Jack Vance - Ecce and Old Earth

“Carlotta, my dear! Let us be temperate!”

“I am being temperate. I will call you a scoundrel, a festering sore and a human jackal. That is temperance and it must suffice. I will send for my belongings tomorrow."

Carlotta marched through the front door and out into the night. The door thudded shut.

Moncurio paced back and forth, head lowered, arms clasped behind his back. “I am dogged by adversity; it must be my destiny! After travail and endless patience, not to mention expense, my plans lie in shards!” He glanced sharply at Wayness. “Who informed you of my address? Was it Clara? I have never trusted that woman!”

“Myron told me.”

“Myron?” Moncurio’s jaw dropped. “How did he know?"

Wayness shrugged. ”Clairvoyance, perhaps.”

Moncurio resumed his pacing. Glawen and Wayness rose to their feet, bade Moncurio goodbye, and followed Carlotta out into the night.

Standing by the railing at the edge of the verandah they looked toward the ghostly ranks of the Standing Stones.

“I am still frightened,” said Wayness. “I was sure that I would be killed.”

“It was a near thing. I should never have let you go off by yourself.” Glawen put his arms around her; they embraced.

Wayness spoke at last. “So — what now?”

“At the moment I can't think of anything sensible. My head seems to be whirling. I would like to find us a civilized dinner with a bottle of wine. I have had nothing to eat for days on end except some bread and cheese and a bite of pold. At the moment I don’t even have a room.”

“No problem there,” said Wayness. “I have a very nice room."

From Tanjaree on Pharisse and through the Jingles to Mersey, thence to Star Home on Aspidiske VI; then back toward the center of the Reach: so went their voyage, without excitement or notable event. There was little to do but watch the stars slide by and to speculate in regard to the question: where was the Charter, and the Grant-in-Perpetuity?

Glawen and Wayness spent hours in conjecture and cogitation, but in the end they returned to what seemed a set of basic facts. Charter and Grant had definitely been taken and sold by Frons Nisfit, along with other Naturalist documents. That was proved by Smonny's conduct at Gohoon Galleries. She had discovered a notation confirming the sale of Charter and Grant to Floyd Swaner, which had prompted her to excise the page and to concentrate her attention upon the Chilke ranch and Eustace Chilke himself.

Such was Basic Fact A. Basic Fact B was that Charter and Grant had not left Floyd Swaner’s possession. There was no reason to doubt both Keeble’s and Moncurio that Floyd Swaner had not included the items among the Naturalist Society materials he had traded to them for tanglets. Basic Fact C was that Floyd Swaner had bequeathed all his belongings to Eustace Chilke, his grandson. However, on several occasions Chilke had declared that he knew nothing of such documents; and that the most notable items of his inheritance consisted of several stuffed animals and a collection of purple vases.

''The conclusion is plain," said Wayness. “Charter and Grant, despite all of Smonny's attempts to locate them, are still somewhere among Floyd Swaner's effects — that is to say, the objects he bequeathed to Eustace Chilke."

The two sat in the after saloon, watching the stars shift across the dark sky. Glawen said: “It seems then that we must trespass once more upon the patience of Ma Chilke. She must be very bored with this business by now."

“She won’t be bored if we explain that the tanglets are valuable.”

“That may soothe her. The documents are probably in some perfectly obvious place, where no one has troubled to look."

“It's a good theory except that at the Chilke ranch there doesn’t seem to be any such obvious places, except those which are used all the time.”

“Perhaps they are among Chilke's boyhood keepsakes — old letters, high school yearbooks and the like — we might find an inconspicuous envelope labeled ‘Memoranda' or something of the sort. In fact — " Glawen stopped short.

'' ‘In fact’? What does that mean?”

“It means that I thought of somewhere to look, I don’t mean the stuffed moose.”

Glawen and Wayness emerged from the Tammeola spaceport into the light of early morning. Immediately boarding the slideway, they rode north to Division city and thence by local air service to Largo on the Sippewissa River. As before, Glawen rented a flitter they flew north and west into the heart of the Big Prairie, over Idola and beyond to where Fosco Creek, lined by cottonwoods and weeping willows, made its great loop and there, below, was the Chilke farmstead.

On this occasion Ma Chilke was alone, without even the children on hand. Glawen and Wayness alighted from the flitter and approached the house. Ma Chilke came to the door and stood waiting with hands on hips. She greeted Glawen with formal cordiality, and gave Wayness a sharp inspection, which Wayness bore with as much aplomb as possible. Ma Chilke turned back to Glawen and spoke, rather tartly: “Instead of keeping to business and going out after Mel Keebles, it looks like you went out and got this young lady instead.”

Glawen grinned. “I could explain my reasons, if you were interested.”

“Don’t bother,” retorted Ma Chilke. “I can guess your reasons, and depending upon what you were looking for, they make sense. Are you planning to introduce us?"

“Mrs. Chilke, this is Miss Wayness Tamm."

"Pleased to meet you.” Ma Chilke backed into the house. “Come in. So long as I hold the door open, the flies will take advantage.”

Ma Chilke took her guests through the kitchen and into the parlor. Glawen sat on the couch, with Wayness beside him. Ma Chilke surveyed them without affability. “So what is it this time? Did you find Mel Keebles?”

“Yes. It took some doing. He was out on a far world a long ways from home.”

Ma Chilke shook her head in disapproval. “I just can't understand it; surely there is nothing out there as good as what we have at home. Most often things are worse! I have heard of places where a black slime covers you every time you lay down to sleep. Is that nice?"

“No,” said Wayness. “Definitely not!”

Ma Chilke went on. “I don’t want to look out my window and find a snake sixty feet long looking back at me. I take no pleasure in that sort of thing.”

“There is no explaining why people go out among the stars,” said Glawen. “It might be curiosity or the love of adventure or the prospect of great wealth; and sometimes people simply want to live by their own rules. Sometimes they are misanthropes, or sometimes they have made Old Earth too hot for themselves."

“Like Adrian Moncurio," suggested Wayness.

Ma Chilke frowned. “Adrian who?”

“Moncurio. You've probably heard the name before, since he was a friend of both Grandpa Swaner and Melvish Keebles.”

“I remember the name,” said Ma Chilke. “I haven’t heard it for years. He had something to do with the purple vases and the green jade buckles.”

“That is one reason we are here,” said Glawen. “These purple vases are burial urns and they are valuable to collectors."

Wayness said: “The same applies to the jade buckles. They are called tanglets. Before we go, I will put you in touch with someone who will help you sell them at a good price."

'"That’s kind of you," said Ma Chilke. “The things really belong to Eustace, but I don’t suppose he'd mind if I sold a few of them. I can use the money, certainly.”

“To start with, you should put them in a safe place, and don’t let the children play with them.”