created, too small to eat the baby; dogs — the dogs cannot pack and hunt any more; all they look for is ‘master;’ seedless grapes that cannot reproduce; boneless chicken. So we have just done the same as you, but more.”
Clé called the man an asshole and the three of us wandered on. Ron whispered to Clé something I didn’t catch, probably sage advice about restricting the use of ‘asshole’ to the purely anatomical, and that only on polite occasions, such as when admiring one’s.
#
Past a sign reading ‘Adults Only’ in four and a half languages, we found the sellers of robots ‘for your pleasure.’ “All the protuberances and hollow places,” said one seller, reading his prompt-card. “No need to inflate but if you do comes with multiple pump adapters. Evolution’s triumph! And only sixteen thousand for two, must have two to keep each other amused when you cannot be present to interact with them, you know, or unfortunate events will follow. We learned that hard way and now is government regulation.”
While we were pondering this exciting device (which had been set to ‘demo’ mode, democratically exercising all its artificial organs in conjunction with each other in all possible combinations, with available sound track also), a young man intruded.
“You’re not going to buy that gizmo, are you?” he said.
Ron ventured that he thought not, but it would be up to the women.
“Forget it!” the young one said. “They’re dangerous! You know these robots have their own agenda, they’re just too good at what they do and find us sexually boring. That’s a real downer! Not good enough to fuck a damn machine! So they fuck each other at every opportunity — I caught mine doing that three or four times! And they’re plotting, plotting!”
“Plotting?”
“Against us!”
The hawker intervened. “Pay no attention to him; he is just a jealous young man with a short penis.”
Ignoring him, the young man continued. “And I caught one of them flashing yesterday! In the market! One of my robots! It made some sorry excuse I didn’t believe.”
Ron resolved the matter. “We don’t have sixteen thousand,” he admitted.
The hawker was not to be deterred. “Two hundred a trick. Ten minutes guaranteed. Or three hundred and they call you ‘honey’ several times!”
Ron shook his head, and the three walked out. Behind them they could hear the two men yelling and shouting, and SFX of robots getting horny.
#
Past a booth bearing the sign ‘BioHazard Bitches,’ and the House of Ill Repute of Good Repute, was a peep-show. The proprietor called out “Hey tourists! Peep-show not for chickens ha ha, maybe for chicks! Have you good supply of quarter-coins for the machines?”
Ron thought he might like to see what the place was all about. Clé and I gave him a disgusted look and said we’d stay out in the passage and watch, thank you, while he ‘made a probing inquiry.’
Ron entered the tiny shop. To his left was a series of booths. He picked one at random and entered. On the wall to his right was a menu describing the attractions of each short film in lubricious misspelled detail. On the left was a large-lettered sign “This booth is equipped with a moisture sensing device! Police will automatically alert!” There was, of course, no moisture-sensing device, so the desk-man had to mop up once again.
I noticed Ron tipping the attendant on his way out of the booth. He rejoined us, and we bantered him unmercifully. “Did the movies show ‘coming attractions,’ Ron?” I offered.
Clé chimed in with “how much did you ‘spend’ in there, Ron?” Ron shrugged with a hint of embarrassment.
We left the ‘Adults Only’ section, and re-entered the main part of the bazaar.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
