nevertheless, she had long, shamelessly and vainly, marked Scharde for her own.
Spanchetta at this time was a flashing-eyed young woman, buxom and large, with a tempestuous spirit and a great roiling mass of dark curls which usually lay in a cylindrical heap on top of her head. To justify her fury, Spanchetta seized upon the problems of her sister Simonetta:
"Smonny."
Like Spanchetta, Smonny was large and burly, with a round face, rounded shoulders and large moist features. Where Spanchetta was dark-haired and dark-eyed, Smonny showed taffy-colored hair and golden-hazel eyes. Often she was jocularly assured that with yellow skin she might have passed for a Yip, which never failed to annoy her.1 To gain her ends Smonny was purposeful but lazy. Where Spanchetta preferred to bluster and domineer, Smonny used a wheedling or peevish persistence which rasped away at her adversary's patience, and eventually reduced it to shreds.
Through indolence she failed her courses at the lyceum, and was denied Agency status. Spanchetta at once placed the blame upon Scharde, for introducing Marya into the house, thereby "rolling" Smonny out.
' Couplings between Yips and ordinary Gaeans yielded no progeny; Yips apparently were a subspecies of man in the process of differentiation: at least such was the speculation.
Yips, both men and women, were physically attractive;
indeed, the beauty of Yip girls was proverbial.
"That is absurd and illogical," she was told, by no less than Fratano the Housemaster.
"Not at all!" declared Spanchetta, eyes glittering and bosom heaving. She took a step forward and Fratano drew back a step.
"The worry absolutely destroyed Smonny's concentration! She made herself sick!"
"Still, that's not Scharde's fault. You did the same thing when you married Minis. He's out-House too, a Laverty collateral, as I recall."
Spanchetta could only grumble.
"That's different. Minis is our own sort, not just some little interloper from God-help-us!"
Fratano turned away.
"I can't waste any more of my time with such nonsense."
Spanchetta gave an acrid chuckle.
"It's not your sister who is being victimized; it's mine! Why should you care? Your position is secure! As for wasting your time, you are anxious only to get to your afternoon nap. But there will be no nap for you today. Smonny is coming to talk with you."
Fratano, not the most obdurate of men, heaved a deep sigh.
"I can't talk to Smonny right now. I'll make a special exception. She can have a month for study and another examination; I can't do any better. If she fails, she is out!"
The concession pleased Smonny not at all. She set up a howl of complaint: "How can I cover five years of material in a month?"
"You must do your best," snapped Spanchetta.
"I suspect that the examination will only be a formality; Fratano hinted as much. Still, you can't get by with nothing! So, you must start studying immediately."
Smonny made only a perfunctory attempt to encompass the material she had so long ignored. To her consternation, the examination was of the usual sort, and not just a pretext for granting her a passing grade. Her score was even worse than before, and now there was no help for it: Smonny was out.
Her eviction from Clattuc House was a long and contentious process, which climaxed at the House Supper, when Smonny delivered her farewell remarks, which escalated from sarcastic jibes, through a revelation of disgraceful secrets, into a shrieking hysterical fit.
Fratano at last ordered the footmen to remove her by force;
Smonny jumped up on the table and ran back and forth, followed by four bemused footmen, who finally seized her and dragged her away.
Smonny took herself off-world to Soum, where she worked briefly in a pilchard cannery; then, according to Spanchetta, joined an ascetic religious group, and subsequently vanished no one knows where.
In due course Marya gave birth to Glawen. Three years later, Marya drowned in the lagoon, while two Yips stood on the shore it no great distance. When asked why they had not gone to her rescue one said:
"We were not watching." The other said: "It was none of oar affair." Both, puzzled and uncomprehending, were immediately sent back to Yipton.
Scharde never spoke of the event and Glawen never asked questions. Scharde showed no inclination to remarry, even though the ladies considered him eminently personable. He was quiet and soft-spoken, of medium stature, spare and strong, with coarse short prematurely gray hair and narrow sky-blue eyes gleaming from a bony weathered face.
On the morning of Glawen's birthday, the two had barely finished breakfast before Scharde was called away to Bureau B on special business. Glawen, with nothing better to do, lingered at the table, while the two Yip footmen who had served the breakfast now cleared away the dishes and set the room to rights. Glawen watched them, wondering what went on behind the half-smiling faces. The quick sidelong glances:
what did they signify? Mockery and contempt? Simple placid curiosity? Or nothing whatever? Glawen could not decide, and Yip behaviour gave no clue. It would be interesting, thought Glawen, to understand the quick sibilant Yip idiom.
Glawen finally rose from the table. He departed Clattuc House and wandered down to the lagoon: a series of brimming ponds fed by the River Wan, with trees along the shore both native and imported: black bamboo, weeping willow, poplar, purple-green verges." The morning was fresh and sunny;
autumn was in the air; in a few weeks Glawen would be entering the lyceum.
Glawen came to the Clattuc boathouse: a rectangular structure with an arched roof of green and blue glass supported on pillars of black iron, built to outdo in elegance the other five boat houses
The Clattucs of this particular time, save perhaps for Scharde and Glawen, were not keen yachtsmen. The boathouse sheltered only a pair of punts, a beamy little sloop twenty-five feet long and a fifty-foot ketch for more extended blue-water cruising.2
' A large number of Earth-native plants and trees had been introduced to enhance the already rich flora ofCadwal. In every instance the biologists had adapted die plant to the environment, imposing ingenious genetic safeguards to prevail ecological disaster.
The boathouse was one of Glawen's favorite resorts, where he could almost always find solitude, which today he wanted above all else so that he might compose himself for the ordeal of the House Supper and his birthday celebration.
Such affairs were little more than formalities, so Scharde had assured him. Giawen would not be required to deliver a speech or embarrass himself in any other manner.
