The Garments of Caean Page 9

  ‘A thousand years ago Earth was still the focus of political power for the whole of mankind. By that time there had already been a great spread of activity throughout the galaxy, and there was a great rivalry between various nations, but all those nations were Earth nations. This seems odd to us, of course. We are used to thinking of a nation as something consisting of many planets, hundreds of planets as likely as not, and for a number of autonomous cultures to coexist on the same globe strikes us as contradictory. Yet this was the case on Earth, not only prior to the galactic expansion but for some decades afterwards. And despite their small base many of these Earth-rooted nations managed to retain their power during the initial years of galactic exploitation, and not only that but actually to increase it.

  ‘Two such national powers were the USSR – also called Russia – and Japan. There had always been a traditional feud between these two countries. At the time we are speaking of they had managed to be at war with one another in various parts of the galaxy for nearly a hundred years – including, for a brief time, in the Tzist Arm. Perhaps they felt themselves to be over-extended here, for apparently they withdrew. But it seems certain that in the process both sides left behind them sizeable pockets of personnel and equipment, cut off and marooned, with no way of getting home, right here where we are now. How did this happen? We’ll never know. Perhaps this tiny system was simply overlooked in the drama and confusion of the withdrawal. Perhaps the task forces fighting here were thought to have been destroyed.

  ‘Most human beings would have seen no alternative but to die in such a hopeless situation. This system is not a fit abode for human life. There are no habitable worlds. There is only one planet where man can set foot at all – Shoji, a tiny world a short distance sunward of here. These old enemies, however, were both of them peoples possessed of an unusual tenacity. They both developed remarkable, though different, adaptations to their circumstances. And they both, after a fashion, survived.

  ‘The Russian survival tactic we have already seen in the society of the suit-people. The Japanese solution was something else again. They were already in possession of Shoji, fifteen hundred miles in diameter, arid, cold, with a thin unbreathable atmosphere, and totally inhospitable. To survive these horrid conditions the Japanese “cyborgated” themselves, that is to say, they redesigned the human body, blending it with artificial machine-organs.’

  She played the cyborg pictures again. ‘Respiratory, vascular and homeostatic systems have all been entirely replaced, and there have been serious inroads also into the nervous and hormonal systems. Remarkable as it seems, these modifications can adapt the human organism to the most unlikely of environments, including the void, without any need of protective covering. The surface of Shoji is their natural habitat, but they make frequent forays into space, usually in order to attack the descendants of the Russians – that is to say, the suit-people.

  ‘Alexei Verednyev has not been too forthcoming about cyborg life, but what details I have gleaned from him are fascinating. The cyborg ethos would seem to be a fairly direct derivative of certain strains of Earth Japanese culture, going on what little we know of the latter. Here we have a yakusa bonze.’

  She stopped the tape at the picture of the cowled figure on the space raft. ‘A bonze is a religious priest; yakusa originally meant gangster. Religion and gangsterism seem to have gone hand in hand in Japan; a yakusa organization led by a Buddhist abbot once forcibly took over the Japanese government. Though it’s rather hard to say whether the cyborgs still have religion, the individual in the cowl is doubtless by way of being a “warrior monk” wielding considerable power.

  ‘The cyborg culture is fanatical and aggressive. To a cyborg, death means nothing. Suicide missions against enemies – which necessarily means the suit-people, of course – are traditional. It’s a pity we can’t take time off to investigate them fully, but that would be too lengthy a digression from our main task. We lack so much of the starting data, anyway. We don’t even have a record of the Japanese language, for instance.’

  Captain Wilce interrupted in surprise. ‘Why is that, Amara? After all, you can speak Russian well enough.’

  Amara smiled indulgently. ‘Most aboriginal Earth cultures are a closed book to us, as it happens. Remember that cultures tend to be mutually exclusive; they don’t like being crowded together on one planet. When the expansion into the galaxy took place they demonstrated their natural magnetic repulsion for one another. They separated out on a large scale. Our knowledge of ancient Earth is confined mostly to the culture called the Euro-American, from which both Tzist and Ziode are descended. There must also be regions of the galaxy dominated by the Japanese, the Arabs, the Afros and so on – all peoples with whom we have no contact. The cyborgs are an oddity, a remnant of a war the Japanese lost.’

