Infinity's Shore

She heard the young hunter moan, held captive by metal arms below her perch. But as the wounded battle drone fled recklessly onward, Rety turned away from Dwer’s suffering, which he had only brought on himself, trekking all the way to these filthy Gray Hills from his safe home near the sea—the Slope—where six intelligent races lived at a much higher level of ignorant poverty than her own birth clan of wretched savages. Why would slopies hike past two thousand leagues of hell to reach this dreary wasteland?

What did Dwer and his pals hope to accomplish? To conquer Rety’s brutish relatives?

He could have her smelly kinfolk, for all she cared! And the band of urrish sooners Kunn subdued with fire from his screeching scout boat. Dwer was welcome to them all. Only, couldn’t he have waited quietly in the woods till after Rety and Kunn finished their business here and flew off again? Why did he have to rush things and attack the robot with her aboard?

I bet he did it out of spite. Prob’ly can’t stand knowing that I’m the one Jijo native with a chance to get away from this pit hole of a planet.

Inside, Rety knew better. Dwer’s heart didn’t work that way.

But mine does.

When he groaned again, Rety muttered angrily, “I’ll make you even sorrier, Dwer, if I don’t make it off this mudball ’cause of you!”

So much for her glorious homecoming.

At first it had seemed fun to pay a return visit, swooping from a cloud-decked sky in Kunn’s silver dart, emerging proudly to amazed gasps from the shabby cousins, who had bullied her for fourteen awful years. What a fitting climax to her desperate gamble, a few months ago, when she finally found the nerve to flee all the muck and misery, setting forth alone to seek the fabled Slope her great-grandparents had left behind, when they chose the “free” life as wild sooners.

Free of the sages’ prying rules about what beasts you may kill. Free from irky laws about how many babies you can have. Free from having to abide neighbors with four legs, or five, or that rolled on humming wheels.

Rety 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.

“Idiot! 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 robot must 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.