After catastrophic biological warfare, small surviving pockets of humanity are building a new civilization. They have founded a city amid a poisoned landscape of abandoned countryside and warped forests. They have released genetically engineered plants and animals into the wild to rebuild the surrounding ecosystem. But the psychological scars of the global disaster are too much for some people, who reject modern civilization and dream of reestablishing a natural world, without states or cities or the advanced and deadly technologies that contributed to the catastrophe. The revolutionaries are on a collision course with the city's leaders, sophisticated authoritarians who have no intention of relinquishing their grip on power. Nikos Kumano is a nonpolitical man, a pilot, caught in the middle. Purely by chance, he becomes a go-between, relaying demands from the revolutionaries and finding himself drawn into the cultured social circles of his city's leadership. He does not know how to deal with the different kinds of corruption surrounding him. He does not understand the ideological intensity and driven anger of the revolutionaries, or the seductive corruption of the city's leaders. Nikos does come to realize, however, that his life is hanging in the balance, along with the lives of most of his fellow citizens. He and they will find that some competing dreams are irreconcilable with each other.