Ecce and Old Earth (2 page)

Chilke was born near the town ldola, on the Big Prairie of old Earth. Early in his life little Eustace was influenced by his grandfather Floyd Swaner, a collector of stuffed animals, old oddments, purple brlc-a-brac, rare books, and anything else which caught his fancy. When Eustace Chilke was a child, his grandfather presented him with a wonderful ATLAS OF THE UNIVERSE, depicting all the inhabited worlds of the Gaean Reach, including Cadwal. The ATLAS stimulated young Eustace to such an extent that he became a wanderer half vagabond, half jack-of-all-trades.

The route which brought him to Araminta Station was devious but certainly not accidental. Chilke one day described the circumstances to Glawen:

“I was working as a tour-bus operator out of Seven Cities, on John Prestons World." Chilke told how he became aware of a big pie-faced lady with lots of bosom, wearing a tall black hat, who joined Chilke's morning tour four days in succession. At last she engaged him in conversation, commenting favorably upon his conduct.

Chilke responded modestly: “It’s nothing special, just my stock in trade."

The lady introduced herself as Madame Zigonie, a widow from Rosalia, a world to the back of the Pegasus Rectangle. After a few minutes of conversation she suggested that Chilke join her for lunch: an invitation which Chilke saw no reason to refuse.

Madame Zigonie selected a fine restaurant where they were served an excellent lunch. During the meal she encouraged Chilke to talk of his early years on the Big Prairie and the general facts of his family background. Presently, as if on sudden impulse, Madame Zigonie mentioned her clairvoyant powers which she ignored only at grave risk to herself, her fortunes, and all others involved in the revelations. “Perhaps you have wondered at my interest in you. The fact is that I must hire an overseer for my ranch and my inner voice insisted that you were the right and proper person for the position."

“That is very interesting," said Chilke cautiously. “The salary is high and you plan to pay a substantial advance?”

“You will be paid in the standard fashion, after you render the duties I will require of you."

“Hmm,” said Chilke. The remark was ambiguous and Madame Zigonie, large, somewhat over-dressed, with small narrow eyes glinting from a broad-cheeked face the color of putty, lacked all appeal.

In the end Madame Zlgonie's inducements overcame his reluctance and Chilke became superintendent of the Shadow Valley Ranch on Rosalia.

Chilke's duties required that he direct the activities of a large work-force, composed entirely of indentured Yips brought to Rosalia by a labor contractor named Namour.

Chilke's puzzlement with circumstances became extreme when Madame Zigonie declared her intention of marrying him. Chilke refused the honor, and Madame Zigonie discharged him in a rage, though she neglected to pay his salary.

In the town Lipwillow on the Big Muddy River Chilke was approached by Namour and offered a job as airport manager at Araminta Station. Namour here far exceeded his authority, but Chilke managed to secure the post on his own merits. Madame Zigonie’s off-again on-again romantic interest and Namour's sympathetic assistance was a mystery to which he found no ready solution. Other even more urgent mysteries hung in the air. How many illicit flyers had the Yips constructed from the stolen parts? How many had they acquired by other means? If such existed, where were they located?

The superintendent of Bureau B was Bodwyn Wook: a small man, bald, yellow of skin; thin, active and sharp-eyed as a ferret. Bodwyn Wook was notable both for his caustic tongue and his indifference to the dictates of stylish convention. The discovery of the Yip thefts prompted him to a swift response. Yipton was raided; two flyers and a machine shop were destroyed

Another sinister discovery followed hard upon the first. Yips of the Araminta work-force were found to be armed with a variety of weapons, as if in preparation for a grand massacre of Agency personnel. The work-permits were instantly canceled; the Yips were sent back to Yipton. When questioned, Namour merely shrugged his shoulders and denied complicity in the affair. No one could prove differently and, indeed, it seemed incredible that the personable and popular Namour would involve himself in crimes so horrendous, and suspicion, while always latent, lost its edge as time went by. Namour proceeded with his regular routines, indifferent to lingering doubts.

Namour was a person impossible to categorize. He was strong, innately graceful and of good physique; his features were classically regular. He wore his clothes with flair and seemed to know everything worth knowing. At all times Namour conducted himself with an engaging deliberate ease and understatement, suggesting passion under careful control: an attribute which many ladies found appealing, and indeed Namour's name had been linked with many others, including both Spanchetta and Smonny, whom he apparently served on a continuing basis as a joint paramour, to the satisfaction of both.

