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to
Rety, the star god.
    If only that triumph could have lasted.

    She jerked back when Dwer called her name.
    Peering over the edge, Rety saw his windburned face, the wild black hair plastered with dried sweat. One buckskin breech leg was stained ocher brown under a makeshift compress, though Rety saw no sign of new wetness. Trapped by the robots unyielding tendrils, Dwer clutched his precious hand-carved bow, as if it were the last thing he would part with before death. Rety could scarcely believe she once thought the crude weapon worth stealing.
    â€œWhat do you want now?” she demanded.
    The young hunter’s eyes met hers. His voice came out as a croak.
    â€œCan I … have some water?”
    â€œAssumin’ I have any,” she muttered, “name one reason I’d share it with you!”
    Rustling at her waist. A narrow head and neck snaked out of her belt pouch. Three dark eyes glared—two with lids and one pupilless, faceted like a jewel.
    â€œwife be not liar to this one! wife has water bottle! yee smells its bitterness
.”
    Rety sighed over this unwelcome interruption by her miniature “husband.”
    â€œThere’s just half left. No one tol’ me I was goin’ on a trip!”
    The little urrish male hissed disapproval, “wife share with this one, or bad luck come! no hole safe for grubs or larvae!”
    Rety almost retorted that her marriage to yee was not real. They would never have “grubs” together. Anyway, yee seemed bent on being her portable conscience, even when it was clearly every creature for herself.
    I never should’ve told him how Dwer saved me from the mulc spider. They say male urs are dumb. Ain’t it my luck to marry a genius one?
    â€œOh … all right!”
    The bottle, an alien-made wonder, weighed little more than the liquid it contained. “Don’t drop it,” she warned Dwer, lowering the red cord. He grabbed it eagerly.
    â€œNo, fool! The top don’t
pull
off like a stopper.
Turn
it till it comes off. That’s right. Jeekee know-nothin’ slopie.”
    She didn’t add how the concept of a screw cap had mystified her, too, when Kunn and the others first adopted her as a provisional Danik. Of course that was before she became sophisticated.
    Rety watched nervously as he drank.
    â€œDon’t spill it. An’ don’t you
dare
drink it all! You hear me? That’s enough, Dwer. Stop now.
Dwer
!”
    But he ignored her protests, guzzling while she cursed. When the canteen was drained, Dwer smiled at her through cracked lips.
    Too stunned to react, Rety knew—she would have done exactly the same.
    Yeah
, an inner voice answered.
But I didn’t expect it of him.
    Her anger spun off when Dwer squirmed, tilting his body toward the robot’s headlong rush. Squinting against the wind, he held the loop cord in one hand and the bottle in the other, as if waiting for something to happen. The flying machine crested a low hill, hopping over some thorny thickets, then plunged down the other side, barely avoiding several tree branches. Rety held tight, keeping yee secure in his pouch. When the worst jouncing ended she peered down again … and rocked back from a pair of black, beady eyes!
    It was the damned
noor
again. The one Dwer called
Mudfoot.
Several times the dark, lithe creature had tried to clamber up from his niche, between Dwer’s torso and a cleft in the robot’s frame But Rety didn’t like the way he salivated at yee, past needle-sharp teeth. Now Mudfoot stood on Dwer’s rib cage, using his forepaws to probe for another effort.
    â€œGet lost!” She swatted at the narrow, grinning face. “I want to see what Dwer’s doin’.”
    Sighing, the noor returned to his nest under the robot’s flank.
    A flash of blue came into view just as Dwer threw the bottle. It struck watery shallows with a splash, pressing a furrowed wake.