"You circled 'c,' "Frank Armitage says. "So now, luith absolutely no hesitation whatever, please tell me why."
"Because 'c' was what you wanted," Ted replies with absolutely no hesitation whatever.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I'm a telepath," Ted says. "And that's what you 're really looking for. "He tries to keep his poker face and thinks he succeeds pretty well, but inside he's filled with a great and singing relief. Because he's found a job? No. Because they'll shortly make him an offer that would make the prizes on the new TV quiz shows look tame? No.
Because someone finally wants what he can do.
Because someone finally wants him.
SEVEN
The job offer turned out to be another honeypot, but Brautigan was honest enough in his taped memoir to say he might have gone along even if he'd known the truth.
"Because talent won't be quiet, doesn't know how to be quiet," he said. "Whether it's a talent for safe-cracking, thoughtreading, or dividing ten-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It never shuts up. It'll wake you in the middle of your tiredest night, screaming, 'Use me, use me, use me! I'm tired of just sitting here! Use me, f**khead, use me!'"
Jake broke into a roar of pre-adolescent laughter. He covered his mouth but kept laughing through his hands. Oy looked up at him, those black eyes with die gold wedding rings floating in them, grinning fiendishly.
There in the room filled with the frilly pink tutus, his fedora hat cocked back on his crewcut head, Armitage asked if Ted had ever heard of "the South American Seabees." When Ted replied that he hadn't, Armitage told him that a consortium of wealthy South American businessmen, mostly Brazilian, had hired a bunch of American engineers, construction workers, and roughnecks in 1946. Over a hundred in all. These were the South American Seabees. The consortium hired them all for a fouryear period, and at different pay-grades, but the pay was extremely generous-almost embarrassingly so-at all grades.
A 'dozer operator might sign a contract for $20,000 a year, for instance, which was tall tickets in those days. But there was more: a bonus equal to one year's pay. A total of $100,000. If, that was, the fellow would agree to one unusual condition: you go, you work, and you don't come back until the four years are up or the work is done. You got two days off every week, just like in America, and you got a vacation every year, just like in America, but in the pampas. You couldn't go back to North America (or even Rio) until your four-year hitch was over. If you died in South America, you got planted there-no one was going to pay to have your body shipped back to Wilkes-Barre. But you got fifty grand up front, and a sixty-day grace period during which you could spend it, save it, invest it, or ride it like a pony. If you chose investment, that fifty grand might be seventy-five when you came waltzing out of the jungle with a bone-deep tan, a whole new set of muscles, and a lifetime of stories to tell. And, of course, once you were out you had what the limeys liked to call "the other half to put on top of it.
This was like that, Armitage told Ted earnestly. Only the front half would be a cool quarter of a million and the back end half a million.
"Which sounded incredible," Ted said from the Wollensak.
"Of course it did, byjiminy. I didn't find ovit until later how incredibly cheap they were buying us, even at those prices.
Dinky is particularly eloquent on the subject of their stinginess... "they" in this case being all the King's bureaucrats. He says the Crimson King is trying to bring about the end of all creation on the budget plan, and of course he's right, but I think even Dinky realizes-although he won't admit it, of course-that if you offer a man too much, he simply refuses to believe it.
Or, depending on his imagination (many telepaths and precogs have almost no imagination at all), be unable to believe it. In our case the period of indenture was to be six years, with an option to renew, and Armitage needed my decision immediately. Few techniques are so successful, lady and gentlemen, as the one where you boggle your target's mind, freeze him with greed, then blitz him.
"I was duly blitzed, and agreed at once. Armitage told me that my quarter-mil would be in the Seaman's San Francisco Bank as of that afternoon, and I could draw on it as soon as I got down there. I asked him if I had to sign a contract. He reached out one of his hands-big as a ham, it was-and told me that was our contract. I asked him where I'd be going and what I'd be doing-all questions I should have asked first, I'm sure you'd agree, but I was so stunned it never crossed my mind.
"Besides, I was pretty sure I knew. I thought I'd be working for the government. Some kind of Cold War deal. The telepathic branch of the CIA or FBI, set up on an island in the Pacific. I remember thinking it would make one hell of a radio play.
