The Garments of Caean Read online

  He handed Peder a circular mirror, which at first appeared perfectly ordinary except perhaps that its surface seemed to shimmer rather oddly, which could have been a trick of the light.

  But as Peder looked into it, it seemed to flame with a pale effulgence. He gazed entranced at his face in the glass. His features were undergoing a subtle transformation. They were still his own, but evincing some indefinable alien cast.

  And while he remained staring wide-eyed, the eyes of his reflection closed. The face settled into a sleeping repose.

  He was inexplicably alarmed. ‘How is this done?’ he exclaimed.

  Weld showed a rare hint of amusement. ‘Although it looks like an ordinary mirror it is not, quite, a mirror. The image is formed not by reflected light but is a reconstituted image produced by a micro-computer backing. The device is fully perceptive.’

  Peder turned the mirror over. Beyond a few barely visible etched lines there was nothing to see, and it had only the thickness of a normal looking-glass. That meant little, of course. Micro-electronics could put the contents of an entire brain into an even smaller space.

  ‘A sentient mirror,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes. Computer sentience, of course. Not quite as real as the human variety. But even so, perhaps it has a quality we lack. It is able to experience, nothing more. It doesn’t have to perform actions, as we do.’

  ‘It’s purely passive. A passive sentience. A strange thought.’

  ‘Yes. Yet sometimes the face that looks back as one gazes into it is not quite the face that an ordinary mirror would show. It’s really quite percipient.’

  Peder laid down the mirror. Similar devices were becoming common in this part of space: electronic machines which did nothing but soak up influences from their surroundings devoid of any power of action. The phenomenon was symptomatic. The colonization of the latter half of Caean had apparently produced a sort of photographic negative to the earlier culture, the ebullience of Verrage and similar places being replaced by passive receptivity, as though – to continue the analogy – the human mind had decided to turn itself into a universal camera plate.

  His gaze fell on Weld’s jacket. Although Prossim was of vegetable origin, the fibres were much too minute to be visible to the naked eye – yet suddenly, in his imagination, he seemed to be seeing them, and he entered into a green, microscopic forest of living fronds, fibrillous networks and clumps of tiny bracken-like folioles, a forest which spread and rustled all around him, filling his horizon. As if from a great distance, he heard Weld speaking.

  ‘Ah, here comes Famaxer now.’

  In answer to Weld’s summons the third Frachonard suit to be seen by Peder entered the cutaneous sodality. Peder moved forward. He seemed to walk though the matted forest, brushing aside the fern fronds. Or was the forest instead moving through him, reaching with its fibrils into his nervous system, replacing his thoughts and perceptions?

  The vertiginous hallucination vanished. ‘Good day, brother,’ Famaxer greeted in a dry, cynical voice. ‘I hope Otis has not been mistreating you.’

  ‘No, he has been most hospitable,’ Peder answered.

  Famaxer’s suit had the apparent texture of forrel, a vellum-like parchment at one time used for covering books. It imparted to Famaxer a quality of dryness, of a dusty, wind-blown environment, of a man much weathered by sun and air. His stance signified leathery cynicism, sprightly confidence – and other qualities Peder could not readily define.

  It gave Peder no cause for wonderment that the Frachonard Prossim suits could guide their wearers across hundreds of light years. Apart from a flickering curiosity as to what might be Frachonard’s master plan, he never asked himself why he did what he did, any more than a man waking in the morning asks why he wakes.

  As if saluting the sun, his mind was filled with the glory of Frachonard’s genius.

  The three came close together. Peder was dimly aware that subtle radiations were passing between the three suits, too rarefied to be detectable on any scientific apparatus, perhaps, but nonetheless real.

  ‘We must call together the others, and travel,’ Famaxer said.

  ‘Yes, we must travel,’ Peder agreed. ‘The time has come.’

  ‘Something is wrong,’ Amara announced. ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It has to make some kind of sense,’ Estru argued. ‘We just haven’t found out what it is yet.’

