The Garments of Caean

by Barrington J. Bayley

  He staggered on, letting himself be guided by the suit. It was a strange experience, having surrendered his will while his mind was yet active. He was himself, yet he was not himself. He could think, feel, and make decisions. But the thoughts, the feelings and the decisions were not those of which he would normally have been capable.

  He went into an automatic food store and bought four cartons of granulated white sugar. Then he took himself to the cafeteria on the upper floor and bought a quart of coffee.

  He was alone in the cafeteria. He sat in the corner, half-slumped over the table. He emptied the sugar into a bowl and spooned it into himself as fast as he could go, helping it down with the coffee.

  When the sugar was gone the craving was less, but he was still dizzy. He rested for an hour, panting softly and watching the handful of people who entered the cafeteria for breakfast.

  Then he bought four more cartons of sugar and devoured those too.

  Eventually he began to feel a little better. But he stayed where he was. He wondered how the Third Minister’s ball was progressing. Probably it was over by now.

  He could not remember if he had killed the Minister or not. Everything had been so confused.

  He fell into a half-doze. He could not say how much later it was that he awoke with a start. Four men stood by his table, gazing down at him. As he looked from face to face they bowed slightly, as if in acknowledgement.

  ‘May we sit with you, sir?’ asked one respectfully.

  His mind blank, he nodded.

  They sat down. ‘We have been aware of your presence for some time, sir,’ the same speaker told him quietly. Then he lapsed into a language Peder did not know.

  ‘Why are you talking to me like that?’ he asked.

  The other made a self-deprecating gesture. ‘My apologies, sir. I should have been more careful.’

  Another of the four took up the conversation. ‘It puzzles us that we were never informed of your arrival, sir, and we debated on whether we should contact you. Not knowing the nature of your mission, we decided merely to keep you under observation, and to be on hand should we be needed. We observed your attendance at the ball of the Ziodean Third Minister and by means of a spy-ray ascertained that you were being conducted from the palace. We followed you to the house used by ZZ, and hence here. Now, with great reverence, we make ourselves known to you.’

  With great reverence …

  Peder scrutinized the conservative, dark-coloured suits the four men wore. In an unobtrusive way they were exceedingly well made – better than anything ordinarily obtainable in Ziode – and cunningly designed to seem modest and inconspicuous. The strangers sat in these humble suits with a peculiar kind of confidence, exhibiting a rapport between the person and the cloth that did not exist in the society Peder was used to.

  ‘So!’ he exclaimed softly. ‘There are Caeanic agents in Ziode!’

  They looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Naturally, sir.’

  Another spoke, in a confidential tone. ‘We will not enquire the purpose of your coming to Ziode. We merely make our presence known to you, to assist you in any way you deem fit.’

  They all fell silent. They had probably spotted him by accident, Peder thought. A suit of Frachonard quality would be instantly noticeable to Caeanics, just as it had been to Baryonid Varl Vascha. But their subservience surprised him. It did not accord with what he knew of Caeanic attitudes. Then again, there was something odd in it, something indirect.

  Suddenly it came to him just what bothered him about their manner. Their respect was not to him; it was, rather, to his suit.

  They knew he was wearing a Frachonard suit! But they could scarcely have learned that such a suit had been lost, still less that it had fallen into Ziodean hands. He looked past them and around the cafeteria. He felt lost and deserted, drifting alone in a void. Unaccountably, with no wish on his own part, the lines and forms of the cafeteria scene began to transform themselves in his sight, and to depict designs and hieroglyphics he knew only he could see.

  For months now the urge to go to Caean had been building up in him. The pictorial code was exteriorizing that desire; it was as though his brain were interpreting random data to form but one message, a painted perspective pointing in a single direction.

  ‘I want to go to Caean,’ he said suddenly, urgently. Then he stopped short. He didn’t want to go.

  The suit wanted to go.

