The Garments of Caean Read online

  Caean was definitely not the place for Mast. He could never be happy here. It depressed him unspeakably that he seemed unable to exert any influence over anyone. When he had heard that a Ziodean ship had landed on Verrage he had decided to risk the consequences and attempt to get back among this own kind. Now the thought that he might soon be free of this crazy society intoxicated him and he even began to enjoy himself.

  During the course of the evening he fell in with a rather strange young creature calling himself Reggae Elphis, and at length acceded to his suggestion that they adjourn to a nearby wine-tavern. Mast found it refreshing to be accepted as a companion. They sat sipping persimmon wine, which had a fine, bitter flavour. He looked across the table at the young man. Reggae wore an open-jacketed zoot-suit whose incredibly padded shoulders thrusted sharply up and out so that the pointed ends were more or less on a level with his pixie-like ears. The garment set off perfectly his almost phthisic thinness, his jerky, rapid movements. Yet Reggae, for all his youth, had a strikingly self-assured manner. His face was unusually mobile and expressive, though wasted, the skin being drawn close to the bone, the eyes at once restless yet showing a considerable power of concentration. His unhatted hair was high and oiled and combed back in a prow-like manner.

  He caught Mast’s eye and smiled enigmatically. Mast looked away.

  ‘How do you like the place?’ Reggae asked, raising his glass in a salute, the timbre of his voice colourful but slightly off-balance. ‘Do you have taverns like this in Ziode? What’s it like there? Can you have a good time? Or is everything dull and lifeless, like they say?’

  ‘Oh, you can have a good time, all right,’ Mast drawled. ‘There are some differences, though.’

  He started to tell his new friend about Ziode. But his story soon turned into self-pitying complaints about the life he was leading in Caean. ‘Nobody takes any notice of me,’ he said peevishly. ‘I’m just a rotten foreigner here. Everybody makes me feel it.’

  Reggae jerked his pointed shoulders sinuously to the rhythm of some music coming from the other end of the tavern, moving his arms back and forth slightly at the same time. ‘You’re unhappy,’ he murmured, his eyes half-closed. ‘We’ve got ways of dealing with that.’ He leaned forward. ‘Nobody need to be a foreigner in Caean. Caean is for all mankind.’

  ‘Not for Ziodeans.’

  ‘It’s easy to find yourself with the right gear. You can really get in phase, get coherent. You just need the right sort of …’ Reggae’s voice was caressing and oddly thrilling.

  Mast guessed what he was talking about. Reggae probably realized that his clothes hadn’t been made by a native sartorial. But Mast kept quiet. To tell Reggae what he thought of Caean clothing would probably insult him.

  He sat back with a sigh, wondering how in the galaxy he came to be sitting in this Caeanic tavern, which even at this hour was half-filled with its weirdly caparisoned patrons and presented as alien a sight as was possible. It seemed like a dream. Sometimes he wondered if he was dreaming. It still seemed unbelievable to him, for instance, that the Little Planet could lumber openly into the Tzist Arm and actually put down in the Verrage countryside without being challenged! After landing, he and Peder had simply walked into Inxa. No one had ever questioned their presence, from that day to this.

  Peder had found them a room and they had learned the language from hypno-tapes. Mast, however, had obstinately refused to wear the Caeanic clothes Peder had obtained for him to replace his quite unsuitable prison wear. ‘I’m Ziodean,’ he had said stubbornly. He had been afraid of draping himself in those seductive shapes, and spent the days skulking indoors, refusing to go out.

  Peder had been patient with him in those early days, taking pity, perhaps, on his helplessness. Finally Mast had compromised. He wouldn’t wear Caeanic clothes proper, but he would wear garments made by Peder.

  At first Peder had demurred at the thought of having to produce something to be worn in Caean; but then he had risen to the challenge. He had purchased tools and fabrics. He had gone to a professional sartorial for tutelage. And, by dint of effort, he had surpassed himself. The results were in fact barely up to Caeanic standards, but Mast thought them magnificent.

  Reggae performed a frenetic hand-jive, his lips puckered and his face intent. He seemed miles away, yet Mast became aware that the youth’s attention was still full on him.

