medical puzzle could ever accomplish. "I don't understand what you're
getting at."

"I don't know these other cata-characters, but I do know Zelda," said
Arnold Wilson Wyle. "She's got to get something out of all that work.
Clocker says it's the same with the others and I take his word. What are
they knocking theirself out for if it's for free?"

"They gain some obscure form of emotional release or repetitive
gratification," Doc explained.

"Zelda?" exploded Clocker. "You offer her a deal like that for a club
date and she'd get ruptured laughing."

"I tell her top billing," Oil Pocket agreed, "plenty ads, plenty
publicity, whole show built around her. Wampum, she says; save money on
ads and publicity, give it to her. Zelda don't count coups."

Doc Hawkins called over the waiter, ordered five fingers instead of his
customary three. "Let us not bicker," he told Clocker. "Continue."

* * * * *

Clocker looked at his charts again. "There ain't a line that ain't
represented, even the heavy rackets and short grifts. It's a regular
human steeplechase. And these sour apples do mostly whatever they did
for a living--draw pictures, sell shoes, do lab experiments, sew
clothes, Zelda with her time-steps. By the hour! In the air!"

"In the air?" Handy Sam repeated. "Flying?"

"Imaginary functioning," Doc elaborated for him. "They have nothing in
their hands. Pure hallucination. Systematic delusion."

"Sign language?" Oil Pocket suggested.

"That," said Clocker, before Doc Hawkins could reject the notion, "is on
the schnoz, Injun. Buttonhole says I'm like doping races. He's right.
I'm working out what some numbers-runner tells me is probabilities. I
got it all here," he rapped the charts, "and it's the same thing all
these flop-ears got in common. Not their age, not their jobs, not
their--you should pardon the expression--sex. They're _teaching_."

Buttonhole looked baffled. He almost let go of Doc's lapel.

Handy Sam scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully with a big toe.
"Teaching, Clocker? Who? You said they're kept in solitary."

"They are. I don't know who. I'm working on that now."

Doc shoved the charts aside belligerently to make room for his beefy
elbows. He leaned forward and glowered at Clocker. "Your theory belongs
in the Sunday supplement of the alleged newspaper I write for. Not all
catatonics work, as you call it. What about those who stand rigid and
those who lie in