The Garments of Caean

8

Always on awakening lately, Peder was filled with fearful apprehensions, invaded by confused and perturbed thoughts, made to feel abandoned, alone and miserable. But he could never summon the will to make any sense out of his feelings. He could only, as today, stare blankly at the ceiling and move feebly under the covers, terrified of leaving his bed.

Eventually he forced himself to rise and flex his muscles with zombie-like movements, trying to clear his brain of its undeclared war. He had a headache. He took a pill, and padded to the bathroom.

On returning he stood and stared at the Frachonard suit, which hung on a rack near the wardrobe. His face was slack, his body like lead.

‘I own you,’ he said dully, trying to spark life into himself. The thought alone had once been enough to leave him brimming with joy. Now his words seemed cheerless and disappointing.

But the urge to wear the suit was still there. Of late he wore it every day – there was an enormous let-down in wearing anything else. Moving as if drawn by magnetism, he put on undergarments and a suitable shirt, then dressed himself in the superb Prossim cloth, adding slim shoes of soft lavender leather and a cravat to match. He adjusted the garments before the full-length mirror, his eyes flicking here and there.

Suddenly everything zipped into place in his mind. It was like switching on a power supply. The future tumbled through his head, showing him where he was going. He felt invigorated and in command of himself, strong and in his prime.

He gazed for some moments longer at the suit. There were new aspects to it every time he looked at it. Its ingenious lines were always revealing dazzling new effects. He had still not fathomed how the scyes and shoulders had been cut and fitted, for instance. Frachonard had buried secret upon secret in his masterpiece.

It was a pity he was so vulnerable during that short period between waking and dressing, he reflected ruefully. That was the old Peder Forbarth returning and blinking in the light of the renewed Peder Forbarth.

He dialled the service hatch for breakfast.

He was still eating when the door opened. Two men in dark conservative clothes entered uninvited, looking around them warily. It was obvious they were security police. That they had gained access to his private elevator and neutralized the door lock without arousing the building’s watchdog circuit told him that.

‘You Peder Forbarth?’ demanded the taller of the two.

He nodded.

‘Come with us. You’ve got some questions to answer.’ The plain clothes man flashed a card.

‘Quite impossible!’ declared Peder loudly with a flourish of his arm. ‘Whatever your business is, it must be settled right here. Tonight I am to attend the birthday ball of the Third Minister, so there is a great deal to attend to. Will you have some coffee?’ he finished politely.

They glanced at one another, utterly disconcerted. Peder was inwardly complacent. The suit had stalled them. They did not even know why they felt so paralysed, why they had undergone a loss of confidence immediately on entering his presence. It was a phenomenon he had learned to use. People would even disbelieve the evidence of their senses if he wanted them to – provided he was wearing his Frachonard suit.

‘Then may I know your names?’ he asked with an ironic smile.

‘I’m Lieutenant Burdo,’ the tall security man said. He took a folder from his pocket and began shuffling documents. Finally he decided to get on with it. ‘Where were you between the eighty-fifth and hundred-twentieth of last year?’

Peder paused as if searching his memory. ‘I was vacationing on Hixtos part of that time. For the rest of it I was here in Gridira.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Where did you stay on Hixtos?’

‘At the Pearl Diver Hotel in Permerand. It’s on the Holiday Reefs. A big vacation area.’

‘Yes, I know.’ The lieutenant scribbled on a pad. Then he took out a picture of Realto Mast and laid it on the breakfast table. ‘This man disputes your story. He says you were with him, on a star yacht called the Costa.’

‘What would I be doing with him?’

‘You tell us.’

‘All right,’ Peder said, smiling. ‘Probably smuggling Caeanic contraband, the way you read it.’

‘So you admit it.’ It was the other plain clothes man who spoke, his voice determinedly tough.

‘No, of course not. But I did meet this man once, when I used to keep a shop on Tarn Street. He came in there and tried to sell me Caeanic garments.’

‘Did you buy them?’

‘No. I don’t deal in them.’

‘You didn’t inform the authorities.’

‘I should have, I know, but I didn’t want my customers driven away by any publicity. The line of work I was in…’

‘That’s right,’ Lieutenant Burdo said brusquely, ‘you’re a specialist in bizarre and outlandish garments. A freak tailor, the kind who’s always been regarded as a security risk. Usually with good reason.’

The other man waved a hand at the walls. ‘What’s all this, for instance?’

Peder had adorned his lounge with paintings of Caeanic scenes, some fanciful and imaginary, but others depicting identifiable Caeanic landmarks. One such was the famous tower of Quest, built in the shape of a man with outstretched arms, face raised to the sky, wearing a stiff garment trailing finlike structures down from his shoulders to the ground. In the original the tower was five thousand feet high.

It was admittedly embarrassing to have these pictures on show when the security police called. ‘An interest in the bizarre doesn’t necessarily mean approval of it,’ he said.

‘Why would Realto Mast try to implicate you in the smuggling of Caeanic contraband?’ Lieutenant Burdo asked him.

‘Who knows? I dare say the more people he drags down with him the lighter his sentence will be. That’s how justice works these days, isn’t it?’

