The Garments of Caean

‘I can get us out. To Caean. That is better than Ledlide, even for you.’

‘Caean? …’ Mast frowned. ‘But there just isn’t any way out.’

‘I know a way. A ship is waiting for me on the surface. But it is difficult for someone like myself to man it alone. Better if you come with me. Caean is a long way.’

Mast took a step back. ‘No,’ he said in alarm. ‘It’s an automatic extension of sentence if you do anything …’

He trailed off. Peder leaned against the door jamb, the lines of his jacket falling away in a codicil of grace and perfection.

‘Twenty years,’ he reminded Mast. ‘Twenty years of this grey routine, of never seeing outside. Come with me and you’ll be freeeee …’ His voice soared and caressed. ‘Free on new worlds.’

Mast gave a cynical quirk of his lips. ‘Free?’

He sighed.

‘All right, Peder,’ he said, ‘I’ll try you out.’

He reached for his prison clothes. Together they left the cell. At the end of the gallery one of Peder’s pass keys gained them entry to a door which opened on a tiny station where waited a bullet-shaped vehicle containing two seats, side by side. The shuttle service was normally never used by prisoners unless accompanied by a warder, but at a gesture from Peder they took their places in the seats and the shuttle moved forward on its guide rails, coursing along the efficient transport system. They traversed the sleeping silence of their own segment and entered others which, though identical, were like foreign territory to them. Here men were awake and working, for the rotation of shifts was designed never to leave a machine idle.

Other shuttles swept past them in a blur of motion. Peder steered the vehicle unhesitatingly. When they eventually came to a stop it was in a factory area where the hum of machinery mingled with the bustling of prisoners shuffling to the canteens, to the sleeping galleries, or to the baths and the recreation halls.

Peder’s stride was unhesitating as he led Mast along the outside wall of one of the factory workshops. Mast was becoming increasingly nervous to see so many warders about, and he stiffened as one approached them. But the officer strolled on with only a passing nod to Peder.

‘Relax,’ Peder murmured. ‘I am a warder; you are a prisoner I am taking to the medical room.’

‘But you’re wearing civilian clothes!’

Peder smiled. ‘I’m in disguise,’ he said.

‘It’s some kind of hypnotism?’ Mast asked after a pause. ‘People see what you want them to see?’

Peder did not answer. The truth was not quite as Mast had stated, but in a sense it was close to it. The suit could make itself inconspicuous; it could cause its wearer to adopt a role so convincingly that a detail like the absence of the correct uniform went unnoticed. The warder’s mind had been subliminally tricked, distracted.

He had considered tricking his way in this manner through the official portals in the prison roof, but had decided it was impossible. Even if he could get through the cage that separated the prisoner compound from the outer administrative shell, he still would not be able to leave the prison without setting off the automatic alarms.

Besides, the suit had a better way. Peder turned into a narrow down-sloping passage ending in a metal door which needed no pass key. They stepped into an engine room filled with row upon row of power units.

The high-pitched whine the machines gave off made a din in which hearing was difficult. As they passed by, the prisoners tending the power units looked up once, then took no further notice. Peder made his way to the far corner of the room and moved aside one of a series of what looked like filing cabinets or store cupboards. He beckoned to Mast, then began testing the wall behind the cabinet.

The cabinets were cleverly arranged so that the two men were screened from view, enclosed in a triangular space in the corner. At first nothing happened. Then, with a click, a section of wall slid aside.

Feet first, Peder dropped through the hatch-like opening to a floor about four feet below. As Mast followed, the concealed entrance sprang automatically back into place behind them, and the noise of the machinery faded somewhat.

They stood in a dimly lit chamber, or cellar, that appeared to have been hammered together from sheets of scrap metal. Its only occupant was a grey-clad prisoner who was hunched over a glowing screen. The figure whirled round to glare at them in fear.

This, as Peder knew, was Grashnik, a lifer like himself. Grashnik was almost unique among the inmates of Ledlide, however, in that he refused to accept that escape was impossible. He had always clung steadfastly to the belief that he could – and would – break out.

The first reward of his optimism had come twenty years ago, when, on a working party that had been extending the prison a few hundred yards farther into the rock, he had discovered a fissure leading to the surface.