The Garments of Caean

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. Blurrily 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.’

He jerked to his feet, angular, lithe and saturnine. ‘Now don’t be so unreasonable, Peder. Everything is going splendidly! Try to snap out of this silly mood. I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep now. I’ll call on you again this afternoon and we’ll go to the storehouse together.’

Sick with frustration, Peder watched them leave.

Mast hummed softly to himself as his Cauredon saloon car, chauffeured by Castor, slid away from the kerb and whispered through the nearly empty streets.

Grawn, in the back of the car with him, spoke in a gruff voice. ‘Why are you bothering with that creep, Realto? Heave him over the side, that’s what I say. He’s a comedown.’

‘Hmm, maybe,’ Mast replied patiently. ‘But we need him for the evaluation. Never sell anything until you know what it’s worth.’

‘So? He’s not the only goddam tailor in town, for Chrissake. Buy another.’

‘There is the question of secrecy… but you have a point, Grawn. It might be as well to remove the merchandise from Forbarth’s reach. That, at least, should secure his co-operation!’

He tapped on the window separating them from Castor. ‘A change of plan, Castor! Drive to the warehouse!’

Castor pulled on the steering rod. The car swerved round a corner, then proceeded south.

Mast leaned back in satisfaction. ‘He’ll soon realize he’s been bucking the wrong league,’ he said confidently.

Unable to return to his bed, Peder paced the room in an agony of vacillation. He didn’t know what to do!

Eventually he sat down despairingly, his head on his hand. In the end he would give in to Mast, he supposed. But where would that lead him?

To Ledlide, the prison planet, most likely.

For half an hour he must have sat there, until eventually the Frachonard suit began to come into his thoughts. It was getting light outside, and he might as well make a start to the day.

And today, of course, was the day of the Frachonard Prossim suit.

The great occasion of trying on the suit should be approached with care and respect. He washed slowly and powdered himself, and ate a leisurely breakfast before choosing his accessories: a lemon-coloured shirt with ruffled front and piped cuffs, silk underpants with a flowered pattern in gold thread, hand-knitted socks of real lambswool, and shoes of soft black leather with gold buckles.

His heart pounding with anticipation, he descended to his workshop and donned the accessories there. Momentarily, his hands trembled.

Then he reached for the hanger and dressed himself in the Frachonard suit, feeling instantly its electrifying effect.

Wonderful, wonderful! It fitted as well as if Frachonard had measured him up for it personally. The waistcoat was a superb personality support, making him feel erect, strong and alert. The trousers were lank and only slightly flared, like the fairings of a transsonic rocket, and gave him the extraordinary feeling of being long-legged and energetic. Under the prompting of this feeling he strode from one side of the cellar to the other and back again, the jacket’s subtlety of line helping to control his movements, eliminating the slight awkwardness of gait that normally plagued him.

Stopping to view himself in the full-length mirror, he felt the suit appropriating his personality, taking it over and remedying its defects, forming his new interface with the exterior world. Here was a new Peder Forbarth, upright, rational and aware, the kind of Forbarth he liked to imagine, now in possession of his latent qualities. Even his face was artfully transformed. The same open, pleasant-enough expression was there, but the eyes held a new directness. The pliability and vacillation were gone, to be replaced by an unmistakable air of ability. Even the pudginess of jowl, which before had given an impression of weakness, now reappeared as the full-fleshed look of someone who had learned how to make his way in the world.

How could anyone attired in a Frachonard suit gainsay the tenets of Caeanic philosophy? Man’s naturally evolved form was adventitious, lumpy and incomplete, and it did not fit his creative inner powers. If he was to exteriorize these dormant inner powers then he must acquire the appropriate interfaces with reality. Only then could he confront the universe in his true garb, become the creature of effective thought and action he should be, and experience all possible realms of existence.

But the evolution of his physical form beyond the status of the hairless ape could not be left to blind biological forces. It had to be done by conscious art. In a word, it was to be accomplished by means of raiment.

As he gazed upon his image these ideas, which previously he had never taken seriously, carrying as they did the taint of foreign subversion, struck him with full force. With every glance he discovered dazzling new effects. He thought he saw in the mirror’s depths the foreshadowing of the future god-man, fearlessly apparelled, flashing through the galaxies, impinging by virtue of his glorious vesture on any circumstance. Who could compare such splendour with the sodden clay that was unclothed man?

