The Garments of Caean

by Barrington J. Bayley

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

THE GARMENTS OF CAEAN are forbidden in the Ziode Cluster, their qualities little understood. So when Peder Forbath finds the legendary Frachonard suit on a wrecked Caeanic freighter, he immediately tries it on. To his delight he finds that the garment endows him with undreamed-of powers. But is Peder wearing the suit - or is the suit wearing him?

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 222

Sample

‘I tell you I don’t like it,’ Peder Forbarth said nervously.

‘Dammit, none of us can be expected to like it,’ replied Mast. ‘It’s a matter of guts.’

Realto Mast lounged full-length on an elegant couch which was sumptuously cushioned and quilted and burnished in gold and
lavender resins. It was without doubt the most prepossessing of several items of arts nouveaux furnishing the main cabin of the star yacht Costa. Mast had, indeed, taken particular care over the outfitting of the cabin, since he liked at all times to live in style.


Sighing, he poured himself another measure of purple liqueur from a swan-necked decanter. ‘Now please stop moaning, Peder,
and try to show a little spirit. You accepted this assignment, after all.’


‘Accepted!’ wailed Peder. ‘I’m wishing I hadn’t!’

‘Considering the price I paid for your services,’ murmured Mast, sipping his liqueur reflectively, ‘it’s disappointing to
find you so eager to chicken out.’


Peder stopped his pacing of the cabin and sank down on a chair, the picture of a man defeated and frightened. The two other
occupiers of the cabin, Mast’s sidekicks Castor and Grawn, chuckled mockingly in the background.


Mast had him there, of course. He had fallen in with Mast’s scheme lock, stock and barrel, hypnotized by the man’s charisma and no less by his glowing descriptions
– descriptions which a full-blooded, professional sartorial could hardly ignore. To begin with he had hesitated, it was true,
because of the dangers and risks involved, but those misgivings had vanished when Mast had offered, as an advance on Peder’s
share, to pay off the debts that were about to ruin him.


Only now, thinking about it in retrospect, did Peder Forbarth reach the suspicion – rather, the certainty – that Mast had had
a hand in calling in those debts. His creditors were not normally that pressing.


And only now, after locking up his shop The Sartorial Elegantor and journeying to within striking distance of the planet Kyre, did the full extent of his funk hit Peder. For one thing,
Mast’s image of faultless ability and impeccable planning was beginning to wear thin at the edges. He had noticed how the
self-styled entrepreneur’s (more accurately, racketeer’s) carefully cultivated nonchalance hid an occasional ineptness, and
a definite tendency for things to go slightly wrong on him. Peder was afraid that Mast would somehow mishandle the affair,
that they would be caught trying to dispose of their illegal cargo or even worse.


The chief fear that loomed in Peder’s mind, however, was of what lay in wait for him below. He no longer believed that Mast
really appreciated what infra-sound could do. He was a calculating chancer, always ready to minimize the risks involved.


Suddenly Mast spilled a drop of liqueur on his green velvet waistcoat. ‘Damn!’ he mumbled, attempting to brush off the drop.
He rose and swept out in search of stain remover.


A grin spread over Grawn’s broad, ugly face. ‘Don’t bug Mast so much,’ he told Peder good-humouredly. ‘You’re ruining the
tone of the operation, for Chrissake.’


‘Yeah, you’ve got too little faith in Mast,’ Castor added. He was thin and below medium height, with square shoulders and
a slight stoop. He had once suffered damage to his eyes, and the retinal function had been partially replaced by light-sensitive
contact lenses which gave them an odd, metallic glitter. Castor exuded seediness: already the new suit Peder had given him
– he had given them all new clothes as a gesture of good faith – looked grubby and crumpled.


‘We’ve been with him a long time, and we’ve done all right,’ Castor continued. ‘He works everything out before he starts,
and having sunk half a million in this caper he’s not likely to go at it half-cocked.’


‘Though he likes to take the odd gamble,’ put in Grawn, his grin widening yet further.


