t a one of
them who wouldn't spend hours mulling over the lore of the range and
the prairie. They knew the Great Names from the Great Days--Eugene
Autry, Wyatt Earp, the legendary Thomas Mix, Dale Robertson, Paladin,
and all the others; men who rode actual horses in the era when the
West was really an untamed frontier.

And like the cowboys they were, they maintained the customs of other
days. Every few months they rode a bucking helicopter into some raw
western town--Las Vegas, or Reno, or even over to Palm Springs--to
drink recklessly in the cocktail lounges, gamble wildly at the slots,
or "go down the line" with some telescreen model on location for
outdoor ad-backgrounds. There were still half a dozen such sin-cities
scattered throughout the west; even the government acknowledged the
need of lonely men to blow off steam. And though Ag Culture officially
disapproved of the whole cowhand system, and talked grimly of setting
up new and more efficient methods for training personnel and handling
the cattle ranges, nothing was ever done. Perhaps the authorities knew
that it was a hopeless task; only the outcasts and iconoclasts had the
temperament necessary to survive such loneliness under an open sky.
City-dwelling conformists just could not endure the monotony.

But even Emil Grizek's hands marvelled at the way Harry lived. He
never joined them in their disorderly descent upon the scarlet cities
of the plain, and most of the time he didn't even seem to watch the
telescreen. If anything, he deliberately avoided all possible contact
with civilization.

Since he never volunteered any information about his own past, they
privately concluded that he was just a psychopathic personality.

"Strong regressive and seclusive tendencies," Bassett explained,
solemnly.

"Sure," Nick Kendrick nodded, wisely. "You mean a Mouldy Fig, like."

"Creeping Meatball," muttered cultist Januzki. Not being religious
fanatics, the others didn't understand the reference. But gradually
they came to accept Harry's isolationist ways as the norm--at least,
for him. And since he never quarreled, never exhibited any signs of
dissatisfaction, he was left to his own pattern.

Thus it was all the more surprising when that pattern was rudely and
abruptly shattered.

Harry remembered the occasion well. It was the day the Leff Law was
officially upheld by the Supremist Courts. The whole business came
over the telescreens and there was no way of avoi