Cloud-painting was done with ionized beams of energy that caused the clouds to become denser or less dense according to the charge placed on the water droplets. Thus one could manipulate the colors of reflected sun- light and cause them to coalesce or to disperse, according to how the ionizing beam was moved about.

In those days the Dawn Master was chosen for the job of making the dawns more beautiful and soul-satisfying, and of all the artists in the world, the Dawn Master had the most critics and the most loyal devotees. For everyone had their own ideas about how the dawn painting should be handled.

Now, you may not think cloud- painting was a very important governmental task. In our world, so devoted to bustling and "industry," the dreamer who spends his time gazing at clouds is considered a wastful and idle fellow.

But in that time, gazing at clouds was considered a necessary food for the soul. They were a people very devoted to things like art and poetry, and the colored shapes of changing clouds were considered the highest form of poetry combined with art, for to them each shape was a symbol of great inherent meaning.

In that time, bustling and doing things for the sake of doing, without proper thought as to the ultimate beneficence to the race and to the Mother Earth, was very much frowned upon. You see, they had had their fill of mass production and organized industry and had passed laws against all industry devoted to the benefit of a single man or group of men at the expense of other people's welfare and livelihood. .

So being busy was no virtue unless one were busy with the general welfare. Cloud painting was considered a very necessary office of government, because so very many people all over the world benefited from the ritual of beautiful forms and shapes that had to be always new and different and very symbolically informative.

For in those days they had one fundamental law rigidly enforced. That law was thus: "Nothing Twice Alike!"

They enforced that law rigidly because it provided work for everyone. It ruled out the auto- mated factory, repetitively putting every artisan out of work, and allowed artistic individuality to flourish.

In those days they didn't allow artists to starve. They needed them desperately, for the law "Nothing Twice Alike" made it imperative that each article manufactured be separately designed. And only a real artist can design every single thing new and different and never twice alike. Artists were sought out and paid more by far than other workers.

So you can be sure that the Dawn Master did a lot of homework making sure that he never produced the same dawn twice, for he would have been reduced to workman status immediately.

To preserve his office for all the days of his 1,000-year-long life term, the Dawn Master had invented the computerized art form of design that could NOT produce the same design twice over, just to be on the safe side. Secretly at night he ran his computer overtime, devising and checking and figuring that the basic themes he put into the computer always contained a new element, so that the resulting design would be different from any other dawn in history.

Actually, after a long time at his job, the Dawn Master had grown aware that Mother Nature did a pretty good job of painting herself, so all he really did was to introduce into the computerized beam-mech a new element that would cause the result to be different than ever before. This was not so difficult as trying to oversee, all of the round the clock painting as the Earth rotated. Nobody could keep up with it otherwise. .

There is no element of accidentalism in computer art, but then too there was no way a Dawn Master could control all the six points of the world compass all at once. He had to turn some of it over to the computer-art-board-beam-director-complex.

But the general public thought the Dawn Master devised all those spectacular rosy formations of wonder all by himself. If they had known the truth, they would have thought much less of his art, and this was a worry to the Dawn Master, who had devised the art computer out of sheer necessity.

But his daughter knew. Aurora (named after the dawn goddess) was very worried about her dadda ...er...father, because in recent years he had become quite sloppy and went about in an old black tunic and skull cap. He wasn't the only artist that was ever careless about his personal appearance, of course, but he was the only one that had a curvaceous daughter only 200 years old to worry about him.

In that time, clothes were a fetish and ritual in themselves, and the most glorious artists were those who designed the most fantastic clothing. You see, there was a kind of creeping sybaritism in the social fabric that was mainly disguised as "Care and Cleanliness and Fantasy in Clothing."

But I can hardly explain that a foot-tall turban was not unusual, or that it might be arranged to represent other than totally mundane utility. Not anymore than I can explain that women wore tinkling bells on their ankles and were often tattooed totally to represent snake-skin, or insect beauty, or most anything an artist could represent...and those artists were people who spent centuries learning their art.

Tattooing was an ancient art that had once been very utilitarian, in that it was used mainly for camouflage. For Earth was very warm of climate, the weather machines holding the temperature stable with only slight variations. So a tattooed warrior, naked, was so designed skinwise as to be able to step into a bush and become indistinguishable from the leaves.

Then, as times grew equable, such things as war vanished from the world scene. All government functions were accomplished by wide-field mental-impulse augmentation, which ruled out the unruly passions of war so that no one could even think about making war, let alone actually do it.

With police work thus reduced to a minimum, the world became a place where camouflage was no longer needed, and tattooing evolved into an art of embellishment of the human form like nothing you can imagine from today's vulgarities.

I can't really tell you how the tattooed lady looked, for we have nothing of equal beauty to compare her with. But the Dawn Master, privately, would have confessed that he had taken more than one motif for a dawn theme from the backside of a woman he saw in the street!

