Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

“I would enjoy that,” he said truthfully. “Very much.”

“Then that is what we shall do,” Luken declared. “Until soon, my son.”

“Until soon, father,” Pat Rin responded and rose to bow Luken to the door.

IT APPEARED THAT Luken had been correct in his assessment of the lot of rugs from the Southern House, as well as in his understanding of the utility of McWhortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend.

The tea was surprisingly tasty for something avowedly of Terran extraction, and equally efficacious.

The rugs… He sighed. Not all of the pilots of Korval—put together!—knew what Luken did of rugs, and some had, alas, displayed an amazing lack of both color sense and fashion awareness. The first rug, indifferently rolled and protected by nothing more than a thin sheet of plastic, was synthetic. He threw it across the flat onto the show-zone, where the mass and size were automatically recorded—the overhead camera recorded detail, but really—there wasn’t much to say for it. Machine stamped in a small, boring floral pattern, backed with nothing more than its own fibers, with a density on the low side, it might as well be sent as a donation to the Pilot’s Fund used-goods outlet in Low Port.

Pat Rin dutifully entered these deficiencies into his clipboard, slotted the stylus, and touched a key. The clipboard hummed for a moment, printing, and a yellow inventory tag slid out of the side slot. Pat Rin picked up the stitch gun and stapled the tag to the corner of the rug, before rolling it, bagging it in a bel’Tarda-logo light-proof wrapper, and dragging the sorry specimen over to the storage bin which he had marked with Cousin Er Thom’s number and the additional legend, “Southern House.”

Straightening, feeling somewhat better for the tea and in fact much more clear eyed—he looked suddenly to the shelf above the bin, where a long-haired white cat with excessively pink ears lounged, very much at her leisure. Likely she’d been there the while; that he hadn’t noticed her was a further testament to his excesses of the evening before.

“Niki,” Pat Rin murmured, extending a finger, but not quite touching the drowsing animal.

Her eyes slitted, then opened to full emerald glory. Yawning, she extended a pink-toed and frivolously befurred foot to wrap around his fingertip, her claws just pricking the surface of his skin.

Pat Rin smiled and used his free hand to rub the lady softly beneath her delicate chin. Niki’s eyes went to slits again and her breathy purr filled the air between them. The claws withdrew from his captive finger and he let the freed member fall to his side, while moving his other hand to her ears. His exertions there were shortly rewarded with an increase in her audible pleasure, and he smiled again.

One’s mother did not keep cats, or any other domestic creature, aside the occasional servant. It made for an oddly empty feel about the house, even when it was full with guests.

“Thank you,” he whispered, giving her chin a last rub and stepping back. Niki squinted her eyes in a cat-smile, purring unabated.

Pat Rin turned back to his work.

The next rug was intriguingly and thickly wrapped in what must have been a local newspaper. He fussed the sheets off and found the rug rolled backing out, tied at intervals with what might have once been elegant hair-ribbons. He sat on his heels and smiled. This, he would examine last. It had good weight and somehow the smell of a proper rug—and would be his reward for doing a careful inventory of the rest of the obviously unsuitable specimens tumbled about them.

He used a utility blade to slit the plastic sealing the next rug, noting the ragged jute backing, and unrolled it onto the scale with a casual kick before bending to retrieve the clipboard.

The work was—comforting. Despite that Kareen yos’Phelium had declared that she would not have her heir made into a rug salesman—had in fact complained of him coming up with callused hands—Luken had trained him well, and he knew himself to be the master of the task he had set for himself. It could not be said that he completely shared his foster father’s ecstatic enthusiasm for carpets, or his encyclopedic knowledge of their histories, but he owned to a fondness for the breed, and knew a certain pleasure in being once more among them.

The unrolled carpet was a geometric, hand-loomed in bronzes, browns and dark greens, with pale green fringe along the two short sides. It glistened in the light, inviting him to believe that it was silk. But he had seen the backing and was not taken-in.

As counterfeits went, it was rather a good one. The traditional Arkuba pattern had been faithfully reproduced, the measurements precisely those to which all Arkuba carpets adhered, to the very length of the pale fringe, and the vegetable-dyed thread. Alas, the luster which would, in the genuine article, be testimony to the silken threads that had gone into its manufacture, was in this case misleading. Rather than silk, the carpet before him had been woven with specially treated cotton thread.

A perfectly serviceable and attractive rug, really, setting aside for the moment those issues surrounding a counterfeit hall mark. Pat Rin merely hoped that the nameless ancestor who had purchased the thing had known it for what it was and had paid accordingly.

He entered his observations, tapped the stylus against the print button, and slid it into its slot while the clipboard hummed its tuneless tune and in the fullness of time extruded an inventory ticket which he stapled to the corner of the rug before bagging and dragging it over to the bin.

Niki was still on the shelf overhead, profoundly asleep. He smiled, but did not disturb her.

The protective plastic over the next carpet had been torn at some time—possibly as recently as the move from the southern House to Luken’s warehouses. Pat Rin slit what was left of the sheet, approving, as he did so, the plentitude of painstakingly tied knots along the carpet’s underside, and the foundation of wool.

Once more, a kick sent the rug rolling out—and he sighed aloud. Insects had gotten in through the breached plastic. The wool in spots was eaten down to the backing, leaving the skeleton of a handsome rectilinear design he did not immediately recognize. No, this damage had not occurred in the warehouse, being both too extensive and too old.

Sighing yet again, he reached for the clipboard to record the loss—

“Cousin Luken?” The voice was clear and carrying—and unfortunately familiar.

Pat Rin closed his eyes, there where he rested on one knee beside the ruined rug, and wished fervently that she would overlook this room. There was little chance that she would, of course. His cousin Nova was nothing if not thorough. Unnaturally thorough, one might say.

“Cousin Luken!” she called again, her voice nearer this time.

Pat Rin opened his eyes, picked up the clipboard, fingered the stylus free and entered a description of the damage. The mechanism hummed and in due time a red tag emerged. He reached for the stitch gun—

“Oh, there you are, cousin!” Nova said from the doorway at his back.

Amidst the sound of approaching light footsteps, Pat Rin stapled the red tag to a corner of the ruined rug.

“Father sent me to help you catalog the rugs from the—” She stopped, aware, so Pat Rin thought, that she had made an error.

Gently, he placed the stitch gun on the floor next to the clipboard, and turned his head slightly so that she could see the side of his face.

“Cousin Pat Rin!” she exclaimed, with a measure of astonishment that he found not particularly flattering.

He inclined his head. “Cousin Nova,” he stated, with deliberate coolness. “What a surprise to find you here.”