The Garments of Caean

They were in the late stages of an extended session in the department’s operations room. Amara was revelling in all the data she could handle. But that data simply did not tell her what she wanted to hear.

According to Amara, those regions of Caean farthest from Sovya should be relatively free from garment fetishism, and even those parts settled earliest should by now be discovering more normal ideas. Yet field reports, as well as the personal observations of anyone who cared to venture outside the ship during its frequent landfalls, made it perfectly clear that quite the opposite was the case. Caeanic culture was not phasing into normalcy. The farther one got from Sovya, the weirder and more aberrant it became.

The calculations on which Amara placed such stock made used of the sociological notion of ‘decay time’ – the time taken for cultural forces to lose their impetus and die. A passing fad or fashion might have a decay time of weeks or months. An obsession like the one ruling Caean could, at the other end of the scale, persist for centuries. Amara’s parameters, she believed, were solid. The ‘half-life’ of Caean was even shorter than she had at first supposed. By this time Caean should have grown out of its specific syndrome, should be a nation more nearly resembling Ziode.

‘This is a sick nation,’ she said. ‘But something is keeping it sick – making it sicker. We have to find out what.’

‘Maybe the computation is wrong?’ someone suggested bravely.

Amara scowled.

Estru took up the thread. ‘It could be we have underestimated the staying power of the Sovyan experience. Our equations don’t allow, for instance, for total erasure of body image.’

‘Total erasure?’ Amara came back at him indignantly.

‘The Sovyans clearly demonstrate that the normal body image – the image that exists in the mind for purposes of personal and species identify – can be overlaid with an alternative image,’ Estru said. ‘The Sovyans see themselves as big spacesuits. But suppose the original human body image has no instinctive or genetic component? What if it can be erased permanently? Then the Caeanic syndrome could be stable – not subject to decay.’

‘Plausible,’ Amara admitted. ‘The Caeanic phenomenon would then emerge as a form of accelerative evolution, analogous to biological evolution. Psychologically, in terms of outward image, the Caeanics could be diverging into countless new species.’

Estru felt encouraged. ‘That’s right. Especially if some of these images are archetypal, dragged from the subconscious as Matt-Helver believed. A Caeanic puts on a fox-type suit and it makes him into a foxy individual, because he feels like a fox. I recall that List had something to say along those lines in his Cultural Compendium.’

‘It’s plausible, but it’s wrong,’ Amara stated. ‘The natural body image is genetic. It can’t be permanently obliterated.’

‘Arms and legs are genetic, but Alexei Verednyev didn’t have any to speak of when we first found him,’ her staff chief said.

She waved a hand in exasperation. ‘Proliferation. Proliferation is the very thing that knocks Estru’s argument down. Caeanic sartorials are enterprising enough not to leave stones unturned. Even if the basic image had been erased, what’s to prevent it appearing again? How long before some sartorial whizz-kid discovered that the naked body is an exciting object in it own right? What’s to prevent garments becoming increasingly scanty until nakedness becomes acceptable, as it is with us? Yet in fact the naked body, where it is an erotic object, is such only as an unspeakable perversion.’

As she said this she blushed deeply, then to hide her embarrassment turned to study the display screens again. ‘There is something blocking the natural process of normalization,’ she said.

There was a silence in which they all stared at the screens. Suddenly Estru spoke up again.

‘Isn’t there something else we should be talking about, more important than this? What we have also failed to find is any aggressive intention towards Ziode.’

Everyone murmured. ‘Yes, that’s so,’ Amara said with a frown, almost reluctantly. ‘It seems Abrazhne Caldersk was telling the truth in that respect.’

‘Well, shouldn’t our first priority be to explain this to the Directorate? We ought to be giving some thought to it. After all it might not be as easy as it sounds.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘After gearing up for war, to some people it can seem a pity not to go to war,’ Estru said.

‘Yes, it is unnerving,’ Alexei said mildly, in reasonably intelligible Ziodean. ‘All the time.’

Mast responded feelingly. ‘You poor bastard. God, I thought I was a villain until I met some of these scientific types we’ve got here.’

‘I’m managing to cope,’ Alexei said. ‘They give me drugs to keep me moderately schizophrenic. That’s the only way to get through this type of experience, I’m told.’