"He's supposed to," Mulden explained quietly. "If he accepted what we told him, he'd go around talking about it naively. This way, he understands the necessity for secrecy."
"He doesn't understand—"
"Well, then he realizes it. Let him get some sleep, will you? Tomorrow's going to be a good day for us, a big day for him. Good night, Ellaby. If you want anything, Sinclair will get it for you."
Ellaby assured them he would want nothing except a simple meal of whatever most people in the Capitol ate on Wednesdays. It turned out to be pork chops, which Ellaby neither particularly liked nor disliked. He chewed his food with the proper lack of enthusiasm and retired early.
he next morning, Ellaby took his I. Q. test at the 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.