Beta testers for this novel were the always insightful Ted Bleaney, Michael A. Burstein, David Livingstone Clink, Marcel Gagné, Richard Gotlib, Peter Halasz, Howard Miller, Dr. Ariel Reich, Alan B. Sawyer, and Sally Tomasevic, and I was fortunate enough to be working again with the copyediting team of Bob and Sara Schwager.
Parts of this book were written at John A. Sawyer’s vacation home on Canandaigua Lake—thanks, Dad! Thanks, also, to Nicholas A. DiChario, my host on frequent visits to Rochester, New York, where some of this novel is set.
York University, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and the Creighton Mine all really exist. However, all the characters in this novel are entirely the product of my imagination. They are not meant to bear any resemblance to the actual people who hold or have held positions with these or any other organizations.
If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest
of us and destroy them. But the line
dividing good and evil cuts through the heart
of every human being. And who is willing to
destroy a piece of his own heart?
—ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Prologue
“I’ve done a terrible thing,” said Ponter Boddit, straddling the saddle seat in Jurard Selgan’s office.
Selgan was a member of generation 144, ten years older than Ponter. His hair was a wise gray, and his part had widened into a deep river of scalp, emptying onto the low forehead above his browridge. “Go on.”