Capitol personnel bureau. He was slightly above average in space perception but slightly below average in comparisons. He hoped his anxiety didn't show on his face. If anyone asked him why he had come to the Capitol he was ready to blurt out the reason and have done with it. He wondered what Sam Mulden would have thought if he knew. The Sinclair woman would have been furious.

No one asked Ellaby. You came to the Capitol because you wanted to work there. According to the mode, a man desired to change his location every 3.7 years. Ellaby had been 6.3 years tardy, but High Falls was an ideally modal community in which people tended to linger.

"I. Q., point seven under the mode," the personnel clerk told Ellaby. The slight variation—due to his anxiety—was not enough to matter, Ellaby realized with a faint sense of triumph. "Proceed to physical testing," the girl told Ellaby.

Obediently, Ellaby followed the green arrow to the gymnasium. He was given a locker, a towel, a pair of athletic shorts and a first-aid kit. He stripped off his clothing, placing the tunic, underwear and sandals in the locker, then climbed into his athletic shorts and fell into line with the other men and women carrying their towels and first-aid kits into the gymnasium.

The ten-over-mode male wrestling tester pinned Ellaby in less than two minutes, a fact which was duly noted on his employment blank. He was given fifteen minutes of rest, then squared off on the mat with a skinny, five-under-mode male. Ellaby bested him in four minutes flat, took another fifteen minute break, mopping the sweat from his body with an already sodden towel, then defeated the ten-under-mode female wrestler in two minutes and some seconds. It developed into a knock down, drag out fight with the two-over-mode female, who finally forced Ellaby's shoulders to the mat for the necessary five seconds after half an hour.

Ellaby showered, ate a hot Thursday lunch and took his employment blank to the emotion lab. His electroencephalogram revealed nine alpha cycles to the second, but too much theta.

"Are you nervous?" the technician asked Ellaby. "You're thetaing all over the place."

"I guess so. Yes, I'm nervous."

"Then let's try it again."

They did, the technician rubbing the greasy electrode salve on Ellaby's forehead before the electrodes were fastened there for the second time. The result was the same. "More than modal theta," said the 

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