It is the second year of the Emperor's silence, and a terraformed Mars is dying - the high, cold deserts expanding as lakes shrink and forests wither: But in a newborn spring, a young man sets out from the Bitter Waters danwei - unaware that his journey will carry him to the far ends of the planet... and beyond.A lowly Contract Agronomist Technician with a blood connection to the ruling Ten Thousand Years, Wei Lee's life-path is forever altered when he chances upon the crashed spacecraft of a runaway female anarchist. Agreeing to transport the prisoner deep into the Martian wild at his powerful kinsman's request, Lee soon discovers he has been cruelly betrayed - and that he, his charge and the future itself are all seriously imperiled.And so begins the strange odyssey of Wei Lee - as he follows the words and music of a rock 'n' roll demi-god across dry river and dust sea, toward an inevitable confrontation in information space with the true lord of the living and the dead. For myth, circumstance, and a viral kiss have transformed Wei Lee from man to reluctant deity - setting him adrift in a remolded world of cowboys, tribal Yankees and feral children... anointing him savior of a red planet doomed by a dread conspiracy of religious destruction born on a machine-run green wilderness called "Earth." Read Less