When the database on which human society depends begins mysteriously to implode, the finger of causality points directly to HuteNamid, an idyllic planet on the very edge of human-occupied space. The man pointing the finger is Stephen Ridenour, a young computer genius with a knife's edge hold on his sanity. The man targeted is Wesley Smith, another computer genius with the keys to that database and, according to Stephen, a revolutionary new theory about the nature of space itself. Admiral Loren Cantrell of the Alliance starship, Cetacean, is given the task of delivering Stephen to HuteNamid....and keeping him sane—and alive—at least long enough to confirm or disprove his suspicions. But HuteNamid holds more than just a singularly attitudinal programmer. Cantrell finds herself up against a log jam of Native American Ethnic Reconstructionists and up to her oft-decorated collar in lies, plots, and deception. For within HuteNamid itself lie the answers to some of the oldest mysteries of the universe.

A secret binds the colonists of HuteNamid, a secret for which they will risk everything, even genocide. Admiral Loren Cantrell, insystem to investigate diruptions in the vital interstellar data 'Net, has only one clue: the code phrase Dena Cocheta. And only one source of information: Stephen Ridenour, the tormented, neurotic, and incrasingly hostile young genius assigned to solve HuteNamid's mysteries. The answers Cantrell seeks lie buried in Stephen's own tragic past. Is there a link between the madness that destroyed his homeworld and the growing insanity that grips HuteNamid? Proping Stephen's mind could destroy him and the colonists—perhaps all humankind. But one young man's life and the existence of one colony weigh very little against a threat to the 'Net itself—and the powers that command Cantrell.

Disaster in the 'Net The star-spanning 'Net is crashing—collapsing under its own unwieldy weight, its vital database losing bits and connections at an alarming rate. The politicians and technocrats that depend on it are desperate. Desperate enough to come looking for the boy they dispatched on a mission larger than they knew, and for the prankster who exploits are notorious among programmers on the 'Net. Stephen Ridenour—tormented boy genius and survivor of HuteNamid's secrets—has found a refuge from the civilization whose bigotry almost destroyed him. Wesley Smith—genius, seducer, joker, and certifiable loose cannon—has captured the ultimate prey and isn't about to set it loose. And no one realizes what can be done is already a dead issue . . .