At some stage during the evening Amara lost track of Abrazhne Caldersk, her hoped-for consort, but she did not let that disappoint her for long. As the party wound down she went on a night tour of Inxa with an acceptably presentable, if slightly intense, man, much younger than herself, who had been pursuing her for hours.
He went by the name of Holosk. His pudgy face showed, perhaps, a rather unconfident attitude for a Caeanic, being once both eager and hesitating. The outlines of his body were practically obliterated by a dark-coloured suit, and he seemed to hang on Amara’s every word, to be fascinated by any details she could tell him of Ziode. Amara could not help but sense something behind his pressing enquiries, though she was at a loss to understand what.
‘What do you do, Holosk?’ she asked him. ‘Are you in the government?’
‘No, I’m in business,’ Holosk explained. ‘Export-import. My firm trades with fifteen planets in this sector.’ His voice was quiet, almost inaudible. ‘Tell me, in Ziode… do the women… er…’ He trailed off.
They were leaning against the balustrade of a terrace overlooking a great plaza where coloured fountains played. Amara looked at her watch, which she had already adjusted to Verrage time. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I’d better be getting back to the ship.’
‘I live very near here,’ he told her quickly. ‘Why don’t you come up for a nightcap?’
‘Well…’ With a doubting expression she went with him across the terrace to the street.
Holosk lived in an apartment block only a few hundred yards away. He fumbled with the key as he opened the door, clearly in a state of excitement. Flattered but also filled with curiosity, Amara entered. The apartment was small and unpretentious, but moderately comfortable. Holosk gave her a drink then paced nervously back and forth.
‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You’ll wear a hole in the carpet.’ She held out a hand invitingly.
For answer he suddenly went down on his knees before her. To her astonishment his lumpy face was filmed with sweat and he was tense and trembling. He was in a sexual frenzy!
‘Come on!’ he cried with bulging eyes. ‘I’ve heard all about you Ziodean women! It’s true, isn’t it? That you – that lovers –’ He swallowed and choked, unable for a moment to bring out the words. ‘Undress one another!’ he gasped hoarsely.
‘But of course,’ Amara replied lightly. ‘What else?’
‘Oh God, oh God,’ moaned Holosk, writhing on the floor.
All at once Amara understood, and struggled not to burst out laughing. She was in the hands of a Caeanic pervert – one so depraved that he actually gained erotic excitement from the thought of uncovering the body!
Was his type common? Probably not – Amara’s guess was that it was very rare, and that such as there were kept the vice secret. News of a Ziodean woman would bring them running, of course.
Taking his courage in both hands, Holosk clutched at her skirt and began to mouth the Caeanic equivalent of obscene sex talk.
‘Unclothe me,’ he begged in a hot breathless voice. ‘Undrape me, disrobe me, leave me naked! Strip me, peel me, expose me! Unlace, untie, unbutton and undo me! Oh, take my clothes off!’
Giggling, she obliged him while he lay back shivering in a near-swoon. Then he whimpered in ecstasy while she helped him to do the same to her.
13
Every creature having a complex nervous system makes use of body image. Body image is self image: the creature’s knowledge of its own physical existence, a knowledge which hovers between conscious and pre-conscious perceptions. It has been a matter of argument as to whether body image has a genetic basis, or whether it results from conditioning. Experiments designed to resolve the question have subjected human volunteers to total amnesia and then attempted to induce them to accept alternative images, of animals or robot waldos, as their own. Results were never conclusive, due to the difficulty of occluding the volunteer’s own body with another body, and also to the mentally deranging effects of the drugs used. Some subjects reported that they had ‘dreamed’ they were the replacement body – a dog, a bear, in one case, even, a butterfly.
Pliability of body image is clearly of interest in the study of bodily adornment, a feature of all human cultures. In the case of Caean it would seem to be specially important. Is Caean a proliferation of divergent body images? Are the Caeanics dreamers, lost in a state of hypnotic sleep, imagining that they are exotic and arcane as suggested by their apparel? These questions remain to be answered by social science.
List’s Cultural Compendium
The Tzist Arm contained in excess of ten million suns. The section covered by Caean alone embraced one million. Among that million were about a hundred inhabited worlds, connected by threads of commerce and nationality: phantasmagoric sodalities, fantastic fetishes, cultural displays which bedecked planets like floral growths.
Peder made his way in Caeanic society with automatic ease. The suit he wore meant that he was treated with utmost respect everywhere he went. Whether people realized it was a Frachonard suit he was wearing, let alone the one that had gone missing, he did not know. Here, where style was understood, such questions were not asked. The suit had found its wearer; he was the acme, social man made perfect. That was all there was to it.
That was, indeed, all there was to it. As Peder sank deeper into Caeanic ways an inhuman detachment came over him. The suit, having indulged him for a while, sent him on his travels again, wandering from star to star, tending always, as if by chance, towards the other end of Caean.
In the city of Quetzkol he one day happend to stroll beneath a continuous stone awning that sheltered a long esplanade paved with hexagonal grey flagstones. The farther end of the esplanade broke into a cascade of descending ledges that resembled the slope of a ziggurat. It was here, standing staring at him, that he saw the first of his brothers: a wearer of one of the other four existing Frachonard suits.
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.