She turned, eyes wide. “My … ah father’s a Count. He’s nowhere near that old.”
“Maybe he’s not old enough yet.” Jeorfy made a face. “According to the archives, they turn into oldies later.”
“How old do they get?”
“Oh, two or three hundred. Maybe more.”
Genevieve stood to one side, lost in wonderment, while the men removed the cargo from the carrier and carried it into a nearby room, one much like the previous chamber except that this one had been professionally built with stout masonry walls and a pitched, tiled roof. From the large combined office-cum-parlor a short corridor extended past a kitchen, a toilet, a bathroom, two bedrooms, and a number of empty living spaces, all of them brightly lighted and well sealed against the dust. In one of the empty rooms Jeorfy placed the mattress they had salvaged and put Genevieve’s belongings upon it.
They returned to the largest chamber. “Our official post,” said Jeorfy, gesturing at the wall, which was lined with screens and panels. “Those are the inventory machines.”
Zeb said, “Everything the Lord Paramount ever bought’s supposed to be listed there.” He sniggered, unpleasantly, as seemed to be his habit as a kind of punctuation to his private thoughts.
“What are you supposed to be doing here?” she asked curiously, dropping into a chair.
“It’s just ordinary maintenance,” Jeorfy answered, with a slightly worried sidelong glance at his companion. “Every little while there’s something new that comes down on the elevators, and we’re supposed to put it in new stacks, and number the stacks and enter the numbers in the machines. And the machines keep track of how long stuff has been here, and lists off the things that have to be destroyed because they’re no good anymore . . .”
“Or dangerous,” said Zeb.
“Right, so when the machine tells us something has run out of time, we’re supposed to take a suitable lifter and load whatever expired and move it through one of the tunnels to a fire chasm, where we push it over.”
“And what do you get for all that?” she wondered.
Zeb twisted his mouth into a particularly nasty smile. “Nothing that makes it worthwhile. I tell you, I dream of getting out of here!” He said it angrily, with another of those leering, hungry glances at Genevieve. She looked away.
Jeorfy caught this and said quickly, “Well there is another good thing they don’t know about.”
“And that is?” sneered Zeb.
“The tunnels. They go everywhere. We could go to Merdune, underground. Hell, we could probably go to Sealand, underground, under Havenpool, the whole way.”
“Except you’d starve,” said Zeb. “The vehicles won’t go that far without refueling, and the only power source is right here. You’d have to walk, and it’d be a damn long walk.”
“So you can take me underground to a place near Midling Wells?” asked Genevieve.
“Somewhere near there,” said Zeb, turning away to busy himself at the kitchen cabinets.
“Don’t worry, pretty girl,” said Jeorfy, with a troubled glance at his companion. “We’re not monsters, not sex maniacs, not dreadful anything but dreadful bored, probably.”
Zebulon made no comment, merely continued putting together a meal while Jeorfy asked Genevieve questions about everything under the sun. By the time dinner was ready, he had elicited more than she had intended to tell about her schooling, her reading, and her life in general.
Genevieve, she cautioned herself. You’re tired and you’re spouting. You’re chatting. You’re doing everything wrong! The self-caution came too late. She had already mentioned her feelings of loathing regarding Prince Delganor, an indiscretion that stopped Zebulon’s activities momentarily while he stared at her with his leering smile.
When they were seated around the table, Jeorfy asked. “These off-world publications you read at school? They weren’t catalogs?”
“No, no. They were accounts of current happenings.”
“Did you notice, were any of them from Ares? Or Verben’s World? Or Chamis?”
“There wasa story about Chamis,” she said, her forehead furrowed. “About the world becoming . . . depopulated. I mean, it’s going downhill. Why?”
Jeorfy shook his head, puzzled. “I’ve been looking back over the records that were kept, oh, say three or four hundred years ago. Before Marwell was elevated, it was Lord Paramount Gorbagger. He bought little stuff from about a dozen different worlds. And so did Marwell, but he bought a lot. Then as time went on, Marwell kept right on buying more and more, but from fewer and fewer planets. Now he gets most of his stuff from Ares. Including his bodyguards.”