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Diane darted from the stream with a glad little cry, shaking the water from her long, tawny hair, the droplets of water sparkling on her bronzed skin like diamonds, the long, lithe lines of her body clothed only in the moisture until she found her buckskin shorts and halter and dressed. Life was comparatively simple and uncomplicated among the Shining Ones, and she, of all their encampment, remembered no other way. The others might look back with bitter longing or curse softly and futilely at the silver patches of skin at elbow and knee which marked them as survivors of the Plague, but not Diane.
So what if they were shunned by others, by the non-afflicted people who clung so doggedly to their mean existence in the small villages? She had but to hunt and fish and evade the bands of roving Robots lest they conscript her in their services. The only other bane in her life was Harry Starbuck and she could take care of herself where he was concerned. She could.