The Dawn Master's real name was Peri-ton. There was a lot more of it because in those days families liked to know who they were related to and tacked them all on...but I can't pronounce the rest. Peri-ton meant a "Weighty Fairy" if translated, but they didn't think about fairies like we do. A "Peri" was a master of the art of magnification and optics, and ton meant something like "top-flight" in our modern words.

In those days fairies weren't thought of as unreal or mythical. They all knew the fairies were an extraterrestrial race who had spent a lot of time and work educating Earth races. So the Dawn Master's name really meant he had some extra blood in his family lines. But mostly his friends called him Perry, and his daughter, even though she was 200 years old and still growing, called him Dad.

Peri-ton was nearly 900 years old, but he was not very big for his age. Many people of his age ran 15 feet tall. Peri-ton was only around 9 feet tall, and Aurora was less than six feet tall, but she would be growing for a long time yet.

Anyway, some poking busy- body had learned about his computer and was gossiping about it. So Perry was worried more than usual about losing his job. In those days a job was a lifetime affair unless somebody was able to prove in court that ethics had been violated.

It wasn't any big thing, except that in the case of top-flight political figures like Peri-ton, exile was usually included in the court judgment. This was to avoid friction and punitive eventualities. And Peri-ton liked his life and his job and his place in the scheme of things.

Computerized art was not unknown, but like automated production of things for the people, it was frowned on as putting artists out of work. It was very like a union musician taking a non- union job; it could have wide repercussions.

And his use of the computer was out of sheer necessity. Nobody human could come up with a new dawn design for every 8- hour day, 728 days every year. But could he prove it? Would they listen?...or would they give him a summary trial that depended on the rules alone--rules never intended to be applied to a job like his?

Rules and laws were all very well, but they didn't always precisely fit every circumstance. And in those days there was a very strong overlay of lawfulness and rule-keeping impulsion being broadcast from every ro-mech round the world. It was this overlay conscience that was causing Peri-ton's nervousness, and this in turn was causing a lack of attention to his appearance.

He was really a very good- looking man, with a strong aquiline face and a pointed black beard with really awe-inspiring mustaches. But when he didn't shave for a week he was a pretty hairy Peri.

This is how things were when Aurora really put it to him: "Dada," she said, "why do you use a computer to design your pattern layouts for the cloud painting? You do such lovely work of your own inspiration!"

Dada . . . er . . . I mean Peri-ton paused at his key-punching and grinned at Aurora a little sheepishly. "You see, daughter, I can't be sure I won't duplicate some pattern I used as a basic theme a century or two ago. Only by using this art-computer with its banks containing all previous pattern layouts can I be sure I haven't duplicated. You know the law. 'Nothing Twice Alike ' is particularly applicable to dawn painting. The only way I can keep the law is by breaking the unwritten law against machine art. It is an insoluble enigma for me...and I have kept it under wraps so long it smells a little. It will be a relief when it comes out in the open..

"Night- soil!" said Aurora. "That's a pretty kettle of fish! It hadn't occurred to me you were on the hob either way you jumped."

(You have to understand that in that time, they composted every bit of manure, and "night- soil" referred to the soil they used to soak up the refuse in the night...about on a par with "kitty litter" to us. It really wasn't much of an oath. But then the people of that day hadn't much to swear about, as they had conquered most of the problems that are beginning to look insoluble to us today.)

So the time came when a large scroll was presented to poor Peri-ton, calling him before the weekly tribunal (which was very like what we call a grand jury of citizens). All his suspected duplicities in art matters were listed in order of importance, even down to his composing of each and every date for the past year.

Anyway, poor Peri-ton had to explain at great length that although he did in fact use the computer, he had to break one law to keep another. .

Now, it so happened that the Tribunal, purposely chosen from among the artists of the land, almost immediately broke into open discussion of the merits of this method, and this argument was in direct contradiction to every law of the land, for they were supposed to discuss, but not to argue heatedly. So what happened to Peri-ton became subordinated by what happened to the Tribunal, who had come together to crucify computer art and Peri-ton together, but found themselves locked up for the grievous crime of punching one another.

That was very understandable, for their feeling against machine art was very old and very important to them. No machine could ever compare with the virtuosity of the "real" artist -- their living and their employment depended on that fact. Yet, even they could not bring Peri-ton's dilemma into any agreement with sense as they saw it. The conflict was just as insoluble to them as it was to him.

This was a famous story in that time of poets and artists and quiet everyday living in which dawn-watching was a ritual with all people who valued their beings and their minds and their talents. The dawn was sacrosanct. Yet. they could not see how Peri-ton could be condemned for keeping the law of "Nothing Twice Alike" by breaking the unwritten law against all machine repetition.

So, like all contradictions, the whole thing was quietly brushed under the rug or dumped into the nightsoil container and left to compost itself into less of a problem. It was all very distressing, particularly when the Tribunal found it had to pay the fine of 80 drachmas for riotous behavior. And 20 times 80 drachmas was no small sum.

It was a quiet time, that age of the Dawn Master who used a computer against all the consciences of all the artists and won his case. It was a quiet story about a quiet time when people were masters of their environment and had time to argue about how the dawn should be painted.