Search Worlds Without End

One day, early this century, the aliens arrive. They have an invitation for humanity – or at least that portion of it idealistic, desperate or brave enough to contemplate a one-way journey to the stars. Peoples' reasons for accepting the invitation are as varied as the people themselves. Stan Morgan is a young NASA scientist attached to a US Army Special Forces team. Hathaway Dene is his niece, a rebel teenager bent on finding a place where she – and her unborn daughter – can live life on their own terms. Sophie Hemingway is a research pathologist seeking a cure for her own and her family's genetic illness. Stephen Cooper is on the run from Earth justice. Marian West is an elderly former WW II agent in search of one last adventure.

Expecting welcome, the humans find themselves alone, cut off from Earth and deprived of all terrestrial technology. They are left to discover for themselves the meaning of the strange, malleable, artificial environment in which they find themselves and to renegotiate the relationships between men and women, soldiers and civilians, nationalities and political cadres... before these things become literally matters of life and death.

The planet familiarly known as Blueheart is a world of ocean, settled some three centuries ago by humanity, and explored by humans adapted to live in the oceans. The strategy of settlement involves building up both population and knowledge to allow terraforming of the planet, eliminating the need for the modifications. Humanity, according to those who control the making of the adaptations, must not be subdivided. But the adaptives of Blueheart are not prepared to go gracefully into that good night. Many have refused to participate in development, or show any interest in technological society, and have built themselves a community in the seas. Some have gone beyond that, in an effort to secure their future.

Rache is an adaptive scientist and administator of an undersea research base, who has managed with more or less success to live between the two worlds – until the day he finds the corpse of a young woman in the seas. The finding leads him to a shattering series of discoveries about himself and the people around him.

Cybele is the daughter of a man whose religious convictions cause him to reject adaptation. Upon his death, she becomes enmeshed in conspiracy and counter-conspiracy, between adaptives and their opponents, and must chose where to place her loyalties.

Teal is the twin sister of Juniper, a charismatic advocate of the preservation of the seas who vanished in those seas over twenty years ago. Teal has come to Blueheart to discover the last traces of her sister, only to find that what happened twenty years ago is of great, and dangerous, consequence to the present day.

Much as these three people would dearly like to mind their own business and get on with their lives, they find themselves carrying responsibility for the future of their world.

Sixty six years, or five generations, before the start of the story, three starships left Burdania in the midst of a political crisis surrounding continuing space exploration. All attempts at colonization had failed, and space exploration was deemed futile and wasteful. The political dispute turned violent, and, in fleeing the starships’ crews activated an experimental stardrive, which devastated the planet caught in its backwash. The explorers settled on distant Taridwyn, made contact with the native kinder’el’ein, and awaited slow extinction.

Despite themselves, they survived and prospered. Five generations on, their colony’s future is no longer in doubt, and what is at issue is their past. Can they or can they not find in themselves the courage to return to Burdania? What will they find when they get there?

Among Burdanians, Lian D’Halldt is unique. He has been fostered by the long-lived, empathic kinder’el’ein, and he has been left mildly handicapped by brain injuries received as a child, when he fell through the ceiling of the debating hall into yet another debate on return to Burdania. The Burdanians discount his particular insights, but the kinder’el’ein do not. It is with their support, through their wish to find peace for their unquiet guests, that Lian becomes instrumental to the decision to return. Legacies is the story of that decision and its consequences, for Lian and his people.

For the Darkborn, sunlight kills. For the Lightborn, darkness is fatal. Living under a centuries-old curse, the Darkborn and the Lightborn share the city of Minhorne, coexisting in an uneasy equilibrium but never interacting. When Darkborn physician Balthasar Hearne finds a pregnant fugitive on his doorstep just before sunrise, he has no choice but to take her in. Tercelle Amberley's betrothed is a powerful Darkborn nobleman, but her illicit lover came to her through the daytime. When she gives birth to twin boys, they can see, something unheard of among the Darkborn. When men come for the boys, Balthasar is saved by the intervention of his Lightborn neighbor-and healed by the hands of his wife, Telmaine. Soon he finds himself drawn deeper into political intrigue and magical attacks, while Telmaine must confront a power she can no longer keep sheathed in gloves, a power she neither wants nor can control.

The Darkborn aristocracy has rejected magic, viewing the pursuit of science as the only worthy goal. But Lady Telmaine Hearne does not have that luxury. She has kept her own powers secret, fearful of being ruined in society...until her husband Balthasar draws her into a conspiracy to protect the archduke and his brother against a magical enemy. But who will protect them from her?

Magic dies with the mage, or so the Darkborn believe. That's why Lady Telmaine Hearne has been condemned to death for sorcery. She's escaped but is now bound with her mageborn allies for the Borders and war. Meanwhile, her husband, Balthasar, has learned of his family connection to the Shadowborn-and is fighting for survival and sanity as magic turns him against everything he holds dear.

War threatens to destroy both worlds...

In the far reaches of space the descendants of humanity have evolved into two vastly different cultures. On the planet Rire, the Reetions use computer technology to ensure comfort and equality for all. On Gelion, genetically modified Sevolites adhere to a strict hierarchy based on racial purity and ones ability to wield a sword.

As war threatens to destroy both worlds, two men, Erien of Rire and Amel of Gelion, attempt to preserve the fragile peace. Together they hope to unravel the complex web of intrigues and ancient hatred that threatens to destroy humanity itself.