  ‘I’ll do you a favour,’ Reggae said. ‘I’ll take you to my sodality tonight. I belong to a special one … I can take you in as a guest.’ He reached across and patted Mast’s knee comfortingly.

  Two more bottles of persimmon wine later Mast’s speech was more slurred and, not really resisting, he went with Reggae to a large house with shuttered windows tucked away in a back street. Within, however, the house had the inward-looking, sated atmosphere of a temple. They passed through a number of rooms, each more cushioned and quilted than the last and clad in perfumes hinting at depravity. Mast was aware of the induction process only vaguely – the murmured explanations, the searching glances in his direction, the discreet air of special privilege.

  ‘I say,’ he drawled at one point, ‘I won’t have to go through any ceremonies, will I?’ Not until he was ushered into the adytum, with Reggae by his side, did he begin to sober up.

  The walls of the interior were broken at intervals by arches which led to screened passages or else to cosy alcoves. The atmosphere was one of luxury and indulgence; the adytum had lavender walls brocaded with extraordinary erotic murals, chaises longues of soft magenta fabrics, and deep armchairs. Several members were present – all males, this being a male-only sodality – and they turned to greet the newcomers with friendly smiles. Some were of a commanding appearance, looking very smart and handsome in military-style uniforms. Others seemed to exude an almost repugnantly intense masculinity. And there were others, mostly younger, who exhibited the same svelte quality of deliberate sexual ambivalence he had up until now chosen to ignore in Reggae. One or two of these wore slashed doublets that allowed glimpses of frilly chemises and undergarments – Mast knew that slashed over-garments were considered daring and even indecent in Caean.

  But it was the phallocrypts that informed his befuddled mind most plainly of the nature of the sodality into which he had wandered. Projecting from trousers, breeches and hose, curving sharply upward before the belly, the horn-shaped penis sheaths exaggerated the member they enclosed in such a magnificent way that they altered the entire stance and character of the wearer.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mast groaned. ‘Sorry, Reggae, I’m not …’

  ‘No one’s a hundred per cent,’ Reggae murmured in a voice that was like rough diamonds. ‘It just has to be brought out, that’s all. Come on! It won’t hurt you to let yourself go for once.’

  Mast learned with a shock that the Caeanic sartorials did indeed know how to ‘bring it out’. There was something about the slim, erect lines of the young man by his side that sent a shivering, trembling sensation right through him, and in his own breeches he felt his own horn rising, responding to the horn sheaths worn by the others.

  ‘I have to change now, Realto. Come along and I’ll give you something suitable to wear.’ Reggae gave his hand a squeeze and made for one of the arches, taking Mast willy-nilly in tow.

  *

  At some stage during the evening Amara lost track of Abrazhne Caldersk, her hoped-for consort, but she did not let that disappoint her for long. As the party wound down she went on a night tour of Inxa with an acceptably presentable, if slightly intense, man, much younger than herself, who had been pursuing her for hours.

  He went by the name of Holosk. His pudgy face showed, perhaps, a rather unconfident attitude for a Caeanic, being once both eager and hesitating. The outlines of his body were practically obliterated by a dark-coloured suit, and he seemed to hang on Amara’s every word, to be fascinated by any details she could tell him of Ziode. Amara could not help but sense something behind his pressing enquiries, though she was at a loss to
understand what.

  ‘What do you do, Holosk?’ she asked him. ‘Are you in the government?’

  ‘No, I’m in business,’ Holosk explained. ‘Export-import. My firm trades with fifteen planets in this sector.’ His voice was quiet, almost inaudible. ‘Tell me, in Ziode … do the women … er …’ He trailed off.

  They were leaning against the balustrade of a terrace overlooking a great plaza where coloured fountains played. Amara looked at her watch, which she had already adjusted to Verrage time. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I’d better be getting back to the ship.’

  ‘I live very near here,’ he told her quickly. ‘Why don’t you come up for a nightcap?’

  ‘Well …’ With a doubting expression she went with him across the terrace to the street.

  Holosk lived in an apartment block only a few hundred yards away. He fumbled with the key as he opened the door, clearly in a state of excitement. Flattered but also filled with curiosity, Amara entered. The apartment was small and unpretentious, but moderately comfortable. Holosk gave her a drink then paced nervously back and forth.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You’ll wear a hole in the carpet.’ She held out a hand invitingly.

