At that point of harsh emotion, without transition, the dream shifted to another scene. Suddenly, the bird was right in front of her, closer than ever, fluttering inside a jeweled cage, dodging a mist of golden, cloying drops… then cowering away from searing knives of flame!

Frustration choked Rety, unable to give aid. Unable to save it.

Finally, when all seemed lost, the bird did as Rety herself would have done. It lashed out with desperate strength, dying to bring down its oppressor, the agent of its torment.

For several nights in a row the dream ended the same way, with someone’s insistent arms holding her back in shameful safety while the bird fired its own head upward toward a hovering, shadowy form. A dark rival with dangling, lethal limbs.

It seemed revenge was going to be another of those things that didn’t turn out quite the same in real life as she’d imagined.

For one thing, in her heart, Rety never reckoned on Jass taking pain so well.

The hunter lay strapped to a couch inside the scout aircraft, his ruggedly handsome features twisting as Kunn kept the promise he had made. A promise Rety regretted a bit more each time Jass clamped back another moan, choking it behind gritted teeth.

Who would’ve thought he’d turn out to be brave, she pondered, recalling all the times Jass used to brag, bluster, and harass other members of the tribe. Bullies were supposed to be cowards, or so one of the tribe’s aged grandfathers used to mutter when he was sure the young hunters wouldn’t hear. Too bad the old geep would never know how wrong he’d been. That battered patriarch had died during the months since Rety left these hills.

She tried steeling her heart during the contest of wills between Kunn and Jass, one Jass was bound to lose. You want to find out where the bird came from, don’t you? she asked herself. Anyway, don’t Jass deserve everything he’s getting? Ain’t his own stubborn-headedness bringing this on himself?

Well, in truth, Rety had played a role in stiffening the hunter’s resistance, thus extending his torment. Kunn’s patient, insistent questions alternated with grunts of pure glaverlike obstinacy from Jass, sweating and contorting under jolts applied by Kunn’s robot partner.

When she could take no more without getting sick, Rety silently slipped out the hatch. If anything changed, the pilot could call her on the tiny comm button the sky-humans had installed under.the skin near her right ear.

She set off toward the campsite, trying to appear casual in case any sooners watched from the shrubby undergrowth.

That was how she thought of them. Sooners. Savages. No different in kind from those puffed-up barbarians on the Slope, who thought themselves so civilized with their fancy books but who were still little more than half-animals, trapped on a dirty world they could never leave. To a sky-being like herself, they were all the same, whichever side of the Rimmers they led their dirt-scratching lives.

She smelled the camp before reaching it. A familiar musty blend of wood smoke, excrement, and poorly tanned hides, all mixed with a sulfury pungence rising from the steam pools that always drew the tribe here this time of year — a fact that had made it easy to guide Kunn to this pocket canyon, high in the Gray Hills. Rety paused halfway to the campsite, smoothing down the sleek jumpsuit Ling had given her, soon after she became the first Jijoan to enter the underground station, that wonderland of luxuries and bright marvels. Ling had also bathed Rety, treated her scalp, and applied potions and rays to leave her feeling cleaner, stronger, even taller than before. Only the livid scar on one side of her face still marred the mirror’s transformed image, and that would be tended, she was assured, when they all went “home.”

My home too, Rety mused, resuming a brisk pace until all moaning traces of the hunter’s torment faded behind her. She drove out memory of Jass’s squirming agony by calling to mind those images the sky-foursome had shown her — of a splendid, jewellike city, tucked inside a steep-walled valley. A city of fairy towers and floating castles, where one lucky branch of humanity lived with their beloved patrons, the wise, benevolent Rothen.

That part didn’t quite appeal to her — this business of having masters who told you what to do. Nor did the Rothen themselves, when she met the two living aboard the station, who seemed too pretty and prim, too smugly happy, by far. But then, if Ling and Besh loved them, she supposed she could get used to that idea too. Anyway, Rety was willing to do or put up with anything to reach that city of lights.

I always knew I belonged someplace else, she thought, rounding a bend in the forest. Not here. Not in a place like this.

Before her stretched a debris-strewn clearing dotted by half a dozen ragged shelters — animal hides thrown over rows of bent saplings — all clustered round a cook fire where soot-smudged figures hunched over a carcass. Tonight’s meal. A donkey with a neat hole burned through its heart. A gift, courtesy of Kunn’s handy hunter-killer robot.

People dressed in poorly tanned skins moved about at chores or simply slouched through the middle of the day. Their complexions were filthy. Most had matted hair, and they stank. After meeting the Slopies-and then Ling and Besh — it was hard to picture these savages as the same race as herself, let alone her own tribe.

Several male figures loafed near a makeshift pen where the new prisoners huddled, having barely moved since they were herded into camp a couple of nights back. Some of the men chopped at tree stumps with machetes swiped from the newcomers’ supplies, marveling at the keen blades of Buyur metal. But the men kept well away from the pile of crates Kunn had forbidden them to touch, awaiting his decision which to destroy.

A handful of boys straddled a new fence of laser-split logs, passing the time by spitting, then laughing as angry complaints rose from the captives.

Shouldn’t let ’em do that, Rety thought. Even if the outlanders are nosy fools who oughtn’t have come.

Kunn had assigned her the task of finding out what brought the prisoners to these parts, violating their own sacred law. But Rety felt reluctant, even disgusted.

Dawdling, she turned to survey a way of life she once thought she’d never escape.

Despite the tumult of the last few days, tribal life went on. Kallish, the old clubfoot, still labored by the stream bed, hammering stone cores into flake arrowheads and other tools, convinced the recent influx of iron implements would be a passing fad. He was probably right.

Upstream, women waded through shallows, seeking the trishelled juice oysters that ripened in volcanic heat this time of year, while farther upslope, beyond the steamy pools, a cluster of girls used poles to beat Illoes trees, gathering the tart fallen berries in woven baskets. As usual, females were doing most of the hard work. Nowhere was this more evident than near the cook fire, where grouchy old Binni, her arms bloody past the elbows, took charge of preparing the donkey for roasting. The headwoman’s hair was even grayer than before. Her latest baby had died, leaving Binni irritable with swollen, tender breasts, hissing at her two young helpers through wide gaps between yellow-brown teeth.

Despite such signs of normality, most tribe-folk moved in a state of sluggish distraction. Whenever anyone glanced Rety’s way, they flinched, as if she were the last thing on Jijo they ever expected to see. More shocking than a glaver standing upright.

Rety, the god.

She held her head high. Tell your stinky brats about it by the campfire, till the end of time. Tell ’em about the girl who talked back to big mean hunters, no matter what they did to her. A girl who wouldn’t take it anymore. Who dared to do what you never imagined. Who found a way to leave this stinking hell and go live on a star.