The Garments of Caean

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.