‘Like the gamble he took with your eyes,’ snapped Peder to Castor, instantly regretting the words. Castor’s accident, he had
gathered, had been due to a mistake of Mast’s.


Mast returned to the cabin, the stain only half eradicated and still spoiling the soft sheen of the velvet. ‘I’ve just taken
a look in the cockpit,’ he said. ‘We’ve arrived; the yacht’s going into orbit now. Are you ready, Peder?’


‘Y-yes. I suppose so.’ Peder’s stomach tightened up into a knot and he began to tremble slightly.

‘Good.’ Mast looked eager. ‘No point in wasting time. Let’s get down to work!’

He led the way to the hold below the cabin. The space here was quite large; everything extraneous had been cleared out of
the yacht for the sake of speed and to gain maximum room for their expected cargo. At the loading end stood a small planetary
lighter for descending to and returning from Kyre: Mast had no intention of risking the Costa herself.


Near the lighter, in pride of place, hung the baffle suit, a bulky object covered all over with clustered, variously sized
tubes resembling organ pipes. Peder felt somewhat like a condemned criminal entering the death chamber as they approached
it. There were three layers of baffle-tubes so that the suit, though vaguely manlike, was so gross and grotesque that it looked
more like something designed to trap and encase a man than to protect him.


Castor operated a winch, lowering the suit jerkily to the floor. Then he unlocked its front, swinging it open like an iron
maiden, and with a sardonic smile made a gesture of invitation for Peder to step into the cavity thus revealed.


Peder swallowed. By now the Costa would be in orbit, the auto pilot swinging her along those co-ordinates which Mast had obtained; mysteriously, but nevertheless
somehow obtained (by means of a lucky break, as he would have put it) and which had made the whole mission possible. This was it. Peder felt that unfriendly forces, invisible hands, were impelling him forward against his will.


He hesitated, then stepped back. ‘Why me?’ he said. ‘This is unfair. There are four of us.’

‘Come, come,’ said Mast, a look of complete reasonableness appearing on his lean, handsome face. ‘You are our expert. That’s why you’re here in the first place, to value the goods. How can you do that if you don’t go down?’


‘But that doesn’t go for the first trip down,’ Peder argued. ‘We haven’t found the wreck yet. Perhaps we won’t find it for
two or three trips, so you don’t need my expert knowledge yet. You, Grawn, or Castor would probably be much better at looking
for it than I would.’


Mast pursed his lips. ‘I think you are pessimistic … but perhaps you have a point. We will cast lots.’

He took a small randomizer from his pocket. ‘Choose your numbers. One to four.’

‘One,’ said Peder instantly.

Castor and Grawn semeed scarcely interested in the proceedings. Castor murmured a casual, indifferent ‘Two’, and Grawn followed
with a grunted ‘Three’.


‘Then that leaves me with four,’ Mast said animatedly, apparently entering into the spirit of things. He inserted the appropriately
numbered domino-like chips. They rattled about the slotted framework of the randomizer for several seconds, shuffling and
rebounding. Then one was suddenly ejected. Peder bent to inspect it.


One.

So it was Peder after all.

‘Well, well,’ exclaimed Mast. He gave Peder a look of comradely concern. ‘I hope you feel happier about it now, Peder?’

Peder nodded dismally. He offered no resistance as they helped him into the suit and clamped it shut. He had worn it several
times before, during their training sessions, and oddly, once he switched on the externals and began to communicate with his surroundings through them his panic
abated and he began to consider the task before him more calmly. The motors came on; he turned and lumbered towards the lighter,
negotiating the enlarged hatch awkwardly.


There was no question of sitting or lying down in the suit. Clamps reached out to hold him fast in the cockpit, so that the
suit’s maniples, several feet outside the reach of his real hands, could manage the controls. There was little for him to
do, in any case; the lighter was mostly on automatic.


Mast’s voice came to him through the suit intercom. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we’ve just heard that the survey sensors have located
a large metal object. That might be it. The lighter knows where to go. Good luck.’


