In the parched twenty-first century Southwest, Carli D'Auber has made the most important discovery of the century. She has pioneered a new form of communications: It is now possible to send your consciousness across hundreds of thousands of miles, to be present in another country or on another world, through a remote device. But powerful forces have seized control of her invention. A globe-spanning corporation has taken the credit for its discovery. And on a distant orbital platform a secret hive of children, trained from birth to use the new technology, are using borrowed android bodies - "proxies" - to stage a stunning coup against an interstellar mission. But they need Carli to carry out their plan and have sent a deadly cyborg hunter to track her down.