The Garments of Caean

‘I’ll go further than that,’ Estru told her mildly. ‘I’d say he’s never been out of it. It’s not just the muscles that are atrophied. His limbs haven’t developed properly.’

‘You mean he’s been in it since birth?’

He nodded. Unlike Amara he had lingered with the technicians to inspect for a minute or so the workings of the suit. He had seen enough to indicate a permanent life support system supplying all aspects of biological existence. The man in the suit had been transformed into a new kind of creature: one able to inhabit space.

Suddenly Amara seemed to overcome her disgust. The scientist in her took over. She became thoughtful.

Two medical officers arrived. The sociologists accompanied them into the service room. They paused on seeing the suit and its contents.

One cast a reproving look around him. ‘This should have been done in a properly equipped theatre, not in a mechanic’s service shop.’ Estru shrugged.

The techs had cut, not just through the suit’s outer casing, but also through much of its interior equipment. Estru was worried that some of it might be vital to the health of the wearer. He watched anxiously while the medics made their examination, applying their probes and pick-ups. The figures and traces that appeared on the read-out plates of their instruments meant nothing to him, and their faces were professionally impassive.

Finally they closed up their cases and stepped out of earshot to confer, nodding in agreement.

‘He’s in shock, the catatonic kind,’ the older medic said when they returned. ‘Otherwise he’s in good health, if one leaves his unusual condition out of consideration.’

Estru gazed down at the worm-like pallor of the shrivelled human being encased in the works of the suit. ‘What would bring on that kind of shock?’

‘Trauma of an unexpected, unacceptable kind. Something the mind just wouldn’t be able to face up to.’

‘Well, that’s only a medical problem, isn’t it?’ Amara said hopefully. ‘You can bring him round, can’t you? We want to talk to him.’

The doctor hesitated. ‘That depends on whether the cause of trauma is still present. If it is, bringing him forcibly to consciousness could be contra-indicated. In such cases, a safer procedure is to remove the patient from the source of trauma, and apply psychomedications in an environment familiar to him.’

‘I get you,’ Estru said. ‘You mean put him back in the suit, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You’re saying we were wrong to break the suit open,’ Amara said heavily.

‘That’s not for us to comment on, madam.’

Estru screwed up his face in concentration. ‘Let’s get this straight. You’re suggesting the suit is the natural environment for the man inside it – that cutting it open sent him catatonic? How long do you think he’s been in it? Since birth?’

The medics glanced at one another, then at what lay on the bench. ‘That would be our guess,’ said the one who had remained silent up to now. ‘Not in this suit, of course, but in some comparable kind of container. You realize, of course, what that means.’

‘Yes,’ Amara answered firmly. ‘It means that his own body-image of himself doesn’t include anything we would recognize as a human being. When he thinks of himself as a person, the picture in his mind is that of the suit’s exterior. Probably he isn’t even conscious of his biological body, except as a sort of internal organ or essential core.’

‘And we forced him to look at himself,’ Estru breathed. ‘My God!’

‘Psychologically it’s a fascinating situation,’ Amara said. ‘An almost unique opportunity, in fact. It would be interesting to do some experiments – but that’s not our mission.’ She waved her hand dismissingly and her face became stern. ‘We’d better stick to our brief. If this is a cultural norm then we’re up against a pretty weird culture.’

A look of guarded relief had come over the older medic’s face. ‘I take it you have abandoned the idea of removing him completely from the suit?’

‘That would be some job of unscrambling. God, where does the suit end and the man begin?’ For the first time Amara stared without flinching at the bulky sawn-open cylinder and its unnerving contents. The inert flesh was, indeed, practically enmeshed in its surrounding web of transducers and catheters. ‘Imagine what it must be like to be this man,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He doesn’t have the use of the limbs he was born with; only of the suit’s devices and organs. I wonder if the suit is equipped with a kinesthetic sense? Probably so; in that case he’s able to sense it and feel it the same way we do our own bodies. It is his body, as far as he’s concerned.’

‘It’s so elaborate it’s a misnomer to call it a suit,’ Estru added. ‘It’s an integrated system in its own right: a space body-prosthetic.’

‘And from his point of view you’ve inflicted savage injury on him,’ the older doctor pointed out.

Amara turned to the techs. ‘What about that? Can you repair the damage?’