Expendable - James Alan Gardner [86]
Raising his voice, Tobit went on, “The Prophet also had an insight about the ideal state of the human body: covered with skin like the first generation. Skin good, glass sinful. You see, Ramos, being invulnerable and immune to disease is ignoble. Far better to suffer and bleed and get bitten by insects….”
I tried to silence him with a sharp look. The Morlocks were drunk, but they still might recognize sarcasm…and I could guess their reaction if someone mocked their prophet.
“Sure, okay,” Tobit said grudgingly. “The point is, the Prophet found the synthesizer that could make artificial skin; and he devised a scheme for bestowing skin on Morlocks who deserved it. Like merit badges. You get skin for your face at birth—that’s a freebie—then on your crotch when you pass puberty rituals, on your chest for killing a buffalo, on your hands if you kill a mountain lion…that sort of thing. And if you are worthy and brave, eventually you get to look like…” Tobit did a mock curtsy. “Me. Skin from head to toe. I’m their fucking ideal.”
“They are fools,” Oar said.
A male Morlock tried to struggle to his feet, but Tobit waved him down. “Stay! Sit!” The Morlock slumped again. “You see what having skin means?” Tobit smirked at me. “I have clout. I’m fucking elevated. And that means I can bestow certain honors on my friends.”
He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a handsized scrap of brown tissue: thin and limp, like a cloth bandage.
“Skin, Ramos,” he said. “Do you think this chunk is big enough to cover that splotch on your face?”
Part XIV
TRANSITION
Camouflage
For a moment, my mind went blank. I wish I could say I wanted to hit him, kick that stupid grin off his face; but I was too stunned even for anger. The limp flap of skin lay in his dirty glove like a rag of brown linen…and he thought I should put that on my face?
“I can see you’re pleased,” he said. “And I promise, it’s everything you hope for. Self-adhesive…porous to let sweat out and air in…even designed to adapt to your skin color like a chameleon.”
“My…” I swallowed hard. “Yes, Phylar, that’s just what I want. A scrap of synthetic I can put on my cheek and watch turn purple. The height of entertainment.”
“Ramos, the League designed this stuff to hide crap like that shit on your face. Hiding is what Melaquin’s all about. Let me tell you, I had one fuck of a lousy scar as a memento from an old exploration mission. Now it looks as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” His voice was loud with booze, and he must have realized it. In a softer voice he said, “Listen—Festina—maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. Who knows how the skin will respond to your…condition. But when I use it to cover a bruise, it doesn’t turn the color of the bruise. And I’ll tell you a secret: I put some of this fake skin on my nose. It hides the….”
He waved his hands vaguely—too squeamish, I suppose, to say that his nose had once been the ravaged red of a drunkard, florid with prominent blood vessels. Now that I looked, Tobit’s nose was a healthier color than at the Academy: smooth, not pitted or flushed. It was still unnaturally bulbous, but the skin itself looked…good.
“See?” he said, proudly turning his head to show off his physiognomy. “Maybe the skin can help you too.”
He pushed the pathetic brown tissue toward me. I didn’t take it.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “You aren’t the sort of woman who uses her face as an excuse, are you? The kind who blames every little problem on an accident of birth, and won’t try to fix things for fear it might work. You can’t be worried that without the birthmark, you won’t have reason to bitch and moan—”
“One more word,” I told him, “and the skin I take off you won’t be that piece in your hand.”
The Morlocks roused themselves stewishly and made a show of brandishing