Isolde's new owner was a missionary named Newell. He was dedicated to the task of bringing all the heathen in the known galaxy around to seeing things in their proper perspective, i.e., the way he saw them. He was a devout disciple of Neo-Christianity, popularly known as FDRism, which had begun late in the twentieth century and which proclaimed Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the real Christ. He owned his own ship—the NRA—and he carried a collapsible chapel in the hold. As he was unmarried and as most of the lands he visited turned out to be lonely as well as hostile, he bought Isolde to keep him company—and, of course, to keep the ship clean, do the cooking and darn his socks.
His first—and last—stop after leaving Procyon 16 was Idwandana, a primitive province on the southern-most continent of Gamma Bootis 4. The natives were a rusty brown in hue, stood on an average of five feet in height, used a glue-like mixture on their scarlet hair to make it stand up straight, and lived off the pweitl—a cow-like creature whose milk they drank, whose flesh they ate and whose hides they used for lap-laps, tepees and gourds. Occasionally, they varied their diet by eating each other.
The particular tribe Newell chose for his initial ministrations took a dim view of FDRism right from the start. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor was a practice they indulged in habitually, providing that the "rich" were their enemies and the "poor" were themselves; but they could see no religious connection in the matter. Old Age Security they considered impractical, and sick benefits for incapacitated members of the community, left them cold. When an Idwandanan grew too old, he or she was cooked and eaten. If he or she became a detriment to the tribe because of illness or accident, he or she was also cooked and eaten. So it always was, so should ever be. There was only one god, and he was Bruggil, the giant who lived in the fire mountain and whose fiery breath you could sometimes see when he went into a tantrum.
If the Reverend Newell had been a realistic person, he would have folded up his chapel then and there, and took off for home. But then, if he had been a realistic person, he wouldn't have been trying to shove his credo down the throats of a race of savages who would just as soon eat him as look at him.
He did not see the arrow till it was already protruding from his chest, and then he saw it only briefly. He fell, appropriately enough, in the doorway of the collapsible chapel he had come to love the way some men love women and the way other men love wine. But here the appropriateness ended: the Idwandanans streaked out of the surrounding forest and quartered him neatly, whereupon they swarmed up the ladder to the ship's lock in search of the creature whom they believed to be his mate. Isolde was in the galley, fixing breakfast, and it was no trick at all for the foremost Idwandanan to creep up behind her and plunge his knife between her shoulder blades. It was a long knife, and a sharp one—the best that the beche-demer trader who supplied the area, had in stock—and it went all the way through and came out between her synthetic breasts. The Idwandanan felt pretty proud of himself, till she turned around and confronted him, whereupon he ran screaming from the room.
He returned presently with several of his fellows, among them Skonsdoggugil, the chief. There was a prolonged palaver, after which Isolde's would-be executioner approached her and withdrew the knife. It had done no damage whatsoever, even missing the small bellows that kept her chest rising and falling in a rhythmic and realistic imitation of human breathing. As for the holes it had made, her skin-plastic was of the self-sealing type, and grew together forthwith. The bodice of the gingham dress Newell had outfitted her with, concealed this additional miracle from the eyes of the Idwandanans, but Skonsdoggugil had seen enough: here was Bruggil's Bride, sent down from the fire mountain by ways incomprehensible to man, to test the mettle of his children.
They built a temple for her deep in the forest, laboriously quarrying the stone and dragging it through underbrush and vine to the chosen site. Isolde watched, or seemed to be watching, and every now and then she gave forth with recitative or aria. The Idwandanans interpreted these outbursts as admonitions to hurry, and because of them, the temple was completed much sooner than it otherwise would have been. After a lengthy ceremony, officiated by Skonsdoggugil, Isolde was escorted inside and seated upon a crude throne, after which a guard of honor was installed without. By now, her goddesshood was unquestioned by even the most cynical. Was she not above such worldly necessities as eating and drinking? Had anyone ever seen her sleep? Oh, she was Bruggil's Bride all right, and woe to the Idwandanan male who failed to make his obeisance at her feet each time he slaughtered a pweitl, and woe to the Idwandanan female who failed to attend the fertility fete which was held each night in the courtyard!
Isolde reigned in the temple for five Earth-years, and she probably would have gone right on reigning there till her batteries gave out and her tapes went dead and the little in-built motor of her heart ceased to whir if a certain native labor recruiter named Jose Swenson had not landed in the Malaita to pick up a payload of Idwandanans. As it was, her reign came to an abrupt end.