The Isana mudflats spread out in a broad fan where the river melted into a slurry of water and muck. Shirtless, the boy Ishmael stood in the mire, barely able to maintain his balance. Every night he washed his sore palms and applied smears of ever-dwindling salves.

The work supervisors showed no sympathy for the slaves’ discomfort. One grabbed Ishmael’s hand and turned it over to examine the sores, then shoved him away. “Keep working, it’ll toughen you up.” Ishmael went back to his labors, silently noting that the man’s hands were much softer than his own.

Once the shellfish planting season ended, the slave owners would find other work for them, perhaps sending them north to rugged cane fields to hack down thick stands of grasses and harvest the juices.

Some of the Zensunni muttered that if they were transferred to the agricultural fields, they would escape at night and flee into the wilderness. But Ishmael had no idea how to survive on Poritrin, did not know the edible plants or the native predators, as he did on Harmonthep. Any escapee would be without tools or weapons, and if captured would surely face violent punishment.

A few of the muddy slaves began to chant, but the folk songs varied from planet to planet, the verses changed among the Buddislamic sects. Ishmael worked until his muscles and bones ached and his eyes could see little but the sun glaring off the standing water. In endless treks back and forth to the supply basins, he must have planted a million clam seedlings. No doubt, he would be asked to plant a million more.

Hearing three blasts of a shrill whistle, Ishmael looked up to see the frog-lipped supervisor standing on his platform mounted above the mudflats, safe and dry. Ishmael knew it was not yet time for the slaves’ brief morning break.

With narrowed eyes, the supervisor scanned the labor gang, as if mentally making selections. He pointed to a handful of the youngest planters, Ishmael among them, and instructed them to slosh their way back to a staging area on dry land. “Get yourselves cleaned up. You’ve been reassigned.”

Ishmael felt a cold hand squeeze his heart. While he hated the smelly mud, these refugees from Harmonthep were his only connection to his home planet and his grandfather.

Some of the “volunteers” wailed. Two of those not selected clutched at their reassigned companions, refusing to let them go. The frog-mouthed supervisor snapped harsh words and made threatening gestures. A pair of armed Dragoon guards came in to enforce the edict, splashing mud on their golden uniforms as they separated the slaves. Though sad and terrified, Ishmael offered no resistance. He could never win if he fought them.

The supervisor stretched his lips in a grin. “You’re lucky, all of you. There’s been an accident in Savant Holtzman’s laboratories, and he needs replacement slaves to do calculations. Clever boys. Easy work, compared to this.”

Clearly skeptical, Ishmael eyed the ragtag group of mud-spattered youths.

Uprooted again, taken from a dreary existence that had just begun to seem normal, Ishmael trudged along, not understanding what he was expected to do. He would find some way to endure, though. His grandfather had taught him that survival was the essence of success, and that violence was the last refuge of a failure. It was the Zensunni way.

SCRUBBED CLEAN AND with his hair shorn close to his head, Ishmael fidgeted in his fresh clothes. He waited in a large room with a dozen recruits taken from work teams around Starda. Dragoon guards remained stationed at the door, their gold-scale armor and ornate helmets making them look like birds of prey.

Ishmael took a place next to a dark-haired boy about his own age who had light brown skin and a narrow face. “My name is Aliid,” the boy said quietly, though the guards had instructed them all to be silent. Aliid had an intensity that spoke of trouble, or perhaps leadership. A visionary or a criminal.

“I’m Ishmael.” He glanced around nervously.

A Dragoon guard turned toward the whispers, and both boys formed their faces into placid expressions. The guard looked away, and Aliid spoke quickly again. “We were captured on IV Anbus. Where did you come from?”

“Harmonthep.”

A well-dressed man entered the room, causing a commotion as he did so. Pale-skinned and with a square-cut mane of iron-gray hair, he looked and acted like a lord. He wore decorative chains around his neck and flowing white robes with loose sleeves. His face and sharp eyes showed little interest in the batch of slaves. He gazed down his nose as he assessed the young workers without much satisfaction, only resignation. “They’ll do— if they’re trained well enough and carefully watched.”