‘Right,’ answered Peder. And then, as his mind ranged over the situation, still trying to fight down his fears, a realization
came to him.


‘The lots!’ he gasped. ‘You rigged it!’

‘Well naturally, old man. I have to protect my investment, after all. We can’t have you chopping and changing plans at this
stage. Good luck.’


‘Let me out!’ raged Peder impotently. ‘I demand that we cast the lots again!’

But it was no use. He felt the lighter moving under him. On the screen, he saw that it was trundling through the air-lock.
Seconds later he had been launched into space and the lighter darted down towards the glowing atmosphere of Kyre.


The rustling of the air over the outside surfaces, the buzzing of the lighter’s mechanisms as it guided itself in, filled
Peder’s consciousness for some minutes. Seen from the outside, Kyre was an unremarkable, hospitable-looking planet. The atmosphere
expanded and brightened as he plunged in. Nearer the surface it would contain a fair proportion of oxygen. The white clouds
were water vapour. It would be a world fit for colonization, if it weren’t for the habits of its denizens.


Once below the cloud layer, the features of the landscape began to take shape. There were mountains and plains, rivers and
forests. All looked normal and innocuous. From a height, Kyre’s special feature was not discernible.


The lighter slowed down and winged over a plain broken into a series of gullies, many of them fringed and hidden by tree-like
vegetation. The lighter stopped and hovered about uncertainly in the air.


Mast came through again. ‘You’re on our sensor spot,’ he said. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘No,’ said Peder, ‘but I get a reading too.’

He focused his attention on one of the tree-cloaked gullies. It could be down there, he thought.

Then he noticed that there was animal life on the plain. A big animal emerged from cover, looked around it, and trotted lumberingly
towards a small body of water about a mile away. That reminded Peder of what a jam he would be in if the lighter was destroyed
or damaged, and that he was asking for trouble by hovering about in the open. He would have to continue on foot – or on what,
in the baffle suit, passed for feet.


He put the lighter down as close to the gorge as he could get. ‘I’m down. I’m going out,’ he said curtly. Mast’s reply came
faint and thoughtful. ‘Right.’


Releasing the clamps, Peder backed himself to the hatch. Promptly it opened, and he backed straight out onto the ground. No
sooner was he three or four feet away than the lighter took off again and went soaring skywards, back to the Costa. It was good strategy, but it still gave him the feeling of being alone and cut off.


For here he was at last, on the infra-sound planet.

Evolution on Kyre had reached a stage somewhat equivalent to the Jurassic. But the animal life here had developed a unique
form of offensive and defensive armament: infra-sound, low-frequency vibrations that could, by hitting the right resonant note, shake to pieces any large object using very little power. Buildings, vehicles, machines,
animals or men, all were equally vulnerable.


Several roving expeditions had landed on Kyre, and one of them had been lucky enough to get off sufficiently in one piece
to report on the conditions there. The animals on Kyre attacked one another with infra-sound. Conversely, surviving species
were those that had best learned to defend themselves against infra-sound. The use of infra-sound had developed biologically
into a sophisticated spectrum of effects on Kyre. Even plants had been obliged to guard themselves against it and to generate
it on their own account.


The baffle suit was Mast’s answer to this deadly environment. Constructed at great expense, the suit’s ranks of tubes were
designed to deaden lethal frequencies before they reached the wearer. As a last-ditch defence the suit carried its own sound
generator to try to cancel out or interfere with any attacking vibrations that got through.


‘Are you getting anything?’ Mast asked with interest.

Inside the suit, two screens confronted Peder. One gave a panoramic view of his surroundings: bright, clean air, a sky tinged
with pale blue, a rocky foreground with boulders and trees in the farther distance. The second screen was an oscilloscope.
Waggly traces ran across it. From a small speaker curious tones and squeals emerged; ranged-up analogues of infra-sounds the
air outside was carrying.


‘There seems to be some of the stuff about,’ he replied. ‘Must be some animals somewhere around. Nothing’s coming through,
though.’