  The screen died as she switched off the playback.

  ‘Now let’s see what we can deduce from these facts. Although we have no proof of it as yet, I think we can take it for granted that at some date in the past some of the suit-people escaped from this system and migrated farther along the Tzist Arm. Possibly they managed to build a relativistic drive, or perhaps Sovya was discovered by later explorers who took them along as passengers or captives. In time the suit-people abandoned their suits and colonized habitable planets, becoming human again. They became, in fact Caeanic civilization; there is little doubt that the Sovyan phenomenon is the source of the entire Caeanic aberration!’

  Her words provoked a stir among the ship’s officers. ‘You mean the Caeanics are all descendants of these Sovyans?’ Navigator Hewerl asked.

  ‘No, not all by any means. The Sovyans were the first settlers, the cultural matrix to which later migrants had to conform. This is usually the case when new territories are opened up. The first culture to arrive pre-empts all options and absorbs later arrivals. In the process some watering-down of the original aberration occurs of course, but – God, you can imagine what it must have been like when the Sovyans first came out of their suits.

  ‘Well, there it is. Everything we find bizarre and exaggerated in Caeanic mentality can be traced back to the time when their Sovyan forebears, the prototype Caeanics, buried themselves in their space canisters. The correspondence really is quite remarkable in all details. The Sovyans replaced the natural body form with an artificial exterior – ergo the Caeanics are obsessed with bodily covering. To the Sovyans the natural body is physically repulsive – as repulsive, in fact, as we find our own intestines – ergo the Caeanics have a horror of nudity.’

  She paused. ‘Another aspect of this business is also quite interesting. Although the Sovyans have conditioned themselves to see their machine-nature as beautiful, and have arrogated to the human body the distaste we would feel for our internal organs, it’s doubtful if the brain’s instinctive levels can ever really forget what a human being should look like. It’s worth nothing that, for the sake of his sanity, a suit-man must avoid looking at his organic body. The danger is probably that he will subconsciously recognize the body as his real body, repulsive as it is. Along with this would come the repressed knowledge of what was done to that body in the collective past. So we have self-disgust, and for another reason, racial guilt all in the same emotional charge. I needn’t enlarge on the implications of that.’

  ‘A version of original sin, as it were?’ Captain Wilce said.

  She nodded to him, politely amused.

  ‘Is that why the suit-people hate the cyborgs so much?’ someone else asked. ‘Because the cyborg body stimulates this subconscious memory?’

  ‘They have good practical reasons for hating them, also. But it explains the totally irrational element in that hatred, yes.’

  ‘Do you think the Caeanics themselves know how they originated?’

  ‘I’m quite confident that they don’t know, which already gives us an advantage over them – an advantage we must learn to exploit. So unless there are further questions we can now discuss our future programme. Firs
t we must investigate Sovyan society as thoroughly as we can, then we must travel farther along the Tzist Arm and try to trace out the pattern of the early settlements. I have no doubt that as we research the worlds stretched out between here and central Caean we shall unearth the cultural bones and fossils – the customs, mores and mythologies – that will show us how the mentality of the suit-people evolved into the Art of Attire.’

  She frowned. ‘But first we have a little problem. We have to gain the co-operation of the suit-people in Domashnabaza – that’s what they call the ring system encircling Sovya. It’s proving a difficult enough job to win the trust of Verednyev, though I’m slowly bringing him round. In view of our closer resemblance to the cyborgs, our reception there is likely to be anything but friendly.’

  There was silence for a while. Suddenly Estru’s lined face puckered with amusement. ‘There isn’t any problem, Armara. We’ll go out to meet them in spacesuits – those big jobs, self-propelled with plenty of armour and opaque face-plates. Provided we don’t let them see the interior of the Callan, the Sovyans will take us for a species cognate to themselves, not to the cyborgs.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Amara replied slowly. ‘All we have to do is keep them out of the Callan and represent ourselves as “metalloids” like them. But it means we won’t be able to use Verednyev as a liaison, as I had intended. We’ll have to keep him under wraps or he’ll blow the gaff on us.’

