THE GARMENTS OF CAEAN
Barrington J. Bayley
www.sf-gateway.com
Enter the SF Gateway …
In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain's oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language's finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
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Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Website
Also by Barrington J. Bayley
Author Bio
Copyright
1
‘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 swal
lowed. 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 Garments of Caean Page 1
