Harmony by Marjorie B. Kellogg

by one paused to touch the sleeping boy’s head in awe and gratitude, each murmuring as he did the name of Latooea.
    THE ARKADIE:
    Micah settled down to work pretty well after the ritual purging of his corner. Once he’d allowed as how he’d gone about his revisions a little too freely and that it wasn’t worth setting the Marin project back another six months, we spent the rest of the morning restoring his weekend spree of damage and disorder.
    “Okay,” Cris called from his console. “I’m clear on the sequencing up to Captain Seraglio breaking into the Sorcerer’s secret library and burning the rune book. But then…”
    “Don’t forget the magic sword,” Songh put in.
    I was glad someone was interested enough in Marin to keep track of the more baroque details.
    “The sword, the sword…” Cris fiddled at the keyboard, peering at the holo miniature on the model stand. “Got the sword. After then I’m lost, when the fire spreads to the royal nursery.” His glance at Micah dared a faint reproach. “We never set the point where you want to switch from live flame to the projection, or which walls you want to be real—”
    “Or for that matter,” replied Micah, “how to prevent some overly involved viewer from reaching into the cradle and rescuing the damn princess.”
    I laughed out loud. It was okay to laugh at Marin. Even Jane was snorting quietly to herself, while Songh pouted in confusion.
    Micah made a grand effort to pay attention, but by noon he was terminally restless. He sharpened his pencil again and again, insisting the machine was jammed and he couldn’t get a point. He complained about his brush and the quality of the paper he was forced to use “nowadays.” It was soon clear that the rest of the Marin restoration would be up to us.
    But that was okay. You always learn more when you have to make a few design decisions on your own, and Marin was the perfect project to school apprentices with, where maturity and subtlety were clearly not required or even desirable. If Songh’s grasp of the CADD system had been better than hopeless, I’d have assigned him to draft Marin. Enchanted princes, love potions. It was just his speed. I decided I’d trust him to take charge of the model, and in that little burst of optimism, I began to think we might actually get Marin done in time for bids.
    But Micah wanted me to go to the Arkadie with him. By twelve-thirty he was waiting in the doorway.
    He’d been inviting me to design meetings lately, ostensibly to take notes on schedule and budget figures, those crucial data directors so often hope to gloss over. But mostly I was along to learn “the process,” that mysterious and touchy method whereby a design is developed and agreed upon.
    I turned off my desk and told Jane to do anything she could to hurry
Deo Gratias
along.
    We squeaked out just as the first tourists came nosing around the courtyard gate, searching through the beech branches for the nonexistent sign.
    “This is the place,” I assured them, though the real place to visit, if you wanted to understand where the work came from, would be the inside of Micah’s head.
    We edged away through the crowds streaming up from the village and took the Tube four stops to Fetching Green, home of the Arkadie Repertory Theatre. Fetching was larger than BardClyffe, being one of the “cardinal villages,” the four original settlements ranged crosswise around Founders’ Park. The green spaces between had filled in more rapidly than anyone had dreamed, but BardClyffe was one of the last villages to be incorporated and remained, along with Underhill, the least developed.
    The Tube was packed with tourists. Residents no longer used the Tube during Open Hours unless they absolutely could not walk or bike to their destination. But it was a two-mile hike to Fetching, and Micah had never been seen on a bike in his life. Mind you, everyone rode bikes in Harmony. Apprentices passed them down like antique