"Thank you, Glawen. First, you must know that I am not absolutely certain of anything, and I may be off on a wild-goose chase. But I feel that I must learn the truth."

"Very well. Proceed."

"When I visited Earth before, I was just a schoolgirl. I stayed with my father's cousin at a place called Tierens, which is not far from Shillawy. His name is Pirie Tamm; he lives in an enormous echoing old house with his wife and daughters, all older than I. Pirie Tamm is a complicated person, an amateur of a dozen arts and crafts and recondite skills. He is one of the few remaining Naturalists on Earth-or, for that matter, the whole Gaean Reach--by reason of his interest in evolutionary biology. He has dozens of interesting friends; Milo and I both enjoyed every minute of our stay.

"One day an old man named Kelvin Kilduc came to call. We were told that he was the secretary, and possibly the final secretary, of the Naturalist Society, now on the verge of becoming totally defunct, since

the membership consisted only of Kelvin Kilduc, Pirie Tamm, a few antiquarians and two or three dilettantes. The Society had once been prosperous but no longer, owing to the peculations of a secretary named Frons Misfit, who had held office sixty years before. Nisfit |if plundered the accounts, sold all the assets and made off with the proceeds. Nisfit could not be traced and the Society was left with a trifling income from investments Nisfit had not been able to liquidate about enough to pay for the official stationery and the annual registration fee. And of course the Society held title to Cadwal, through the original Grant in Perpetuity, which was integral with the original Charter.

"Kelvin Kilduc in due course became secretary an honorary position, which gave him a unique status at dinner parties;

he was a walking conversation piece. I don't think he took his position seriously.

"I approached him in the most demure and polite manner imaginable and asked if I might look at the original Charter, since I myself was a Naturalist from Throy. He did not want to be bothered and made difficulties: the Charter was locked in a vault, deep under the Bank of Margravia in Shillawy. I did not persist, although I thought him rather stuffy and self-important.

"Poor Kelvin Kilduc died in his sleep two weeks later, and for lack of anyone else Pirie Tamm assumed the post of secretary to the nearly nonexistent Naturalist Society."

"One moment," said Glawen.

"What of the folk on Throy?"

"There is a distinction. They are Naturalists, so called, but not necessarily members of the Society, unless they pay dues and fulfill membership requirements, and no one has done so for centuries. In any event, Pirie Tamm became secretary, and felt obliged to visit the bank in Shillawy in order to make an inventory of the Society's possessions a task which Kelvin Kilduc had neglected in all his tenure.

"To make a long story short, when we looked into the vault, we found a large number of old records, the few paltry bonds which were still yielding income, but no Charter and, worse, no Grant in Perpetuity.

"Pirie Tamm was baffled. Before he thought, he blurted out that this was most serious; the grant was transferable and required only a bill of sale and new registration for a transfer of ownership.

"In other words, whoever held the original Charter and the attached grant owned all Cadwal: Ecce, Deucas and Throy.

"Pirie decided that the Charter and grant had been among the curios sold by Frons Nisfit. I suggested that we check the records to find if a new registration had been entered. Pirie now realized that we had uncovered a most delicate situation, and he did not know what to do, except ignore the whole thing and hope for the best. He obviously regretted that I knew of the situation, and made me promise to say nothing to anyone--at least until he could somehow regularize the matter.

"I don't know what he did--I suspect nothing, although he did learn that the grant had not been re registered

"There were a few clues which Pirie rather halfheartedly tried to run down, without any particular success. At the moment he wants only to let sleeping dogs lie, but he is old and ailing, and when he dies the new secretary will look for the Charter--if there is a new secretary.

"So there you have it. I planned to go to Earth with Milo, and try to find the Charter, before something dreadful happens. Now you know what I know, which is a relief, since if something happened to me, no one would know except Pirie Tamm, and he is a weak reed."

"Now I know," said Glawen.

"What will you do when you return to Earth?"

"I'll go back to stay with Pirie Tamm. Then I will join the Naturalist Society and become secretary. In that way, no new secretary will discover that the Charter is missing. Pirie might even cooperate and step down in my favor. I can't imagine that anyone else wants the position."

