can still supply
enough food, and the old supply-and-demand takes care of the economy
as a whole. I have no recommendations for an overall solution, or even
a regional one. My job, the Board's job, is regulating housing and
traffic and transportation in Chicagee. That's about all you can
expect us to handle."

Again they jolted to a stop and the horns howled all around them.
Harry sat there until a muscle in the side of his jaw began to twitch.
Suddenly he pounded on the horn with both fists.

"Shut up!" he yelled. "For the love of Heaven, shut up!"

Abruptly he slumped back. "Sorry," he mumbled. "It's my damned
headache. I--I've got to get out of this."

"Job getting you down?"

"No. It's a good job. At least everybody tells me so. Twenty-five
hours a week, three hundred bucks. The car. The room. The telescreen
and liquor and yellowjackets. Plenty of time to kill. Unless it's the
time that's killing me."

"But--what do you _want_?"

Harry stepped on the accelerator and they inched along. Now the street
widened into eight traffic lanes and the big semis joined the
procession on the edge of the downtown area.

"I want out," Harry said. "Out of this."

"Don't you ever visit the National Preserves?" Frazer asked.

"Sure I do. Fly up every vacation. Take a tame plane to a tame
government resort and catch my quota of two tame fish. Great sport! If
I got married, I'd be entitled to four tame fish. But that's not what
I want. I want what my father used to talk about. I want to drive into
the country, without a permit, mind you; just to drive wherever I
like. I want to see cows and chickens and trees and lakes and sky."

"You sound like a Naturalist."

"Don't sneer. Maybe the Naturalists are right. Maybe we ought to cut
out all this phoney progress and phoney peace that passeth all
understanding. I'm no liberal, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I
think the Naturalists have the only answer."

"But what can you do about it?" Frazer murmured. "Suppose for the
sake of argument that they _are_ right. How can you change things? We
can't just _will_ ourselves to stop growing, and we can't legislate
against biology. More people, in better health, with more free time,
are just bound to have more offspring. It's inevitable, under the
circumstances. And neither you nor I nor anyone has the right to
condemn millions upon millions of others to death through war or
disease."

"I know," Harry said. "It's hopeless, I guess.