TEN
"There are about a hundred and eighty full-time personnel at work in the Algul," Ted said. "I'm not the guy to tell anyone how to do his job, but that's something you may want to write down, or at least remember. Roughly speaking, it's sixty per eight-hour shift and split twenty-twenty-twenty. Taheen have the sharpest eyes and generally man the watchtowers. Humes patrol the outer run offence. With guns, mind you-hard calibers. Topside there's Prentiss, the Master, and Finli O'Tego, the Security Chief-hume and taheen, respectively-but most of the floaters are can-toi... the low men, you understand.
"Most low men don't get along with the Breakers; a little stiff camaraderie is the best they can do. Dinky told me once that they're jealous of us because we're what he calls 'finished humes.' Like the hume guards, the can-toi wear thinking-caps when they're on duty so we can't prog them. The fact is most Breakers haven't tried to prog anyone or anything but the Beam in years, and maybe can't, anymore; the mind is also a muscle, and like any other, it atrophies if you don't use it."
A pause. A click on die tape. Then:
"I'm not going to be able to finish. I'm disappointed but not entirely surprised. This will have to be my last story, folks.
I'm sorry."
A low sound. A sipping sound, Susannah was quite sure; Ted having another drink of water.
"Have I told you that the taheen don't need the thinkingcaps?
They speak perfectly good English, and I've sensed from time to time that some have limited progging abilities of their own, can send and receive-at least a little-but if you dip into them, you get these mind-numbing blasts of what sounds like mental static-white noise. I assumed it was some sort of protective device; Dinky believes it's the way they actually think.
Either way, it makes it easier for them. They don't have to remember to put on hats in the morning when they go out!
"Trampas was one of the can-toi rovers. You might see him one day strolling along Main Street in Pleasantville, or sitting on a bench in the middle of the Mall, usually with some self-help book like Seven Steps to Positive Thinking. Then, the next day, there he is leaning against the side of Heartbreak House, taking in the sun. Same with the other can-toi floaters. If there's a pattern,
I've never been able to anticipate it, or Dinky either. We don't think there is one.
"What's always made Trampas different is a complete lack of that sense of jealousy. He's actually friendly-or was; in some ways he hardly seemed to be a low man at all. Not many of his can-toi colleagues seem to like him a whole hell of a lot. Which is ironic, you know, because if there really is such a thing as becoming, then Trampas is one of the few who actually seem to be getting somewhere with it. Simple laughter, for instance.
When most low men laugh, it sounds like a basket of rocks rolling down a tin coal-chute: makes you fair shiver, as Tanya says. When Trampas laughs, he sounds a little high-pitched but otherwise normal. Because he is laughing, I think. Genuinely laughing. The others are just forcing it.
"Anyway, I struck up a conversation with him one day. On Main Street, this was, outside the Gem. Star Wars was back for its umpty-umpth revival. If there's any movie the Breakers never get enough of, it's Star Wars.
"I asked him if he knew where his name came from. He said yes, of course, from his clan-fam. Each can-toi is given a hume name by his clan-fam at some point in his development; it's a kind of maturity-marker. Dinky says they get that name the first time they successfully whack off, but that's just Dinky being Dinky. The fact is we don't know and it doesn't matter, but some of the names are pretty hilarious. There's one fellow who looks like Rondo Hatton, a film actor from the thirties who sviffered from acromegaly and got work playing monsters and psychopadis, but his name is Thomas Carlyle. There's another one named Beowulf and a fellow named Van Gogh Baez."
Susannah, a Bleecker Street folkie from way back, put her face in her hands to stifle a gust of giggles.
"Anyway, I told him that Trampas was a character from a famous Western novel called The Virginian. Only second banana to the actual hero, true, but Trampas has got the one line from the book everyone remembers: 'smzfcwhen you say that!"
It tickled our Trampas, and I ended up telling him the whole plot of the book over cups of drug-store coffee.