  ‘So we are to keep him prisoner,’ Captain Wilce said gravely.

  ‘It’s better we retain control of him for a while. I’ve put in a lot of work on him.’

  ‘Presumably we are going to let him go eventually,’ Navigator Hewerl added uneasily.

  ‘Any more questions?’ Amara snapped.

  But Hewerl would not let go. ‘What do we say to his people about him? They must know we have him – there was a witness to his capture. They’ll want to know where he is.’

  ‘The cyborgs …’ Amara began, then checked herself. She disliked this kind of interrogation. ‘I’ll handle that point when we come to it. Doubtless Verednyev will still be able to play some sort of role in our dealings. Right, then, everything’s settled. If Captain Wilce is agreeable we can make the move at the beginning of the next shift.’ She raised her eyebrows to Wilce, obtaining his nod. ‘So get a good night’s sleep, everyone. We have a busy day tomorrow.’

  Abruptly she turned and departed through a door to her left. The briefing was over.

  You had to hand it to Amara, Estru thought. She was overbearing, but she brought results.

  There had been a time when he had privately scorned the whole idea of searching for pre-Caeanic origins. Yet here they were, right on target, suited up and smack in the middle of the Caeanic prototype – a prototype that was as unsuspected as it was incredible.

  He and Amara emerged from the mouth of a caverned-out asteroid where they had been inspecting a food factory. Accompanying them was Sarkisov, their Sovyan guide. His bulking metal form waited patiently on the threshold while they paused to take in the view once more.

  It was quite a sight. All around them were the spreading fields of rock and ice chunks, a seemingly limitless labyrinth that shifted and slid together as the rings orbited, creating the illusion of grottoes and deep canyons constantly merging and melting into one another. It was the constant motion that made the perfect silence so eerie, Estru thought. And then there was the light – a limpid, soft, lucid radiance which made the fragmented rock and ice glow, which was sent endlessly spearing and reflecting through the apparent infinity of slowly dissolving grottoes.

  Sovya, the gas giant, filled more than a third of the sky, her vast globe glimmering, glinting and flashing with the storms exploding deep within her atmosphere. Compared with that angry, raging world the airless realm of the rocks was calm and idyllic, a paradise that was to the suit-people what meadows, forests and lush watered valleys were to planet dwellers.

  What Estru thought of as the eternal silence of the rings was in one sense spurious, however. It did not extend to the world of human intercourse: on the radio wavebands Domashnabaza was alive with talk. Yet a casually traversing eye might have failed to notice the Sovyan civilization at all, given the rings’ span of two hundred thousand miles. Only if one knew exactly what to look for did the miracle make itself evident. Estru, turning up his helmet’s vid magnification, could pick out the larger, asteroid-sized rocks that had been converted into permanent caves, platforms and casemates, many of them sculpted into elegant shapes. Some maintained group formations by automatic course adjustment. Others were linked together by chains. Many carried powerful steel buffers to absorb the shock of the collisions that frequently occurred, albeit gently, as the rocks drifted along. Also visible were metallic glints that were crowds of suit-men on the move. A large glint, intermittently visible as the rocks shifted, was the Callan.

  Amara, encased like himself in a brass-coloured, heavily armoured spacesuit, spoke to their metalloid guide.

  ‘Ochen interesno. Nu, mozhete nam pokazat dyetkiye sady?’

  With difficulty Estru followed her Sovyan Russian: ‘Very interesting, but how about letting us see the nurseries?’

  Sarkisov’s reply was deep-bellied and indignant. ‘Takiye lichnye veshchi nye ochen piyatno smotret!’ ‘Such matters are not pleasant to see, or for our eyes!’

  Estru sighed. Determined to keep treading on taboos, Amara had persisted in her impudent demands throughout their stay in Domashnabaza (literally, Homebase). She had even pressed to be shown the hospitals – a suggestion which to the Sovyans was nauseating.