For a few moments Glawen pondered over what he had heard.

"I

don't know what to tell you. There's something nagging at my brain, but I can't remember what it is. I wish I could come with you."

Wayness said wistfully: "I wish you could too. But no matter. I'll go to Earth and learn what I can, and perhaps there is some easy way out of the difficulty."

"I hope it's both easy and safe."

"Why shouldn't it be safe?"

"Someone else might be looking for the same thing."

"I never thought of that." Wayness considered.

"Who would it be?"

"I don't know. Nor do you. And so it might be dangerous."

"I'll be careful."

"And now ..." Glawen put his arms around her and kissed her, until finally she drew away.

"I'd better be getting home. Mother and Father will be wondering what has become of me."

"I'll think over what you've said. There's something at the back of my mind that I want to tell you, but it won't come to the surface."

"It will come when you least expect it." She kissed his cheek.

"Now, take me back to Riverview House, before any alarms are sounded."

CHAPTER 6

Wayness had departed Araminta Station aboard the Perseian Lines' packet Faerlith Winter/lower, which would carry her down Mircea's Wisp to Andromeda 6011 IV: a junction world where she would transfer to a Glistmar Explorer Route space cruiser for the remainder of her voyage to Earth.

Wayness' departure left a dreary void in Glawen's life.

Overnight existence became drab and dull. Why had he allowed her to go so fearfully far away, beyond the reach of human perception? He asked himself the question often, and the answer came always in company with a rueful smile: he had been given no voice in the matter. Wayness had made her own decision, on the basis of her own best judgment. This was a process which, in all justice, could not be faulted: so Glawen assured himself, though without full or fervent conviction.

In some respects, Wayness must be compared to a natural force:

sometimes warm and beneficent (and in the last few weeks, breathtakingly affectionate), sometimes mysterious and baffling, but never susceptible to human control.

Glawen pondered this unique individual named Wayness Tamm.

If through some extraordinary circumstance he became endowed with divine powers and assigned the pleasurable task of designing a new Wayness, he might well diminish the proportion of sheer single-minded obstinacy and intractable, volatile self-willed independence by a soupcon or two--not enough to disturb the flavor of the mix, but to make her just a bit more ... Here Glawen hesitated, groping for the proper word. Malleable? Predictable? Subservient? Certainly none of these. It might be that whatever divine being had created the original Wayness had done his job with such consummate skill that no improvement was possible.

To occupy his energies, Glawen undertook several new courses of study, which upon completion would allow him to sit for the IPCC First Grade examination. A passing score, together with demonstrable competence at weaponry, practical technics, emergency control and hand-to-hand combat, would qualify him as IPCC Agent Ordinary, and would allow him IPCC status and authority across the entire Gaean Reach. Several others at Bureau B had achieved such status. Scharde had proceeded past the first grade to IPCC Agent Second Level, which enabled Bureau B to function as an IPCC affiliate.

Kirdy Wook announced that he also would undertake the IPCC regimen, but seemed in no hurry to attend the classes. He had apparently recovered from his ordeal at Yipton, except for a tendency toward vagueness and a set of abrupt or impatient mannerisms, which everyone expected would diminish with his full recovery. Kirdy still refused, or perhaps was unable, to discuss his experiences. Almost as soon as he left the hospital he resigned from the Bold Lions, and thereafter had nothing to do with any of the group.

For a period Glawen tried to engage Kirdy in conversation, hoping to ease him into a more positive frame of mind. The effort, so Glawen found, was like trying to pick up quicksilver. For the most part Kirdy listened in moody silence, smiling a strange glassy-eyed half-smile, in which Glawen thought to sense traces of both hostility and contempt. Kirdy volunteered no remarks of his own, so that, had Glawen not spoken again, the two would have sat in dead silence. To questions, Kirdy either responded not at all or at verbose length but without any reference to the question.

Kirdy had never been noted for his humor; now he seemed to find levity incomprehensible. Whenever Glawen spoke lightly or attempted a witticism, Kirdy turned him a glance so cold and brooding that the words caught in Glawen's throat.