Ray Aldridge. The Flesh Tinker and the Fashion Goddess
Ray Aldridge does not use the kind of extrapolation Jack Williamson mentions in his essay. Instead "The Flesh Tinker and The Fashion Goddess" relies on another kind of extrapolation — one in which Ray examined the West’s fascination with looks and asked himself "What would happen in a culture in which appearance was a person’s most important commodity?"
I remember the genesis of the Flesh Tinker himself Ray also attended the experimental writers workshop put on in Taos, New Mexico, by Writers of The Future. At the workshop, the student writers outlined stories on three-by-five cards, and the instructors helped the students develop the ideas. "I told the group about Flesh Tinker,” Ray writes. "Fred Pohl and Jack Williamson got these musing looks on their august faces. One of them said something like, ‘You know, it’s too bad Leo Margulies isn’t editing these days; you could sell him a Flesh Tinker story every month for a year.’ The other nodded. I stretched open my ears, then asked something like, ‘Do you think anyone else would buy Flesh Tinker stories?’ ‘Ob sure,’ they said, or words to that effect. I sold the first one to Amazing Stories and the second one to PULPHOUSE. It just goes to show how smart Fred and Jack are.”
Ray is no dummy either. In the three years that I have known him, he has sold ten stories to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (two of which are cover stories). His work has also appeared in WRITERS OF THE FUTURE VOLUME II and Aboriginal SF.
Here, then, is the second Flesh Tinker story to see print. I hope there will be many, many others.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, editor
"Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine", Issue 4. Summer 1989, p.33-50
The Flesh Tinker and the Fashion Goddess
Ray Aldridge
Hidden in the dead weapons pod, Madeira Ezolico watched her enemy. Her hand covered her mouth, pressing against the scars, holding in rage.
She rocked back and forth, back and forth.
Tomov Trevant stood with the other guards on the sunny landing stage, tall, elegant, self-assured. Glittering pale blond hair framed his smooth patrician face. His crimson uniform was perfect, his orange eyes languid. How unfair, she thought, that he should stand out there in the warm sun — beautiful, smiling. Her hand trembled over her scars, touching lightly at the scams and ridges.
Tomov had given her a thousand wounds, beginning the day her mother first took her to the creche.
Even then Tomov had been beautiful, a rosy blonde child with chiseled features. He had looked at Madeira, crowed with infant glee. “Look, isn’t it ugly?” And clapped his little hands together, smiling, eyes twinkling with childish malice. The oceancity of Arcimor was no kind place for a homely child — Arcimor, where the people lived and died for beauty — Arcimor, where the most beautiful one reigned for a season as the Fashion God.
Those chubby fists had grown into heavy clubs, and he had used them to make her uglier still. She touched her scars again, remembering, and her hate rose up so strongly that she felt light-headed.
Madeira shook her head, forcing away painful memories. Watch him, she ordered herself. Watch him. If I watch him long enough, if I follow him whenever he goes... sooner or later I`ll find a way to get even.
Her hatred seemed to glance off Tomov, as if the hard gloss of his beauty armored him against her curses. With all her will, she wished him dead; still he lived, still he smiled. Madeira’s curses lost a little force, though no depth. She watched with half-shut eyes.
An ancient starboat came humming down out of the empty green sky. Tomov sprang alertly back as its skids thumped the platform, avoiding death by a meter. Madeira hissed with frustration; so close!
The starboat’s hatch popped open, a gangway descended, a carpet unrolled like a furry red tongue. A short burst of brassy music blared out, cut off in mid-phrase.
A remarkable person debarked.
He walked down the carpet with a fine confident stride, the tallest, strangest man Madeira had ever seen, and the oldest. He dressed in a flamboyantly antique style; a gold cape with buttercup slashes, a suit of apricot flamesilk, high boots of supple silvery metal. A tangled white mane streamed back from an impossibly wrinkled face. His magenta eyes glowed. His smiling mouth was red and youthful.
The stranger bore down on Tomov, arms wide in greeting.
Tomov drew his weapon. “Stop! Who are you, what do you want in Arcimor?” Tomov’s voice shook.
The stranger stopped, strong violent emotions shifting across his face. Tomov took a step backward, and brought up his weapon. The stranger’s face purpled with rage, the mouth worked silently, the long hands crooked into talons.
Tomov made a squeaking sound and fired. The pale beam shattered into futile orange sparks against the Shield the stranger wore, lifting his white mane into a great halo of snaking tendrils.
“Can it be?” the stranger shouted, raising his arms dramatically, as if supplicating cruel gods. “Arcimor knows me no more? Me, the Flesh Tinker, notorious on a thousand worlds?” The voice boomed across the platform, deep, cold, potent.
Tomov held his weapon awkwardly, as if he could not bring himself to admit its uselessness. The guards rushed forward to seize the Flesh Tinker. They fell back howling, shaking their hands as though flinging off sticky fire, except for Tomov, who had trailed behind. A brief stalemate ensued.
“Croakery!” the Flesh Tinker shouted. “I’ll go with you quietly. This is undignified, and if I have nothing else left, I have my dignity!” fire laughed, a wild cackle, and his eyes were whirling fire.
The Flesh Tinker strolled toward the dropshaft, and the guards trotted to keep up. As they passed Madeira’s hiding place, Tomov glanced in her direction, and she rejoiced to see his perfect features clotted with frustration.
Madeira followed through the empty corridors, trailing a careful distance behind. Perhaps, she thought, I`ll get to see Tomov thwarted again.
The Flesh Tinker led his escort in the direction of the Grand Hallroom, where formerly dignitaries were greeted. Madeira raced ahead, arriving in time to find a hiding place behind a column.
The Flesh Tinker strolled to the center of the hall. The net fell silently.
The weight of it should have flattened the old man, but he thrust the folds from his head, roaring wordlessly, gripping the net in huge knotty hands. It took a dozen guards to pull him off his feet, but finally he was wrapped up tight as a ball of string.
Tomov swaggered forward and bent close to the Flesh Tinker. The Flesh Tinker whispered something. Tomov straightened abruptly, his face white as paper. They moved away through the pillars, carrying the Flesh Tinker like a rolled-up carpet.
Madeira wandered out to the terrace and looked off to the north, where Arcimor’s sister oceancity Mindamon swam, a great featureless bulk against the horizon. She leaned out and looked down at the sea a hundred meters below. The last of the previous night’s suicides bumped along Arcimor’s smooth white flank, a gaudy foam of bright garments, slack limbs, eyeless faces. The tide had taken them away at dawn; the warm breeze had returned them. People leaned from waterline ports, using barbed poles to collect the dead.