The Garments of Caean

The bizarre and infelicitous relationship between himself and his apparel might in other circumstances have led to the suit’s abandoning him for a more compatible wearer, but for the moment he answered its limited programme. And so Castor had wandered through Ziode, delighted with the bursts of jangling erratic talent the suit gave him, and making full use of his new-found power to influence others.

Like Mast had said, it was like being a hypnotist. And that had meant money. But he could never keep the money he made. The suit gave excessive self-confidence, but events did not always deliver on that confidence. Castor was always sure to pour everything he gained on to the gaming tables and lose it.

On Zenda and Arraseos he had operated a quack practice making use of his one-time medical training. That always meant one had to move on quickly, of course, especially if any of his patients died as a result of treatment. On Julio he had simply pimped. On the Harriet circuit of worlds he had worked a type of con he found delightfully easy, known as switchback steering. It was on Kaylo, one of the Harriet planets, that he had finally become entirely ruled by a passionate urge to get to Caean by any means, and he had selected his present partners.

Kass’s space field lay some distance from Castor’s shack. To get there he had to walk through the empty dawn streets, passing between wax-coloured buildings. ‘Beehive Town’, some people called the place. All the buildings were rounded in shape, to ward off the two-hundred-miles-per-hour winds that came racing across Vence’s plains during spring and autumn. At least half the town, in fact, was underground.

The Little Planet was one of half a dozen spacecraft parked on the space field. Vence, on the periphery of Ziode, was not a route to anywhere and received very little traffic, being very much the terminus of a minor branch as far as interstellar commerce went. The Little Planet had been parked for twenty days, watching other ships arrive and return whence they had come, while Castor tried to wheedle what he wanted out of the local governor.

He undogged the hatch and pulled himself through into a smelly corridor whose grey-painted walls were dimpled with rivets. The Little Planet, he had to admit, was a step down from the Costa. She was an out-of-service short-haul freighter that had spent forty years plying between two adjacent stars. But, with extra fuel, Castor was confident she could make it to Caean.

He squeezed through the inner door and climbed a ladder to the crew compartment. His partners were still sleeping on beds against the walls. Leecher and Rabbish both were snoring. Gadzha slept soundly, pressing the body of his girl possessively up against the bulkhead. Raincoat, who never slept without a weapon, had come adrift from his bedding and was sprawled on the bare floor, the stock of his gun protruding from under the vacated pillow.

The stale odours and clogging air went unnoticed by Castor. He began kicking his partners awake. Raincoat (Castor had never found out whether it was a nickname or a real one; they had once tried to dub Castor ‘Eyes’, but he had soon squashed that) came awake with a start, groping for his missing gun before he oriented himself. The others stirred resentfully.

They all hated him, and all with reason. Gadzha chiefly because Castor had raped three of his girl-friends in the months they had known one another. It was surprising he had risked bringing his current girl along on this jaunt, but the truth was he simply didn’t like to be without a woman. The others hated Castor because he had cheated them, robbed them, insulted them. But that hadn’t stopped them from putting up the money for the Little Planet. Violent and dangerous men, they were nevertheless under Castor’s spell; he had baited them with his tale of the riches to be picked up from the crashed Caeanic spaceship on Kyre. They could take everything he owed them out of his share, he had promised, and there would still be plenty.

But they were growing impatient with the delay, not to say with Castor’s company. For that reason Castor had moved out of the Little Planet to the shack on the edge of town.

‘C’mon,’ Castor urged. ‘This is it. Today.’

Gadzha squinted at him blearily. ‘Sod off. You’ve been telling us that all along.’ He turned back, clamping himself to the girl.

Castor kicked him again. ‘Get up. Ready the ship for take-off. I’ll be back today with the pass.’

Grudgingly they stirred while Castor made them a rough breakfast. Afterwards he spent two hours helping them check the ship. It was all routine, but Castor was being careful.