The lieutenant gave a wry smile. ‘Well, we’ll have to check this out,’ he finished in a more friendly tone. ‘But don’t leave Gridira without permission.’

Peder dialled the service unit to clear the table and rose to his feet, turning to the two men. All his movements had absolute elegance and precision. The suit was still working for him, subjecting the intruders to a subliminal bombardment of line and gesture, fractional poses whose effect on the unwitting perceptions could be remarkable.

‘I am a loyal Ziodean,’ he drawled, ‘and these aspersions affect me unpleasantly…’ He held out an arm and tweaked the cloth of his sleeve. ‘Feel this: good old crabsheep twill, Ziode’s native fabric. If you want someone to vouch for my loyalty, get in touch with the Eleventh Minister.’

‘The Eleventh Minister?’ Burdo repeated.

‘A personal friend. I am also acquainted with the Third Minister, as I have intimated.’

‘Yes, sir, I see,’ Burdo said respectfully. ‘Forgive us for taking up your time…’

After they had gone Peder wondered if his fake alibi would stand up. To cover some of the time he was away with Mast he actually had booked a vacation on Hixtos, but he had given the booking to a customer of his to use in his name.

What did it matter? A man garbed in the art of Frachonard had no cause to fear anything! Even when given incontrovertible evidence of his guilt, even when his increasing obsession with all things Caeanic, his mounting desire to see the Tzist Arm for himself (impossible though that was) was obvious beyond all reasonable doubt, men would still prefer to believe the front he showed them. Even though face to face with a man in a Frachonard Prossim suit, Caean’s highest artform, they would still imagine he was wearing some factory-produced piece of Ziodean wretchedness. That was part of the suit’s genius – its seeming conventionality. It was the perfect disguise. And, at the same time, it became a powerful social weapon.

Peder laughed, and went striding from the penthouse to go confidently about his day’s business.

He arrived fairly late at the birthday ball of Baryonid Varl Vascha, Third Minister to the Directorate. The main mass of the Minister’s palace was hidden from view of the ground by an ascending series of hanging gardens, up which Peder, after tendering his coded invitation, was escorted to the main entrance on the roof. The palace was already thronged with guests and the affair promised to be a splendid one.

But before he could join the revelry he had to wait nearly half an hour in an ante-room to be presented to the Minister. Baryonid Varl Vascha was a thickset man, his grip muscular and firm as he shook hands with Peder, growling a perfunctory greeting. His jet-black hair was greased sideways across his nearly flat pate, and his face wore a habitually ironic, knowing smile. His glance flicked to the present Peder had placed on the gift table: an engraved drinking goblet in gold and tantalum-silver alloy which Peder had commissioned specially.

Peder felt the Minister’s unsettling eyes on his back as he left the audience room. He passed through a wide, brightly-lit connecting passage whose walls were decorated with meandering veins of gold, and set off to explore as much of the palace as had been made available for the occasion.

There was a main ballroom and three subsidiary ballrooms, and in each room music of a different type was being played. In interconnecting salons luxurious food and drink were laid out in such profusion, and footmen were so numerous, that no guest felt any whim unsupplied. Third Minister Vascha had spent a fortune on the arrangements. It could hardly have been otherwise; unstinting extravagance was expected of all high-ranking members of the Directorate, and Vascha was certain to have his eye on the Second and even First Ministerships.

Peder took himself to the radiant main ballroom, where the Master of Ceremonies took his name and bellowed his arrival to the company.

‘Citizen Peder Forbarth!’

Leisurely Peder sauntered beneath the blazing overhead curve of the ceiling, whose golden lights and delicately tinted frescos made a hazy impression of some distant heaven. A number of heads turned at hearing his name, and he began quickly to pick out those he knew and those whom he would take the opportunity to get to know.

Soon he found himself dancing with Aselle Klister, daughter of the Thirtieth Minister, a comely girl with sparkling brown eyes and flushed, peach-like cheeks. Her hair was daringly bouffant and sparkled with diamante. They made a handsome couple as they capered about the floor together, and he knew they were attracting attention.

The orchestra struck up an angular, lively tune. Peder stepped out, long-legged and energetic, and the girl allowed herself to be swept breathlessly after his lead. Peder had never been much of a dancer before he came into possession of the Frachonard suit; now it was as natural to him as flight to a bird.

‘Oh! Such thrilling music!’ she gasped.

‘Yes!’ He whirled her round even faster, and she clung to him, laughing.

When the orchestra stopped playing they stood clapping with the other dancers. Peder gazed around him, taking stock once more of the celebrities present. There was no sign, he noted, of either the Second or First Ministers; none of their aides, servants or representatives seemed to be present. The disdain befitting their station would require that they make only a perfunctory and barely polite appearance at a festival in honour of one who was both their underling and a close rival, and no doubt they had performed this ritual very early in the evening.

Back at the tables Peder gravitated to a group discoursing with Eleventh Minister Severon, a prominent politician already known to him. A few weeks earlier Severon had hinted to Peder that he might find a place for him in the Economic Co-ordination Network, or as he liked to call it, ‘the E-Co-Net’.

