Starcruiser captain, Suki Ty Chang has known she is the ancient soul, Shebana, since she was a little girl. She has spent thirty years tracking down her eternal nemesis, Mamboja, and now finally has him cornered on Zanula V, where he reigns as Manumas, master of a slave planet in the Thirty-Third Century.

But just as Shebana has Mamboja in her grasp, he reveals he now has the power to change the past. In the blink of an eye, reality is changed, and she is no longer Suki Ty Chang, but clone-slave ZV FP38120621, just one of thousands of wretched souls, bred for a life of subservience.

As Manumas delights in showing '621' around her new home, heaping torments both physical and emotional upon her, she recalls another, all too similar, life of servitude, seventy-five centuries earlier: as Sagmi the slave girl, snatched from her childhood home by the Sumerians who see her as nothing more than a possession they can do with as they please.

All seems lost for both Sagmi and 621, but both endure their seemingly endless suffering for the sake of those they love... until help arrives in the most unexpected form.