“Why do you want to know?” she cried. “It isn’t your business.”
“Is so,” said the older of the two. “Anything goes on in this cavern is my business! This is my place! My job! And you came poking into it.”
“She didn’t, you know,” said Jeorfy, in a conversational tone. “Don’t get all in an uproar, Zeb. We pulled her in.” “What is this place?” she whispered.
“The Lord Paramount’s cavern,” said Zeb. “Where he keeps the things he gets from off-world.” He sniggered. “WhereI keep ’em, for I’m the actual keeper. Him,” and he jutted an elbow toward Jeorfy, “he’s my assistant, and he’s just arrived.”
Jeorfy drew himself up, raised one hand, and declaimed: “After years without a word, I was suddenly transferred. They removed me from the archives, where I’d spent eleven years, and I’ll hate them all their damn lives for they took me from my peers.”
He stopped, grinning like a maniac. “If it weren’t for Zebulon, my dear, I’d have been here totally alone.”
“If you don’t quit versifying stupidities, Zebulon will transfer you violently,” growled the other, over his shoulder. “It’s damned annoying, Bottoms!”
Jeorfy grinned at her again, but fell silent as they rumbled among further promontories of goods and furniture, shortly arriving at the door of a small room built of packing cases against the cavern wall. Genevieve pulled herself upright, assisted by Jeorfy, and stood dazedly looking about herself at endless stacks of cartons and boxes and crates towering into vanishing points against the vault and its widespread galaxies of dim lights. She shook her head at the monstrous accumulation. “I thought there were very few things bought off-world.”
Zebulon laughed, a dry, scraping sound. “Oh, woman! That’s for public consumption, that little tale. Why, the Lord Paramount buys all sorts of things off-planet. Piles of them. Stacks of them. Look at them! And this is only one cavern! There’s others! Bigger!”
Genevieve stepped down from the vehicle, dusting herself off, and Jeorfy led her into the small room. It was warm, dry, and furnished with several well-padded chairs and a neat bed against the wall. It was also well lighted by a sun-bright panel set into its ceiling, and Genevieve sat in the chair beneath it, grateful for the outdoors feeling it gave her. Though the cavern was huge, it had a claustrophobic, tomblike atmosphere.
She slapped at her neck, where something clung, dashing the thing to the floor. Jeorfy grabbed it up, in the moment, tossing it out into the cavern and closing the door behind it. The door was covered in mesh, not metal or fabric, but something she had not seen before.
“What was it?” she cried, feeling her neck and bringing blood-stained fingers before her eyes. “It bit me!”
“Cave-lizzy,” said the older man. “When they’re tiny, they’ll bite, you give them a chance. Unless you teach ’em not.”
“Like this,” said Jeorfy, going to the door and whistling. At once there were several tiny forms clinging to the mesh, and Genevieve went to look at them, jeweled little creatures, ruby and sapphire and emerald, with frills around their necks, webs between their legs and sharp little muzzles, siren-lizards in miniature. Jeorfy went to a cupboard and took out a packet, unwrapped the dripping contents, opened the door a crack and held it out. His hand was covered at once with a whistling, squeaking, chomping horde of the little creatures.
“Every so often, the grown-up ones come into the caves to make their stinking nests and lay their eggs,” said Jeorfy, conversationally. “They hatch into these little ones, and at this age they’re supposed to eat fish. These caves used to be full of rivers, and the rivers were full of fish. But when the Lord Paramount drained the caverns, oh, long ago, the fish were all drained away somewhere else. So, these hatchlings, they’ll eat us instead, or we could poison them all, but that’d wipe out the big lizards, and the nobles like lizard skin boots, so, we feed ’em instead.”
“What do you feed them?”
“Fish. It comes in from outside somewhere. And it’s only every ten or twelve years that the big lizards reproduce. This time next year, all these little ones will be grown up and flown out into the world. The grown ones are aquatic. It’s only when they’re little they can fly.”