  He recollected the self-serving rationalizations by which he had still tried to picture himself as his own master. Such pretences were a delusion. The truth could no longer be evaded – the truth that he could not, now, claim to be the owner of the Frachonard suit. The Frachonard suit was a suit that owned its wearer. Without sentience it might be; passive and without powers of action, a mere object, but by degrees it could so change a situation that he, the wearer, became the recipient partner. The sleeping partner.

  Dimly he realized that the Caeanic agent was speaking to him again. ‘Unfortunately it is currently impossible to make physical contact with Caean. Ziodean forces have sealed off the Gulf.’

  Peder jumped up. ‘Forget what I said,’ he told them thickly. ‘Do not approach me again.’ Staggering from the table, he negotiated his way across the floor of the cafeteria, feeling like a drunkard on stilts.

  Once in the open air he seemed to recover his strength. The streets were filling now with Gridirans going about their daily business, and as far as he could tell the Caeanic agents did not follow him.

  What if he got rid of the suit? he thought. What if he tore it off him right now and threw it in the gutter? Could he do it?

  No, he couldn’t do it. He did not have the will to break its bond with him. He paced the sidewalk, the tussle continuing in his mind, and paused at the corner to look about him. The perspective of streets and buildings was forming into a corridor leading off the curve of the planet and into the sky, across the void to an immensely distant destination. A one-way corridor to Caean!

  How did his brain perform this trick? Was it the first stage of a total separation from reality?

  And yet, the delusion offered the only certain solution to his predicament. Anywhere in Ziode, he was a hunted man. Only Caean was a safe haven.

  Besides, was he not by now more of a Caeanic than he was a Ziodean? Even Caeanics themselves mistook him for one of their own. Yes, he would go to Caean. Perhaps if he journeyed to where the outer Ziodean stars straggled off into the Gulf it would be possible to find a way across it. The suit would help and protect him, as it always had. Help him also because thereby it fostered its own plans, whatever they were, plans which had been sewn and cut, by some arcane sartorial science, some coded language of psychic intentions, into its fabric.

  With this decision his brain cleared and he applied himself to immediate details. Once the events at the ZZ house became known it would be difficult indeed to evade the ensuing police net, especially if the dead included the Third Minister. There might still, however, be an hour or so remaining in which to leave Harlos unimpeded. Hailing a cab, he went to his penthouse atop the Ravier Building and quickly collected together money, credit cards and a few documents, leaving everything else behind.

  He took the elevator to the street again. As he emerged from the foyer a small, square-shouldered, slightly stooped figure sidled up to him.

  ‘Hello, Peder. Havin’ fun?’

  Castor’s eyes glittered at him. He was even grubbier than usual and his hands moved uneasily over his crumpled clothes. His face was deadpan, his jaw slightly fallen and his unhealthy skin drawn grey and slack over his bones. Peder, having presumed him to have been arrested along with Mast, was astonished to see him.

  Before he could prevent it Castor waved away Peder’s cab. ‘You going somewhere, I take it? Think smart, Peder. Go everywhere in the same cab and the police know your movements just by asking one guy. Where were you goin’? Spaceport?’

  Peder nodded. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It stands to reason
Mast will have ratted on you. Me, I got away. Mast wasn’t so smart in the end.’

  He touched Peder’s arm and coaxed him along the sidewalk. ‘The spaceport’s not a good idea. They’ll pick you up there. Come along with me. I’ve got a safe gaff where you can put up for a while.’

  ‘Why should you help me?’ Peder self-consciously moved his elbow from Castor’s grasp.

  ‘We can do each other some good.’

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  Castor walked him a short distance to where a battered runabout was parked. Peder squeezed himself into the unaccustomedly cramped space while Castor took the driving lever and they shot off, heading east.

  Peder did not to any degree trust Castor, but the man was an accomplished criminal and in his present circumstances that was a valuable asset. He probably wanted money, Peder reflected. There was always the possibility, of course, that Castor was trapping him on behalf of the authorities in return for leniency, but overall Peder did not think that likely.

  Castor drove the runabout on a wandering, zig-zag route. They entered Deberon, Gridira’s example of a type of district possessed by every city of any size and age: an old run-down warren of an area sprawling between the city’s commercial and entertainment sectors, the home of crime, vice, jaded artists and adventurous young.

