The Garments of Caean Read online

  They were cutting into his body! Alexei struggled and screamed, but these creatures were remorseless. Soon they had sliced through his outer skin and he saw his innards revealed. His consciousness reeled. And then they cut him open to reveal the inmost innards, and in the final moment of trauma in which he finally passed out, he saw in the mirror the pale worm-thing which he had never seen before, as unprotected as when he had first been born.

  3

  The most prestigious occupation in Caean is, of course, the sartorial’s. As a profession it entirely supplants the functions of psychiatrist, priest and moulder of public opinion, none of which exist in their own right in Caean. If someone has a problem, he consults his sartorial, who runs up garments to help him find his own way out of his difficulties.

  Despite this, Caeanic tailoring is not necessarily bespoke. No Caeanic would think of limiting himself to the output of a single sartorial, unless he is fortunate enough to have a special relationship with an all-round genius; he demands access to the whole range of the art. Consequently there is massive trade in ready-mades between Tzist planets.

  All garments are, however, hand-made, whether bespoke or not. The mass manufacture of garments on a machine or factory basis could not possibly be envisaged. The very idea is regarded as a horrific barbarity, and Ziodeans, because of their willingness to wear garments so made, are looked on with pity and contempt. A Caeanic’s raiment is his interface with the universe, the sole means by which his existence can be validated and his hidden abilities brought into play, and it is therefore imperative that it should be the work of a single artist who is both designer and executor. A Caeanic sartorial displays a marvellous unity between hand and brain. Using power tools and often working in the heat of inspiration, he is capable of producing a full suit of clothes in minutes, in an astonishing exhibition of skill and originality.

  Caeanics would strenuously deny that their addiction to apparel has anything in common with the use of mood drugs. The Art of Attire is held to be a practical, extrovert method of fulfilling life, and not to rely on introspective mood changes. Arth Matt-Helver (see Travels in the Tzist Arm) believes, however, that the more creative of the Caeanic sartorials are guided by subconscious forces. Hands that cut and stitch are responding to subconscious racial archetypes, which can then possess the wearers of the garments that express them.

  List’s Cultural Compendium

  The cab sped through the streets of Gridira, Harlos’s capital city. Through the tinted windows the vague shapes of the metropolis fled by like angular phantoms, in alternations of light and shade.

  Realto Mast was in an expansive mood. ‘A most satisfactory conclusion to our enterprise, don’t you think, Peder?’ He raised his glass in a salute to his partner, downing the raw green spirit which was all the cab service dispensed.

  Peder sipped his own glass. ‘So far so good,’ was all he would say.

  But on the face of it all was well. The Costa had come down at the same provincial spaceport, used almost wholly by small-time commercial lines, from which they had departed, and was now back in the possession of its owner with an innocent trip to the antipodastral hunting reefs entered in the log. They had been cautious and circumspect about transferring the cargo to Gridira, but the transfer was now being completed by Castor and Grawn, who were storing the Caeanic garments in a suburban house previously rented for the purpose. All that now remained was the disposal of the goods, a leisurely business which would take years and which was to be entirely Peder’s prerogative.

  There was reason, therefore, to feel fairly gratified, and Peder had even begun to forgive Mast his various peccadilloes towards him. The cab stopped at a low entrance framed with jazzy pink and electric-blue mobile light-strips. Peder peered anxiously through the window. He saw a narrow, dusky street, tall buildings rearing up on either side, flickering with dimly glowing lights and signs. He recognized the Mantis Diner, a haunt in a part of Gridira all but inaccessible to the law, which he had visited in Mast’s company once previously.

  ‘Ah, here we are!’ Mast enthused. ‘Come in and let me buy you a drink and some dinner.’

  Peder fumbled unhappily with a hold-all he was carrying. ‘I’ll take the cab home,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I was going straight to my shop in Tarn Street.’

  Mast slapped him jovially on the shoulder. ‘Nonsense! Reticence has always been your downfall, Peder. A success like ours needs celebrating! Besides –’ He tilted his head in a suggestive manner, raising his eyebrows – ‘I may be able to put a bit of business in our direction, and get some of this merchandise off our hands.’

