The Garments of Caean

Once the ship was down, the depleted swarm of flies finally died, and the now-flaccid suit collapsed to the floor in a neat pile. The stench of decomposing flies filled the bridge.

After a while a door opened in the prison roof, and a man wearing a breathing mask appeared. Pausing once to orient himself, he trudged the mile or so to the ship. After a brief inspection he opened one of the hatches and went inside, exploring all sections of the ship and calling out to announce his presence.

When he reached the bridge the brittle bodies of the flies crunched under his feet. He still wore his breathing mask and did not notice the stench, or he would instantly have vomited. Otherwise the only sign of occupancy was the suit heaped on the floor near the guidance board. For some moments the man gazed at the suit. Then he bent down and carefully picked it up, straightening the folds and draping it over his arm.

After one last look round he retraced his steps and left the ship to trudge back to the prison. He reported that the ship was empty and appeared to have landed on automatic, but to make sure the governor ordered an air search of the surrounding terrain. The possibility of that unheard-of-thing – an escape attempt – was raised, but the governor quickly dropped it, secure in the knowledge that Ledlide was deemed escape-proof. The crew of the Little Planet must have suffered some accident, he decided. The craft must have flown itself here. He would ask for it to be taken to Ziode with the next supply ship.

For no apparent reason the suit was placed in a cupboard in the staff common quarters. Patiently, it waited.

*

Peder never discovered quite how large the prison was or how many inmates it contained. The population might, he conjectured, be as much as a million. It certainly could not be less than a hundred thousand, for Ledlide was a successful prison and had become a general dumping ground for Ziode’s undesirables.

In view of such large numbers, tightly confined and marshalled by a relatively nugatory warder force, the chance of a revolt was surprisingly small, almost nonexistent. The reason was simple. Should a revolt occur, no more food would be sent from Ziode and the prisoners would starve. The fact that they earned their food anyway, by working in the prison factories, was usually enough to keep them quiet.

The entire establishment was underground. Day by day Peder’s consciousness became submerged into the environment of grey galleries, grey cells, the smell of men (he had heard there was also a women’s segment somewhere), grey factories and workshops, and black-uniformed warders. He particularly hated the prison uniform, which was grey and baggy and humiliating. He had become shrunken and shrivelled since losing the Frachonard suit, and his flesh cringed away from the coarse hard fabric of his new clothes. He lived, moved and worked in a perpetual daze.

Once or twice, in the endless routine processions along interminable galleries and ubiquitous ramps, he had glimpsed Realto Mast, who had arrived in the same intake as himself, but he felt no desire to seek him out. He wished only to huddle in himself and die a little more each day.

So it caused him no pleasure when one evening during the association period, when Peder was sitting in his cell ignoring the murmur of talk on the landing, that the figure of Mast appeared in his open doorway. Framed in the yellow-grey light from the gallery, Realto looked much reduced in stature in his shapeless uniform and cropped hair. Peder turned away and hunched his shoulders sullenly, trying to rebuff him, but unabashed, Mast stepped into the cell, invading the tiny cubicle that was Peder’s only privacy.

‘Hello, Peder, how are you?’ he said, the gaiety of his tone quite out of keeping with their circumstances. ‘How long a sentence did you get?’

‘What are you doing on this landing?’ Peder grumbled.

‘I’ve been moved to the end of your gallery – for the time being, at any rate. People get shifted around pretty often in this place, you know – that’s to stop them forming permanent attachments, you see. So let’s not quarrel. We might not be together for long.’

‘Good,’ Peder said in a stubborn, accusing mutter. ‘You informed on me.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Mast asked him with a small, apologetic sound. ‘It could have been Grawn.’

‘Was it?’

‘As a matter of fact it was me – but I had every excuse, Peder. You see, it was poor old Grawn I was thinking of. I would have kept you out of it, but they would have dragged everything out of poor Grawn, the defenceless old thing, and he would have suffered in the process. So I blabbed to spare him that. After all it makes no difference from your point of view – does it?’ Mast adopted the frank, open-eyed camaraderie Peder had learned to mistrust.

‘Very altruistic!’ Peder sneered. ‘But no doubt you collected your due reward!’