The Garments of Caean

The ship must have come down at least partly under its own power, for the damage from impact was not all that great. The fauna of Kyre had done all the rest. The whole structure of the vessel had been broken open, shattered and cracked, by infra-sound. Through the vents Peder could see its structured interior, also crumbled and broken. Its cargo, though, should be intact.

‘I’ve found it,’ he clipped tersely to the Costa. ‘It’s in the gorge, as I said. Pretty badly broken up. I’m going inside.’

‘That’s my boy,’ said Mast ingratiatingly. ‘I told you you could do it.’

He picked his way down the overgrown slope and clambered through a rip in the hull large enough to take him. To his mind came the sketch that Mast had shown him (obtained, again, by some devious, unspoken means) of a typical Caeanic transport’s layout. This section of corridor he was in must be one of those running the length of the ship just under its skin. He had entered close to the nose; opening a door to his left, he found himself looking into the main astrogation dome. The crystal canopy was in shreds, of course; reclining in semi-lounge control chairs were the decaying bodies of the ship’s officers. Probably they had lost consciousness at the moment of impact and had been killed by infrasound before recovering.

Peder cast an interested eye over their rakishly smart uniforms, so strange to him, and then withdrew. Decomposing human beings were not something his stomach could take too well.

He lumbered sternwards. Any minute now, he told himself. His heart began to thump with excitement as he thought of what lay so close.

He entered the first cargo section.

It was only a small hold, designed to store minor items. Its contents, now, had been thrown from their racks and were tumbled about in profusion. A little light entered through the broken roof. Peder switched on his suit lamp to provide more. His breath caught in his throat.

Hats!

Colours glowed; elegant shapes hypnotized his senses in the beam of the lamp. Hats of myriad descriptions: hats, caps, berets and bonnets; toques, trilbies and titfers; chaperons, chaplets, cornets and coifs.

Soft-crowned hats, stiff-crowned hats, low-crowned and high-crowned; feathered, plumed, winged and gauzed; bicorne and tricorne; boaters and bowlers, homburgs and turbans; gorgets, cowls and hoods; helmets, galeas and aegeas.

And these were just the hats!

Peder picked one up and held the sleek titfer at head level. He recognized the touch when he saw it. The cloth was like no other, the line, the design – the creativity – had the unmistakable flair found in only one part of the galaxy. This hat would do something for a man, would make him feel different, act different.

‘Send the lighter down,’ he said to the Costa. ‘I’m ready to start loading.’

Mast had been right. The ship was loaded to the roof with freight of inestimable value: the clothes of Caean.

At one time they had been called tailors. Peder’s father had been a tailor. And on Peder’s home world – Harlos – as indeed on many worlds of the Ziode Cluster they were still referred to as tailors. But that was because in Ziode vestments did not have the esteem that, in Peder’s view, they deserved. He, like others of his ilk, called himself a sartorial, and his was not a trade but a profession.

Twice before he had been privileged to handle garments from that strange, clothes-conscious civilization, Caean. They had been a brief, damasked gipon, and a simple flowered cravat, no more. But even then he had been captivated, entranced, and had realized that all the legends concerning Caean were true.

The Caeanic worlds occupied a section of a galactic spiral arm known as the Tzist Arm. It was a well-defined arm with a regular curve and nearly empty space on either side of it. The Ziode Cluster, looking like a sudden burst of sparks, was situated somewhere near the focus of this curve, but contact between the two political systems had been slight over the past few centuries and mostly confined to guarded hostility. The Cluster did not understand the ways of Caean; and Caean, for its part, was aloof and unyielding in its attitude towards raggedly dressed foreigners.

In Caean clothes were not merely an adornment but a philosophy, a way of life – the way of life. Even Peder Forbarth knew that he failed to grasp the fullness of this philosophy, try as he might; officially, in the Cluster, the covering of the body was of no importance and it was even sanctioned to go naked. But even there, despite any amount of official disapproval, the love of clothing – one of man’s oldest arts – flourished and Caeanic articles were recognized for the consummate, sublime treasures that they were. In point of fact it was illegal to import, sell, or even possess a garment from Caean, and very few of them had ever crossed the black gulf of light years; but those few fetched fabulous prices.