Davidson flies back to Smith Camp and discovers it has been burned down with all the humans inside killed.

Selver confronts Davidson in the camp ruins, sings a ritual song over him, and orders him to leave and spread the news.

Selver arrives at the Athshean town of Cadast and falls into a deep healing sleep in the Men's Lodge.

Selver wakes and tells the Cadast elders how humans raped and killed his wife Thele, prompting him to organize the attack.

Elder Coro Mena declares Selver a god after hearing the full account of the camp attack.

At the HQ conference, Lyubov publicly reveals that Davidson raped and killed Selver's wife, establishing the motive for the uprising.

Alien emissaries Or and Lepennon present the ansible to the officers and announce the formation of the League of Worlds.

Davidson is transferred to the remote New Java Camp as punishment following the conference.

Davidson leads ten men carrying flamethrowers into the forest and burns an Athshean town to the ground.

Lyubov visits Selver in the village of Tuntar, and Selver warns him to leave Centralville within two nights.

Selver leads the attack on Centralville, and Lyubov is killed when a collapsing timber falls on him.

Selver proposes surrender terms to Gosse: the surviving humans must live on a treeless reservation until a ship comes to take them home.

Davidson bombs Athshean warrens from the air for two weeks, setting vast stretches of the forest on fire.

Selver and a band of Athsheans capture Davidson after his airship crashes, and Selver has him marched to the barren, treeless island of Rendlep.

The returning ship collects all surviving humans and the Commander informs Selver that Athshe has been placed under permanent League Ban.

Captain Davidson returns to Smith Camp to find it burned and all its humans killed in a coordinated Athshean uprising. Selver, whose wife was raped and killed by Davidson, leads the attack and releases Davidson to spread the news. At a military conference, the alien emissaries Or and Lepennon introduce the ansible and announce that a League of Worlds now oversees the colony, ordering the release of all Athshean slaves. Davidson is punished by transfer but continues attacking Athshean settlements, while Selver warns his human friend Lyubov to flee before launching a devastating assault on Centralville that kills Lyubov. Selver negotiates a truce that confines the surviving humans to a treeless reservation for three years, but Davidson defies the agreement and bombs the forest until Selver captures him and strands him on a barren, lifeless island. When the ship finally returns, the planet is placed under League Ban and the humans depart, leaving Selver with a world saved but permanently changed.

The key events driving the colonizer-native conflict from start to finish.

Davidson advises logging foreman Ok to exploit the Athsheans' fear of hallucinogens to keep the workers obedient.

Davidson flies to Centralville and spends the afternoon with newly arrived Recreation Staff women before returning to camp.

Davidson recognizes his own Athshean servant Ben standing among the armed attackers holding a gun on him in the ruins.

Healers in the Cadast Men's Lodge tend a wound in Selver's arm while the community watches silently over him as he sleeps.

Ebor Dendep makes Selver tell the story of the camp attack publicly so that her people will know killing the yumens is possible.

Runners leave Cadast carrying news of the attack to towns across the Forty Lands.

A messenger arrives in Cadast reporting that many female yumens have joined the human settlement at Centralville.

Selver tells Ebor about Lyubov, the yumen who rescued him from Davidson and shared knowledge freely with him.

Lyubov explains to the HQ meeting that Athshean males use ritualized competitive singing to release aggression without physical violence.

At the close of the conference, Lyubov whispers to Lepennon, pleading with him to ask the League to save the forests and the forest people.

All Athshean workers are released from the labor camps following direct orders transmitted through the new ansible.

Selver's people find him wandering in a waking dream after the Centralville attack and carry him to the holding area at Endtor.

Selver holds a formal truce meeting with Colonel Dongh, Gosse, Benton, and other officers, finalizing the terms of the reservation agreement.

Colonel Dongh radios Davidson to warn that his continued bombing raids are placing all remaining humans in mortal danger.

Selver hands Lyubov's box of anthropological documents to the departing humans, asking that his friend's work be taken where Lyubov intended.

Before the uprising, Davidson's casual cruelty toward the Athsheans is visible in small acts of control, while Selver's attack on Camp Smith ripples outward through Athshean society as elders and messengers carry the news across the Forty Lands. At the human conference, Lyubov makes a last desperate appeal to the League emissaries, knowing that without intervention the Athsheans face extermination. The League's order to free all Athshean slaves removes Davidson's workforce but does nothing to soften his hatred, and he quietly recruits loggers to his cause. After the Centralville attack and Lyubov's death, Selver struggles to master the waking dream that violence has become, while the surviving humans negotiate formally for their lives. The story closes with Selver honoring Lyubov's legacy by handing his life's work to the departing humans, ensuring that at least something survives the catastrophe.

The supporting scenes and quieter revelations that shaped the conflict's outcome.

Davidson wakes at Smith Camp and reflects confidently that the planet was literally made for humans and will be remade in Earth's image.

Selver tells the Cadast community how he organized the 900-strong force that burned Camp Smith and killed its more than 200 humans.

Coro Mena enters a waking dream of giant iron machines felling trees and senses that Selver has crossed from the dream-time into the world-time.

Or confronts Davidson at the HQ conference, asking why he would have sex with Selver's wife if he truly considered Athsheans to be animals.

Lyubov tells the conference that Athsheans adapted to human violence by reclassifying yumens as a different, non-human species, which made killing possible.

Coro Mena walks with Selver as he departs Cadast and shares a vision he once had of Selver with young trees growing up behind him.

Lyubov recalls finding Davidson beating the badly wounded Selver the morning after Thele's death and carrying Selver back to his quarters.

Lyubov secretly flies Selver to the distant town of Broter to free him, an act that permanently destroys his colleagues' trust in him.

Lyubov wakes to the sound of an explosion and realizes in that moment that by omitting Selver's presence from his report he has become a traitor.

Selver lifts a timber from Lyubov's body and, slipping into a dream, asks Lyubov why he stayed when he knew what was coming.

Selver tells Gosse that the Athsheans killed all the women deliberately to prevent the humans from breeding more people on Athshe.

Davidson spreads his message among New Java loggers, warning that the 2,500 humans on the planet are vastly outnumbered and must kill first to survive.

Thousands of Athsheans launch a coordinated assault on New Java Camp, overrunning it and forcing Davidson to flee to his airship.

Davidson knocks his crewman Post unconscious with a gun butt to stop his objections, then orders his pilot to circle for a bombing run on the battle below.

Selver tells Lepennon that once a people learns to kill, the knowledge of murder cannot be driven back into the dream or forgotten.

The seeds of the uprising are planted in Davidson's ideology of domination and in Selver's grief over Thele's death, a grief that transforms him into a figure his people call a god. At the human conference, the arrival of the ansible and the exposure of Davidson's crimes force every character to confront what the colony has truly become, and Lyubov crosses from observer to participant. His secret act of freeing Selver, and later his choice to omit key details from a report, make him complicit in the very attack that kills him, a fate he seems to have known was coming. Selver's victory over the humans costs him his peace of mind, as he admits that the dream of violence now drives him rather than the reverse, and that the act of killing the women was a calculated, terrible logic. By the story's end, Selver and Lepennon share the novella's most devastating revelation: that the knowledge of murder, once introduced into a culture, can never be recalled, and Athshe's innocence is gone forever.

The critical decisions, moral discoveries, and emotional shifts that changed both worlds.