Intruder Read Online Free Page B

said.
    “That you may, young lord. If one could ask your preferences, one might show you other choices.”
    “Carving,” he said at once. He had seen better carving on a lot of furniture around them, some with gilt, some without. “A lot of carving. With animals, not flowers, and not gold. The most carving there is. You would not have any dinosauri…”
    The man looked puzzled. “No, nandi. One must confess ignorance of such.”
    “Well, big animals, then. With trees. Except,” he added reluctantly, “we are not permitted to have antiquities.”
    “I know several such sets,” the supervisor said, and led the way far down the aisle between towering stacks of old furniture.
    The first set was all right, dusty, but the animals were all gracefullyrunning, more suggestions than real animals. The second one had animals just grazing. That was fine. But not what he wanted.
    The third, around the corner, had fierce wild animals snarling out of a headboard and a big one with tusks, staring face-on from a matching bureau with white and black stone eyes. “This one, nadi!” he said. “And this!”
    So a tag went on that set. And he had most of the bedroom. It was a big bed. Bigger than the one he had in mani’s apartment.
    “You will need chairs for a sitting room, young gentleman; we have a suggestion for seven chairs. And a table. A desk for an office. Carpet for three rooms. All these things.”
    “And my aishid will have their beds and carpets,” he said. “And they can choose for themselves. Whatever they want. But we favor red for ourselves.”
    “Red. One will strive to find the best,” the supervisor said.
    There were five wonderful chairs. Mani would approve. They were heavy wood and tapestry had the most marvelous embroidery of mountains in medallions on the backs and seats, each one different. There was a side table of light and dark striped wood that was almost an antique. And for his office there was a desk that had a picture of a sailing ship, an old sailing ship, with sails. He liked that almost as much as the bedroom set. It reminded him of Najida.
    There was a red figured carpet that was fifty years old and hedging on antiquity, too, but the supervisor said if it was in the bedroom, it would surely not be spilled on; and it was a wonderful carpet, with pictures woven in around the border of a forest and fortresses and animals, with a big tree for most of the pattern, but the bed would cover that.
    Then his aishid picked out beds and side tables and chairs for their rooms: Lucasi and Veijico liked plain furniture with pale striped wood, and Antaro and Jegari liked a dark set that had trees and hunting scenes like Taiben forests, and they agreed to mixit up, because Veijico and Antaro had one room and Lucasi and Jegari had the other. But that was all right, too: Mother had said there would be a master of kabiu to sort all that out and put vases and hangings and such that would make it felicitous, however they scrambled the sets.
    It was a lot of walking and pulling back canvas covers and looking at things. He thought they would all smell of vermin-poison by the time they got out of the warehouse.
    But they were only half done. The supervisor showed them a side room and shelves and shelves of vases and bowls and little nested tables and statues and wall hangings. The supervisor pulled out several hangings he thought might suit, and Antaro wanted a hunting one that he rejected, himself. He took one that was mountains and lakes and a boat on the lake, and Veijico took another that was of mountains, while Lucasi and Jegari took hunting scenes and another mountain needlework.
    And there was, in this place, a marvelous hanging that was all plants, and all of a sudden Cajeiri saw what he wanted for the whole room, the whole suite of rooms. “I want that one, nadi,” he said. “But I want growing plants, too. I want pots for plants, nadi.” He and his associates on the ship had used to go to hydroponics,