  She just didn’t seem to appreciate, either, that her metalloid disguise was far from perfect and that to the Sovyans she was a far from reassuring sight. The Ziodean suits measured only seven feet in height as compared with the Sovyans’ twelve, so that they must have resembled fantastic little goblins in Sovyan eyes. There were other physical differences, too. The Ziodean helmet was quite different from the Sovyan head, which was a robotic type of structure lacking any organic content. Even more discerning, from the Sovyans’ point of view, must have been the fact that the Ziodean spacesuits possessed legs, which were quite redundant in a purely spatial environment.

  Estru did not blame them for becoming both exasperated and suspicious. Several times they had asked to see Alexei Verednyev, and were far from satisfied with Amara’s evasive explanations as to why he did not appear.

  Peremptorily the huge suit-man motioned them along the lip of the food asteroid’s slot-like opening. While Amara continued to argue, Estru taped in his recorder and added notes to his running commentary.

  ‘Life in the rings is highly mobile. Although there is no weather, leaving aside bursts of solar radioactivity, and therefore no proper need of shelter, the Sovyans maintain private dwellings which have propulsors and can move about the rings at will, each emitting a coded radio address by which it can be located at any time, thanks to a public triangulation service.

  ‘The economy of the rings is centrally directed and rests on communal decisions alone. Food, fuel, artifacts and services are distributed free, every individual sharing in their production as a matter of obligation. This unusual arrangement possibly springs from the early Russian economy, which also prized group activity above individual enterprise. On the other hand it could have arisen as the best answer to the difficulties of wresting survival from extra-planetary surroundings.

  ‘We have found out why it is that the metalloids frequently emit UHF. It seems that these emissions are emotional, non-verbal communications. The Sovyans, of course, are unable to communicate by facial expression, possessing nothing you would care to own as a face. We surmise that these UHF transmissions compensate for this deficiency.’

  He broke off as Amara suddenly spoke to him. ‘Sarkisov is getting hostile,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’ve pushed him too far?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘He’s been going on about Verednyev again. Claims we’ve got him in
a Faraday cage!’ She sounded annoyed.

  ‘We have got him in a Faraday cage,’ Estru said resignedly. ‘If you think we’re in danger I’ll call Captain Wilce.’

  She seemed not to have heard him. ‘There’s something going on,’ she said excitedly. ‘I think he’s talking to someone a long way off. See if you can pick it up, Estru.’

  Obediently he tuned his receiver, more elaborate than hers, up and down the scale, trying to find the wavelength Sarkisov was using. Whistlings and hummings, together with momentary babbles of Sovyan Russian, the living background of the rings, assailed his ears. Finally he pin-pointed a transmission which appeared to be beamed directly this way. Several voices were speaking on it, but from the rapid talk he picked out one repeated word.

  Kiborg – Kiborg – Kiborg.

  Cyborg!

  Abruptly the voices stopped. Sarkisov’s head section rotated slightly, as though searching the sky.

  Amara spoke up brightly in Sovyan. ‘Well then, we’d be interested in seeing some more public utility installations. What about—’ But Sarkisov cut her off.

  ‘Instead I would like to see the inside of your installations, the Callan,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘Well, it’s difficult …’ she said slowly.

  ‘Where is the difficulty? Our comrade Alexei Verednyev is already there – as a prisoner!’

  ‘No, no, not a prisoner,’ objected Amara. ‘He is with us by choice. You have spoken to him!’

  ‘He speaks only when you take him out of the Faraday cage. The rest of the time you keep him in the cage so we cannot hear him. What would you tell us if he could speak freely?’

  ‘He is not in a Faraday cage,’ Amara lied.

  ‘I will tell you what I think,’ the Sovyan said calmly. ‘You have told us you are our cousins, creatures like us from a far star. We have accepted your word and answered your questions, expecting to learn of your people in return. But perhaps you have deceived us. It is possible you are cyborgs wearing body-masks, seeking to trick information on Domashnabaza out of us.’