Barrington Bayley - The Garments of Caean

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.’

They crowded round as Amara took up a lecturing stance under the big terminal vidplate at the rear of conference room. Currently the plate showed the elongated curve of Tzist, dramatized so that the inhabited planets stood out as bright blue blobs while the rest was faded to a ghost-like glow.

‘On the evidence of the utterly reliable parameters we have adopted, we have already ascertained that the situation as we find it in Caean is theoretically impossible,’ she asserted. ‘ Ergo , some other factor must be present of which we were unaware. So first, let’s set the problem up in structural terms.’

She inclined her head to the screen, her hand straying to the terminal console. Under her prompting the image began to transform. Arrowed pathways connected up the blue blobs, then these themselves began to shift position, many of them coalescing into one another, so that the whole display bunched itself up and the picture became simplified and formalized.

‘Right. This is Caean reduced to a network of cultural influences,’ Amara explained. ‘Now to identify those influences. The aberration coming from the direction of Sovya should have worked out in this fashion.’

The network had a lozenge shape. From its left-hand vertex a red stain appeared and spread through the connecting pathways. On reaching the middle of the network it began to fade, so that the lozenge’s right-hand quarter was left in its original white – the colour of sociological normalcy in the accepted code. Amara tapped this part of the graph with her baton to emphasize her point.

Then she turned to face them triumphantly. ‘Yet instead of cultural conditions returning to norm we find that the Art of Attire is even more thriving, with new unpredicted features developing. Only one circumstance can explain this. Our original appraisal of Caean can be only half right. The impetus coming from the direction of Sovya is being reinforced by a second impetus coming from the opposite direction. By using the same kind of cultural mapping we have just established roughly whereabouts the source of this impetus lies.’

Amara’s hand went again to the terminal. A green stain began at the lozenge’s right-hand vertex in complement to the red stain, spreading until it met and blended with it, producing a spectrum gradated from buff orange to a murky mauve. ‘There is even a likely candidate planet. Selene, the last Caeanic planet in Tzist and – as it happens – the farthermost from Ziode. So there it is. We repair full-speed to Selene.’

Those who had not helped Amara to arrive at this conclusion stared in fascination at the diagram. There could be little doubt of the cogency of her logic. Remarkable as it was, the thesis answered the facts.