The Garments of Caean

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’.