Vennerian was a fat little man about whom the reek of sweat hung like the fog on top of Mount Atli. He was eternally irritable and perpetually hostile to his situation in life, or to life itself for that matter. But he was a Techno, and immensely proud of the fact.
He was slouched in his office, a wooden shack near the southwestern corner of the Yards, when another even more minor Techno came in. Mad at being taken away from the report that he was already mad at having to read in the first place, Vennerian asked the man, one Kort by name, what he wanted. Kort replied in his slowest drawl that he had finally gotten around to checking out the antennae and detection gear that old Limpkin had ordered put on top of the Westwatch. They had been mounted by Trebbly a month after Limpkin had given him permission, but he still did not have any notion of just what the equipment did; Trebbly had just followed the wiring diagrams and attached the leads to more mysterious machinery underneath the Yards.
And those machines had sat in their little compartments emitting sound and displaying lights that no one had the ability or the desire to interpret. Finally, in an especially ambitious moment, Trebbly had ordered a study of the whole apparatus. Since the antennae at least resembled First World assemblies, it was deemed that an "intensive analysis" would reveal some useful facts. But once the initial command was given, the process ran something like this: "Benman, I want you to find out exactly what those damn things are supposed to be watching."
"Right, Chief!"
"Fuller, find out what those antennae mean."
"Right."
"Beam, check out those things up there, will you?"
"Yeah."
"Vennerian, look after it."
"(grunt)."
"Kort, looka those flyswatters up there." That was seven months ago.
"Bloody well about time, Kort." Vennerian grumbled. "Find out anything particularly earth shattering?"
Kort drew heavily on his cigar, filling the room with choking fog. "Well, my honored superior"—he crushed the cigar slowly on the bare desk, gazed out into the depths of Eternity, and then continued with much agonized twisting of the face muscles—"yes—yes, I have discovered something."
"Oh?" Vennerian was taken off balance.
"They're all antennae, all right."
"Look, Kort, if this is your bloody . . . "
"Uh-huh, all antennae. Wadda they call it—radar? sonor? Real First World junk. Pity none of us can understand what most of them are trying to tell us."
Vennerian lifted an eyebrow. "But not all of them?"
"Ah, no. That report you gave me said that Trebbly set up seven antennae; and seven are, you know, receivers: infra red, that sort. But it looked to me like there were eight pieces of metal on top of the 'Watch and one of that eight is a transmitting antenna." Kort leaned forward and hissed, "Terrifying, ain't it?"
"Is this crud on the level?"
"Superior, would I lie to you?"
Vennerian decided to get really mad; he colored to a deep red, uttered some oaths worthy of the Dark Powers themselves, and tossed an empty liquor bottle after the retreating Kort.
* * *
A week after this interview, the maintenance staff was debating whether or not it was worthwhile trying to remove the large splash of blood and gore that a minor Techno named Vennerian had left when he fell from the top of the Westwatch. The clumsy fool. There were always people like him leaving a mess behind for someone else to clean up.
On the same day that a brigade marched out to the delta with buckets and a shovel, a crane operator noticed a curious smell coming from underneath a big transporter rig. Much to his surprise, he discovered the remains of one Gordon Kort intertwined about the forward loading lift machinery. More steel wool for the maintenance staff. Trebbly issued an order requesting that Technos be a bit more careful of where they step in the future.