Zebulon Coffin was removing crates from a stack back along the way and piling them across the aisle below. Not only was he stacking them to block the aisle, but he was leaving a narrow door at the bottom, half hidden behind one large box. Moving carefully, Jeorfy crept along the trembling edge to look down into the chamber behind Zebulon’s barrier. The girl, whatever her name was, was lying there, seemingly unconscious, feet and arms tied, mouth gagged. She didn’t move. Jeorfy watched for a long moment and was just making up his mind to go down to her when the stacking machine went silent.
Jeorfy drew back, and a moment later Zeb skulked through the opening, went to the girl and leaned over her.
“Hey!”
She didn’t move.
He struck her, not hard, once, twice, three times:splat, splat, splat.
She opened her eyes.
Zeb said, “I’ve got water here, you want some?”
She moved restlessly, neither a nod nor a shake, merely a shrug. He leaned forward and took the gag from her mouth. “Like last time, eh? You make a sound, I take the water away. You drink it nice and quiet, you can have it.”
“Why are you doing this?” the girl begged. “Why?”
“Somebody wants you,” he said. “Somebody’ll pay for you.”
She laughed, chokingly. “You’ve got piles of stuff here that somebody would pay for. Mountains of it.”
“I’m not interested in moving mountains,” he snarled. “You, you’re running away from something, somebody wants you, and somebody will pay to get you.”
“They won’t pay to get me if you let me die down here.”
“You won’t die. This is just to get you away from Jeorfy. I need him for things. He’s going to make us new identities, he is. I need him for the inventory machines. Never learned to run ’em. Never had to run ’em. My assistant did that. But after I killed him, I had to wait ten years for another one.”
“Your . . . partner? You killed him?”
“He nagged me. All the time. Store the new stuff. Get rid of the old stuff. Make a new stack here. Make a new stack there. He didn’t do it. He didn’t want to do it. He just sat theretappy tappy all day, nagging at me. I’d go out and make something up and come back and he’d tell me I couldn’t have made a new stack there because there was an old stack there. I got sick of it. I thought I’d get a new helper right away, somebody easier to get along with, but they just let me wait. Ten years I waited.”
“For Jeorfy,” she murmured.
Zebulon looked up, shaking his head slightly. “Jeorfy’s not bad to have around, but he’s got no loyalty. I could tell that, right away. He wouldn’t cooperate, selling you. So, I had to hide you, first, then I’ll figure out what comes next. . . .”
As the conversation progressed, the watcher above became grimmer and grimmer, until at last he shuddered all over, like a startled horse, and began the slow trip back across the plateau. Oh, he’d had his suspicions about Zebulon Coffin. Right from the first, he’d had his suspicions. There were just too many things that didn’t add up in either an arithmetical or a psychological sense.
He followed his tracks back to familiar ways, then drove back to the dwelling, where he put his few belongings on the little cart along with a number of other useful items. He fetched tools from the storage compartment on his cart and used them to open the carapaces of conveyances that stood dusty and unused at the far end of the vehicle line. From these he removed several fully charged fuel cells, carefully closing and locking the carapaces afterward. The ones he had lifted were now almost dust free. He frowned, stroked his chin for a time, then went into the dwelling and fetched a piece of mesh, like that used in the doors. Shoveling dust onto a square of the mesh, he used it to sprinkle dust over the vehicles, then blew a few clouds across it, returning them to their unused appearance. After a moment’s thought, he decided to take the mesh with him.