Synopsis
Te Pewa—the Source World—is the fabled planet from which humanity sprung dozens of millennia ago, an age that survives only as fanciful myth. During the long, tortured history that flung humans across the stars and twice nearly wrecked them as a species, the Source World was lost to all knowledge. Moreover, the descendants have since mutated and engineered themselves for life on other worlds so that, at present, they are a divided, rootless people, longing for identity. This thirst for their history has become an obsession and has generated a host of religions and political orders all bent on reclaiming the lost humanity they idealize and worship. Now, as the ancient enemy of humanity, the alien Pladjin, reemerge from the darkness of space to threaten another inter-species war, a true human, called Nao, is discovered on the periphery of the human Diaspora. But will the discovery of Nao unite humanity or further divide it?
The story follows Feh-la Ukura, a genetic archaeologist who discovers Nao and must grapple with the religious and political reactions of her discovery along with the ghosts of her own past. Meanwhile, viewed as the only surviving vessel of the human soul, Nao, seeks to quench his thirst for freedom in spite of the exalted role others would have him play. Together, Feh and Nao travel from the remotest lost worlds of humanity to the center of a grand, genetically-engineered civilization with messages of hope but also of danger. In the wake of their journey, entire empires and religious traditions will shudder, old truths will be invalidated and the hope for a new era will stir in the hearts of the vestiges of humanity.