Now he was expatiating on the advantages of supervised – in other words bureaucratic – resource allocation as apposed to the free decisions of market-oriented entrepreneurs. ‘It works like this,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘Whenever the government wants something done it can go about it in one of two ways. It can invite tenders, that is to say, it can buy whatever it is it wants on the open market. Or it can interfere with the course of business, dictating which firms will do what. That is the method I favour and which we are putting into effect with the E-Co-Net, and it is the best method, and I will tell you why. Take the first method. Governments invariably have more money than prudence. When a firm finds it has the government for a customer then that government gets swindled for all it’s worth. Now take the second case. Government officials who have the power to dictate to firms will be bribed. Those firms who do not want the work will bribe the officials not to allocate it their way. Firms who can complete the government’s requirements with ease will, for the sake of profit, again bribe the officials. A bribed official takes care to acquaint himself with the business of both ends. He is much more knowledgeable than the honest civil servant living off his salary. He makes a fortune, but the government gets the job done for less money. In a phrase, graft serves the Directorate better than incompetence. What do you say, Forbarth?’

Peder, already aware that corruption and self-seeking were so cynically accepted that they had become an established instrument of administration, was not surprised to hear this rationalization. He had already heard it from Severon’s lips, in a indirect way, when the Minister had insinuated how much good they could do one another once Peder was installed in the E-Co-Net. He laughed suavely. ‘A realistic appraisal, Minister.’ He launched into his own animated version of Severon’s words, arguing that only a man who knew how to do himself some good could do his nation good, and illustrating the argument with countless anecdotes. Severon nodded sagely, his lips curling in amusement. ‘True, Peder, true.’

‘Enjoying the ball, Forbarth, huh?’

Peder was startled to hear the rasping, commanding voice behind him. He turned. Baryonid Varl Vascha stood eyeing him with narrowed brows, as if weighing him up.

He smiled and put on all his charm. ‘An unqualified success, Minister!’

Vascha grunted and lumbered away.

Peder did not allow the Third Minister’s apparent grumpiness to spoil his own enjoyment of the evening. There was plenty here for him to take advantage of. He talked, he drank, he danced, he won the infatuation of Aselle Klister. He did not utter a word or make a move that was not, from the point of view of the social graces, flawless. He moved through the gathering with all the elegance and panache of a gorgeously plumed cock through a barnyard full of hens.

A press photographer moved in and took a shot of him with Aselle clinging to his arm. Directorate officials, including the Thirteenth Minister, and their wives framed the couple.

‘Oh, we’ll be on the newscast tomorrow!’ Aselle giggled.

‘If we’re lucky.’ The newscasts would publish few pictures that did not feature the Third Minister himself.

It was still several hours before dawn when a footman approached Peder and coughed deferentially.

‘The Minister would appreciate a word with you, sir.’

‘With me?’ Peder gazed at him imperiously. ‘Which Minister?’

‘Why, Third Minister Vascha, sir. Would you care to follow me?’

The footman’s face was professionally blank, but Peder was puzzled by his slight stiffness of demeanour, which seemed to betoken something wrong.

He frowned and glanced to where Aselle was talking with her father. Leaving the footman to wait, he stepped over to her.

‘I have been called away for a short while, my dear,’ he said solicitously when he had caught her attention. ‘The Third Minister requests my presence. I hope he will not keep me too long.’

He followed the footman down a broad, winding staircase. While they were leaving the ballroom one of the displays arranged for the evening burst into life. Canisters were opened to release clouds of coloured smoke which wafted through the hall, eventually taking on a semi-solid consistency and assuming the forms of fantastic dragons and imaginary beasts. The multi-hued phantoms went slithering and twisting through the ballroom, knocking over tables and chairs, grappling with the guests, and creating general pandemonium.

Then the sounds of the ball were left behind. Peder descended into the deeper reaches of the palace where a calm, almost stifling silence prevailed. They entered a wing displaying a more modest style of architecture, the colour scheme consisting of harmonious blues and pale greens. Peder guessed that this was Vascha’s own private wing.

The footman paused at a circular nexus of five radiating corridors. The flat ceiling bore a golden starburst. From one of the corridors emerged two dark-garbed men, and Peder was disconcerted to find that one of them was Lieutenant Burdo, his visitor of the previous morning.

Burdo’s present companion waved a detector box down the length of Peder’s body, then frisked him expertly. ‘What is this?’ Peder protested.

‘You’re under arrest.’ Burdo’s face was closed, almost hurt.

‘But why?’

‘You might be able to fool us,’ Burdo told him, ‘but you can’t fool Vascha.’ He nudged Peder forward. The two policemen fell in behind him.

Peder was mystified. He followed the footman, who led them down a long corridor whose colours, seen in perspective, gave the impression of a box-shaped rainbow. As they walked by them the walls phased through purple, russet and gold, like a technicolor autumn, until finally the footman stopped at a door of carved wood.

Peder was pushed into a room breathing luxury. The walls, painted delicate peach, were lent an odd impression of texture by embossed murals of the same colour. All the furniture was antique. If Peder was any judge one or two pieces dated from before the settlement of Ziode itself.