  ‘This type of calculation can’t be simply set aside, not if we are to be in any way scientific,’ she insisted. ‘Sociological decay-time is a fact, not a theory.’

  They were in the late stages of an extended session in the department’s operations room. Amara was revelling in all the data she could handle. But that data simply did not tell her what she wanted to hear.

  According to Amara, those regions of Caean farthest from Sovya should be relatively free from garment fetishism, and even those parts settled earliest should by now be discovering more normal ideas. Yet field reports, as well as the personal observations of anyone who cared to venture outside the ship during its frequent landfalls, made it perfectly clear that quite the opposite was the case. Caeanic culture was not phasing into normalcy. The farther one got from Sovya, the weirder and more aberrant it became.

  The calculations on which Amara placed such stock made used of the sociological notion of ‘decay time’ – the time taken for cultural forces to lose their impetus and die. A passing fad or fashion might have a decay time of weeks or months. An obsession like the one ruling Caean could, at the other end of the scale, persist for centuries. Amara’s parameters, she believed, were solid. The ‘half-life’ of Caean was even shorter than she had at first supposed. By this time Caean should have grown out of its specific syndrome, should be a nation more nearly resembling Ziode.

  ‘This is a sick nation,’ she said. ‘But something is keeping it sick – making it sicker. We have to find out what.’

  ‘Maybe the computation is wrong?’ someone suggested bravely.

  Amara scowled.

  Estru took up the thread. ‘It could be we have underestimated the staying power of the Sovyan experience. Our equations don’t allow, for instance, for total erasure of body image.’

  ‘Total erasure?’ Amara came back at him indignantly.

  ‘The Sovyans clearly demonstrate that the normal body image – the image that exists in the mind for purposes of personal and species identify – can be overlaid with an alternative image,’ Estru said. ‘The Sovyans see themselves as big spacesuits. But suppose the original human body image has no instinctive or genetic component? What if it can be erased permanently? Then the Caeanic syndrome could be stable – not subject to decay.’

  ‘Plausible,’ Amara admitted. ‘The Caeanic phenomenon would then emerge as a form of accelerative evolution, analogous to biological evolution. Psychologically, in terms of outward image, the Caeanics could be diverging into countless new species.’

  Estru felt encouraged. ‘That’s right. Especially if some of these images are archetypal, dragged from the subconscious as Matt-Helver believed. A Caeanic puts on a fox-type suit and it makes him into a foxy individual, because he feels like a fox. I recall that List had something to say along those lines in his Cultural Compendium.’

  ‘It’s plausible, but it’s wrong,’ Amara stated. ‘The natural body image is genetic. It can’t be permanently obliterated.’

  ‘Arms and legs are genetic, but Alexei Verednyev didn’t have any to speak of when we first found him,’ her staff chief said.

  She waved a hand in exasperation. ‘Proliferation. Proliferation is the very thing that knocks Estru’s argument down. Caeanic sartorials are enterprising enough not to leave stones unturned. Even if the basic image had been erased, what’s to prevent it appearing again? How long before some sartorial whizz-kid discovered that the naked body is an exciting object in it own right? What’s to prevent garments becoming increasingly scanty until nakedness becomes acceptable, as it is with us? Yet in fac
t the naked body, where it is an erotic object, is such only as an unspeakable perversion.’

  As she said this she blushed deeply, then to hide her embarrassment turned to study the display screens again. ‘There is something blocking the natural process of normalization,’ she said.

  There was a silence in which they all stared at the screens. Suddenly Estru spoke up again.

  ‘Isn’t there something else we should be talking about, more important than this? What we have also failed to find is any aggressive intention towards Ziode.’

  Everyone murmured. ‘Yes, that’s so,’ Amara said with a frown, almost reluctantly. ‘It seems Abrazhne Caldersk was telling the truth in that respect.’

  ‘Well, shouldn’t our first priority be to explain this to the Directorate? We ought to be giving some thought to it. After all it might not be as easy as it sounds.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘After gearing up for war, to some people it can seem a pity not to go to war,’ Estru said.

