Everyone you've met

Brede is the small woman at the Ship's directive console, called Shipspouse; she is prescient, soothes the quarrel, and has lightly sounded the planet.

Lord Dionket is Chief Healer of the Tanu and heads the Guild of Redactors.

The Exalted Lady Eadone is Dean of Guilds and eldest daughter of the Thagdal, and formally greets the travelers at the palace.

In the Pliocene the Mediterranean is an empty basin far below the Rhône delta, holding bitter salt lakes and eroded salt, anhydrite and gypsum formations.

More than forty birdlike flyers carry the exiles away from the Ship, wait out the impact, and later rest by the crater for a thousand years.

The Galactic Milieu is a civilization of six coadunate races that humanity joined; its Human Polity funds scientists such as Guderian.

A golden torc, alive with power, is found by a young ramapithecus in a dormant flyer at the crater; his mother throws it into a gorse thicket.

The Great Intervention brought humanity into the Galactic Milieu, costing it languages, philosophies, and sovereignty, which Guderian resents.

Guderian's device opens a singularity to the Pliocene in the Rhône valley; living things returning are aged by over six million years and die.

A Hipparion gracile, a small Pliocene horse, was retrieved with a carrot bait and instantly aged into dust.

The stolid Krondaku can withstand 370 df, about the upper limit for Milieu races.

The Lylmik are the galaxy's most ancient rational race; Marc found no trace of their home sun and may have been altered.

Madame waits upstairs with refreshment for Guderian and his visitors.

The exiles name the planet the Many-Colored Land; it lies in a remote galaxy where none will dare to look for them.

The Venerable Lady Mayvar Kingmaker presides over the Hall of Farsensors, whose colors are violet and amber.

Pallol is an irrepressible, one-eyed enemy of Thagdal who sneers at the hymns and doubts they can survive.

A Poltroyan research vessel was stranded in subspace with translator trouble and had under fifteen hours of oxygen left when a Lylmik cruiser rescued them.

The ramapithecus is a small, furred, tool-using, nearly upright hominoid; a mother searches for her missing child by the crater lake.

Sanders is a placid scientist from an institute on Londinium who wishes the time trip were not one-way.

The Skipetar is a mustachioed, massive human scientist from Shqipni who is a fervent supporter of the Intervention.

Thagdal is the golden-haired, bearded King leading the exiles; he wears a golden torc and uses it to silence the others' minds.

The Ship, a dying vessel carrying a thousand exiles, emerges from faster-than-light travel near a compatible planet and then crashes, making a crater about thirty kilometers wide.

Guderian is a dying professor of dynamic field-physics near Lyon who discovered a way back to the Pliocene Epoch, published in 2034.

Auvergne is where the medieval pageant is staged for tourists who travel there from many worlds.

Grenfell is a visitor to the pageant site who is concerned about Mercy's distress and defends her against Gaston.

It is the setting of a recreated 1410 French maying festival for tourists, with a Due de Berry procession, maypole, tournament and feast.

Gaston is the director of the May pageant, directing from the control room and giving Mercy cues, with exasperated kindness.

The Due is played by a professional actor, dressed in heraldic blue with fleurs-de-lis, and leads the ducal procession.

Comparative ethnologists from the Krondak world are among the exotic tourists who straggle behind the main group.

Mercy operates the marshaling channel in a control room, cueing the pageant's flower girls, courtiers, filler voices, birds, butterflies and breezes.

The betrothed Princess Bonne is a pageant role, wearing malachite-green silk and a horned crépine headdress.

A Class Three tectonic slip crumpled a three-kilometer section of the bore and its service tunnel 793 kloms out, vaporizing a mirror station.

The Concilium forbids people with operant metapsychic powers from passing into Exile, as they are too valuable to the Milieu.

Georgina is the team leader of Lisboa crew Sixteen-Echo; she reassigns partners to keep Stein from being paired with Jango.

Hubert is a crew member who won at cards and tries to calm quarrels; he is sent to rebore the mainline.

Jango is a Portuguese crew member who resents Stein, threatens to file a union complaint, and is assigned to sleeve-spinning and then the mirror.

A drill crew from the Azores end of the break that will take the fistula and link up with Georgina's crew.

It gathers sunlight via stratotowers into a coherent photon beam distributed through underground bores for consumers along the 39N parallel.

Stein is a huge, hard-drinking, berserker-tempered drill-rig operator who fantasizes about being a Viking and believes he is the best bore-zapper in Lisboa.

Richard's older sister Evelyn commanded a diplomatic courier and served with distinction in the Metapsychic Rebellion.

Richard's older brother Farnum was a line officer, executive officer on an asteroid-sized colonization transport, who served with distinction in the Metapsychic Rebellion.

Section 24, 'Ethical Obligations of Deep-Space Vessels,' requires ships to aid vessels in distress.

Richard was born on Assawompset and from toddlerhood hated and feared the exotic alien races, a xenophobia that grew into full hatred.