  For answer he suddenly went down on his knees before her. To her astonishment his lumpy face was filmed with sweat and he was tense and trembling. He was in a sexual frenzy!

  ‘Come on!’ he cried with bulging eyes. ‘I’ve heard all about you Ziodean women! It’s true, isn’t it? That you – that lovers –’ He swallowed and choked, unable for a moment to bring out the words. ‘Undress one another!’ he gasped hoarsely.

  ‘But of course,’ Amara replied lightly. ‘What else?’

  ‘Oh God, oh God,’ moaned Holosk, writhing on the floor.

  All at once Amara understood, and struggled not to burst out laughing. She was in the hands of a Caeanic pervert – one so depraved that he actually gained erotic excitement from the thought of uncovering the body!

  Was his type common? Probably not – Amara’s guess was that it was very rare, and that such as there were kept the vice secret. News of a Ziodean woman would bring them running, of course.

  Taking his courage in both hands, Holosk clutched at her skirt and began to mouth the Caeanic equivalent of obscene sex talk.

  ‘Unclothe me,’ he begged in a hot breathless voice. ‘Undrape me, disrobe me, leave me naked! Strip me, peel me, expose me! Unlace, untie, unbutton and undo me! Oh, take my clothes off!’

  Giggling, she obliged him while he lay back shivering in a near-swoon. Then he whimpered in ecstasy while she helped him to do the same to her.

  13

  Every creature having a complex nervous system makes use of body image. Body image is self image: the creature’s knowledge of its own physical existence, a knowledge which hovers between conscious and pre-conscious perceptions. It has been a matter of argument as to whether body image has a genetic basis, or whether it results from conditioning. Experiments designed to resolve the question have subjected human volunteers to total amnesia and then attempted to induce them to accept alternative images, of animals or robot waldos, as their own. Results were never conclusive, due to the difficulty of occluding the volunteer’s own body with another body, and also to the mentally deranging effects of the drugs used. Some subjects reported that they had ‘dreamed’ they were the replacement body – a dog, a bear, in one case, even, a butterfly.

  Pliability of body image is clearly of interest in the study of bodily adornment, a feature of all human cultures. In the case of Caean it would seem to be specially important. Is Caean a proliferation of divergent body images? Are the Caeanics dreamers, lost in a state of hypnotic sleep, imagining that they are exotic and arcane as suggested by their apparel? These questions remain to be answered by social science.

  List’s Cultural Compendium

  The Tzist Arm contained in excess of ten million suns. The section covered by Caean alone embraced one million. Among that million were about a hundred inhabited worlds, connected by threads of commerce and nationality: phantasmagoric sodalities, fantastic fetishes, cultural displays which bedecked planets like floral growths.

  Peder made his way in Caeanic society with automatic ease. The suit he wore meant that he was treated with utmost respect everywhere he went. Whether people realized it was a Frachonard suit he was wearing, let alone the one that had gone missing, he did not know. Here, where style was understood, such questions were not asked. The suit had found its wearer; he was the acme, social man made perfect. That was all there was to it.

  That was, indeed, all there was to it. As Peder sank deeper into Caeanic ways an inhuman detachment came over him. The suit, having indulged him for a while, sent him on his travels again, wandering from star to star, tending always, as if by chance, towards the other end of Caean.

  In the city of Quetzkol he one day happend to stroll beneath a continuous stone awning that sheltered a long esplanade paved with hexagonal grey flagstones. The farther end of the esplanade broke into a cascade of descending ledges that resembled the slope of a ziggurat. It was here, standing staring at him, that he saw the first of his brothers: a wearer of one of the other four existing Frachonard suits.

  Peder examined the other suit. In superficial style it might have been thought much like his own, but he knew that philosophically the two were radically apart. ‘A different paradigm,’ he thought to himself. The suit denoted a man of unbending will, a man who set his face in one direction and never retraced his steps. In keeping with this paradigm it had one accessory Peder’s lacked: a sinister hat with a wide brim, low and flat, in whose shadow the man’s eyes were cold, grey and hard.

