"Gingerbread House-which is what we call it because that's what you always smell in here, warm gingerbread, just out of the oven-is as much Dinky's creation as it is Sheemie's. Dink wound up in the Corbett House dorm with Sheemie, and heard Sheemie crying himself to sleep one night. A lot of people would have passed by on the other side in a case like that, and I realize that no one in the world looks less like the Good Samaritan than Dinky Earnshaw, but instead of passing by he knocked on the door of Sheemie's suite and asked if he could come in.
"Ask him about it now and Dinky will tell you it was no big deal. 'I was new in the place, I was lonely, I wanted to make some friends,' he'll say. 'Hearing a guy bawling like that, it hit me that he might want a friend, too.' As though it were the most natural thing in the world. In a lot of places that might be true, but not in Algul Siento. And you need to understand that above all else,
I think, if you're going to understand us. So forgive me if I seem to dwell on the point.
"Some of the hume guards call us morks, after a space alien in some television comedy. And morks are the most selfish people on Earth. Antisocial? Not exactly. Some are extremely social, but only insofar as it will get them what they currently want or need. Very few morks are sociopaths, but most sociopaths are morks, if you understand what I'm saying. The most famous, and thank God the low men never brought him over here, was a mass murderer named Ted Bundy.
"If you have an extra cigarette or two, no one can be more sympathetic-or admiring-than a mork in need of a smoke.
Once he's got it, though, he's gone.
"Most morks-I'm talking ninety-eight or -nine out of a hundred-would have heard crying behind that closed door and never so much as slowed down on their way to wherever.
Dinky knocked and asked if he could come in, even though he was new in the place and justifiably confused (he also thought he was going to be punished for murdering his previous boss, but that's a story for another day).
"And we should look at Sheemie's side of it. Once again, I'd say ninety-eight or even ninety-nine morks out of a hundred would have responded to a question like that by shouting 'Get lost!' or even 'Fuck off!' Why? Because we are exquisitely aware that we're different from most people, and that it's a difference most people don't like. Any more than the Neanderthals liked the first Cro-Magnons in the neighborhood, I would imagine.
Morks don't like to be caught off-guard."
A pause. The reels spun. All four of them could sense Brautigan thinking hard.
"No, that's not quite right," he said at last. "What morks don't like is to be caught in an emotionally vulnerable state.
Angry, happy, in tears or fits of hysterical laughter, anything like that. It would be like you fellows going into a dangerous situation without your guns.
"For a long time, I was alone here. I was a mork who caied, whether I liked it or not. Then there was Sheemie, brave enough to accept comfort if comfort was offered. And Dink, who was willing to reach out. Most morks are selfish introverts masquerading as rugged individualists-they want the world to see them as Dan'l Boone types-and the Algul staff loves it, believe me. No community is easier to govern than one that rejects the very concept of community. Do you see why I was attracted to Sheemie and Dinky, and how lucky I was to find them?"
Susannah's hand crept into Eddie's. He took it and squeezed it gently.
"Sheemie was afraid of the dark," Ted continued. "The low men-I call em all low men, although there are humes and taheen at work here as well as can-toi-have a dozen sophisticated tests for psychic potential, but they couldn't seem to realize that they had caught a halfwit who was simply afraid of the dark. Their bad luck.
"Dinky understood the problem right away, and solved it by telling Sheemie stories. The first ones were fairy-tales, and one of them was 'Hansel and Gretel.' Sheemie was fascinated by the idea of a candy house, and kept asking Dinky for more details.
So, you see, it was Dinky who actually thought of the chocolate chairs with the marshmallow seats, the