  The thought alarmed Peder. It would be like Mast, in his exhilaration, to do something rash and jeopardize all their carefully laid plans. He hurried with him from the cab, fearful now of leaving him unguarded, and went through the rectangular colour frame into the sleazy, smoky atmosphere of the all-nighter.

  The Mantis Diner had, besides a walk-in restaurant open to the street, a private club whose rules of membership were all the more complicated for being arbitrary. In essence, it was necessary to be trusted by the owner. Mast was, and accordingly had become a member. He led the way through a screen of hanging gew-gaws at the back of the restaurant; after a nod to the doorkeeper they entered a six-foot-tall cylindrical capsule made of rainbow plastic.

  The capsule descended fifty feet into the earth, then moved horizontally for about a quarter of a mile; they were heading into a semi-secret underworld, a world that had learned to protect itself simply by being, literally, underground.

  The elevator in which they rode could not be commandeered by anyone seeking to enter the club uninvited. To raid the Mantis, or any of an unknown number of other clubs and hideouts clandestinely slotted among the legitimate installations beneath Gridira, the police would have had to bore their own tunnel. The cylinder slid to a stop. To the strains of soothing music they stepped into the underground club. It was a markedly different place from the all-night eatery, smelling of grease and sour wine, which they had left behind. The décor was plush, utilizing soft lighting effects, glowing carpets and embossed murals on the walls. Here food of good quality was served by pleasant young women, and the air was never foul or fuggish as it generally was above. Here those members of Gridira’s fringe society who could afford it, and who met the owner’s favour – rich fences, top racketeers, professional embezzlers, shady self-styled entrepreneurs (into which category Mast fell) and numbers of their associates and providers of technical services – could relax in their own special milieu.

  Peder and Mast settled at a small table and ordered a dinner of spiced Protvian grasshoper legs, a delicacy Peder promised himself he would enjoy more often in future. Several people greeted Mast or came to exchange words with him. Peder did not really understand why Mast wanted to bring him here – a privilege never extended to Castor or Grawn. Perhaps it was because so much business was conducted here. It was here that Mast had conceived and planned the Kyre junket. The owner of the Costa was also a habitué of the Mantis. Here Mast had learned of the crashed Caeanic ship, buying the information together with the co-ordinates of the infra-sound planet.

  He had also purchased certain technical assistance here. A short scrawny man with a wizened face, completely naked from head to toe, flung himself into a chair at their table. ‘Hi, Realto, the suit work all right?’

  Devilishly handsome in his Caeanic titfer, Mast tapped the end of his nose and gave a saturnine smile. ‘Well enough, Moil. You should ask Peder here. He was our brave “infranaut”.’ He chuckled.

  Since Moil had manufactured the infra-sound baffled suit, in a sense Peder’s life had been in his hands. The sartorial felt uncomfortable as the technician’s eyes flicked to him, not knowing how much Mast had told him of the purpose behind the project.

  ‘It was a bit hairy, but I survived,’ he said.

  ‘Any of the stuff get through?’ Moil asked him. ‘Got the recorder box on you? I’d like to look it over.’

>   ‘No, sorry, I haven’t,’ Peder said, not realizing until now that there had been a recorder.

  ‘We dumped the suit, I’m afraid, Moil,’ Mast explained apologetically. ‘We didn’t keep anything.’

  Moil nodded absently. ‘Well, let me know if you need anything else,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Always glad to do business.’

  ‘Likewise.’ After he had gone Mast refilled Peder’s glass. ‘Fancy a game, Peder? Cards, or some shuffle? Luck’s with you, I can see.’

  ‘No,’ said Peder, certain by now that Mast was a barefaced, accomplished, habitual cheat.

  One large table in the corner of the diner was separated from the rest of the room by cloth screens. Mast kept glancing at it from time to time, a speculative look crossing his features. Eventually he leaned across to Peder, speaking in a confidential tone. ‘See that screen table, Peder? That’s the permanent booking of the most powerful fence on Harlos. There’s no saying whether he’s here tonight, of course, until you get behind the curtain.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Peder responded desperately, gulping down his wine. But Mast was already on his feet, and oblivious of Peder’s look of ineffectual anxiety, he made his way across the saloon to the tented table. A tall, cadaverous man appeared suddenly from behind the screen and held a brief conversation with him, punctuated by vigorous gestures.

