First of all, she was ugly. She was thin and tall, with bony knees and elbows that stuck out and knocked cups off tables and things like that, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on accidents not happening. Her eyes were slanty and a mixed speckly brown and green, definitely weird. As for her hair, it was a blight. No matter how she tried to be as neat as the rest, her hair would bounce into a wiry tangle.

But it wasn't only looking weird. After all Faith wasn’t much to look at, and Purity had a definite squint. It didn't matter because they meshed. They were a secure part of the Web, of the whole psychic society that was the community of Ark Three.

And she wasn’t. She was not a part of it, not in the least way. Had it always been this bad? She thought back and remembered once earning a gold star in Esper games. That was in Grade One. It was in Grade Six that things had begun to go really wrong.

In Grade Six most people began to show their special Esper skill. It was a difficult time for them all, as they were pulled in two directions, by their newly discovered personal skills and by their communal need to mesh with the whole and be a part of the Web. But she hadn't shown a single useful skill. She couldn't heal; her hands were so clumsy that sick people would probably beg her to go away. She couldn't communicate telepathically with anyone in the City; she couldn't even form the tiny part of the Web that was expected of her without spoiling it. And she most certainly couldn't be a teacher, since she hadn't the least speck of any other skill. All she had were day dreams. Stupid, useless, day dreams.

“What am I to do with my life?” she said out loud. “In four months school will be over and I'll be grown-up. I'm sup- posed to work for the City, but what can I do? I'll have a room with only three other girls instead of twenty, but no one will share with me. Maybe I'll never have a room. Maybe I'll have to stay in school and dormitory and be a neophyte for ever and ever!”

I think I'd sooner die!

The thought sent a shiver down her spine, because she really couldn't think of an alternative.

As she stared blankly through the transparent plastic of the protecting dome at the wilderness that lay beyond Ark Three, a crazy thought jumped into her mind. Why don't I leave?

It was a terrifying idea. Nobody had ever left the Ark, not since it had been built at the beginning of the Age of Confusion that followed the last of the oil, a hundred and forty years before. That was the purpose of the Ark, to protect the people and their knowledge from the madness that lay outside.