An ecstatic thought came to him. He was now the best-dressed man in Ziode; and presumably, among the five best-dressed men in Ziode and Caean put together, Frachonard having made only five Prossim suits.

He was, therefore, one of the five best-dressed men in the universe.

He seemed to go dizzy, the room spinning and the harmonic colours of the suit becoming momentarily kaleidoscopic.

The delirium left him as he turned away from the mirror. All at once he realized that the problem that had plagued him minutes before was trivial. There was no need to make an issue of Mast’s scheming obliqueness. It would be a simple matter for Peder to take his cut of the proceeds in kind, disposing of it as he saw fit, and severing all connection with his partners. Mast could then do as he liked.

He went back upstairs and dialled for an autocab, taking out three large suitcases from his storeroom while he waited for it to arrive.

All would be well. He stood in front of his shop, looking up through the plate window. The sun had already risen, but on Harlos the stars remained visible until several hours after dawn. The Ziode Cluster covered nearly half the purplish-green sky, a giant fluorescent puff-ball with a hazy atmosphere of less closely-packed suns. Among the thousands of stars in that puff-ball, nearly a hundred inhabited planets made up the Ziode nation. Beyond it could be discerned the rainbow-like wisp of the Tzist Arm; beyond that, the rest of the galaxy made an even dimmer background to it all.

He thought of the future man, transformed by raiment, who would one day rule that galaxy. The evolution of the transformed man would take a long time – thousands of years, even – but one thing was certain. He would spring from Caean, not Ziode.

The autocab drew up outside. Minutes later he was riding southwards through Gridira’s still nearly-silent streets.

The sleek commercial buildings fled by. Soon the cab entered an outer ring of high-rise habitat tenements where the sky disappeared intermittently behind the criss-cross of overhead dwellings. After half an hour he was in the garden suburb of Cadra, whose streets were shaded by willow and bouquet trees.

He wound down the window, bringing the perfume of the trees clean and fresh on the morning air. But he frowned as the autocab came to a stop at the maisonette rented by Mast. A manual-control Cauredon – Mast’s car – was parked outside. The door to the side garage was raised, and inside he could see someone loading bundles into the van kept there.

He left the autocab and padded down the driveway. ‘So!’ he exclaimed in a ringing voice. ‘A fine trustworthy accomplice I teamed up with!’

Unabashed, with slow careful movements, Mast emptied the armful of garments he held into the back of the van. ‘I too, it seems, have made a bad choice of partner,’ he said pensively. ‘What are you doing here, Peder?’

Peder spluttered. ‘I guessed what you were up to and came to put a stop to it!’

‘Remarkable foresight,’ Mast commented. ‘What are those suitcases I see on your luggage rack?’

Their arms filled with clothing, Castor and Grawn emerged through a side door leading from the house. ‘Put those garments back at once!’ Peder stormed. Poker-faced, they ignored him and dumped their burdens unceremoniously in the van.

Peder followed all three of them into the house. The Caeanic apparel lay neatly stacked against the walls of the storeroom, or hung in racks Peder had erected. While Castor and Grawn continued their hurried transfer of the hoard, Mast looked Peder coolly up and down.

‘I see you’re wearing your new suit, Peder. It makes a new man of you. A new man altogether.’ Mast seemed thoughtful.

Peder in turn regarded Mast, appraising the Ziodean suit he wore. At one time his stylish taste had impressed him. Now all his clothes – apart from the Caeanic titfer, of course – seemed unbelievably grubby. His dress was merely a shabby form of self-advertising; it had nothing in common with the true Art of Attire as it was understood in Caean.

He was sure Mast’s tendency to meddle with plans already well-laid was a basic flaw in his character. Imagining he was looking through the eyes of a Caeanic sartorial, he began to speculate how he would repair the deficiency. He would prescribe garments making for care and caution, as a counterbalance to the initiative and enterprise Mast already possessed in abundance.

An idea came to him. What if he could select the appropriate items from among their haul?… but the idea was unfeasible. Mast would never co-operate. And Peder, for his part, was not a Caeanic sartorial and lacked the necessary insight.

He found his voice again. ‘May I ask what is the meaning of all this?’ he demanded. ‘I’d like to know what excuse you can offer for trying to rob me of everything!’

‘A precautionary measure only, Peder,’ Mast replied easily. ‘I wished to remove the merchandise to a safe place so as to forestall the possibility of theft. I can now, it seems, congratulate myself on my wisdom.’

