"You called Cro a capper."

"Sure, he's a capper." Whizzer took a good drink, and wiped his upper lip with his sleeve before sitting down. He started rocking. "It all has to do with how much of your brain is functioning." He took another drink. "Aahhhh.... All you really need to survive is a brain stem--your reptile brain. So when you see somebody actin' like a lizard, goin' around with a ‘who ya lookin' at asshole?' look on their face most o' the time, you can be pretty sure they're a stemmer. Runnin' on nothin' but brain stem...." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. "The eighteen or so beasts in that shabby house across the street." He shook his head. "All stemmers." He pointed toward Cro's. "Cro, his girl Candy, and most people you'll see over there are cappers, a level above stemmers. Sure, they can be dumb as a muffler. But they usually operate more intelligently than somebody stuck in reptilian mode.... It's as though a vestige of cerebral circuitry resists atrophy, forming a cap of higher consciousness above their stems. It's possible that Cro and his buddies are victims of chemically-induced caphood. Workin' in smelter fumes all the time, around nothin' but a bunch of other smelter workers--maybe that just deactivated most of their cerebrums. Who knows about Candy.... You know, I've read a lot lately about the explosion of anencephalic babies down along the Rio Grande. Lots of American companies are operating plants just across the border 'cause o' the cheap Mexican labor and unenforced environmental laws. Seems all the pollution is responsible for so many babies being born without brains, or with only stems. But then again, maybe nature's just sayin' ‘Hey, you wouldn't use the thing anyway. You'd be better off not luggin' around all that waterlogged tissue.' Yep, looks to me like it might be the hand of evolution at work. Maybe we're seeing the emergence of a new subspecies. Homo Sapiens Americanus Sans Cerebrum." He chuckled, and stopped rocking long enough to take a drink.

He had me full of chuckles, too. "Have you published your theory? Seems to have merit. But I'll tell you what, I caught Cro stemmin' it on my way over here today. I pulled out way in front of him on Haven. He sped up to seventy and got right on my butt, and tailgated me all the way here...in the muddiest truck you ever saw. Shoulda seen the ‘who ya pullin' out in front of asshole?' look he gave me."

"Well, sure, Cro can spend days at a time stemmin'. He's got an intermittent cap. He'd been off-roadin' in the mud all afternoon, diggin' erosion scars. And just you wait. He won't wash that truck for a week. All that mud's like lipstick on your neck...or a hickey." He took a big drink, and smacked his lips. "Yeah...you're gonna love Cro."