I am grateful for the advice and help of:

Jeff Allen, David Baxter, Ethan Bier, John Carroll, Randy Carver, Steven Cherry, Connie Fleenor, Robert Fleming, Peter Flynn, Mike Gannis, Harry Goldstein, Thomas Goodey, Barbara Gordon, Judith Greengard, Dipak Gupta, Patricia Hartman, Patrick Hillmeyer, Cherie Kushner, Sifang Lu, Sara Baase Mayers, Keith Mayers, Terry McGarry, Sean Peisert, William Rupp, Peter H. Salus, Mary Q. Smith, Charles Vestal, Joan D. Vinge, Gabriele Wienhausen, and William F. Wu.

I am very grateful to James Frenkel for the wonderful job of editing he has done with this book. Jim and Tor Books have been very patient with me in the long process of creating Rainbows End .

The first bit of dumb luck came disguised as a public embarrassment for the European Center for Defense Against Disease. On July 23, schoolchildren in Algiers claimed that a respiratory epidemic was spreading across the Mediterranean. The claim was based on clever analysis of antibody data from the mass-transit systems of Algiers and Naples.

CDD had no immediate comment, but in less than three hours, public-health hobbyists reported similar results in other cities, complete with contagion maps. The epidemic was at least one week old, probably originating in Central Africa, beyond the scope of hobbyist surveillance.

By the time CDD got its public-relations act together, the disease had been detected in India and North America. Worse yet, a journalist in Seattle had isolated and identified the infectious agent, which turned out to be a Pseudomimivirus. That was about as embarrassing a twist as the public-relations people could imagine: Back in the late teens, CDD had justified its enormous budget with a brilliant defense against the New Sunrise cult. The Sunrise Plague had been the second-worst Euro-terror of the decade. Only CDD's leadership had kept the disaster from spreading worldwide.