In the year 2023, criminal psychologist Dr. Gideon Wolfe gets an unexpected visit from the widow of John Price, a special-effects wizard mysteriously murdered outside his New York City apartment days earlier. She hands over a computer disc, which offers evidence that the famous news footage of the assassination of President Emily Forrester—footage that implicated an Afghan functionary named Muhammed Khaldun, later convicted of the crime—was doctored. Wolfe takes the tape to his friend, private detective Max Jenkins, and the two begin to investigate. But after uncovering further evidence, Max is shot to death in his own apartment by a sniper.

Realizing that he has stumbled onto something he shouldn't have, Wolfe flies to Florida to visit the man whose dna Max had discovered at the scene of Price's murder. He is Dr. Eli Kuperman, an anthropologist imprisoned for desecrating Indian burial grounds. In the prison waiting room, Wolfe meets Kuperman—who seems to be expecting him. Suddenly a hum envelops the prison, causing walls to collapse and revealing a futuristic vessel waiting for them outside. An alluring young woman, Larissa Tressalian, helps Kuperman and Wolfe board the ship.

There Wolfe meets an odd assortment of crew members, headed by Larissa's brother Malcolm Tressalian, a disabled scientist and son of the man whose technological developments made the Internet possible. As the ship—powered by superconductive magnetic generators and protected by an electromagnetic field—fends off bullets from the law-enforcement helicopters in pursuit and blows away some of them with a pulverizing gun, Tressalian begins to reveal something of the crew's mission. They are headed toward Afghanistan, he tells Wolfe, where the U.S. is secretly sending a task force, ostensibly to retaliate against the terrorists who plotted the President's assassination. In fact, Tressalian reveals, the assassin was not an Afghan at all but a Chinese security officer. Images of the two were indeed manipulated, by Tressalian with the aid of John Price. Before he can explain more, however, Tressalian suffers a sudden physical collapse—and the vessel takes a dive straight into the Atlantic Ocean.

How can I describe the hours that followed? How do I explain my transformation from skeptical (if fascinated) observer of Malcolm Tressalian’s outlandish, even mad, schemes to full-fledged participant in them? There were so many factors involved, not least the lingering trauma of having seen my oldest friend murdered before my eyes, along with the lack of any meaningful sleep in the days since that event. Yet mere emotional and physical exhaustion would be inadequate hooks upon which to hang my swift spiritual metamorphosis. No, the cascade of intellectual, visual and physical stimuli that rained down on me in those predawn hours would have converted the strongest and most doubting of souls, and I say that not simply to excuse my reaction; rather it is a testament to all that I heard, saw and felt as we passed over the Pakistani coast and penetrated the interior of the Indian subcontinent.

As Larissa had said, the valley of the once proud Indus River, mother of one of the mightiest and most mysterious of ancient civilizations, had been turned into a nuclear wasteland during the still raging war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. But my beautiful companion’s further statement that the valley was uninhabited was not, strictly speaking, correct. As we sped along above the surface of the water, past riverbanks strewn with rotting bodies and bleached skeletons, we occasionally saw groups of what were perhaps the most desperate people on earth: farmers and villagers whose way of life–whose very chances for life–had been terribly damaged as a result of the vicious nationalism and religious zealotry of both their enemies and their countrymen. They were moving down the hillsides in limping, shuffling lines, those weakened wraiths, moving down by the light of the moon to fill buckets with the river’s poisoned waters, which they would later boil in a futile attempt at purification so that they might try to go on for a few more days or weeks in the only way that, given the decimated condition of their nation and the unwillingness of the rest of its citizens to accept such nuclear lepers, was possible for them.

"This is what comes of it," Malcolm breathed as he watched them–and in his look as well as his words there was none of the sinister playfulness or scornful disdain that generally marked his conversation. "Of superstitions and fables, once told around fires to ward off the dark and then passed on from generation to generation in documents, books, visual images. All that was bad enough. But now–now rationalizations for this kind of violence can be manufactured in the home of any disaffected or deranged soul and sent out over the Internet to all those terminals that profit-obsessed liars like my father swore would bring democracy and peace to the world." He winced once and turned his wheelchair toward the rest of us. "My apologies," he said, rubbing his temples and speaking with the quiet but emphatic exasperation of the chronically ill. "Once again, Gideon, I’m tired." I found that his unexpected use of my given name aroused a peculiar reaction in me. I felt touched, even grateful, since it was obvious that even this small bit of intimacy was difficult for him. "Perhaps you’ll let the others do some explaining while they prepare you for our next piece of work." His shoulders suddenly went limp, and Larissa moved, as quickly and lithely as ever, to his side.

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