Standback Went on at length about the exquisite curve of her left little finger.
'Okay, we'll take it that she's pretty. What's her name? Her human name,' Mara added hastily.
'It's very beautiful.' Standback stared upward dreamily. 'She's called Watch As Her Machines Move In and Out, Like a Night Watchman Blowing Out A Candle to Light a Lamp of Such Incredible — '
'The short form.'
'Watchout.' He sighed.
Mara nodded. 'Standback and Watchout. You were made for each other.'
'I think so,' he said sadly, 'and she thinks so. But unless things change, it can never be.'
'Why?' Mara asked sympathetically.
Standback glowered and said suddenly, gnome-tognome, 'Thatisabsolutelytheworstpart — '
'What?'
He took a shuddering breath and said in slower human fashion, 'That is absolutely the worst part of this whole business. I have not as yet received approval for my Life Quest.'
'Your what?'
'My Life Quest. My one achievement, my one goal. It is to be the sensors that go into the burglar alarms. I've already designed them and put them in place throughout Mount Nevermind.'
Mara, remembering how she had slipped in without setting any off, murmured, 'Still in the development stage, I guess.'
'Oh, no; they're highly functional. By the way, how did you pass them?'
'I made an elaborate and clever plan to drop from the top of the crater by rope on a winch…' Mara hesitated.
Standback shook his head. 'Impossible. I have every passage, every window, every cranny and cut of the outer mountain covered by a sensor. How did your plan work?' -
Mara fidgeted. 'I didn't use it,' she said finally. 'I was standing at the steel entrance doors, trying to figure out how to climb up the mountain, while the doors were sliding shut. But the triple-lock fell off and jammed them open so I was able to slip through — '
'The doors.' Standback slapped his forehead, leaving a pen mark. 'Of course. I knew I'd forgotten something. Sensors on the doors. Still,' he said quickly, 'it was very clever, making a plan with a lot of rope and a winch. You're almost thinking like a gnome.'
Mara chose to take that as a compliment. 'Have you shown the committee the evidence of your research?'
'I can't.' Standback looked uncomfortable. 'I was cleaning them — with a perfectly fine solvent invented by a friend of mine — when they dissolved. Also, the table under them. Wonderful stain remover, though.' Standback's shaggy eyebrows dropped low as he brooded. 'I can't reapply until I've proven that I have a semi-working prototype.' He added sadly, 'If only you had been caught or killed.'
Mara sighed in her turn. 'If only YOU were the master of the Weapons Guild.'
Standback shook his head. 'If I were, Watchout and I would be married by now. And I would be far above.' He looked upward wistfully, as though he could see through the ceiling. 'Up where there is honor, glory, and matching funding. Where draftsmen constantly draft bigger drafting boards for bigger projects with larger cost overruns…'
Mara, disheartened, listened as he described the Schedule Rescheduling Department, the Management Oversight Overseers, and the apparently all-powerful Expanding Contractors. 'Tell me,' she broke in finally, 'have any of these projects ever been finished?'
Standback, shocked to the depth of his stubby little being, stared at her. 'Young woman, any project worthy of state funding should be perfected, never finished.'
'Well, if you're not the master of the Weapons Guild, then what ARE you?' she asked.
He lowered his eyes. 'I'm a lower-level inventor whose future life work must be scrounged from the debris left by the failures of others — '
'Have you invented anything?'
'I've done more varied work than most gnomes you have met.'
Since Mara had met no other gnomes, she simply nodded.
'My Life Quest — ' Standback stopped, looked pained, and said with careful stress, 'my primary work just now is still sensor-related, since that was my Life Quest. I invent security and safety equipment for home or fort, for the detection and prevention of unwanted forcible spies, intruders, or weapons — '
'Paladine's panties,' Mara said irreverently. 'You make burglar alarms and traps.'
Standback said happily, 'That's why I was so happy when you appeared. What luck, really — a burglar, coming straight through the burglar alarms and lockouts. It will be a boon to my data.'
'Not luck.' Mara was having trouble understanding. 'I mean, Kalend ordered that I take this dangerous mission.'
Standback looked dubious. 'No offense and don't take this the wrong way, but you ARE rather young and did he really order you?'
Mara nodded emphatically. 'It was when I was walking with him on the ramparts, which I try to do a lot — not that he minds or anything, even though I'm younger than he is, since I'm remarkably mature, responsible, and exceptionally good-looking for my age — and we were talking about the war. He said, 'If only there were one working gnome weapon, and we had it…'' Mara stopped and chewed her lip thoughtfully. 'Or maybe he said, 'If there was only one gnome weapon that worked and we had it…'
'Anyway,' Mara went on, 'I remember thinking that he'd better not talk like that where the draconians could hear him, or they'd go get a weapon first, and then I thought about how happy he'd be if I went first instead and found him a weapon and saved the village, and — well, I left.' She folded her arms over her chest. 'Under cover of darkness, like I said. Through the draconian camps — '
The gnome raised a bushy eyebrow. He was coming to know Mara. 'Through their camps?'
'Well, around. Under their very scaly noses.'
'So you saw them?'
'Not actually saw them,' she admitted, but added quickly, 'But I knew they were there, and was too clever to be caught by them. Alone and courageous, I came — '
'To find weapons.' Standback frowned, thinking. 'To fight these draconians, whom you haven't really seen. Um.'
He reached a conclusion and rubbed his stained and callused hands together. 'Well, as long as you're here, I don't see why we shouldn't strike a deal. Do you still want some gnome weapons?'
'What?' It took Mara, caught up in dreams of her own heroism, a moment to remember what she was doing here. Her thin young mouth set firmly. 'More than ever.'
'I'll let you take one,' he said. 'Any one you want. If you'll test my security device.'
She swallowed. Anti-burglar devices? 'Do I have a choice?'
Standback was ecstatic. 'And right afterward,' Standback burbled happily, 'I'll write up my test results and submit them to the Committee. And then if they approve my work — and I have no doubt they will — I'll marry Watchout.'
They strode down the tunnel together, their footsteps setting off an uneasy rustling and flapping in the invisible colony clinging to the walls and roof above them.
'They're only bats,' Standback said reassuringly. 'I hope,' he added, less so.
They walked past a number of side tunnels, their entrances half hidden by debris and hanging ropes and cables. Mara, like a good thief, took note of the turns and the fork back to the exit. 'Where does the money come from for weapons research?'
'I use only junk, spare parts. The main projects were started on a grant from the Knights of Solamnia.'
'The knights?' Mara looked serious. 'I hope you're not counting on them for support. They aren't as rich as they used to be, you know — '
'This was a while back. They aren't as frequent visitors as they used to be, either,' Standback pointed out. He screwed up his forehead. 'In fact,' he said thoughtfully, 'I haven't seen them since the last In-House Weapons Test, several years ago. No, make that several decades ago.'
'And you kept the project going?'
