Intruder

“One should be fairly quick with the sand, one suspects,” Jegari said under his breath.

Meanwhile, fascinating sight, the creature stuck one long fingernail into the egg top and made a hole, which it carefully widened. Then it shifted the egg to hold it in two hands as a young child might hold a teacup. Its purplish tongue flicked into the egg and lapped the yellow contents up quite neatly.

It was very neat. It licked up all the egg it could, then dropped the very clean eggshell onto the floor of the cage and leaped to the other bench.

“Its name is Boji,” Cajeiri decided, and when everyone looked at him oddly: “Boji was one of the mechieti my great-uncle had. Besides, it reminds me of Baiji, who deserves to have a silly creature named after him.”

“Indeed,” Lucasi said.

“Must he always be in the cage?” Cajeiri asked.

“Or on his lead,” Veijico said, “until he is very much tamer. They can become quite tame. He will sit on your shoulder or on your arm, and he will reach man’chi, once he trusts you. But let him rest a little, nandi. He was very upset on the train and especially in the lift. One believes the noises frightened him. A dish of water and a little quiet would be good for his stomach right now.”

“Water,” Cajeiri said, and Jegari immediately left the premises, presumably to take care of that. They had kept all the goings-on very quiet, because there was a strategy in the plan, that nobody else should know about Boji until he had been on the premises for a few days, and then one could prove that Boji was not any disturbance at all, that he did not smell, he did not scare the servants, and that they could take care of him perfectly well without disturbing anybody.

So he settled to watch Boji, just to watch him, determined to keep such an exciting creature and plotting how he could keep Boji’s presence as quiet as possible—while Boji settled to watch him, with what thoughts on the other side of the cage wall one could hardly guess.

It was very strange how much and how immediately he liked having Boji there. They had been fortunate five, he and his aishid, and he supposed in a way there was now an infelicitous sixth, but Boji should hardly count in the class of persons.

And besides, his mother and father were hardly superstitious, or they would hardly have had another baby. Two was an infelicity, and four was no better, so either they had to plan another baby soon—that was a horrible thought!—or they had to be a family of four forever, or, counting their aishidi, twenty, which still not that good a number.

But the baby would hardly have a bodyguard right off, would it? They would be sixteen for years. Two eights. Four fours. Eight infelicitous twos.

His mind wandered off to thinking about the baby. And once he brought his mind back from its diversion, it informed him it was notan unrelated worry, because his mother had gotten more and more touchy and particular the closer she was to having the baby. She had the servants ru

And if anything went wrong, his mother was the likeliest to object to Boji, as she had started objecting to everything lately that might inconvenience the baby.

He could claim that he had gotten Boji because of the numbers—because seventeen was a lotbetter than sixteen. That was the thing to say to anyone having a silly argument about something. One just found good or bad numbers, as suited, and argued. It was what the old men did.

And Boji andthe baby certainly made the nonadults in the household not-two. Which was a good thing.

So, then, he decided he would say he had felt unlucky about the household numbers with the baby, so he had gotten Boji to make the numbers better.

He liked that. It fit. It would make his mother think he was learning traditional thinking, and he was supposed to do that.

So now he was happy, and even ’counters had to be. Happy, that was.

That was brilliant. It stood a fair chance of working. Or at least of diverting the argument.

Now—if he could just keep his mother from finding out Boji even existed—

First off, he had taken his precaution and gotten just two servants, Eisi and Lieidi, assigned to attend his suite, and once they introduced Eisi and Lieidi to Boji and explained the situation—they would hardly betray him at this point, would they? They would understand that this was a surprise, that eventually the whole household would know, but they would not betray a surprise, would he? Not if they wanted his future good will.

He imagined a triumphant show, with Boji all tame and proper, sitting on his arm and maybe doing tricks, as he had heard his kind could—fetching things from a shelf, or bringing one a pen or a book from the desk. He would demonstrate to his father and mother how very ma

Boji bounded across the cage and shrieked. Thatwas a little worrisome. He went to distract Boji and quiet him. He had notthought about Boji making noise. That was a problem.

That was a bigproblem.

The door opened. He held his breath. But it was just Jegari coming back. Jegari had brought a covered dish of water from the kitchen, just a plain little white baking dish of the sort that could disappear from the kitchen stores with nobody objecting.

“Here,” Jegari said, handing the water dish to him. “I shall open the cage. You can put the water in. Just be careful he does not get past you. Antaro can hold the harness while you work, through the grille.”

It took a little arranging, but Antaro reached in and caught the harness,. Cajeiri carefully bent down and put the water dish down.

“Now we can take the harness off,” Jegari said. “He should think about his training when he has it on, but he will only do it mischief if we leave it on. Besides, it will chafe his skin.

That took another bit of careful maneuvering, which Jegari and Antaro managed, getting the harness unbuckled and then letting Boji loose in the cage.

Boji was happier then and bounded this way and that, from perch to perch, ignoring the water dish.

Antaro flipped little hammerlike stops on the bottom and the top of the door.

Antaro said, “Always do that, nandi, because he may be clever enough to get his fingers through and open the main latch. That is why the area behind the latch has a much denser pattern in the brass, so he ca

“One hopes he minds his ma

Fascinating. And very spooky.

Then Boji leaped back up to the perch and then to the wall nearest him, clung to the brass flowers of the filigree and looked at him through the holes with first one eye and then another, as if correctly realizing now who he belonged to.

They said parid’ji could find man’chi to the person that owned them.

Atevi could. Mecheiti could, in their own way. He had never wondered about other animals, except cats and dogs and monkeys, which were as absent from the world as dinosaurs.

He had sowanted a cat or a dog. Or a dinosaur. Just a little one.

But Boji was going to be so good and so much fun. And if Boji decided to settle man’chi toward him, it was going to be very, very good, and so impressive for everyone he knew.

Boji was more fun than any baby. That was sure.

Once mani got back, he could visit her apartment and be under her rules when he was there, which he liked far better than his father’s rules. Well—but—

If he stayed overnight at mani’s apartment, once she came back, somebody had to keep Boji. And he could not tell the staff about Boji yet. And he still had no idea what he was going to do about the servants.