Throy Page 26
* * *
Precursory Footnotes
1 The biological techniques for introducing new species into alien surroundings without danger to the host environment had long been perfected.
2 Bureau:
A: Records and statistics.
B: Patrols and surveys: Police and security services.
C: Taxonomy, cartography, natural sciences.
D: Domestic services.
E: Fiscal affairs: exports and imports
F: Visitors accommodations.
3 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 ‘heart-less,’ 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, not a residential settlement.
4 IPCC: the Interworld Police Coordination Company; often described as the single most important institution of the Gaean Reach. IPCC power was immense but carefully monitored and controlled by the IPCC special Branch. On the rare occasions when an IPCC agent was found guilty of corruption or abuse of power, he was neither reprimanded, nor demoted, nor discharged; he was executed. As a result, IPCC prestige was everywhere high.
Bureau B at Araminta Station was an IPCC affiliate and qualified Bureau B personnel became, in both theory and practice, IPCC agents.
* * *
Chapter 1 Footnotes
1 Chilke: pronounced with two syllables, accent on the first, to rhyme with ‘silky.’
* * *
Chapter 2 Footnotes
1 An unkind detractor had described Bodwyn Wook sitting in his great chair as ‘an old yellow monkey peeking out of a barrel.’ Still, his orders were seldom disobeyed, and no one ever boasted of having outwitted Bodwyn Wook. There had been another remark to the effect that: “When Bodwyn Wook is conniving and fooling you, his eyelids droop and a dreamy look comes over his face, like a Mongoloid baby sucking a sugar-tit.”
* * *
Chapter 3 Footnotes
1 Gnosis: see Glossary A
* * *
Chapter 4 Footnotes
1 A situation ultimately traced to dietary factors: specifically, the presence of black spiderclams in the Yip diet.
2 Oomp: Elite guards in the service of the Oomphaw at Yipton.
* * *
Chapter 5 Footnotes
1 The double government included, first, the Factor’s Association which represented the ranchers and arbitrated their differences; and, second, the Board of Civil Regulation, which governed the rest of the population. Neither service recognized the jurisdiction of the other, each claiming paramount authority. Informal liaison personnel managed to keep the two systems working with acceptable efficiency, and for a fact neither wished to take on total responsibility.
2 If the Yip were asked to desist from this sort of conduct, his response was typically puzzled acquiescence and smiling affability.
If the expostulations persisted, the Yip, still smiling, would furtively sidle away, hoping to avoid any more of this incomprehensible
discord.
* * *
Chapter 8 Footnotes
1 See Glossary B
* * *
Glossary A Footnotes
1 ‘bouschterness,’ untranslatable, is roughly equivalent to ‘conspicuous vulgarity,’ or ‘obviously absurd and unsuitable display,’ such as wearing an expensive garment at an inappropriate occasion, or flaunting extravagant ornaments.