"Armitage told me, 'You'll be traveling far, Ted, but it will also be right next door. And for the time being, that's all I can say. Except to keep your mouth shut about our arrangement during the eight weeks before you actually... mmm... ship out. Remember that loose lips sink ships. At the risk of inculcating you with paranoia, assume that you are being watched."
"And of course I was watched. Later-too later, in a manner of speaking-I was able to replay my last two months in Frisco and realize that the can-toi were watching me the whole time.
"The low men."
EIGHT
"Armitage and two other humes met us outside the Mark Hopkins Hotel," said the voice from the tape recorder. "I remember the date with perfect clarity; it was Halloween of 1955. Five o'clock in the afternoon. Me, Jace McGovern, Dave Ittaway,
Dick... I can't remember his last name, he died about six months later, Humma said it was pneumonia and the rest of the ki'cans backed him up-ki'can sort of means shit-people or shitfolken, if you're interested-but it was suicide and I knew it if no one else did. The rest... well, remember Doc Number Two?
The rest were and are like him. 'don't tell me what I don't want to know, sai, don't mess up my worldview.' Anyway, the last one was Tanya Leeds. Tough little thing..."
A pause and a click. Then Ted's voice resumed, sounding temporarily refreshed. The third tape had almost finished. He must have really burned through the rest of the story, Eddie thought, and found that the idea disappointed him. Whatever else he was, Ted was a hell of a good tale-spinner.
"Armitage and his colleagues showed up in a Ford station wason, what we called a woody in those charming days. They drove us inland, to a town called Santa Mira. There was a paved main street. The rest of them were dirt. I remember there were a lot of oil-derricks, looking like praying mantises, sort of although it was dark by then and they were really just shapes against the sky.
"I was expecting a train depot, or maybe a bus with CHARTERED in the destination window. Instead we pulled up to this empty freight depot with a sign reading SANTA MIRA SHIPPING hanging askew on the front and I got a thought, clear as day, from Dick whatever-his-name was. They 're going to kill us, he was thinking. They brought us out here to kill us and steal our stuff.
"If you're not a telepath, you don't know how scary something like that can be. How the surety of it kind of... invades your head. I saw Dave Ittaway go pale, and although Tanya didn't make a sound-she was a tough litde thing, as I told you-it was bright enough in the car to see there were tears standing in the corners of her eyes.
"I leaned over her, took Dick's hands in mine, and squeezed down on them when he tried to pull away. I thought at him, They didn't give us a quarter of a mill each, most of it still stashed safe in the Seaman's Bank, so they could bring us out to the ivilliwags and steal our watches. And Jace thought at me, / don't even have a watch. I pawned my Gruen two years ago in Albuquerque, and by the time I thought about buying another one-around midnight last night, this was-all the stores were closed and I was too drunk to climb down off the barstool I was on, anyway.
"That relaxed us, and we all had a laugh. Armitage asked us what we were laughing about and that relaxed us even more, because we had something they didn't, could communicate in a way they couldn't. I told him it was nothing, then gave Dick's hands another little squeeze. It did the job. I... facilitated him, I suppose. It was my first time doing that. The first of many. That's part of the reason I'm so tired; all that facilitating wears a man out.
"Armitage and the others led us inside. The place was deserted, but at the far end there was a door with two words chalked on it, along with those moons and stars, THUNDERCLAP STATION, it said. Well, there was no station: no tracks, no buses, no road other than the one we'd used to get there. There were windows on either side of the door and nothing on the other side of the building but a couple of smaller buildings-deserted sheds, one of them just a burnt-out shell-and a lot of scrubland littered with trash.
"Dave Ittaway said, 'Why are we going out there?' and one of the others said, 'You'll see,' and we certainly did.
"'Ladies first,' Armitage said, and he opened the door.
"It was dark on the other side, but not the same kind of dark.
It was darker dark. If you've seen Thunderclap at night, you'll know. And it sounded different. Old buddy Dick there had some second thoughts and turned around. One of the men pulled a gun. And I'll never forget what Armitage said. Because he sounded... kindly. 'Too late to back out now,' he said. 'Nowyou can only go forward."