‘There you are, then,’ Mast said reassuringly. ‘I told you you had nothing to worry about.’

Peder silently cursed Mast. It was all very well for him to talk, safely up there in orbit. And Peder hadn’t even encountered any of the infra-sound beasts yet.


Just the same he felt more confident. Curious stuff, this infra-sound, he thought. All it consisted of was sound waves of very low frequency, say five beats per second. Yet if it happened to hit any largish object’s naturally resonating
frequency, then that object simply crumbled. The principle had once been used to create weapons capable of levelling cities,
so Peder had read somewhere.


‘I’m moving towards a sort of gulch,’ he announced. Be ready to send the lighter down if I tell you.’

The suit moved rapidly over the uneven ground, its tube-clad legs aping the movements he made with his real legs farther up
in the metal body. As he came closer to the trees hiding the gully he could see the regular fluting on their trunks, and took
it to be some sort of anti-vibration device.


The oscilloscope went frantic and the speaker began to squeal urgently as he approached and then passed between the trees.
He paused, and placed a waldo hand on one of the trunks – and in the same instant snatched it away again. A numbing, shuddering
sensation had passed right through him.


Peder wondered if there was any form of life on Kyre that was not in the infra-sound racket.

Below him the ground descended in a series of steps. Finding a shallow slope, Peder began to negotiate the first step. He
had almost reached the cover of a small copse when his attention was caught by a drama being enacted to his right.


A huge brontosaurus-like beast had emerged from behind a slab of rock. At least, a brontosaurus was the first resemblance
Peder could find for it, for it was of comparable size and was massively armoured. But it differed in an important respect:
its gigantic head was almost entirely taken up by an enormous snout taking the form of a permanently open square chute. Peder
recognized this as the sounding-trumpet of its infra-sound roar.


He panicked momentarily, thinking that the beast was after him. He scooted as fast as his suit would take him towards the
copse. But then he saw that he had passed unnoticed; the object of the great saurian’s attentions was a somewhat smaller creature that now turned to face its foe.


Peering from beneath tangled vegetation, Peder recalled some of the hasty pictures taken by the one surviving expedition to
Kyre. The expedition had named the big bronto a ‘shouter’. He was fascinated, as it lumbered closer, to see that its armour
incorporated the same open-ended tube arrangements as his own armoured suit. The tubes were particularly close-packed around
the shoulders, making it look as if it spouted rank upon rank of gun barrels.


The smaller beast, however, Peder did not recall seeing. Instead of a single square funnel, its head sported three barrel-like
projections. Its body was even more covered with vibration-baffling devices than its enemy’s; baffle-tubes, heavy movable
flaps, thick masses of floss-like fur, as well as sharp spikes to ward off a more physical attack.


The two animals squared off, their baffle-tubes rising and arranging themselves. The shouter’s sounding-horn gaped.

And Peder was flung back among the trees by the shock wave that resulted.

The monitoring speaker inside his suit let out a rasping noise. A strong, steady succession of peaks and troughs marched across
the oscilloscope. He heard the sound generator coming into action, desperately trying to counteract the deadly, regular waves
of compression and rarefaction.


Peder felt that some of it was getting through. Something seemed to be seizing his guts and turning them inside out. But it
was not altogether a painful experience and he was able to watch what was happening with full clarity of mind. The smaller
animal had extended long bony flaps like a ruff about its neck and these ablated or broke off before the assault of lethal
sound, carrying away the effect of it. Both animals, it seemed, simply stood their ground and shouted infra-sound at one another. Judging from the oscilloscoped trace and the sonic analogue (the speaker
had recovered, now, and was giving him a regular ululating yowl), they constantly varied their pitch, each seeking the frequency
that would shatter the other.


Then the smaller, three-trumpeted animal began to sag. Cracks appeared in its armour; it trembled like jelly.

And suddenly it collapsed to the ground, its skin rupturing and spilling blood and intestines through jagged rents in a dermal
wall that must have been all of a foot thick.


‘What’s going on down there?’ came Mast’s insistent voice.