Baryonid Varl Vascha stood before a huge open hearth in which timber logs blazed and threw out an enjoyable warmth. Peder was amazed. Never in his life had he seen an open fire inside a closed room before. Vascha wore a purple smoking jacket and was puffing at a curious smoking instrument of some ancient design. He nodded to the footman to leave; the security men arranged themselves by the door.

Vascha looked at Peder hard with eyes nearly as black as his greased-down hair, pulling thoughtfully on the smoking-pipe. His face was square and pockmarked, making him look like a hoodlum. Peder shivered inwardly. For a Ziodean, he had to admit that the Third Minister had remarkable presence.

‘Sir, why have I been arrested?’ he asked.

Vascha took the smoking instrument from his mouth and laid it on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. But he ignored Peder’s question. He looked past him to Lieutenant Burdo.

‘Do you know much about the Caeanics, Lieutenant? At first hand, I mean?’

‘No, sir,’ Burdo told him.

‘They are strange people,’ Vascha said slowly in a gruff, musing voice. ‘Not like us at all. It’s as if they don’t have souls. Take you or me, for instance. Our personality, our mien or whatever you like to call it, comes from our own inner qualities. Theirs comes from the clothes they wear, pure and simple. It’s a weird phenomenon. You don’t get to recognize it right away. Not for a long time, in fact. But when you do, you realize these people are no more human than a robot. It’s the same as if they were some alien kind of life-form.’

‘I guess there’s no accounting for foreigners, sir.’

The Minister gave a short barking laugh. ‘You’re right there, Lieutenant! No accounting for foreigners! But unfortunately that’s not all there is to it. The Caeanics plan to conquer on a wide scale, spreading their perverse way of life everywhere. They’ll come here and turn you into a clothes-robot.’ He nodded with self-assurance. ‘Caean poses a terrible threat to Ziode, in fact to the whole inhabited galaxy. “Caeanic Tzist lies curved above Ziode like a threatening maw” – that’s from an official government pamphlet, and I wrote it.’

He walked across to Peder and fingered the cloth of his suit. ‘Prossim, isn’t it? You must be highly placed.’

‘No, sir!’ Peder cried, shocked. ‘Crabsheep twill!’

The Minister went back to the fireplace, leaned against the mantelpiece and warmed his hands in the heat of the flames. He laughed softly. ‘You made a real mistake in coming to this ball tonight. It so happens I once spent two years as ambassador to Caean! We had diplomatic contact in those days. By the time the two years were up, I had learned to recognize what it was made Caeanics different from real people. Almost as soon as I saw you tonight I knew you were Caeanic.’

‘No sir, I am Ziodean! I was born here in Gridira!’

Vascha waved his hand.

And Peder’s further denials faded away. He was almost totally bemused by everything the Minister had said. He had never really looked on Caean as an aggressive force, and not having taken the feud between the two nations seriously, had never expected to find himself in this invidious situation.

‘Well, you’ve brought me a real birthday present after all,’ Vascha said with evident gratification. ‘Yourself: our first captured Caeanic agent, and a person of some importance if I’m any judge.’ He glanced up at the security men. ‘Bring him this way. ZZ want to take a look at him.’

The rear of the room contained a second door giving access to an elevator. All four men entered it, and the elevator first descended, then travelled horizontally for a distance. They emerged into a garage containing a handsome Maxim car. Peder was bundled into the back, while Vascha climbed into the front compartment. The garage doors opened. They were driven down a ramp, along a shuttered drive, through an automatic gate and on to the streets of Gridira.

The sky was beginning to lighten slightly. The car turned on to the North Axis and crossed the city. The Minister pulled a bandanna from his pocket, handing it to Burdo through a connecting window. Burdo blindfolded Peder.

After a while Peder spoke out loud into the silence.

‘What’s ZZ?’

Lieutenant Burdo’s voice came in reply. ‘You know all about them.’

‘No, I don’t. What are they?’

There was a pause. ‘Zealots of Ziode. A secret patriotic society.’

Peder asked no more questions. Twenty minutes later the blindfold was removed. The car was standing on gravel at the rear of a tall, old-fashioned house, close to a well-tended garden bounded by twelve-foot walls. The baroque outlines of other buildings thrust up beyond. This was an antique, well-heeled part of the city.

After being taken from the car Peder was herded into the house and down some stone steps. They were in a small cellar, facing a steel door.

The Minister turned to Burdo. ‘After we go inside, wait upstairs.’

The door opened. Vascha entered, and Peder was nudged in behind him. At his back the door closed with a thump.

In keeping with their rejection of artificial constraint on human individuality, the council of the Zealots of Ziode met stark naked. There were six of them sitting at the crescent-shaped table. Above and behind them, the starburst of the Ziode Cluster blazed on a dark backcloth. Above that, the initials ZZ were emblazoned. The walls of the room were draped with banners and flags.

Looking into their set, determined faces, Peder recognized at once that he was facing rampant nationalism.

Baryonid Varl Vascha divested himself of his clothing, piling his garments neatly on a nearby chair. Naked, looking flabbier and pudgier than he had appeared when dressed, he went and stood to one side of the crescent table.

