n the year 2168, humanity boasts several star colonies, thanks to having discovered and utilized a system of interstellar tunnels left by an unknown vanished race. This predecessor race has also bequeathed two identical artifacts of immense destructive power. One is in the hands of the humans, and one in the employ of their alien enemies, the Fallers. The ongoing war between the two camps is at a stalemate, since the two artifacts ensure a stance of mutually assured destruction. Should both ever be triggered simultaneously in the same solar system, space-time itself would be destroyed.
Dr. Tom Capelo is the leading physicist investigating both the tunnels and the artifacts. The book opens on his kidnapping by unknown parties, as witnessed by his 14-year-old daughter, Amanda. Convinced that she herself is in danger, and desperate to rescue her father, Amanda sets off on a perilous mission across the solar system to get help. She falls in with a pacifist rebel group allied with the dwindling Catholic Church. First on Luna, then on Mars, she evades pursuit and mortal dangers. Her ultimate ally becomes Konstantin Ouranis, the young heir to an industrial fortune.
Coequal with this thread are the adventures of Lyle Kaufman and Marbet Grant. These two were members of the original expedition to the planet known simply as World, where the deadly artifact was found. Now, realizing that the desperate human military command intends a suicidal attack on the Fallers, they return to World in an attempt to stave off the destruction of the entire universe. They find old comrades on that planet, as well as a capricious ally in the form of Magdalena, a half-insane wealthy and powerful woman obsessed with finding her lost son. Eventually stumbling upon Capelo, the foursome discover that they are the last bulwark against the fatal triggering of the two artifacts.
A trilogy concludes with a touch of Tao
The concluding volume of Nancy Kress' trilogy—begun with Probability Moon (2000) and continued in Probability Sun (2001)—ties up everything that has gone before in a robust and enticing manner. Moreover, the book—thanks to deftly inserted backstory—stands up well on its own. (Experienced readers will of course enjoy extra resonances.) And by opening two years after the action of the previous book, the stage has been reset with a multitude of intriguing new factors which insure that novice readers start on an equal footing with the older ones. Amanda's newfound maturity, lovers' discord between Kaufman and Grant, the remaking of a shattered culture on World, the tumultuous political scene, additional glimpses of the enigmatic Fallers: All these developments and more show that Kress was determined to push her future history into previously unseen territory.
Kress manages to keep her two plots rollicking along at equal rates of high speed. The tension achieved by bouncing between venues insures a speedy reading by readers deliciously torn between various crises. Amanda's personality—a mix of naivete and brains, fear and courage—makes her a good foil to the more experienced reactions and decisions and ethical dilemmas of the Kaufman-Grant team. And Amanda's desperate flight across the solar system insures that we receive a good tour of the home system that complements the more exotic locales.
Two passages exhibit Kress' refreshing take on how life continues on many levels despite high-flown dramatic incidents. Describing the initial discovery of the star-tunnels, Kress says, "The rich flourished on the new investments; the poor remained poor; Earth went on lurching from one ecological tragedy to another. Everything was the same, and nothing was." And after cataloguing the changes that have come to World in the wake of human intervention, she concludes, "World was neither flourishing nor destructing—it just was." This kind of insistence on a certain cosmic equilibrium beyond interference from humanity receives its most ringing endorsement in the ending, when the pieces of many lives must be picked up after a certain catastrophe. Such a brand of Taoist wisdom is rare in space operas, where the cosmic usually swamps the personal, and Kress is to be congratulated for subtly inserting such a refreshing subtext into her slam-bang narrative.
