The Garments of Caean

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.