  Mast’s ex-sidekick eventually parked the runabout in a mews that could not be seen from the street, and took Peder to a windowless room buried deep within the shapeless mass of an adjoining centuries-old building. The room, lit by a yellow glow-bulb, smelling foully of Castor’s habitation, contained a dirty palliasse without covers, a drab armchair and begrimed table. The walls were poorly painted with a cheap distemper which was peeled and soiled. A curtain hanging over part of one wall hid a cooking closet and larder.

  ‘You just take it easy here for a while,’ Castor said softly. ‘I’m going out now. Is there anything I can get you?’ He stared at Peder, his lips stretched in a parody of a smile.

  ‘I just want to get some sleep,’ Peder replied.

  ‘Sleep? Sure. You sleep!’ With alacrity bordering on eagerness Castor leaped to a sliding panel and opened it to reveal a wall cupboard. Inside was a set of brand new clothes hangers. ‘You can hang your gear up here, see? Huh –’ He floundered for a moment, looking about the room wildly, then came up with a dusty mat-like counterpane from the floor of the cupboard. ‘Here’s something to cover yourself with.’

  ‘This is all right, thanks.’ Peder lay down fully clothed on the palliasse, leaving Castor fingering the counterpane, his expression unreadable.

  Eventually Castor dropped the counterpane on the floor and shut the cupboard. As he slouched from the room, Peder’s eyes closed.

  *

  His host’s return awakened Peder some hours later. Castor smelled of drink and swayed slightly on his feet. He carried in both arms a bulky package which he unrolled and erected into a low travelling bed, placing it against the wall opposite Peder. He had also brought two clean coverlets which, though thin, were scarcely needed in the heated room.

  ‘Just like old times, huh?’ he reminded Peder in an attempt at camaraderie. ‘Remember the Kyre junket? Aboard the Costa?’ He chuckled, then rounded solicitously on Peder.

  ‘Hungry?’ he said vaguely. ‘Want something to eat?’

  ‘Just some sugar,’ Peder answered weakly.

  ‘Sugar? Just sugar? How much sugar you want?’

  ‘All you’ve got.’ Peder felt ill. The unnatural drain on his body’s energy had been severe.

  Castor shuffled to the larder and returned with a carton of sugar and a spoon. He sat watching Peder eat it.

  ‘Has there been any news today?’ Peder asked between mouthfuls.

  ‘News?’

  ‘I thought you might have seen a newscast.’

  ‘No. What would be in the news? There won’t be anything about you, if that’s what you mean. The security police don’t work in a blaze of publicity.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Still wondering if he had killed the Third Minister, Peder licked up the last of the sugar.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He lay back on the palliasse, trembling slightly with his exhaustion. Castor flung him a coverlet. ‘You always sleep in your clothes?’ he said, speaking hesitantly. ‘You’ll rumple that fancy suit you’ve got.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Peder murmured.

  ‘Oh.’

  Busying himself for sleep, Castor stripped to grey underwear, carefully laying his own dishevelled suit suggestively on the back of a chair. Settling down on the travelling bed, he turned his face to the wall. Soon Peder heard deep breathing.

  The weight of his own form on the palliasse was burdensome to Peder. There was little life in him. The suit seemed to be quiescent. Perhaps it was letting him recuperate.

  He shouldn’t be sleeping in it, at that, he thought. He was misusing it. When a man slept, his suit should hang.

  He rose shakily and undressed. To prevent Castor from stealing his wallet he tucked it in the waistband of his underpants. He draped the suit in the wall cupboard, leaving the panel open so that it continued to look down on him, a reassuring psychological glyph.

  He turned out the light and quickly dropped back asleep.

  The stealthy sounds that, some time later, impinged blurrily on his consciousness might not have woken him at all had not a dreadful feeling of loss been simultaneously tugging at his mind, expressing itself in doleful, disturbing dreams. The main light was still dead, but a dim hand-torch flickered by the wall cupboard, where a manlike shadow moved and shuffled.