For the first time since he had begun wearing his suit, Peder felt a loss of confidence. He even wondered if he should confess the whole story of its acquisition. That might be better than to be arraigned as an enemy agent, he thought.

No. These toughened fanatics would show him no mercy. He made an effort to call on the suit’s supernal elegance, performing slight, casual motions – extending one foot an inch or two, lifting his shoulders and turning them in a gesture that was almost effete in its ambiguity.

His élan began to return. These near-subliminal manoeuvres were usually guaranteed to bring opponents to a state of fawning ingratiation. For a moment Peder saw the familiar semi-hypnotic look flicker over the faces of the Zealots, but they were plainly less susceptible than the average citizen to foreign wiles and their self-willed sternness soon returned.

They began to fire questions at him.

‘How long have you been in Ziode?’

‘What kind of information have you passed back to Tzist?’

‘Who do you report to?’

‘How many agents does Caean have in Ziode?’

Peder remained dumb before the barrage. ‘You’re on your own now,’ one of them reminded him. ‘No one can help you, you know that.’

Another Zealot made a remark to Vascha. ‘I wonder if he knows the invasion date?’

‘Invasion?’ Peder echoed. ‘Who says Caean is going to invade?’

‘We say it,’ Vascha said gruffly.

‘You should look on Caean as a friend, not as an enemy,’ Peder replied in a clear voice. ‘Caean will do you nothing but good. We—’ The response had come out of Peder’s lips without any volition on his part. He stopped, realizing he was condemning himself out of his own mouth.

But still the words came, prompted by some secret impulse in his brain. ‘We bring you a new life. Cast off your sleep, enter the new morning of revivifying apparel.’ He raised his arm in a strangely awkward, dramatic gesture, tilting his face towards the ceiling. Dimly he was aware that the suit had taken over his persona and was making him behave like this.

‘Watch out, he’s up to some kind of trick!’ Vascha said sharply. He stepped forward and shoved at Peder, delivering a mild rabbit punch to the side of his neck as he went down.

‘Don’t underestimate Caeanic garments,’ he told his fellow Zealots. ‘Some of them can exercise a kind of mesmeric influence.’

Sullenly Peder climbed to his feet, rubbing his neck awkwardly. ‘I have no information for you,’ he muttered.

The Zealot chairman grunted and opened a drawer under the table. ‘We’ve prevaricated enough. Let’s begin the interrogation. Succinyl will soon get him talking.’

Peder shrank at mention of the interrogation torture drug. The chairman took a hypodermic from the drawer. But Vascha laughed without humour.

‘You don’t need that. There’s a quicker method. Just take his clothes off him. Caeanics can’t stand to be naked. It reduces them to some kind of animal state and you can do anything you like with them – I’ve seen it before. I told you, they’re not like us.’

The chairman hesitated, then replaced the hypodermic in the drawer. He nodded to two of those who sat with him. They rose to their feet and approached Peder, their naked bodies, so pale and flabby, filling him with a purely physical revulsion.

The cellar oppressed him. He should have felt relief at his reprieve, but instead another, deeper terror had taken hold of him. The terror of being disrobed, of being made to go naked in front of these men. To stand naked, stripped of his Frachonard suit! No, no, he could not permit it, it was impossible, he could not!

‘The succinyl!’ he shouted desperately. ‘I’ll take the succinyl!’

They all laughed. Then, as they laid hands on him, something snapped. A feeling of gigantic orgasmic release ripped through every fibre of his body. It was like a sudden discharge between the electrodes of an arc light, an eruption of unsuspected power, and everything seemed to go dim, his perception to withdraw itself, to enter a far darkness. He was only aware, in a vague and incomplete manner, that blinding shocks of energy were vibrating through the room and creating turmoil.

He must briefly have lost consciousness. When he came to he was still standing, and was still unmolested. The cellar looked as if a small explosion had gone off in it. The backcloth bearing the Ziodean starburst was burning. The table and chairs had been overturned, the Zealots having been flung about the room like rag dolls. The air carried a strong acid smell of electrostatic discharge.

At first Peder was too nonplussed to know what to do. Then, quietly and carefully, he moved about the cellar, examining the forms of the unconscious Zealots.

The first two he looked at – the same two who had attempted to undress him – were apparently dead. He moved to a third, but at the same time heard a groan behind him.

He turned. Two other Zealots had been stunned, not killed. Now they lurched to their feet and staggered at Peder, their eyes feral with hatred.

Peder knew how to react without knowing why. He clamped a hand to each man’s forehead. He felt a vibration issuing from his palms, passing through skin, skull and brain.

They both fell back dead.

He took one last look round the cellar to make sure there were no more survivors. Then he left, closing the steel door behind him, and mounted the steps to the hallway on the ground floor.

Lieutenant Burdo and his colleague were surprised to see Peder. Wordlessly he beckoned them, his Prossim-sleeved arm moving in a smooth, repetitive arc. They obeyed him involuntarily, though their hands hovered nervously near their guns.

Again using the palms of his hands, Peder killed them.

He decided to leave the house by the front to avoid the chauffeur waiting at the back. There was no sound in the building as he walked softly through it; it appeared deserted. The front door opened on to a short flight of steps giving direct access to the street.

