“They’d find out,” Zeb had groused.
“I’ll make us new identities,” Jeorfy had said. “They wouldn’t find out, believe me. Nobody has any idea what’s down here.”
At first, Zeb had seemed interested in this, but when he had gone looking for the few valuables he’d thought he remembered, he couldn’t find them. Jeorfy checked the files and found them to be no help at all. Zeb and his predecessors had kept track of the things they liked or needed, and that was the limit of their performance. The files listed all kinds of treasures, but the stacks weren’t there! Where were they?
“All right,” Jeorfy had said. “You know where the food is, so we’ll start with food. We’ll start by taking the packaging off the Zybod hams and we’ll claim they come from Barfezi. We’ll claim it’s a special process, long aging, stuff like that. Edibles are a bit bulky, and the profit on each item will be small, but the volume is huge, so we can build up a clientele and find more expensive stuff as we go along.”
Zeb had reacted to that suggestion like a boy told to do the chores. Words like “bulky” and “small profit” sounded too much like work to Zeb.
Zeb was opposed to work. What Zeb wanted was to take his new identity, the one Jeorfy was going to make for him, and leave the caverns just as soon as he could find one nonbulky and high-profit item that would give him enough money to live on. Once he was out, he might hire people to come back down and search, but he wanted out first.
Zeb had made that remark over and over. When the girl came, he’d been funny about her, kind of sneaky. Well, she wasn’t the daughter of the Count of Ob in Frangia, Jeorfy knew that much. There had been no nobility in Frangia since religion took over the province. Whoever she was, Jeorfy knew damned well she hadn’t packed up all her luggage and sneaked off while they slept. There weren’t any vehicles missing. There weren’t any footprints, either, so had she flown away?
It would be logical to wonder, right? Logical to go looking for her? Jeorfy thought so, but not Zeb. Zeb said no point in wasting the energy, she’d come back when she was hungry. All too casual, Zeb. All too easy about it all.
All of which made it quite clear to Jeorfy that Zeb thought he’d found his nonbulky, high-profit item, a girl running away from someone who would pay money to get her back! And, knowing Zeb, Jeorfy wasn’t sanguine about the item surviving Zeb’s attempts at a transaction. Zeb was far gone, a slothful monster, capable of occasional frustrated thrashing about that just got him in deeper. Jeorfy, however, had no intention of letting the girl suffer. He liked her a whole lot better than he liked Zeb.
Which was why he was out here, following Zeb the best he could by sound, aiming for the same general area, but staying out of sight, which wasn’t as easy as he’d supposed! It was like following somebody through a maze by listening to his footsteps!
The aisle he was following came to a dead end against another towering stack. Oh, hell, go back and try again, he said to himself, though he’d take a minute first to go pee in a corner.
He turned off the engine and immediately heard another one, not far away, a heavier machine than his own, probably one of the stackers and lifters. Zeb had started out this morning saying he was going to spend the day clearing an old area, so … maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t.
Leaving his machine where it was, Jeorfy clambered up the side of the nearest stack. When he came to the flat top he was covered with dust and bits of dung, but he persevered, crossing the plateau in slow, easy stages so as not to raise a cloud, not to crash through some carton, not to sneeze or fall. When he came near the edge he hid himself behind a projecting crate and regarded the scene below with concentrated attention.