Divergence

Charles Sheffield

Feb 2013 · Heritage Book 2 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who - or what - the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out - and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.


All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H'sial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJ'merlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.


The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined...

About the author

Charles Sheffield (1935 - 2002)
Charles Sheffield, born in the UK in 1935, graduated from St John's College Cambridge with a Double First in Mathematics and Physics. Moving to the USA in the mid 1960's, he began working in the field of particle physics which lead to a consultancy with NASA and landed him the position of chief scientist at the Earth Satellite Corporation. Best known for writing hard SF, his career as a successful science fiction writer began in response to his grief over the loss of his first wife to cancer in 1977; Sheffield has been awarded both the Hugo and Nebula for his work and won the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Brother to Dragons.. He also served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America between 1984 and 1986.
For more information see www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sheffield_charles