The Garments of Caean

‘Better put a stop to it,’ Estru said tightly.

‘Get the cyborg out,’ Amara ordered.

Suit and cyborg had come together. The suit was incomparably the more powerful. The great metal arms flailed, smashing into the puny organic body. The cyborg’s skull-turret broke and seemed to become dislodged. A thin, pale blood began to strew itself across the chamber in swaying rivulets which broke up instantly into a haze of droplets.

Those watching through the windows had tried to save the situation by switching on the gravity. The suit dropped clanging to the floor, accompanied by the limp body of its enemy.

They rushed into the chamber, fending off the arms of the suit with prods and chains, and dragged away the broken mixture of metal, plastic, flesh, pink blood.

‘It’s dead, Amara.’

‘Oh well,’ said Estru wearily. ‘It all counts as data.’

Amara, too, after casting him a contemptuous glance for his sarcastic remark, took the news philosophically. ‘Get medical section to carry out an examination,’ she said with no trace of embarrassment. ‘The details of the cyborgation process should prove interesting.’

She turned to Estru. ‘Maybe we should go back and get another one?’

‘We’re being pretty free with other people’s lives, not to say their liberty,’ he objected.

‘People? These aren’t people, they’re – well, at best, they’re savages. If one wants to regard them as human at all.’

‘I only hope we aren’t going to behave in quite this fashion once we get to Caean.’

She snorted. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Well, I don’t think we should make any further contacts just yet,’ Estru continued. ‘We ought to try talking to the suit-man again. It’s easy to see now why he was so hostile towards us.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, think about it. He knows two kinds of beings, as far as we know. His own kind – outwardly a species of machine, or space-robot – and the cyborgs, whom he kills on sight. Look at it from his point of view. Which do we most resemble?’

5

Realto Mast’s emotions were a blend of foreboding and resignation as he approached the home of Olveolo Jadper, a splendid villa set in ample grounds and partially hidden by a miniature wood. Among those who had dealings with Jadper, such feelings were apt to be the rule – not because Jadper was Harlos’s wealthiest and most successful fence, but because along with it he belonged to a class of personality unfortunately fashionable in certain parts of Ziode. Jadper was a practical joker, infamous for regarding his clients as fair game.

Mast deplored the cult of the japer. He valued his dignity, and resented all arbitrary assaults on it, especially when in the form of crude and unsubtle buffoonery beloved of Olveolo – ‘Jadper the Japer’, to give him his cognomen. But, business was business.

Silver-plated gates swung lazily open in answer to Mast’s arrival before them. Ahead, overhung by willow trees, a narrow crazy-paving path meandered into a profusion of blooms and bushes. In the distance, raising aloft their translucent green crowns, the villa’s yellow travertine towers peeped through a tracery of silver birch branches.

Mast wore jodhpurs and a lounge jacket, the muted colours of which were made to glow quietly by juxtaposition with his lime green waistcoat. Notwithstanding his stern prohibitions to Castor and Grawn he still wore his Caeanic titfer, and in his hand he carried a small box which he waved in the air in the hope of sniffing out any suspicious electronic activity. Finally, taking his courage in both hands, he stepped through the gates and set forth along the crazy paving.

The path plunged immediately into a miniature jungle which practically cut off the daylight, twisting and turning in a confusing pattern. Mast was surprised, on emerging into the sunlight some minutes later, to find that the villa now lay behind him, but he continued nevertheless to follow the meaningless loops and curves. At the end of thirty minutes he was back at the main gates, having made a complete circuit of Jadper’s home.

With chagrin he abandoned this fool’s route and struck out directly for the villa across a bush-screened gravel bed. He was rewarded by the discovery of a proper path giving clear access to the villa’s front entrance. Having progressed about half-way up this path, however, he was halted by the sudden eruption from the paving of a large box, or platform, which completely blocked his way. Before he could react in any way to this event the box sprang open with a rushing noise. Amid streamers of coloured paper there burst forth the corpulent figure of Olveolo Jadper, grinning and screeching, a large green bird rushing up from below him to flap around his head and go winging off. ‘Hello!’ screeched Jadper, ‘Hello!’ On his head was a white conical hat decorated with purple blobs which matched the red blobs of his ballooning white gown. His face was painted in the manner of a clown. Continuing to grin inanely, he bobbed up and down as if on a spring, only the top half of him visible over the rim of the box.