Adam already knew that her people pursued physical perfection. She explained that this love of human symmetry and beauty was no mere tribal whim, but a national ideal that they followed literally to the death. It dominated their lives and was the central theme of their social organization. Like all great ideals, it was rooted in common sense. The Antarcticans lived in a hostile climate. For eight months each year their world was a horrible desert of ice and snow. Cold to freeze the eyeballs, blizzards raving across the darkened frozen seas, blinding clouds of snow-dust, and the gray wastes stretching forever in the weird gleam of the Southern Lights—this was their winter home. Even in summer they could raise no crops. Their only husbandry was the herding of an undersized buffalo, an unknow