Calmly Peder closed the door behind him and walked towards the centre of Gridira.

It was now early morning and the street was light. Suddenly Peder felt utterly drained. He had never felt so feeble and exhausted. It took a superhuman effort just to put one foot in front of another.

Sugar! He had to have sugar!

He put a hand to his face. The skin hung loose, all the flesh gone from his cheeks. He knew he was the same all over. He was a gaunt travesty of himself, his chubbiness lost in the explosion of energy in the cellar.

For that energy had not come from the suit, as he had at first presumed, but from himself. Like some sea monster he had discharged a lethal wattage of electricity, and to gain that unnatural level of power his body had drawn on all its reserves of fat, instantly converting it – and a good deal of protein – into a controlled, momentary blast.

That the suit could manage his body in such a fashion was a startling development. Had it a mind of its own? Was it alive, inhabiting him like a parasitical creature – or rather, symbiote? Peder still did not think so. He did not believe that the suit was sentient or that it had any powers of its own. For all its incredible qualities it was only a work of art which aroused the dormant powers of its wearer. It was, he concluded, a psychological template: his abilities flowed into it and were shaped and adapted by it. In time, flowing more freely, they could bring about even such remarkable physical effects as he had just witnessed.

Such was his explanation. The suit sometimes seemed to rule him, he decided, because it aroused the powers of his unconscious, and as every psychiatrist knows, a man’s subconscious is a stranger to him.

He staggered on, letting himself be guided by the suit. It was a strange experience, having surrendered his will while his mind was yet active. He was himself, yet he was not himself. He could think, feel, and make decisions. But the thoughts, the feelings and the decisions were not those of which he would normally have been capable.

He went into an automatic food store and bought four cartons of granulated white sugar. Then he took himself to the cafeteria on the upper floor and bought a quart of coffee.

He was alone in the cafeteria. He sat in the corner, half-slumped over the table. He emptied the sugar into a bowl and spooned it into himself as fast as he could go, helping it down with the coffee.

When the sugar was gone the craving was less, but he was still dizzy. He rested for an hour, panting softly and watching the handful of people who entered the cafeteria for breakfast.

Then he bought four more cartons of sugar and devoured those too.

Eventually he began to feel a little better. But he stayed where he was. He wondered how the Third Minister’s ball was progressing. Probably it was over by now.

He could not remember if he had killed the Minister or not. Everything had been so confused.

He fell into a half-doze. He could not say how much later it was that he awoke with a start. Four men stood by his table, gazing down at him. As he looked from face to face they bowed slightly, as if in acknowledgement.

‘May we sit with you, sir?’ asked one respectfully.

His mind blank, he nodded.

They sat down. ‘We have been aware of your presence for some time, sir,’ the same speaker told him quietly. Then he lapsed into a language Peder did not know.

‘Why are you talking to me like that?’ he asked.

The other made a self-deprecating gesture. ‘My apologies, sir. I should have been more careful.’

Another of the four took up the conversation. ‘It puzzles us that we were never informed of your arrival, sir, and we debated on whether we should contact you. Not knowing the nature of your mission, we decided merely to keep you under observation, and to be on hand should we be needed. We observed your attendance at the ball of the Ziodean Third Minister and by means of a spy-ray ascertained that you were being conducted from the palace. We followed you to the house used by ZZ, and hence here. Now, with great reverence, we make ourselves known to you.’

With great reverence…

Peder scrutinized the conservative, dark-coloured suits the four men wore. In an unobtrusive way they were exceedingly well made – better than anything ordinarily obtainable in Ziode – and cunningly designed to seem modest and inconspicuous. The strangers sat in these humble suits with a peculiar kind of confidence, exhibiting a rapport between the person and the cloth that did not exist in the society Peder was used to.

‘So!’ he exclaimed softly. ‘There are Caeanic agents in Ziode!’

They looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Naturally, sir.’

Another spoke, in a confidential tone. ‘We will not enquire the purpose of your coming to Ziode. We merely make our presence known to you, to assist you in any way you deem fit.’

They all fell silent. They had probably spotted him by accident, Peder thought. A suit of Frachonard quality would be instantly noticeable to Caeanics, just as it had been to Baryonid Varl Vascha. But their subservience surprised him. It did not accord with what he knew of Caeanic attitudes. Then again, there was something odd in it, something indirect.

Suddenly it came to him just what bothered him about their manner. Their respect was not to him; it was, rather, to his suit.

They knew he was wearing a Frachonard suit! But they could scarcely have learned that such a suit had been lost, still less that it had fallen into Ziodean hands. He looked past them and around the cafeteria. He felt lost and deserted, drifting alone in a void. Unaccountably, with no wish on his own part, the lines and forms of the cafeteria scene began to transform themselves in his sight, and to depict designs and hieroglyphics he knew only he could see.

For months now the urge to go to Caean had been building up in him. The pictorial code was exteriorizing that desire; it was as though his brain were interpreting random data to form but one message, a painted perspective pointing in a single direction.

‘I want to go to Caean,’ he said suddenly, urgently. Then he stopped short. He didn’t want to go.

The suit wanted to go.