Namour was not universally admired, especially at Bureau B. His critics considered him a stone-hearted opportunist, lacking all compunction and capable of any crime. This view, in the end, proved correct, but before Namour’s crimes could be brought home to him, he quietly slipped away from Araminta Station, to the intense regret of Bodwyn Wook.

VI. THE YIPS AND YIPTON

The typical Yip was by no means deformed or unprepossessing: to the contrary, at first glance, the ordinary Yip seemed extraordinarily handsome, with large luminous hazel eyes, hair and skin of the same golden color, well-shaped features and excellent physique. The Yip girls were notorious up and down Mircea's Wisp for their comeliness, docility and mild disposition, and also for their absolute chastity unless they were paid an appropriate fee. For reasons not wholly understood, Yips and ordinary Gaeans were mutually infertile. Some biologists suggested that the Yips were a mutation and represented a new human species; others suspected that the Yip diet, which included mollusks from the slime under Yipton, gave rise to the situation. They pointed out that Yips indentured to work on other worlds, after a passage of time, regained a normal procreative ability.

Yipton had long been a tourist attraction in its own right. Ferries from Araminta Station conveyed tourists to Yipton, where they were housed in the Arkady Inn: a ramshackle structure five stories high built entirely of bamboo poles and palm fronds. On the terrace Yip girls served gin slings, sundowners, coconut toddy: all formulated, brewed or distilled at Yipton from materials whose nature no one cared to learn. Tours were conducted around the noisome yet strangely charming canals at Yipton and to other places of interest, such as the Caglioro, the Woman’s Baths, the Handicraft shops. Services of an intimate nature were provided both men and women at the Pussycat Palace, five minutes’ walk from the Arkady Inn along creaking bamboo corridors. At the Pussycat Palace the attendants were mild and obliging, though the services lacked spontaneity and were performed with a careful, if somewhat absentminded, methodicity. Nothing was free at Yipton, if one requested an after-lunch toothpick; he found the reckoning on his bill.

Along with profits derived from tourism, the current Oomphaw (3) of the Yips, one Titus Pompo, earned money though the off-world indenture of labor gangs. The Oomphaw Titus Pompo was assisted in this particular enterprise, and others more disreputable, by Namour co-Clattuc.

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3) The title, once a term of derision, had been originated by a tourist from Clarendon, Algenib IV. The Oomphaw's elite police were the Oomps

VII. STROMA

In the first few years of the conservancy, when society members visited Cadwal, they presented themselves, as a matter of course, to Riverview House, in the expectation hospitality. At times the conservator was forced to entertain as many as two dozen guests at the same time, and some of these extended their stays indefinitely, that they might pursue their researches or simply enjoy the novel environment of Cadwal.

One of the conservators at last rebelled, and insisted that visiting Naturalists live in tents along the beach, and cook their meals over campfires.

At the society's annual conclave, a number of plans were put forward to deal with the problem. Most of the programs met the opposition of strict Conservationists, who complained that the Charter was being gnawed to shreds by first one trick, then another. Others replied: “Well and good, but when we visit Cadwal to conduct our legitimate researches, must we live in squalor? After all, we are members of the Society.”

In the end the conclave adopted a crafty plan put forward by one of the most extreme Conservationists. The plan authorized a small new settlement at a specific location, where it could not impinge in any way upon the environment. The location turned out to be the side of a cliff overlooking Stroma Fjord on Throy: an almost comically unsuitable site for habitation, and an obvious ploy to discourage proponents of the plan from taking action.

The challenge, however, was accepted. Stroma came into being: a town of tall narrow houses, crabbed and quaint, black or dark umber, with doors and window trim painted white, blue and red. Seen from across the Fjord, the houses of Stroma seemed to cling to the side of the cliff like barnacles.

Many members of the Society, after a temporary stay at Stroma, found the quality of life appealing, and on the pretext of performing lengthy research, became the nucleus of a permanent population which at times numbered as many as twelve hundred persons.

On Earth the Naturalist Society fell prey to weak leadership, the peculation of a larcenous secretary and a general lack of purpose. At a final conclave the records and documents were consigned to the Library of Archives, and the presiding officer struck the gong of adjournment for the last time.

