"A hint now is better than a growl later, after you had committed the blunder, as in the case of the great Yip larcenies. They robbed us up one side and down the other, while you played blindman's buff and pinky-panky-poo with your eight girls."
Namour smiled ruefully.
"You have touched a sensitive area.
They were deft as devils, and betrayed my trust."
"Item four," said Bodwyn Wook.
"Prepare a list of places on nearby worlds which are actively in need of labor, especially those which will provide transportation and other inducements. I understand that you are already quite familiar with the procedure."
Namour gave his head a deprecatory shake.
"If nothing else, I now appreciate the problems involved."
"Problems, inconveniences they are to be expected when a multitude changes its residence," said Bodwyn Wook.
"Happily, neither you nor I will undertake the migration."
"It goes without saying that the Oomphaw has other plans, which, so I suspect, involve the Marmion."
"These plans must be put aside. That is the gist of the message he is about to receive."
Namour shrugged.
"I fear that you will only exacerbate him."
Bodwyn Wook glared at Namour through malignant yellow slits.
"More appropriately, he should worry lest he exacerbate me.
I will close his harbor, and he will eat no more fish. With the bamboo dead, there will be no more mats for his roof and the rain will drip in his face. At night he will grope through the dark for lack of power. The Yips will gratefully leave the pestilential place. As each files by, we shall ask: "Are you Titus Pompo, the Oomphaw?" And if all deny the identity, we shall know that the last person to leave Yipton is Titus Pompo."
"That may well be the way of it," said Namour.
"I suppose, as a first step, you will completely cut off his tourist trade?"
"To the contrary! We shall ply Yipton with tourist after tourist, in platoons and shiploads! The Arkady Inn will bulge, they will run back and forth between kitchen and crowded tables, bearing platters loaded with delicacies. The tourists will pay in scrip, redeemable at Araminta Station only for contraceptives, copies of the Cadwal Charter and one-way outward-bound passage."
Namour laughed in genuine amusement.
"Bodwyn Wook, I salute you! Still, it is sad that the Yips, who had no hand in writing the Charter, must suffer its worst impact."
"It is even sadder that they covet someone else's property, but that is the perversity of human, or near-human, nature."
Bodwyn Wook glanced at the clock.
"I have had alarming reports--and this is confidential information--that the Yips have used stolen pans to complete at least one Model D flyer, which can only be intended as an aggressive weapon.
We will capture or destroy this flyer if we find it."
"That is interesting news!" said Namour.
"You have given me much to think about." He rose abruptly to his feet.
"And now I must go; other business weighs on both of us."
"You need not go yet. I have set aside this time for our conference, and you are entitled to every last second. To another matter." Bodwyn Wook laid a large-scale chart on the table.
"This is Yipton, as you can see. This is Arkady Inn;
here the harbor and the flight strip." Bodwyn Wook tapped the chart with a long white forefinger.
"This would seem to be the location of the Caglioro, with the women's dormitories out around here." Bodwyn Wook darted a glance toward Namour.
"Where is the palace of the Oomphaw? Point it out to me, if you will."
Namour shook his head.
"I know no more than you."
"You have never treated with him in his private offices?"
"We conduct our business, such as it is, in a room off the hotel lobby. I speak to him through a bamboo screen. Whether these are his private offices I can't say. I suspect that he sits at a place from where he can overlook the lobby. Why are you interested?"
"I could list a dozen reasons," said Bodwyn Wook airily.
"To start with: sheer curiosity." He looked again at the clock.