He recollected the self-serving rationalizations by which he had still tried to picture himself as his own master. Such pretences were a delusion. The truth could no longer be evaded – the truth that he could not, now, claim to be the owner of the Frachonard suit. The Frachonard suit was a suit that owned its wearer. Without sentience it might be; passive and without powers of action, a mere object, but by degrees it could so change a situation that he, the wearer, became the recipient partner. The sleeping partner.

Dimly he realized that the Caeanic agent was speaking to him again. ‘Unfortunately it is currently impossible to make physical contact with Caean. Ziodean forces have sealed off the Gulf.’

Peder jumped up. ‘Forget what I said,’ he told them thickly. ‘Do not approach me again.’ Staggering from the table, he negotiated his way across the floor of the cafeteria, feeling like a drunkard on stilts.

Once in the open air he seemed to recover his strength. The streets were filling now with Gridirans going about their daily business, and as far as he could tell the Caeanic agents did not follow him.

What if he got rid of the suit? he thought. What if he tore it off him right now and threw it in the gutter? Could he do it?

No, he couldn’t do it. He did not have the will to break its bond with him. He paced the sidewalk, the tussle continuing in his mind, and paused at the corner to look about him. The perspective of streets and buildings was forming into a corridor leading off the curve of the planet and into the sky, across the void to an immensely distant destination. A one-way corridor to Caean!

How did his brain perform this trick? Was it the first stage of a total separation from reality?

And yet, the delusion offered the only certain solution to his predicament. Anywhere in Ziode, he was a hunted man. Only Caean was a safe haven.

Besides, was he not by now more of a Caeanic than he was a Ziodean? Even Caeanics themselves mistook him for one of their own. Yes, he would go to Caean. Perhaps if he journeyed to where the outer Ziodean stars straggled off into the Gulf it would be possible to find a way across it. The suit would help and protect him, as it always had. Help him also because thereby it fostered its own plans, whatever they were, plans which had been sewn and cut, by some arcane sartorial science, some coded language of psychic intentions, into its fabric.

With this decision his brain cleared and he applied himself to immediate details. Once the events at the ZZ house became known it would be difficult indeed to evade the ensuing police net, especially if the dead included the Third Minister. There might still, however, be an hour or so remaining in which to leave Harlos unimpeded. Hailing a cab, he went to his penthouse atop the Ravier Building and quickly collected together money, credit cards and a few documents, leaving everything else behind.

He took the elevator to the street again. As he emerged from the foyer a small, square-shouldered, slightly stooped figure sidled up to him.

‘Hello, Peder. Havin’ fun?’

Castor’s eyes glittered at him. He was even grubbier than usual and his hands moved uneasily over his crumpled clothes. His face was deadpan, his jaw slightly fallen and his unhealthy skin drawn grey and slack over his bones. Peder, having presumed him to have been arrested along with Mast, was astonished to see him.

Before he could prevent it Castor waved away Peder’s cab. ‘You going somewhere, I take it? Think smart, Peder. Go everywhere in the same cab and the police know your movements just by asking one guy. Where were you goin’? Spaceport?’

Peder nodded. ‘How do you know?’

‘It stands to reason Mast will have ratted on you. Me, I got away. Mast wasn’t so smart in the end.’

He touched Peder’s arm and coaxed him along the sidewalk. ‘The spaceport’s not a good idea. They’ll pick you up there. Come along with me. I’ve got a safe gaff where you can put up for a while.’

‘Why should you help me?’ Peder self-consciously moved his elbow from Castor’s grasp.

‘We can do each other some good.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘All in good time.’

Castor walked him a short distance to where a battered runabout was parked. Peder squeezed himself into the unaccustomedly cramped space while Castor took the driving lever and they shot off, heading east.

Peder did not to any degree trust Castor, but the man was an accomplished criminal and in his present circumstances that was a valuable asset. He probably wanted money, Peder reflected. There was always the possibility, of course, that Castor was trapping him on behalf of the authorities in return for leniency, but overall Peder did not think that likely.

Castor drove the runabout on a wandering, zig-zag route. They entered Deberon, Gridira’s example of a type of district possessed by every city of any size and age: an old run-down warren of an area sprawling between the city’s commercial and entertainment sectors, the home of crime, vice, jaded artists and adventurous young.

Mast’s ex-sidekick eventually parked the runabout in a mews that could not be seen from the street, and took Peder to a windowless room buried deep within the shapeless mass of an adjoining centuries-old building. The room, lit by a yellow glow-bulb, smelling foully of Castor’s habitation, contained a dirty palliasse without covers, a drab armchair and begrimed table. The walls were poorly painted with a cheap distemper which was peeled and soiled. A curtain hanging over part of one wall hid a cooking closet and larder.

‘You just take it easy here for a while,’ Castor said softly. ‘I’m going out now. Is there anything I can get you?’ He stared at Peder, his lips stretched in a parody of a smile.

‘I just want to get some sleep,’ Peder replied.

‘Sleep? Sure. You sleep!’ With alacrity bordering on eagerness Castor leaped to a sliding panel and opened it to reveal a wall cupboard. Inside was a set of brand new clothes hangers. ‘You can hang your gear up here, see? Huh –’ He floundered for a moment, looking about the room wildly, then came up with a dusty mat-like counterpane from the floor of the cupboard. ‘Here’s something to cover yourself with.’