‘You are mistaken – I came to steal nothing,’ Peder claimed. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t like the way you are handling things. I want to take my share in kind, to sell on my own account. The rest can be yours.’ He paused. ‘I’ll be satisfied with sufficient to bring me in, say, a hundred thousand units. A modest enough demand, all things considered.’

‘Very well, Peder,’ Mast said slowly, ‘I agree. On one condition. Give me a valuation of the remainder, even if only a rough one. I have to have some idea of what I’m offering Jadper.’

Peder hesitated, stroking his chin and looking around him. ‘They are worth whatever one can get for them,’ he said dubiously. ‘That’s why I was anxious to dole them out one by one. Jadper himself probably won’t get as good a total price as I would, in the long run…’

Mast snapped his fingers to Grawn who had just reentered. ‘Grawn, go and get Peder’s cases from the autocab standing outside, will you?’

Peder began looking through the store, selecting a garment here and there.

‘I’m putting a lot of trust in you,’ Mast murmured. ‘Only you know the worth of the items you’re taking.’

‘I am an honest man,’ Peder declared. ‘I keep my bargains.’

Carrying the bulky suitcases, Grawn ambled back into the room. Peder packed away his choices carefully, snapping each case shut as it was filled.

Finally he was satisfied and stood up. ‘Don’t accept less than five million,’ he told Mast quietly. ‘Better if you can get six.’

‘All right.’ Mast offered his hand. ‘Then our association would appear to be at an end.’

Peder shook hands. ‘To our mutual benefit, I hope.’

‘Of course.’

But still Peder lingered. ‘You know,’ he said diffidently, ‘there are garments here that could work wonders for you. Why don’t you let me?… after all, you’ve never exactly been a mezzak.’ Mezzak was a Caeanic word meaning ‘one who dresses like a baboon’.

Smiling, Mast shook his head. ‘I’ll be frank, Peder. There’s another reason why I’d just as soon off-load. I’ve begun to feel uneasy about holding on to them for too long, though not from any legalistic angle.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, you know what they call the Caeanics, don’t you – clothes robots. This sort of gear gives me an odd feeling. There’s something un-Ziodean about them.’

‘Prejudice, prejudice. Typical Ziodean xenophobia!’

Mast shrugged. ‘Call it what you like. I simply have fixed ideas about what’s healthy. I believe one should stand on one’s own feet and walk without crutches.’

Inwardly Peder sighed. Poor Mast. Dressed in rags and tatters, imagining he was adequate. He had put his finger on the difference between Ziodean and Caeanic cultures, of course. The Ziodean ethos stressed individualism and self-dependence. It was diametrically opposed to the artificial augmentation of qualities and abilities such as occurred on Caean.

All of which, Peder now knew, implied a serious misunderstanding not only of the Caeanic sartorial art, but also of man’s psychological nature.

He turned to Castor and Grawn, who were standing grinning at him crookedly. ‘Well, goodbye then, chaps,’ he said.

‘Yeah, have fun,’ responded Castor, his reconstituted eyes glittering.

As he departed, Peder heard their muffled sniggers behind him.

‘Looks like Peder can pull himself together after all, when he has to,’ Castor sneered when the sartorial had gone.

‘You noticed it too, did you?’ Mast remarked. ‘His change of manner? There’s a word for that. It’s called mien. The Caeanic suit does that for him.’

He fell into thought. It had been on board the Costa that he had first begun to have second thoughts about the garments. Castor and Grawn, bedizened in their new finery, had suddenly started to adopt uncharacteristic mannerisms – nothing all that drastic, initially anyway, but enough to persuade him that Caeanic wear was as much a risk to one’s mental health as it was said to be. He had forbidden them to wear anything but Ziodean clothes ever since.

He looked up. ‘Take the rest of the stuff out to the van, fellows. We’ll move out anyway, just in case.’

He hoped the fence would soon take this junk off his hands.

The morning was now bright and full. Peder relaxed contentedly, gazing through the autocab window as Cadra went speeding past him.

How easy it was to solve problems!

But he would never have done it without the Frachonard suit – Mast, he believed, would not have allowed it. Peder would have dithered, would have felt impelled to go along with whatever Mast decided.

Even as he talked to Mast new horizons had opened up before him. Business possibilities which he had been too timid to spot until now became visible all around him. He would soon be moving out of Tarn Street. Zoide was his playground.

Which was as it should be, for a member of a galactic elite, one of the best-dressed men in the universe.