The Garments of Caean

Peder examined the other suit. In superficial style it might have been thought much like his own, but he knew that philosophically the two were radically apart. ‘A different paradigm,’ he thought to himself. The suit denoted a man of unbending will, a man who set his face in one direction and never retraced his steps. In keeping with this paradigm it had one accessory Peder’s lacked: a sinister hat with a wide brim, low and flat, in whose shadow the man’s eyes were cold, grey and hard.

Peder paced the length of the esplanade to meet him. ‘I am Peder Forbarth,’ he said.

‘I am Otis Weld,’ the other replied. His voice was deep and brusque, with a metallic timbre. ‘We have been waiting for you. But time is not important. A forest takes time to grow.’

Peder’s conversation was without any un-necessary verbiage. ‘You know where to find the others?’

‘One more resides already here in Quetzkol. We shall take ship to meet the others. A symposium will be arranged. When the petals of the flower are joined, the whole plant flourishes.’

They made their way through the city. The architecture of Quetzkol was quite unlike that of any other Caeanic city, being redolent of the style referred to as the Incan or Aztec. Flat, grey horizontal slabs slotted and criss-crossed to create a three-dimensional maze. Rakish tiers piled into one another, forming countless interstices that served as streets and passages. The unremittingly clean outlines, the lustrous grey of the building material, all gave an impression of decisiveness and willpower. Above, the sky reflected back a clear, watery blue.

Quetzkol’s idiosyncratic character was typical of this end of Caean. It was as if evolution had started anew in numerous local enclaves, using not biological forms but creatures of cloth and dye. There was Palco, whose people were robed in cool saffron and spent their lives placidly and calmly, reflecting on thoughts that could not have been conceived outside Palco. There was Farad, whose inhabitants wore only blue in all its shades and cognates and fought a ritualized war whose motives would have been incomprehensible to the Ziodean mind. There were the Cabsoloms, absorbed in a new type of sculpture equally enigmatic. And here in Quetzkol there was this stoic severity, exemplified par excellence by Weld himself. Nowhere was the carefree hedonism of Verrage to be found. There was passivity; there was also febrile activity which extended in unthought-of directions. But even there, a kind of inactivity reigned within the activity, a submission to action rather than an initiating of action.

Peder was close now to the very verge of Tzist.

‘I see that much Prossim is worn here in Quetzkol,’ he remarked as they walked. ‘Almost to the exclusion of anything else.’

‘True. Who would wish to wear other fabrics when perfection is available?’

‘How soon can I meet our other companion?’

‘I shall arrange for him to visit the sodality I own.’

Peder was puzzled. ‘One does not own sodalities,’ he said.

‘I do,’ Weld told him.

‘Are you then, by any chance, yourself an exponent of the sartorial art?’

‘Not professionally. Occasionally I make experiments for my own amusement.’

‘Your sodality is one of these?’

‘Yes.’

Weld took him to a cool, unpretentious building, a flat grey slab buried in a mass of flat grey slabs. The interior consisted of a single room having the same shape as the slab itself. Peder quickly learned not to touch any extrusion such as the doorframe with his bare hands. The edges were as sharp as a knife.

A few members of Weld’s sodality arrived and sat silently, making no greeting to Weld. To Peder’s eye their suits were cruder versions of Weld’s own, except that the fabric had a leaden sheen to it and seemed very substantial. Their faces, too, were stern and uncompromising, though unlike Weld they went bare-headed.

‘There is a unique character to my sodality,’ Weld said. ‘Let me show you.’ He beckoned one of his members forward, and bent back the cloth of the man’s sleeve.

‘Cutaneous raiment,’ he explained. ‘I have integrated garments into the cuticle, taking the place of the epidermis. They are part of the person – or more strictly, the person is the biological content of the raiment. They can not be removed.’

Peder felt the metallic texture of the Prossim, noting where it was joined to the skin of the member’s wrist, then let his hand fall. ‘It is an aberration,’ he said in a supercilious tone while the member stood there stony-faced. ‘The essence of the Art of Attire is that one is not bound to a single shape. Thousands of paradigms are offered to the individual by his sartorial. Your invention reverts to pre-Caeanic biological forms of evolution, where every creature had but a single nature.’