ONE The blue-stripe was sleeping in the heat of the day with only the raised line on its back showing through the fine dry dirt visible as a whorl of blue Kean took note of a nearby rock before he stretched out his six-fingered hand the one that was abnormal and poised it above the snake He flexed his fingers and relaxed them breathed in breathed out His hand darted down and caught the blue stripe’s tail and with a throwing action cast it up and then down whip-cracking its head against the rock The body was still twitching as he stuffed it into the leather sack on his belt He looked back to where light danced on the reflective surfaces of the big low tent a whole mile distant across the scrubland They would all be asleep Ahead the landscape became paler more like desert terrain Specks of quartz caught the white heat of the sun and sparkled dazzlingly Good prospecting territory The valley was hundreds of miles
2 long and over three hundred and fifty miles wide and while anywhere or everywhere there were treasures to be found just below the surface the drier the ground the easier it was to dig It was not quartz or other minerals he was after the prize find was fragments of metal but one might also turn up other materials It was a very long way from camp though and he was already well beyond the limits of safety Untroubled by the weight of his soft stained leather clothing he loped onward across the wasteland breathing easily in a temperature of over 110 degrees and feeling spo radic movement on his thigh through the sack The nerves and muscles in the snake’s body would go on functioning for several hours O By the time you reached the final level of education you’d had enough of it Feeling drowsy Essa looked around the white-walled classroom to keep herself awake It was a large space yet the pyramid city of Arcone was so vast that there were those living here who had never entered it The Mentor spoke again She seemed to be musing aloud but they all knew it was a question Does beauty have a purpose She was a girl not much older than Essa wearing a metal bracelet that denoted her rank as citizen Her tunic was very short and very white Many here wore their tunics short because of thrift most chose a drab color that could stand a few marks on it Essa’s own tunic was a washed-out brown
3 Her attention drifted while she waited for a classmate to answer the Mentor’s question Gazing through the near opaque thermal window at her side she could make out the angular shapes of the windmills in the grain fields Like the great pale pyramid itself whose white walls had faded to an ashen gray they were made from a variety of synthetic polymeric materials As the city’s solar panels had failed one by one in the extremes of weather the windmills had mul tiplied greatly and now constituted Arcone’s main energy source A boy got to his feet Essa knew he had sentimental feelings for the elegant Mentor and suppressed a smile Beauty is without purpose he said earnestly We revere it for itself Aware of his admiration the Mentor smiled at him That is so of course Can anyone else contribute The stammerer of the class spoke Essa’s friend Veramus In b-b-beauty there is harmony Harmony p-promotes g-good feeling and eff-eff-eff Efficiency Very good Veramus The Mentor raised her beauti fully plucked eyebrows Anyone else Someone else If someone didn’t speak up they would be asked to med itate in silence for ages Wisdom and Ethics was one of those classes that had no time limit set on it and Essa was anxious not to miss Mania She stood up and said courteously Very often that which is beautiful is strong Like Arcone itself which has stood for so many centuries like a simple shape of rock in
4 harmony with the land granting safety even when the great storms sweep in to assail the city walls Though trite it satisfied the Mentor Individuality in thought and character were encouraged only in theory Very good Elessa Harmony strength efficiency These are the practical benefits of beauty You express yourself pleasingly Predictably she moved on to debate the absence of beauty Essa found herself looking out of the window again Yes Arcone had all you could ever need or want but it would be nice to get outside more than once or twice a year O The long day wore on unremittingly radiant under a cloud less sky Kean had wandered on to where the sand took over from the scrubland This was not true desert like the endless expanse of the Big White hundreds of miles to the north but unfriendly enough When he got back he would get sharp words from Hawkerman for his disobedience A solitary blue-stripe wasn’t much to show for it But all was not lost up on high four or five gray vultures hovered so pale in color they were barely visible against the sky Directly beneath them something must lie dead or dying If that something was a Wanderer and beyond help then that person’s goods would be Kean’s by right if he got to him before anyone else did He broke into a shuffling jog-trot It was an albatross Its phenomenal wingspan lay open in the most vulnerable way Its eyes were filming as Kean