  ‘Yes, it is unnerving,’ Alexei said mildly, in reasonably intelligible Ziodean. ‘All the time.’

  Mast responded feelingly. ‘You poor bastard. God, I thought I was a villain until I met some of these scientific types we’ve got here.’

  ‘I’m managing to cope,’ Alexei said. ‘They give me drugs to keep me moderately schizophrenic. That’s the only way to get through this type of experience, I’m told.’

  As he spoke Alexei’s face was deadpan. He probably never would learn to use facial expression, even though all the requisite muscles had been revitalized.

  Mast was aware that Alexei could tolerate human company only with difficulty. But, he told himself, the Sovyan must also be lonely.

  They were walking along one of the belly passages that ran the curve of the Callan’s hull, Alexei stepping awkwardly and falteringly so that every now and then Mast automatically put out a hand to save him from falling, though in fact the Sovyan lost his balance only rarely. As they reached an observation window Alexei stopped, as if to regain breath. Mast stood by, embarrassed, while he gazed with homesick longing into the vacuum of space.

  Then he hurried on. They turned aside from the belly corridor and came to Amara Corl’s sociology department, which Mast took care to visit at least once a day. A murmur of agitated talk was coming from behind the door of the conference room. No one took any notice as Mast rudely pushed the door open and went in, followed by his limping companion.

  The team had drifted apart into two groups. One, bunched around Amara, was busy with some kind of calculation using a computer terminal at the other end of the room. The rest didn’t seem to be doing anything very much, except to talk aimlessly in the sort of crass jargon which Mast found irritating.

  He listened patiently to their drivel for a minute or two until Estru, who had been gazing into a mirror, suddenly interrupted the discussion.

  ‘It’s wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this is the sort of clue we’re looking for,’ he announced.

  Mast came closer. The mirror was oval, set in a frame of wrought gold. It seemed unremarkable, unless it was that its surface was a little too bright.

  ‘What, that mirror?’ someone asked.

  Estru chuckled. ‘Yes, just a mirror, an ordinary silvered glass reflector. Only it isn’t. While you’re looking into the mirror, the mirror is looking back at you.’

  He turned it over in his hands, explaining. ‘The glass isn’t ordinary silica glass; it’s hologram glass. Instead of being coated with mercury in the usual manner, it’s painted with a micro-computer backing of about the same thickness. The hologram glass digitizes the image that falls on it, absorbing all the incident light, and passes it into the computer, which then puts it through the perception process. Eventually – a few nanoseconds later – the reconstituted image bounces back into the hologram glass and is re-emitted by fluorescence.’

  ‘What in the galaxy is the point of all that?’

  ‘Yes,’ someone else joined in, ‘that’s a very complicated method for a simple convenience.’

  ‘The difference is that the mirror has machine sentience. Only in an extremely receptive, passive way, of course. It has no output leads whatsover; no outcome. It’s a mirror with a mind that reflects what it experiences. So you’re looking at yourself being looked at – the more you think about that, the less simple it seems.’ He chuckled again. ‘You could say it’s a mirror with an open mind.’

  Mast peered at the artifact over Estru’s shoulder. ‘But what practical use is it?’

  ‘None at all. It’s an ornament, a typical Caeanic conceit. Though there’s a little more to it. Sometimes it modifies the “reflected” image, and occasionally quite drastically. The effect can be pretty scary if you don’t know how it’s done. But it still doesn’t invent or add anything. It brings out latent qualities, points out what the human eye might miss.’

  The other speakers edged forward, staring at the mirror. ‘So what’s this got to do with Caean?’

  Estru gripped the mirror, his eyes going dreamy. ‘What if Caean is trying to turn itself into such a mirror … trying to lose its specific human consciousness …’ He shook his head, aware that he was floundering.

  Mast laughed mockingly.

  At that moment Estru spotted Alexei Verednyev hovering nearby. A sudden ruthlessness flitted across his features.

  ‘Here, Alexei, take a look at yourself.’

