Raggedy Andy doll, and there was simply no way to read them. Unless, maybe, you were another taheen.
"I haven't felt right for weeks now," Finli said at last. "I drink too much graf to put myself asleep, then drag myself through the day, biting people's heads off. Part of it's the loss of communications since the last Beam went-"
"You know that was inevitable-"
"Yes, of course I know. What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's never a good sign."
On the far wall was a picture of Niagara Falls. Some can-toi guard had turned it upside down. The low men considered turning pictures upside down the absolute height of humor.
Pimli had no idea why. But in the end, who gave a shit? I know how to do my Jacking job, he thought, re-hanging Niagara Falls rightside up. Iknmv how to do that, and nothing else matters, tell God and the Man Jesus thank ya.
"We always knew things were going to get wacky at the end," Finli said, "so I tell myself that's all this is. This... you know..."
"This feeling you have," the former Paul Prentiss supplied.
Then he grinned and laid his right forefinger over a circle made by his left uiumb and index finger. This was a taheen gesture which meant I tell you the truth. "This irrational feeling."
"Yar. Certainly I know that the Bleeding Lion hasn't reappeared in the north, nor do I believe that the sun's cooling from the inside. I've heard tales of the Red King's madness and diat the Dan-Tete has come to take his place, and all I can say is 'I'll believe it when I see it. Same with this wonderful news about how a gunslinger-man's come out of the west to save the Tower, as the old tales and songs predict. Bullshit, every bit of it."
Pimli clapped him on the shoulder. "Does my heart good to hear you say so!"
It did, too. Finli O'Tego had done a hell of a job during his tenure as Head. His security cadre had had to kill half a dozen Breakers over the years-all of them homesick fools trying to escape-and two others had been lobotomized, but Ted Brautigan was the only one who'd actually made it "under the fence"
(this phrase Pimli had picked up from a film called Stalag 17),
and they had reeled him back in, by God. The can-toi took the credit, and the Security Chief let them, but Pimli knew the truth: it was Finli who'd choreographed each move, from beginning to end.
"But it might be more than just nerves, this feeling of mine," Finli continued. "I do believe that sometimes folk can have bona fide intuitions." He laughed. "How could one not believe that, in a place as lousy with precogs and postcogs as this one?"
"But no teleports," Pimli said. "Right?"
Teleportation was the one so-called wild talent of which all the Devar staff was afraid, and with good reason. There was no end to the sort of havoc a teleport could wreak. Bringing in about four acres of outer space, for instance, and creating a vacuum-induced hurricane. Fortunately there was a simple test to isolate that particular talent (easy to administer, although the equipment necessary was another leftover of the old people and none of them knew how long it would continue to work) and a simple procedure (also left behind by the old ones) for shorting out such dangerous organic circuits. Dr.
Gangli was able to take care of potential teleports in under two minutes. "So simple it makes a vasectomy look like brainsurgery," he'd said once.
"Absa-fackin-lutely no teleports," was what Finli said now, and led Prentiss to an instrument console that looked eerily like Susannah Dean's visualization of her Dogan. He pointed at two dials marked in the henscratch of the old people (marks similar to those on the Unfound Door). The needle of each dial lay flat against the O mark on the left. When Finli tapped them with his furry thumbs, they jumped a little and then fell back.
"We don't know exactly what these dials were actually meant to measure," he said, "but one thing they do measure is teleportation potential. We've had Breakers who've tried to shield the talent and it doesn't work. If there was a teleport in the woodpile, Pimli o' New Jersey, these needles would be jittering all the way up to fifty or even eighty."
"So." Half-smiling, half-serious, Pimli began to count off on his fingers. "No teleports,