Richard Thorne is the Citizen of a highly technological future City State. Sol Thatcher is a Guardener, a seasoned member of the psych police, trained to track down aberrants who present a danger to the State and recondition them as stable productive citizens. When Richard Thorne becomes involved with not one, but two slum dwellers, a compulsive gambler and an uncommon prostitute, his descent into aberrance begins, leading to the ultimate crime, the murder of a high government official. Sol Thatcher will know it all. He will examine the case of Richard Thorne backward and forward, but it will make no sense to him. Even his most sophisticated tools, including the mind probe of the cyberscan, will leave him baffled. Richard Thorene is that rarest of occurences, the incuarble abberant, and Sol Thatcher must be deal with him accordingly.