  Peder paced the length of the esplanade to meet him. ‘I am Peder Forbarth,’ he said.

  ‘I am Otis Weld,’ the other replied. His voice was deep and brusque, with a metallic timbre. ‘We have been waiting for you. But time is not important. A forest takes time to grow.’

  Peder’s conversation was without any un-necessary verbiage. ‘You know where to find the others?’

  ‘One more resides already here in Quetzkol. We shall take ship to meet the others. A symposium will be arranged. When the petals of the flower are joined, the whole plant flourishes.’

  They made their way through the city. The architecture of Quetzkol was quite unlike that of any other Caeanic city, being redolent of the style referred to as the Incan or Aztec. Flat, grey horizontal slabs slotted and criss-crossed to create a three-dimensional maze. Rakish tiers piled into one another, forming countless interstices that served as streets and passages. The unremittingly clean outlines, the lustrous grey of the building material, all gave an impression of decisiveness and willpower. Above, the sky reflected back a clear, watery blue.

  Quetzkol’s idiosyncratic character was typical of this end of Caean. It was as if evolution had started anew in numerous local enclaves, using not biological forms but creatures of cloth and dye. There was Palco, whose people were robed in cool saffron and spent their lives placidly and calmly, reflecting on thoughts that could not have been conceived outside Palco. There was Farad, whose inhabitants wore only blue in all its shades and cognates and fought a ritualized war whose motives would have been incomprehensible to the Ziodean mind. There were the Cabsoloms, absorbed in a new type of sculpture equally enigmatic. And here in Quetzkol there was this stoic severity, exemplified par excellence by Weld himself. Nowhere was the carefree hedonism of Verrage to be found. There was passivity; there was also febrile activity which extended in unthought-of directions. But even there, a kind of inactivity reigned within the activity, a submission to action rather than an initiating of action.

  Peder was close now to the very verge of Tzist.

  ‘I see that much Prossim is worn here in Quetzkol,’ he remarked as they walked. ‘Almost to the exclusion of anything else.’

  ‘True. Who would wish to wear other fabrics when perfection is available?’

  ‘How soon can I meet our other companion?�
�

  ‘I shall arrange for him to visit the sodality I own.’

  Peder was puzzled. ‘One does not own sodalities,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ Weld told him.

  ‘Are you then, by any chance, yourself an exponent of the sartorial art?’

  ‘Not professionally. Occasionally I make experiments for my own amusement.’

  ‘Your sodality is one of these?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Weld took him to a cool, unpretentious building, a flat grey slab buried in a mass of flat grey slabs. The interior consisted of a single room having the same shape as the slab itself. Peder quickly learned not to touch any extrusion such as the doorframe with his bare hands. The edges were as sharp as a knife.

  A few members of Weld’s sodality arrived and sat silently, making no greeting to Weld. To Peder’s eye their suits were cruder versions of Weld’s own, except that the fabric had a leaden sheen to it and seemed very substantial. Their faces, too, were stern and uncompromising, though unlike Weld they went bare-headed.

  ‘There is a unique character to my sodality,’ Weld said. ‘Let me show you.’ He beckoned one of his members forward, and bent back the cloth of the man’s sleeve.

  ‘Cutaneous raiment,’ he explained. ‘I have integrated garments into the cuticle, taking the place of the epidermis. They are part of the person – or more strictly, the person is the biological content of the raiment. They can not be removed.’

  Peder felt the metallic texture of the Prossim, noting where it was joined to the skin of the member’s wrist, then let his hand fall. ‘It is an aberration,’ he said in a supercilious tone while the member stood there stony-faced. ‘The essence of the Art of Attire is that one is not bound to a single shape. Thousands of paradigms are offered to the individual by his sartorial. Your invention reverts to pre-Caeanic biological forms of evolution, where every creature had but a single nature.’

  ‘Quite right, it is an aberration,’ Weld agreed. ‘Yet it is an interesting diversion. It would have displeased me not to see this possibility explored.’ He waved the member away, then picked up an object lying on a nearby table. ‘You’re from the Verrage sector, aren’t you? Have you ever seen anything like this before?’