  Mast returned looking excited. ‘Jadper is there, Peder. I haven’t managed to obtain an interview with him yet – but there’s a definite possibility that later in the evening … if so, I want you to come with me. You understand the merchandise; you’ll be able to talk to him.’

  He slurped his wine, unaware of Peder’s nervous strain. ‘You realize what this means? Jadper won’t be interested in bits and pieces. He’ll take the whole load in one go! By this time tomorrow you may be rich!’

  ‘No, no,’ Peder protested in anguish. ‘That’s not how to do it at all. I must sell them slowly, piece by piece over a period of years, through my contacts in the trade. That way they’ll enhance their value. This is already agreed, Realto.’

  Mast arched his eyebrows. ‘How long must I wait to recoup my capital? You are too amateurish, Peder, one doesn’t do things like that at all if one can help it. The thing is to make quicker gains to invest in new projects.’ He lowered his tone. ‘I haven’t mentioned this before, but I know a way to tap the main root of the sap-oil forest on Tundora. The outlay is rather expensive, but we can draw off a substantial quantity of fluid before being detected, and it can be sold immediately at a large profit, no questions asked.’ He tapped Peder on the knee. ‘Come in with your share from selling the garments, and in a few months you’ll get it back tenfold. What do you say to that?’

  ‘No,’ Peder said. ‘I’m not in your line of business. I’m a sartorial, and that’s all I ever want to be. I’m sticking to our agreement.’ He folded his arms stubbornly.

  ‘Are you aware of how risky it is to be in possession of Caeanic apparel?’ Mast reminded him, wide-eyed. ‘Leave it to the fences, the professionals. They take the risk, and they don’t mind hanging on to the goods for a year or two.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Peder said in a surly tone. Part of his resentment stemmed, in fact, from the prospect he had been savouring of doling out the merchandise to avid customers culled from all over Ziode; discriminating elegantors who would pay almost anything for such treasures as a pair of Caean-cut breeches or a Prossim cheviot.

  Mast was undergoing one of his dangerous bouts of over-confidence. It had been a mistake to come to the Mantis, Peder thought. Without him Mast would make no move; he needed his expertise.

  Peter had initially been seduced by Mast’s glamorous aura of privateering, even imagining – falsely – that they were kindred souls; that the care Mast took to be a snappy dresser meant he was seriously interested in the sartorial art. But he was wrong in that, and he did not have the nerve to go along with the man’s compulsive opportunism.

  He jumped to his feet in a near-panic. ‘I’m going home,’ he said bluntly. ‘I have as much at stake in this as you do. I’m using my right of veto.’

  ‘You do not have as much at stake in it!’ Mast exclaimed, leaning back and looking up at him. ‘Who paid for the co-ordinates, hired the Costa, had the baffle suit made? Your own expenditure has been nil – and your share in the proceeds, correspondingly, is minor. Or had you forgotten that?’

  ‘I risked my life,’ Peder reminded him icily. ‘You didn’t – or ever intend to.’

  Clutching his hold-all, he went stumbling for the rainbow plastic elevator. As it rushed him to the Mantis Diner’s greasy street-front, he hoped vacillatingly that he had not hurt Mast’s feelings.

  It was midnight when he arrived in Tarn Street, and the stars of the Ziode Cluster blazed overhead, a spangled ceiling to the city’s night-glow. Peder unlocked his small shop, The Sartorial Elegantor, and stepped quietly within.

  The closeted smell of cloth greeted him. In his imagination the populations of garments huddled on their racks, like a close-packed army on parade, seemed to welcome him. He brushed through them in the near darkness and descended a few steps to his cellar workshop, switching on the light.

