Now she knelt at the edge of the austere compound, using a small tool to loosen the hard dirt around hardy, scraggly shrubs and thin flowers she had planted. In her spare moments, she tended and watered whatever plants she could find, tried to help them flourish; even the tiniest flecks of green life reminded her of the lush forests on Theroc. Though she was cut off from the worldtrees and the sentient forest mind, Nira was still a green priest, and she remembered her duties.

Though her emerald skin absorbed the daylight and converted it to energy, Dobro's sun felt weak and undernourishing, as if contaminated by the dark history of this place. She looked up, judging how much more time she might have to herself before the next labor shift out in the excavation trenches.

The breeder camp was a sprawling enclosed area with barracks, birthing hospitals, experimentation laboratories, and crowded dwelling complexes. Prisoners went about their business, knowing no other life. Some of them talked with each other; one gaunt man even laughed, as if unaware of his plight. Human children-sanctioned offspring of the breeding prisoners-found games to play even in a place such as this. The Dobro Designate insisted on a constant renewal of purebred descendants in order to keep the breeding stock diverse and healthy. However, to Nira, it seemed as if the human spirit had been bred out of them in less than two centuries.

Even after five years among them, Nira was still treated as a novelty, eccentric and strange, a troublemaker. At least the people had stopped staring at her green skin, which was unlike anything they had ever seen. But they could not understand her attitude, why she still refused to accept her situation and settle down to her new life.

The poor people didn't know any better.

Nira looked up as the alien supervisors put together another work crew. She tried to remain small and unobtrusive, hoping the bureaucrat kithmen would not choose her, not today. Her muscles were strong, though her mind was weary from years of difficult assignments-chipping opalbone fossils, handpicking fruits from thorny bushes, digging trenches.

The Ildirans would eventually give her an assignment-they always did-but she clung to each moment, one at a time. Resisting the instructions would only provoke the Ildiran guards to tear up her plants. They had done it several times before. She would find other ways to resist, if she could.

When Nira had first been taken captive, before the Dobro Designate realized she was pregnant, she was imprisoned alone in darkness, sealed in an unlit cell-the worst punishment imaginable to an Ildiran accustomed to constant daylight. The black claustrophobia was intended to crush Nira's spirit, perhaps even drive her mad. The Designate needed only her reproductive system, not her sanity.

For weeks, Nira had shuddered in dank darkness, suffering further as she went through physical withdrawal from the sunlight. Normally, under Ildira's dazzling sunshine, her photosynthetic skin delivered life energy every minute. Trapped in darkness, however, her metabolism and digestive system had to readjust themselves. Nira had to learn to eat again, to digest normal food. She became extremely ill, weak, but refused to surrender, keeping her heart and her strength.