The Garments of Caean

‘Oh, I don’t know. Grawn came off much better, in the event. He only got five years. I managed to convince the court that his part in the affair was minimal – they realized he was too dim to be an instigator, I think. But it worries me to think I won’t be around to look after him when he’s released. I don’t know what will become of him, he’s quite hopeless.’

‘Oh, yes, you’re good at looking after people, all right.’

Mast seemed genuinely disappointed by Peder’s bitterness. He smiled painfully. ‘Come come, now. Circumstances do occasionally get out of hand. Risk is proportionate to the potential reward, and so forth.’ But Peder remembered Mast’s smoothness on previous occasions, and remained unrelenting.

Mast hummed meditatively to himself, looking out on to the landing where the other prisoners were playing with improvised cards. He essayed one or two further remarks, to which Peder made no reply, and after a while wandered off.

Several nights later the humming of the lock on his cell door woke him from his sleep. He raised his head from his pillow. The cell was in darkness, the infra-red bulb, which allowed any passing warder to survey the cell through the sensitized peephole, being invisible to him. But normal yellow-grey light from the landing was filtering through the outlines of the door as it swung open. Peder became aware of a presence moving into the narrow cell.

The interior light came on. A warder stood there, though Peder knew him as a warder only because he recognized his face. He was not wearing his usual black serge uniform. He was wearing the Frachonard Prossim suit.

A chilling thrill of fright and shock ran through Peder. He shrank to the farther end of the bunk, his eyes wide with terror, trembling with anticipation. The warder’s expression was glassy and unseeing. Without a word he undressed, neatly laying out the Frachonard suit on the bunk.

Then both face and body crumpled. The warder collapsed on to the floor.

How the suit had found its way here was too large a concept for Peder even to think about. But he knew now, accepting the fact with a dumb, animal-like resignation, that he could never be free of it. Slipping from the bunk, he stood up. With deft movements he removed his sack-like sleeping garb, took undergarments from his locker – hesitating at the thought of bringing Prossim in contact with their rough, churlishly cut cloth – and drew them on.

As he donned the suit its field of influence settled on him once more. There was the usual instant change of outlook, but this time in a way that was different from before. Impressions of a hitherto unknown order crowded into his brain, as though the whole prison around him was open to his inner gaze.

Nor was that all. Never before had the suit buried his ego almost completely beneath the thoughts and actions it suggested. It had always allowed him some independent consciousness. Now this changed. It was still his own brain that formed his thoughts, but that brain took its cue from something that was outside of him, something that surrounded him and supported him.

In the face of this invasion his ego at first struggled feebly but it had time for only one complete thought of its own.

Clothes robot.

Then it gave up as an entity on its own account, collapsing into a pale reflection of what went on around it.

And Peder the New Man, creature of Prossim, emerged. He went through the pockets of his suit and found several electronic pass keys. Kneeling, he inspected the unconscious warder. The man’s breathing was light. He was in a deep coma.

He straightened. The beat of Ledlide prison was all around him. He became aware of facts, details, names that the unaided senses could never have told him, all interlocking throughout the huge ramification. The sleeping shifts, the working shifts, the rest-and-association shifts.

And he realized that escape from Ledlide was possible.

Leaving his cell, he padded the length of the silent landing. Men snored and muttered in their sleep behind the locked doors. On his left-hand side was a railing. The gallery well, screened at regular intervals by safety nets, dropped down for a thousand feet. On the opposite side of the well Peder could see the standard historical pattern of large-scale prisons: tier upon tier of landings and cells, a giant honeycomb of prisoners.

At the end of the gallery he halted. Using one of his electronic keys, he opened the door to Mast’s cell. Quietly he went inside.

Mast was a light sleeper. He awoke immediately the light came on. He greeted Peder with a befuddled frown, then climbed from his bunk and stood staring at him.

‘Peder … how did you do it? They are letting you wear your suit!’

‘I’m leaving here,’ Peder announced. ‘You may come with me. It will be convenient.’

‘Leaving where? Ledlide?’ Mast chuckled softly, still puzzled, and shook his head. ‘That isn’t possible, Peder. You have to stay here. Better just to accept it.’