  Neatly arrayed before him in the cramped space were the tools of his trade: the pressing board, the dummies, the slender bodkins, the array of power needles for stitching and seaming in hundreds of different ways, the fibril-loom – a hand-held machine for joining cloth so that there was no seam. Another machine wove individual suits from the ground up, starting from reels of yarn, a procedure which ostensibly was personal tailoring, the sartorial sitting at the control board and feeding in instructions; but one which Peder rarely used – the work was too remote from the hands, it was something borrowed from a factory.

  His eye fell on the half-completed garments bedecking the walls, and as he compared them mentally with the contents of the hold-all he carried Peder smiled the bitter-sweet smile of an artist who knows he is inferior, knows he is in the presence of a creativity transcending all he could aspire to.

  And yet he would have to summon up what talents he did possess, for judging by his first hasty examination of it the Frachonard suit was a trifle too large for him, and would have to be adjusted. The thought of adjusting the work of a Frachonard sent prickles down his spine, but it would have to be done if the suit was to be his own.

  He laid the hold-all on the table, and opened it.

  He took out the lavender suède slippers.

  He took out the Frachonard suit.

  Handling it gently, he draped it on a hanger and then stepped back to view it.

  Just as when he had first seen it on the crashed Caeanic spaceship, it took over the whole room. The Frachonard Prossim suit! How annoyed Mast would be to know he had appropriated such a rarity!

  It could well be worth as much as the rest of the haul put together, he reflected. He directed all the consciousness he could muster on to the suit, dazzled by its simple elegance, an elegance which surpassed any he had known or imagined. He rubbed the cloth of a sleeve between his fingers; the texture was impossible to pin down and endlessly fascinating, neither sleek nor rough, somehow combining perfect drape with perfect structurality.

  Caean had thousands of different fabrics, natural and synthetic, but the origin of Prossim was a mystery to Peder. He did not even know if it was grown or synthesized. He only knew that it was rare, and costly, and sublime.

  Suddenly he frowned. Had he been mistaken? The suit now seemed a perfect fit for him. He lifted the panel of the jacket and glanced over the lining, but of course there was no size notation.

  The excitement of the trip must have warped his judgement, he decided.

  He was tired; it had been a long day. Tomorrow he would try on the suit.

  He mounted a staircase to his living quarters above the shop. There he undressed, donned a long crocheted nightgown, and settled into a deep sleep on the divan bed.

  He was woken by the chiming of the door bell. Blu
rrily he rose from his bed and peered out of the bay window. The false dawn limned the outlines of the giant emporia half a mile away. Down below in the street, two figures stood in the porch of his shop, but the light was too indistinct for him to see who they were.

  He descended the narrow stairs to the shop. Thrown against the translucent front door by the street lamps were two silhouettes, one tall and slim, the other lumpy. With a grunt of annoyance Peder hurried through the racks of clothing and unlocked the door.

  Mast and Grawn slid into the shop. ‘Really, Peder, must you keep us in darkness?’ Mast said petulantly. ‘Let’s have some light!’

  Ignoring him, Peder led them through the darkened shop to his apartment upstairs. He turned to face them in his main room, which doubled as a sitting-room and bedroom, feeling slightly ridiculous in his nightgown. Mast found the most comfortable chair and draped himself negligently on it. Grawn simply stood there apishly, mouth ajar.

  ‘What do you want?’ Peder asked. ‘I hadn’t expected to see you so soon.’

  ‘Good news, Peder,’ Mast told him nonchalantly. ‘My stake-out in the Mantis produced results. Well, I didn’t actually get to see Jadper, but I’m visiting his villa next week. The deal is probably on. But to do business with him I’ll need to know what the goods are worth, so could you start evaluating them today, finishing the job by, say, the weekend? I know it’s a lot of work, but worth it …’

  Peder had a presentiment of disaster and groaned inwardly. Mast was going to make a mess of things – he felt sure of it.

  ‘I’ve already told you – I’m sticking to the agreed plan,’ he said with stubborn exasperation. ‘Disposal of the garments was to be in my hands – those were the terms of the project.’

  Mast spoke with sudden sternness. ‘I don’t think you really understand our relationship, Peder. You were never really more than an employee. It’s my operation, and I don’t take orders from you.’