Yet he is content enough. The food is good, and although his sexual appetites have subsided quite a bit over the years, he's not a bit averse to the odd bonk, just reminding himself every time that sim sex is really nothing but accessorized masturbation. But then, he's had the odd bonk with the odd whore over the years, as many men living on the road have, and he could testify that that sort of sex is also not much different than masturbation; you 're putting it to her just as hard as you can, the sweat pouring off you, and she's going "Baby-baby-baby," and all the time wondering if she ought to gas the car and trying to remember which day is double stamps at the Red amp; White. As with most things in life, you have to use your imagination, and Ted can do that, he's good at the old visualization thing, thank you oh so very much. He likes the roof over his head, he likes the company-the guards are guards, yeah, but he believes them when they say it's as much their job to keep bad stuff from getting in as it is to make sure the Breakers don't get out. He likes most of the inmates, too, and realizes after a year or huo that the inmates need him in some strange way. He's able to comfort them when they get the mean reds; he's able to assuage their crampy waves of homesickness with an hour or so of murmured conversation. And surely this is a good thing. Maybe it's all a good thing-certainly it feels like a good thing. To be homesick is human, but to Break is divine. He tries to explain to Roland and his tet, but the best he can do, the closest he can come, is to say it's like finally being able to scratch that out-of-reach place on your back that always drives you crazy with its mild but persistent itch. He likes to go to The Study, and so do all the others. He likes the feeling of sitting there, of smelling the good wood and good leather, of searching … searching … and then, suddenly, aahhh. There you are.
You 're hooked in, swinging like a monkey on a limb. You 're breaking, baby, and to break is divine.
Dinky once said that The Study was the only place in the world where he really felt in touch with himself, and that was why he wanted to see it shut down. Burned down, if possible. "Because I know the kind of shit I get up to when I'm in touch with myself, "he told Ted.
"When I, you know, really get in the groove. "And Ted knew exactly what he was talking about. Because The Study was always too good to be true. You sat down, maybe picked up a magazine, looked at pictures of models and margarine, movie stars and motor cars, and you felt your mind rise. The Beam was all around, it was like being in some vast corridor full of force, but your mind always rose to the roof and when it got there it found that big old sliding groove.
Maybe once, just after the Prim withdrew and Gan 's voice still echoed in the rooms of the macroverse, the Beams were smooth and polished, but those days are gone. Now the Way of the Bear and the Turtle is lumpy and eroded, full of coves and cols and bays and cracks, plenty of places to get your fingers in and take hold, and sometimes you drag at it and sometimes you can feel yourself worming your way into it like a drop of acid that can think. All these sensations are intensely pleasurable. Sexy.
And for Ted there's something else, as well, although he doesn't know he's the only one who's got it until Trampas tells him. Trampas never means to tell him anything, but he's got this lousy case of eczema, you see, and it changes everything. Hard to believe a flaky scalp might be responsible for saving the Dark Tower, but the idea's not entirely farfetched.
Not entirely farfetched at all.
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.
"We became friends. I'd tell him what was going on in our little community of Breakers, and he'd tell me all sorts of interesting but innocent things about what was going on over on his side of the fence. He also complained about his eczema, which made his head itch terribly. He kept lifting his hat-this little beanie-type of thing, almost like a yarmulke, only made of denim-to scratch underneath. He claimed that was the worst place of all, even worse than down there on your makie-man.
And litde by litde, I realized that every time he lifted his beanie to scratch, I could read his thoughts. Not just the ones on top but all of them. If I was fast-and I learned to be-I could pick and choose, exacdy die way you'd pick and choose articles in an encyclopedia by turning die pages. Only it wasn't really like that; it was more like someone turning a radio on and off during a news broadcast."
"Holy shit," Eddie said, and took another graham cracker.
He wished mightily for milk to dip them in; graham crackers without milk were almost like Oreos without the white stuff in the middle.
"Imagine turning a radio or a TV on full-blast," Ted said in his rusty, failing voice, "and then turning it off again … justasquick." He purposely ran this together, and they all smiled-even Roland. "That'll give you the idea. Now I'll tell you what I learned. I suspect you know it already, but I just can't take the risk that you don't. It's too important.
"There is a Tower, lady and gendemen, as you must know. At one time six beams crisscrossed there, both taking power from it-it's some kind of unimaginable power-source-and lending support, the way guy-wires support a radio tower. Four of these Beams are now gone, the fourth very recently. The only two remaining are the Beam of the Bear, Way of the Turtle-