‘This is all right, thanks.’ Peder lay down fully clothed on the palliasse, leaving Castor fingering the counterpane, his expression unreadable.

Eventually Castor dropped the counterpane on the floor and shut the cupboard. As he slouched from the room, Peder’s eyes closed.

His host’s return awakened Peder some hours later. Castor smelled of drink and swayed slightly on his feet. He carried in both arms a bulky package which he unrolled and erected into a low travelling bed, placing it against the wall opposite Peder. He had also brought two clean coverlets which, though thin, were scarcely needed in the heated room.

‘Just like old times, huh?’ he reminded Peder in an attempt at camaraderie. ‘Remember the Kyre junket? Aboard the Costa?’ He chuckled, then rounded solicitously on Peder.

‘Hungry?’ he said vaguely. ‘Want something to eat?’

‘Just some sugar,’ Peder answered weakly.

‘Sugar? Just sugar? How much sugar you want?’

‘All you’ve got.’ Peder felt ill. The unnatural drain on his body’s energy had been severe.

Castor shuffled to the larder and returned with a carton of sugar and a spoon. He sat watching Peder eat it.

‘Has there been any news today?’ Peder asked between mouthfuls.

‘News?’

‘I thought you might have seen a newscast.’

‘No. What would be in the news? There won’t be anything about you, if that’s what you mean. The security police don’t work in a blaze of publicity.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ Still wondering if he had killed the Third Minister, Peder licked up the last of the sugar.

‘Thanks.’

He lay back on the palliasse, trembling slightly with his exhaustion. Castor flung him a coverlet. ‘You always sleep in your clothes?’ he said, speaking hesitantly. ‘You’ll rumple that fancy suit you’ve got.’

‘I’m all right,’ Peder murmured.

‘Oh.’

Busying himself for sleep, Castor stripped to grey underwear, carefully laying his own dishevelled suit suggestively on the back of a chair. Settling down on the travelling bed, he turned his face to the wall. Soon Peder heard deep breathing.

The weight of his own form on the palliasse was burdensome to Peder. There was little life in him. The suit seemed to be quiescent. Perhaps it was letting him recuperate.

He shouldn’t be sleeping in it, at that, he thought. He was misusing it. When a man slept, his suit should hang.

He rose shakily and undressed. To prevent Castor from stealing his wallet he tucked it in the waistband of his underpants. He draped the suit in the wall cupboard, leaving the panel open so that it continued to look down on him, a reassuring psychological glyph.

He turned out the light and quickly dropped back asleep.

The stealthy sounds that, some time later, impinged blurrily on his consciousness might not have woken him at all had not a dreadful feeling of loss been simultaneously tugging at his mind, expressing itself in doleful, disturbing dreams. The main light was still dead, but a dim hand-torch flickered by the wall cupboard, where a manlike shadow moved and shuffled.

Peder sat up and rubbed his eyes. He saw that his suit no longer hung in the recess. Instantly he leaped from the palliasse and switched on the ceiling light.

Wearing an acid, frowning expression, the stealthy figure by the cupboard turned to face him.

Castor was wearing the Frachonard suit. Since he was considerably smaller than Peder it looked ludicrously illfitting on him. The jacket and waistcoat hung loose, the sleeves flopping over his hands. The trouser legs were rucked up over the tops of his shoes.

Castor’s face twitched. His eyes glittered. As Peder stepped forward a twinkling sliver-knife appeared in his sleeve-enfolded hand.

‘Watch it, Forbarth.’

‘My suit,’ Peder snarled.

‘Done you real good, hasn’t it? Now let somebody else have a go.’

Castor backed to the door. Unwisely, Peder lunged forward, grappling with him in an attempt to get the suit off him. To his surprise Castor turned the knife aside to avoid doing him any harm. The thief began to utter outraged grunts.

The jacket was half off when Peder suddenly broke away from the tussle and flung himself sobbing to the other side of the room.

‘Take it,’ he groaned. ‘Take it from me! Let me be free of it! It won’t own me any more. Ohhh…’

Agonized, he fought the urge to retrieve the suit, but he knew he couldn’t hold out for long. Seeing it there before him was like being a junkie on withdrawal.

‘Take it! Go!’

‘Sure,’ mumbled Castor, and he edged to the door, opened it and slipped through. The door closed again. He was gone. The suit was gone.

Peder collapsed on to the palliasse. An arid desolation overtook him. He was free, and empty, and dead.

He couldn’t really understand why the suit had let it happen. Why hadn’t it immediately induced Castor to discard it? He would have expected the suit to have rejected Castor straight away.

Then he understood. In the first place the suit did not make decisions on its own account. It merely mobilized the faculties of the wearer. Secondly its influence over Castor would be weak until he had worn it for a while. How it would ultimately affect Castor, a person for whom it was totally unfitted, he did not like to think.

After a while Peder tried to leave the room. The door was locked. Castor had trapped him.

He went back to the palliasse, sat down and waited.