  Peder sat up and rubbed his eyes. He saw that his suit no longer hung in the recess. Instantly he leaped from the palliasse and switched on the ceiling light.

  Wearing an acid, frowning expression, the stealthy figure by the cupboard turned to face him.

  Castor was wearing the Frachonard suit. Since he was considerably smaller than Peder it looked ludicrously illfitting on him. The jacket and waistcoat hung loose, the sleeves flopping over his hands. The trouser legs were rucked up over the tops of his shoes.

  Castor’s face twitched. His eyes glittered. As Peder stepped forward a twinkling sliver-knife appeared in his sleeve-enfolded hand.

  ‘Watch it, Forbarth.’

  ‘My suit,’ Peder snarled.

  ‘Done you real good, hasn’t it? Now let somebody else have a go.’

  Castor backed to the door. Unwisely, Peder lunged forward, grappling with him in an attempt to get the suit off him. To his surprise Castor turned the knife aside to avoid doing him any harm. The thief began to utter outraged grunts.

  The jacket was half off when Peder suddenly broke away from the tussle and flung himself sobbing to the other side of the room.

  ‘Take it,’ he groaned. ‘Take it from me! Let me be free of it! It won’t own me any more. Ohhh …’

  Agonized, he fought the urge to retrieve the suit, but he knew he couldn’t hold out for long. Seeing it there before him was like being a junkie on withdrawal.

  ‘Take it! Go!’

  ‘Sure,’ mumbled Castor, and he edged to the door, opened it and slipped through. The door closed again. He was gone. The suit was gone.

  Peder collapsed on to the palliasse. An arid desolation overtook him. He was free, and empty, and dead.

  He couldn’t really understand why the suit had let it happen. Why hadn’t it immediately induced Castor to discard it? He would have expected the suit to have rejected Castor straight away.

  Then he understood. In the first place the suit did not make decisions on its own account. It merely mobilized the faculties of the wearer. Secondly its influence over Castor would be weak until he had worn it for a while. How it would ultimately affect Castor, a person for whom it was totally unfitted, he did not like to think.

  After a while Peder tried to leave the room. The door was locked. Castor had trapped him.

  He went back to t
he palliasse, sat down and waited.

  9

  Castor, immediately on waking, jumped out of bed and pulled on the suit with savage speed. It was always that way now. The suit didn’t like him to be awake and not wearing it; sometimes he was even obliged to sleep in it.

  But Castor didn’t mind. He didn’t care what the suit did, as long as it helped him to get the one thing he really wanted above all.

  As long as it got him to Caean.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, stretching his greasy face into a yawn. Then he jumped up and began to jerk his body in an awkward parody of physical exercise. That done, he wiped his face with a wet cloth, got rid of his stubble with some shaving cream, and devoured a scanty breakfast of blue milk and germ bread.

  Feeling better, he stepped from the shack where he had been living for the past week. The shack stood on waste ground at the edge of Kass, a ragged town on Vence, a tattered planet on the fringe of Ziode where the star cluster straggled off into the Tzist Gulf. To one side of him were the domes and humps of Kass. To the other the flat terrain was punctuated by spear trees: tall, straight masts, lacking branch or leaf, that stood out against the whorl-like, bluish-tinted sunrise.

  Castor had done a considerable amount of wandering since stealing the suit. But Vence was to be his last stop in Ziode. If all went well, today he would plunge into the Gulf towards Caean.

  What he would do when he got to Caean was something his mind had not dwelled on with any clarity. The suit did not encourage that degree of deliberation. It amused him, though, to think that in traversing the Gulf he would be passing – at a distance of some light years, of course – the prison planet of Ledlide where both Peder Forbarth and Realto Mast were incarcerated. Castor smiled every time he recalled how neatly he had tricked Forbarth, locking him in the hideout and alerting the authorities as to his whereabouts. The one-time sartorial was on Ledlide for life, which in a way was surprising because Mast himself had only drawn twenty years.

  Castor had to admit that his act was an unprincipled one, but tying up loose ends was a matter of simple prudence, after all.