  ‘No, I don’t like mirrors –’ Alexei, however, could not avoid the shimmering oval surface as it was thrust before his face. For a moment he stared, his expression still wooden, before he turned aside with an agonized cry.

  ‘What’s wrong, Alexei?’ Mast said with concern. But the Sovyan turned his back on them all and went stumbling through the door. Mast moved to follow him, then changed his mind.

  ‘Now that wasn’t very nice,’ he said accusingly to Estru.

  ‘Forget it, he needs these shocks as part of his treatment. Besides, it was an interesting result. I saw what showed in the mirror.’

  ‘Oh? And what did show in the mirror?’

  ‘A metal space helmet. Verednyev’s face wasn’t there at all.’

  Estru’s co-workers, embarrassed by the incident, looked away and began to inspect some Caeanic garments that hung in a mobile rack. The clothes had been obtained during their last stop. By now the Callan had a big enough store of them to go into business, Mast thought.

  ‘Everything we pick up lately is made of Prossim,’ one of the sociologists said, fingering the cloth of a tabard. ‘The locals seem to scorn anything else.’

  Unaware that it was his own conduct that had prompted the change of topic, Estru joined in. ‘Caeanics have always prized Prossim,’ he said. ‘It is a remarkable material.’

  ‘But further back in Tzist history fabrics are as varied as styles.’

  ‘A question of cost. Prossim is actually versatile enough to take on any texture, to serve as any other kind of material according to how it’s processed. But it costs a lot. Reputedly it’s grown on some secret planet whose location is known only to the merchants who supply it. Probably the reason why it’s prevalent hereabouts it simply that we are close to the source.’

  He pulled out a suit of the type known as a suit of light. It was a close-fitting set of garments consisting of trousers, a zouave jacket and a pouch-like hat sporting two short horns, one on either side, like stumpy antennae. The suit was resplendent with synthetic gems and gold piping which seemed actually to shine and to cast out dazzling rays.

  ‘Why don’t you try this on, Blanco?’ Estru mused, offering it to the other. ‘Let’s see how it looks.’

  Surprisingly the Ziodeans rarely tried on any of the garments they acquired. Blanco shrugged. ‘All right.’ He slipped out of his clothes and donned the suit with deft movements.

  They all agreed he looked really smart. Immediately he was apparelled his back straightened and his shoulders squared as though of their own accord. His eyes cleared
and seemed to sparkle.

  ‘It really does something for you,’ Estru told him thoughtfully. ‘I had no idea it would – you’ve got the right physique, somehow. How does it make you feel?’

  ‘All right,’ said Blanco in a new confident voice. ‘Fine. Like –’ His eyes took on a far-seeing, penetrating look. ‘Like nothing can be hidden from me–’

  He took a few steps back, dancing away from them, his movements light and nimble. It was as if they saw him on a faulty vidplate which was giving after-image on the highlights. The glittering gems, the glowing goldwork seemed to leave traceries of light in the air, and as he moved he filled the space around him with radiance.

  Amara came striding up from the back of the conference room, her helpers in tow. ‘I see you’ve dealt your own death-blow to your body-image theory, Estru,’ she boomed. ‘Notice how that suit clings to the shape of his body? Proving that the basic image is very much alive in Caean.’ She gave Blanco a sharp glance. ‘Get that rubbish off, Blanco. I’m not having you turn into a subversive.’

  Obediently Blanco disrobed.

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Estru conceded.

  ‘Of course I am. Behind all these garments is the tacit assumption of the naked human form. Any kind of adornment would be redundant without it. Here, I’ll prove it to you – I’ll bet those clothes exert no psychological effect on Verednyev. The basic image is dormant in him. Where is he? I thought I saw him with you just now.’

  ‘He left,’ Estru said. ‘But I’ve already explored that avenue, and you’re quite right about him. He doesn’t respond to Caeanic apparel, or to any kind of apparel – unless you give him a spacesuit.’ He sighed. ‘Well, how have you been getting on?’

  ‘Excellently!’

  She beckoned to all present. ‘I’d like your attention, please. I want everyone to hear this.’