Leonard Teague manages the roster of 212 inertials and every placement made from it: who goes where, for how long, and who sits in for them when they are ill. He joined the firm in 1987 as an associate inertial and has run the practice since Mrs. Runciter entered half-life in 2008.

Before the firm he sold tokens in a subway booth on the overnight shift at Fifty-Ninth Street, where Mrs. Runciter, waiting for a train in the winter of 1986, saw a man on the bench beside her stop muttering the results of tomorrow’s races the moment Mr. Teague came on duty. She measured him the following week. At 7.4 metres his field is the largest on the roster; the other eight Class IV inertials measure between 6.1 and 6.9 metres.

He still takes placements himself when a room needs a Class IV field, and is the inertial in Plate 1 on the firm’s home page.