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snorted contempt for the founders of her tribe.
    Free from books and medicine. Free to live like animals!
    Fed up, Rety had set out to find something better or die trying.
    The journey had nearly killed her—crossing icy torrents and parched wastes. Her closest call came traversing a high pass into the Slope, following a mysterious metal bird into a mulc spider’s web. A web that became a terrifying trap when the spider’s tendrils closed around her, oozing golden drops that horribly
preserved.
 …
    Memory came unbidden—of
Dwer
charging through that awful thicket with a gleaming machete, then sheltering her with his body when the web caught fire.
    She recalled the bright bird, glittering in flames, treacherously cut down by an attacking robot just like her “servant.” The one now hauling her off to Ifni-knew-where.
    Rety’s mind veered as a gut-wrenching swerve nearly spilled her overboard. She screamed at the robot.
    â€œIdiot!
No one’s shooting at you anymore! There were just a few slopies, and they were all afoot. Nothing on Jijo could catch you now!”
    But the frantic contraption plunged ahead, riding a cushion of incredible god force.
    Rety wondered, Could it sense her contempt? Dwer and two or three friends, equipped with crude fire sticks, had taken just a few duras to disable and drive off the so-called war bot, though at some cost to themselves.
    Ifni, what a snarl.
She pondered the sooty hole where Dwer’s surprise attack had ripped out its antenna.
How’m I gonna explain this to Kunn?
    Rety’s adopted rank as an honorary star god was already fragile. The angry pilot might simply abandon her in these hills where she had grown up, among savages she loathed.
    I won’t go back to the tribe
, she vowed.
I’d rather join wild glavers, sucking bugs off dead critters on the Poison Plain.
    It was all Dwer’s fault, of course. Rety hated listening to the young fool moan.
    We’re heading south, where Kunn flew off to. The robotmust be rushin’ to report in person, now that it can’t farspeak anymore.
    Having witnessed Kunn’s skill at torture, Rety found herself hoping Dwer’s leg wound would reopen. Bleeding to death would be better by far.
    The fleeing machine left the Gray Hills, slanting toward a tree-dotted prairie. Streams converged, turning the brook into a river, winding slowly toward the tropics.
    The journey grew smoother and Rety risked sitting up again. But the robot did not take the obvious shortcut over water. Instead, it followed each oxbow curve, seldom venturing past the reedy shallows.
    The land seemed pleasant. Good for herds or farming, if you knew how, and weren’t afraid of being caught.
    It brought to mind all the wonders she had seen on the Slope, after barely escaping the mulc spider. Folk there had all sorts of clever arts Rety’s tribe lacked. Yet, despite their fancy windmills and gardens, their metal tools and paper books, the slopies had seemed dazed and frightened when Rety reached the famous Festival Glade.
    What had the Six Races so upset was the recent coming of a
starship
, ending two thousand years of isolation.
    To Rety, the spacers seemed wondrous. A ship owned by unseen Rothen masters, but crewed by
humans
so handsome and knowing that Rety would give anything to be like them. Not a doomed savage with a scarred face, eking out a life on a taboo world.
    A daring ambition roused … and by pluck and guts she had made it happen! Rety got to know those haughty men and women—
Ling, Besh, Kunn
, and
Rann
—worming her way into their favor. When asked, she gladly guided fierce Kunn to her tribe’s old camp, retracing her earlier epic journey in a mere quarter day, munching Galactic treats while staring through the scout boat’s window at wastelands below.
    Years of abuse were repaid by her filthy cousins’ shocked stares, beholding her transformed from grubby urchin