"I've never heard of them."
"They are a political faction among the Naturalists. We have, essentially, two options: to capitulate and abandon the Conserve, or to maintain order by whatever means is necessary."
"That doesn't seem a hard choice to make."
"Not at Bureau B. We believe that sooner or later the Yips must be vacated from Lutwen Atoll and be resettled off-world. In terms of the Charter, no other solution is possible." Scharde gave his head a gloomy shake.
"The hard facts are that our opinions have little force. We are agents of the Society at Stroma. It's the Society's problem and they must make the decisions."
"Then they should do so, or so it seems to me."
"Ah, but it's not so simple. Nothing ever is. At Stroma the Society is split down the middle. One faction supports the Charter, while the opposition rejects any actions which might lead to bloodshed. The present Conservator identifies with the second group: the Party of Fairness and Peace, they call themselves. But he is retiring and a new Conservator is moving into Riverview House."
"And what party is he?"
"I don't know," said Scharde.
"He'll be here for Parilia, and then we'll know more about him."
Parilia, a three-day festival in praise of the wines of Araminta, was celebrated each autumn and considered the high point of the year.
Glawen said: "It would seem that the Yips would want to be resettled, rather than living in what amounts to a warren at Yipton."
"Naturally! But they want to settle Marmion Province."
Glawen made a disconsolate sound.
"Everyone at Stroma must know that if the Yips were allowed into the Marmion littoral, they'd swarm over all of Deucas."
"Tell that to the Fairness and Peace people at Stroma, not me. I already believe you."
The long summer came to an end. Master Floreste's troupe of Mummers returned from a successful off-world tour, the profits of which would help fulfill Floreste's great dream:
a magnificent new Orpheum for the glorification of the performing arts. Glawen celebrated his sixteenth birthday and immediately started flight training
under the supervision of the airport manager: one Eustace Chiike, a native of Old Earth, i The lessons, the flyers and Eustace Chiike himself, with his tales ofj odd folk in remote places, for a time dominated Glawen's life. Chiike," while barely past the first flush of youth, was already the veteran ofai hundred picaresque adventures. He had traveled the Gaean Reach far and wide, at every level of the economic ladder: all of which had yielded him a working philosophy which he often shared with Glawen." "Poverty is acceptable because then there is no way but up.
Rich people worry about losing their wealth, but I like this worry far more than the worry of scratching the wealth together in the first place. Also, people are nicer to you when they think you are rich although-:
they'll often hit you over the head to find out where you hide your! money." '} Chilke's appearance, while not at all remarkable, combined an unobtrusive flamboyance with a droll corded face. His features wercj weather-beaten and somewhat irregular, under a coarse and tattered^ crop of short dust-colored hair. He stood at average stature, with a:
short neck and heavy shoulders which caused him to hunch slightly;
forward.
Chiike described himself as a farm boy from the Big Prairie.
He spoke so feelingly of his old home, the neat little prairie towns and the wide windy landscapes that Glawen inquired if he ever planned to" return.
"Indeed I do," said Chiike.
"But only after I've amassed a fortune. When I left they called me a vagabond and threw rocks after the car. I want to return in style, with a band playing and girls dancing ahead of me throwing rose petals in the street." Chiike thought back over' the years.
"All taken with all, I suspect that the consensus was correct.
Not that I vas mean and vicious; I just took after Grandpa Swaner, on my mother's side. The Chilkes never thought highly of the Swaners, who were felt to be society folk from the city and hence worthless. Grandpa Swaner was also considered a vagabond. He liked to deal in junk: purple bric-a-brac, stuffed animals, old books and documents, petrified dinosaur droppings. He had a collection of glass eyes of which he was very proud. The Chilkes laughed and jeered, sometimes behind his back, sometimes not. He wasn't troubled in the least, especially after he sold the glass eyes to a fervent collector for a princely sum. The Chilkes stopped laughing and began looking around for glass eyes of their own.
"Grandpa Swaner was a canny old bird, no question about it, and' always turned a handsome profit on his deals. The Chilkes finally had to stop calling him names out of embarrassment. I was his favorite. He gave me a beautiful Atlas of the Gaean Worlds for my birthday. It was an enormous book, two feet high by three feet wide and six inches thick, with Mercator maps of all the settled worlds. Whenever Grandpa Swaner came upon an item of interesting information regarding one of these worlds he'd paste it to the back of the map. When I was sixteen he took me to Tamar, Capella Nine, aboard a Gateway Line packet. It was the first time I'd been off-world and I was never the same again.
"Grandpa Swaner belonged to a dozen professional societies, including the Naturalist Society. I vaguely remember him telling me of a world at the end of Mircea's Wisp which the Naturalists kept as a preserve for wild animals. I wondered if the animals appreciated what was being done for them, so that they would abstain from eating people like Grandpa Swaner. I was just an innocent kindly child. Strange to say, here I am now, still innocent and kindly, at Araminta Station."
"How did you happen to come here?"
"That's a peculiar story, and I haven't sorted it out yet.
There are two or three puzzling coincidences which are very hard to explain."
"How so? I'm something of a vagabond myself, and I'm interested."
Chiike was amused by the remark.
"The story starts off sedately enough. I was working as a tour-bus operator out of Seven Cities, on John Preston's World." Chiike told how he became aware of "a big white-skinned lady 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 amiable manner and sympathetic conduct.
"It's nothing special: just my stock-in-trade," said Chiike modestly.
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 Chiike join her for lunch:
an invitation which Chiike saw no reason to refuse.
