Ecce and Old Earth Read Free

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