‘Quiet!’ hissed Peder, as though the shouter could hear them. He was, in fact, frightened out of his wits.

Looking around itself once more, the shouter pointed its square horn to the sky and gave vent to a great infrasound roar of
victory. Then it stamped its feet up and down and turned about, as if affirming that the area was its own. Peder guessed that
he had just witnessed a fight over territory.


Looking around itself once more, the shouter pointed its snout at a big boulder, perhaps ten feet high, some distance away.
Its sound chute strained forward on its thick neck. Peder’s scope and speaker came through strong.


And the boulder exploded into dust. With that demonstration of its might, the shouter lumbered back to its lair.

As concisely as he could, Peder related what he had seen. ‘If I’m standing in the path of that sound beam,’ he concluded,
‘I’ve had it. You’ve chosen the wrong man for this caper, Mast. Send the lighter down. I want to come up!’


‘No lighter until you’ve finished the job,’ Mast answered firmly. ‘Take hold of yourself, now.’

A cold wind swept through Peder’s vitals. In the humming, clicking suit, he realized he was sweating – a cold, clammy sweat.


‘But what if the shouter sees me?’

‘You’ve got your gun, haven’t you? Just make sure you get your shot in before it opens its mouth.’

Peder’s hand moved unconsciously to the grip-hole that operated the heavy-duty energy rifle. He sighed.

A rustling sound made him turn. Shouldering its way through the ground-level shrubs came an animal about the size of a rabbit.
He was fascinated to see that it reproduced on a small scale the same baffle-tube and head-trumpet arrangement of its more
massive cousins. It made him realize that he had not yet made a real inspection of his surroundings at close quarters. He
extended an arm and carefully pulled away some of the brush.


More small animals scurried away at his touch, some turning their heads momentarily to hurl at him beams of vibrations which
were easily cancelled by his suit.


Looking overhead, he glimpsed a winged creature squatting on a branch, heavily rigged with scale-like feathers and bearing
a conical trumpet in place of a beak. It peered down at Peder, then launched itself into the air and flapped clumsily away.


Peder’s gaze fastened on the bark of the tree itself; insects could be seen crawling about on it. Turning up the magnification
he made out several varieties, many of them top-heavy with various devices for casting vibrations. The frequencies with which
creatures of this size battled could scarcely be called infra-sound at all, of course; they would intrude into the sonic range.


He reminded himself that he had not yet exploited all the suit’s capabilities. He considered opening the direct audio link
for a brief listen, but almost immediately cancelled the thought. The scene looked peaceful enough; but to let into the suit,
even for a few seconds, any of the stray vibrations of infra-sound that he suspected pounded at all times through this woodland could prove fatal, or at least cause him serious internal injury.


Instead, he switched on the odour plate. Connected to a corresponding plate on the outside of the suit, it reproduced all
the odours that struck that plate, automatically omitting any that could be poisonous. A resinous, fresh smell entered Peder’s
nostrils. He was reminded vaguely of a pine forest, except that this was more tangy and contained many altogether foreign
undertones, some sweet, some repugnant. It seemed odd that a world so lethal and alien could, at the same time, smell so natural
and familiar.


He switched off the plate. The smell, he decided, would become too cloying after a time, and besides he was here for something
more serious. He began to consider how to cross the territory that apparently was guarded by the shouter.


After some hesitation he decided that his best bet was to advance through the trees away from the beast’s lair, and make his
way down the next step of the gorge behind the cover of some rocks. This he managed with only moderate difficulty, encountering
some medium-sized animals which snarled low-frequency vibrations at him in a half-hearted manner, but desisted when he retreated.
Only occasionally did he feel the protective capacity of his suit was being pressed to the limit, and he had no occasion to
use the energy rifle.


It was impossible to move stealthily in the baffle suit. He crashed through brush and, once or twice as he careened down the
slope, lurched into a tree. Then he broke through a screen of matted creeper-like vegetation and found himself on the Up of
the gorge’s deepest crevasse.


And there it was.

The crashed . . .