Jack Vance - Ecce and Old Earth

“You will find the sum of one sol duly entered into the Naturalist Society account," said Pirie Tamm.

“That is fraud!" cried Julian. He snatched the document. “‘Sold to the association known as the CADWAL CONSERVANCY for the sum of one sol.’” Julian turned to Mr. Fath. “Can they do that?”

“In short simple words: yes. It has been done. This grant, if you notice, is now stamped, VOID BY REASON OF SUPERSESSION.”

Julian turned to Glawen. “Where is the new Grant?”

“Here is a copy. It has been recorded. The original is in the safe deposit."

"You are still Secretary of the Naturalist Society,” said Wayness. "It is a fine new career for you!”

"I resign,” cried Julian in brassy tones. He swung around to his friends. “There is nothing more here for us; we are in a den of conservationists; they sting like wasps and bite like serpents. Let us go.” He clapped the hat on his head and stalked from the room, followed by his four friends.

Wayness asked Pirie Tamm: “Who is Secretary of the Naturalist Society now?”

“Not I," said Pirie Tamm. “I fear that there is no more Naturalist Society. It is over and past.”

The biological techniques for introducing nest species into alien surroundings without danger to the host environment had long been perfected.

Collateral: only forty Wooks, Offaws, Clattucs, Diffins, Veders and Lavertys could be reckoned Cadwal Agents’. The excess became ‘collaterals’ (co-Wooks, co-Lavertys, co-Clattucs, etcetera), and upon their twenty-first birthday were required to leave the house of their birth and seek their fortune elsewhere. The occasion was fraught always with heartbreak, sometimes fury and, not infrequently, suicide. The situation was criticized as ‘brutal’ and 'heartless,' especially among the LPFers of Stroma, but no remedy or better method could be devised within the intent of the Charter which defined Araminta Station as an administrative agency and a business-place, not a residential settlement.

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

IPCC: the Interworld Police Coordination Company; often described as the single most important institution of the Gaean Reach. Bureau B at Araminta Station was an IPCC affiliate and qualified Bureau B personnel became, in both theory and practice, IPCC agents.

Peepers: transceivers which first encode a message then compress it into a 'peep' a billionth of a second long, which can be transmitted without fear of detection.

Off-world repatriates, unable to mesh comfortably into the society of Old Earth, suddenly gave way to a mass psychosis. Forming hysterical gangs, they indulged themselves in a frenzy of savage destruction, in order to punish the environment which they felt had mistreated them.

Excerpt from ‘Reflections upon the Morphology of Settled Places’ LIFE, Volume II, by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey:

Note: Among certain of Nion’s societies, including that centered upon Tanjaree, nocturnal meals, their content and degree of elaboration, were based upon phases and states of the moons. A person who ate the wrong sort of pold while, let us say, the moon Zosmei was on high would have committed a vulgar and laughable solecisms, so that forever after he would be known as a bumpkin.