On Cadwal the Naturalists of Stroma took no official notice of the event, though now the sole income of Stroma was the yield from private off-world investment. The Charter remained as always the basic law of Cadwal and Araminta Station continued its work as usual.

VIII. PERSONS OF NOTE, RESIDENT AT ARMINTA STATION,
STROMA AND ELSEWHERE

At Clattuc House, Spanchetta and Simonetta Clattuc were sisters, more alike than otherwise, through Spanchetta was the more earthy and Simonetta-'Smonny', as she was known – the more imaginative and restless. Both grew to be large, big-breasted young women with profuse heaps of curling hair, small glinting heavy-lidded eyes. Both were passionate, haughty, domineering and vain; both were uninhibited and possessed of boundless energies. During their youth, both Spanny and Smonny became obsessively fixated upon the person of Scharde Clattuc and each shamelessly sought to seduce him or marry him or by any other means to possess him for their own. Unfortunately for their hopes Scharde found Spanny and Smonny equally distasteful, if not repugnant, and sidestepped the advances of each as courteously as possible, and on several occasions with a desperate absence of courtesy.

Scharde was sent off-world to an IPCC (4) training mission on at Sarsenopolls on Alphecca Nine. Here he met Marya Atene, a dark-haired young woman of grace, charm, dignity and intelligence with whom he became enamored, and she with him. The two were married at Sarsenopolis and in due course returned to Araminta Station.

Spanchetta and Smonny were deeply outraged and grim. Scharde's conduct represented personal rejection and also, at a deeper level, defiance and a lack of submissiveness. They were able to rationalize their rage when Smonny failed to matriculate from the Lyceum and, on becoming a collateral, was forced to move out from Clattuc house, coincidentally at about the same time Marya arrived, so that the blame could easily be transferred to Marya and Scharde.

Heavy with bitterness, Smonny departed Araminta Station. For a time she ranged far and wide across the Reach, engaging in a variety of activities. Eventually she married Titus Zigonie, who owned Shadow Valley Ranch, comprising twenty-two thousand square miles on the world Rosalla, as well as a Clayhacker space yacht.

For the labor necessary to work his ranch, Titus Zigonie, at Smonny’s suggestion began to employ gangs of indentured Yips, brought to Rosalia by none other than Namour, who shared the proceeds of the business with Calyactus, Oomphaw of Yipton.

At Namour's urging Calyactus paid a visit to the Shadow Valley Ranch on Rosalla, where he was murdered by either Smonny or Namour, or perhaps both working in tandem. Titus Zigonie, an inoffensive little man became 'Titus Pompo, the Oomphaw’ though Smonny wielded all authority. Never had she relaxed her hatred of Araminta Station in general and Scharde Clattuc in particular, and her dearest wish was to perform some destructive atrocity upon them both.

Meanwhile, Namour, with utmost sang-froid, once again took up his duties as paramour to both Spanchetta and Smonny.

Marya meanwhile had borne Scharde a son, Glawen. When Glawen was two years old, Maryra drowned in a boating accident under peculiar circumstances. A pair of Yips, Selious and Catterline, were witnesses to the drowning. Both declared themselves unable to swim and therefore helpless to aid Marya, and in any event it was none of their affair. So went most of the joy from Scharde’s life. He questioned Selious and Catterline at length, but both became stolid and uncommunicative, and at last Scharde, in disgust, sent them back to Yipton.

Glawen passed through childhood, adolescence and at the age of twenty-one reached his majority. Like his father Scharde he cast his lot with Bureau B. Glawen took after his father in other ways too. Both were spare of physique, narrow of hip, square of shoulder, sinewy and quick rather than massive of muscle. Glawen’s features, like those of Scharde, were hard and blunt in a rather gaunt flat-cheeked face; his hair was dark, thick and cut short; his skin, though tanned, was not nearly so weather-beaten and brown as that of Scharde. Both men were economical of motion; both at first glance seemed somewhat sardonic and skeptical, but the dispositions of both were far less grim and austere than their first impression suggested. Indeed, when Glawen thought of Scharde, he thought of someone who was kindly, tolerant, absolutely honorable and totally brave. When Scharde considered Glawen, he found it hard to contain his pride and affection.