He stood next to a diminutive, blunt-featured young woman who had the body of a child, though her face looked much older. Preoccupied, the white-robed man muttered something to her and left, as if he had more important things to do.

“That was Savant Holtzman,” the woman said. “The great scientist is your master now. Our work will help defeat the thinking machines.” She offered them a hopeful smile, but few of the boys seemed to care what their new slave master’s purposes might be.

Flustered by their reaction, she continued, “I am Norma Cenva, and I also work with Savant Holtzman. You will be trained to perform mathematical calculations. The war against thinking machines affects all of us, and this is how you can do your part.” She seemed to have rehearsed her speech many times.

Aliid frowned, scorning her words. “I’m taller than she is!”

As if hearing him, Norma turned to look directly at Aliid. “With a single stroke of your stylus, you can complete a calculation that may gain victory against Omnius. Keep that in mind.”

When she turned away again, Aliid said out of the corner of his mouth, “And even if we win the war for them, will they free us?”

AT NIGHT IN their communal quarters at the blufftop estate, the slaves were left alone. Here, the Buddislamic captives kept their culture alive.

Ishmael was surprised that he had been cast in among members of the Zenshiite sect, a different interpretation of Buddislam that had split them from the Zensunnis many centuries ago, before the great flight from the crumbling Old Empire.

He met their muscular, dark-eyed leader, Bel Moulay, a man who had obtained permission for his people to wear traditional striped cloths over drab work uniforms. The tribal clothing was a symbol of their identity, the white of freedom and the red of blood. Poritrin slave keepers understood none of the symbolism, which was just as well.

Bright-eyed, Aliid sat next to Ishmael. “Listen to Bel Moulay. He will give us hope. He has a plan.”

Ishmael hunkered down. His belly was full with strange, bland food, but it nourished him. As much as he resented his new master, the boy did prefer working here, rather than on the awful mudflats.

Bel Moulay called them all to prayer in a firm, gruff voice, then intoned sacred sutras in a language that Ishmael’s grandfather had employed, an arcane tongue understood only by the most devout. In that way, they could converse without being understood by eavesdropping masters.

“Our people have waited for vengeance,” Moulay said. “We were free, then captured. Some of us are new slaves, while others have served the evil men for generations.” His eyes were fiery, his teeth very white against dark lips and a black beard. “But God has given us our minds and our belief. It is up to us to find the weapons and the necessary resolve.”

The muttering among the Zenshiites made Ishmael uncomfortable.

Bel Moulay seemed to be advocating outright revolt, a violent uprising against the masters. To Ishmael, that did not seem what Buddallah would have preached.

Sitting together, the IV Anbus slaves made whispered threats of retribution. Moulay talked of the disastrous alloy-resonator test that had caused the deaths of seventeen innocent slaves.

“We have suffered countless indignities,” Moulay said. The slaves growled their agreement. “We do everything our masters require of us. They reap the benefits of what we accomplish, but the Zenshiites”— he looked quickly at Ishmael and the other new additions to the group—”as well as our Zensunni brothers, never attain our freedom.” He leaned forward as if dark thoughts were coursing his mind. “The answer is in our grasp.”

Ishmael remembered that his grandfather had taught philosophical and nonviolent methods of solving problems. Even so, old Weyop had been unable to save his villagers. The pacifistic Zensunni ways had failed them all, at a time of utmost crisis.

Bel Moulay raised a callused fist, as if he intended to thrust it into the crackling fire. “We have been told by men who call themselves ‘righteous slavers’ that they have no compunction against pressing our people into work. They claim we owe a debt to humanity because we refused to participate in their foolish war against the machine demons— demons that they had created and thought they controlled. But after centuries of oppression, the people of Poritrin owe us. And that is a debt which must be paid in blood.”

Aliid cheered, but beside him Ishmael sat uneasily. He did not agree with the approach, but was unable to offer an alternative. Since he was only a boy, he did not speak up or interrupt the meeting.

Instead, like his companions, he listened to Bel Moulay. . . .