A replica temple with sacred images and rolling stock, built on Old Earth for Hindu colonists on Orissa and due before the Rath Yatra festival.

The Voorhees family descended from New Amsterdam skippers and four generations of U.S. Navy airmen, and took to deep space after the Intervention.

Formerly a VIP speedster, it was converted by Richard into a fully automated express cargo ship with powerful superluminal translator and oversized inertialess drivers.

A small planet whose "Canadian" people are sports-mad and take ring-hockey very seriously.

A massive reserve guard on Greenhammer who tried to kiss Felice and was incapacitated by her; he later calls her a freak who enjoys shooting men down.

Greenhammer's coach, who gushes praise over Felice and receives the championship banner from her.

Seventeen-year-old star of ring-hockey on Acadie, who rides a three-ton verrul and has never fallen in her first professional season.

Felice's team, which wins its first pennant in the championship series against Whitewing.

Dangerous mounted sport in which players ride verruls, stun opponents with stun-guns and score by putting a ring into the goal scoop.

Verruls are hideous mounts resembling stilt-legged rhinos with ceratopsian neck frills and glowing eyes; they are evil-tempered and used in ring-hockey.

Czarneki advised Elizabeth to take a long vacation on a warm peaceful world.

The Institute on Denali treats and trains metapsychics; Elizabeth had worked there for many years.

Jon Remillard's wife, a Paramount metaconcert specialist who wore a diamond mask over a half-destroyed face.

Elizabeth, a former farspeaker, lost her metapsychic powers after an accident and cannot project even a simple message despite repeated therapy attempts.

Kwong is Elizabeth's therapist and friend; she urges her to keep trying and detects only a simple carrier, no images, from her.

Lawrence is dead; Elizabeth mourns the loss of his dear identity among the things she can no longer reach.

Metafunctions include farspeaking and Unity, linking minds across worlds; Elizabeth recalls them as lost angel wings.

Aiken Drum is a gifted, charming, normally chromosomed man of high intelligence, raised on Dalriada, who is a natural crook and leader.

Dalriada is a newly founded human colony whose adults are raising an entire generation of test-tube colonists.

Jack and Illusio are venerated for putting down the first metaphysic human threat to Milieu security.

Claude is a 133-year-old retired salvage exopaleontologist who specialized in macrofossils and was married to Genevieve for ninety-four years.

Eggs are egg-shaped flying craft used for fast travel between locations.

Genevieve was a microfossil specialist who refused a third lifetime. She died of age-related decline at the Hospice in July 2110.

Repeated volcanic eruptions over about fifteen million years buried successive animal populations in ash, forming a formation more than half a kilometer thick.

Claude and Annamaria hike Cooper Spur on Mount Hood while he talks about fossils and grief.

Annamaria is a 37-year-old nun who has worked at the Hospice for fifteen years and is burnt out, with a faith that has shriveled.

Madame Guderian's inn near Lyon, built as a legal cover and screening service for would-be time travelers; it was licensed as a public accommodation, common carrier, counseling service and travel agency.

A Frankfurt poet who sold everything to reach the Pliocene, seeking an innocent, peaceable wilderness; he was the first time-tripper through the gate.

Richter's well-mannered dachshund, who accompanied him through the time-gate.

Decamole film inflates with compressed air into a rigid-structured boat, such as Grenfell's eight-meter sloop, ballasted with water and mercury.

Unst Starport is in the Shetland Islands of Earth, where Grenfell's starship lands.

The deep-driller uses sigma-field heat shields to survive lava and can burrow through rock and travel underwater.

Stromboli's volcano erupted spectacularly after Stein and Georgina's lava-chamber visit, leaving them half-joking that they caused it.

The Chateau d'Yquem '83 is a famed Sauternes, the Lost Vintage of the Metapsychic Rebellion year, sold at four and a half kilobux a bottle.

The café proprietor is a jolly, pot-bellied man with a big nose who proudly serves only non-synthetic French food and wine.

A Lyon opera impresario, bribed with a case of Mouton-Rothschild '95, supplied Richard a seventeenth-century Flying Dutchman pirate costume.

Shonkwiler is a psychosocial counselor at the auberge who tries to talk Felice out of Exile and into treatment.

The recidivist clause has no age restriction; it might have applied to Felice had Mac Sweeny and Barstow pressed charges.

In the Pliocene the British Isles are fused into one large landmass, Albion, probably joined to Normandy by an isthmus.

The Bordeaux area is above water in the Pliocene, and earlier timefarers took grape cuttings and winemaking apparatus there.

In the Pliocene Brittany is an island, separated from the mainland by the narrow Strait of Redon.

Mishima is a tall, sleek, courteous counselor giving the Group Green candidates an orientation lecture on Pliocene geography and ecology.

The Euxinic Basin will someday become the Black Sea but is fresh water in the Pliocene.

Group Green will pass through the time-portal together after five days of training; its members meet for the first time in the Petit Salon.

The Tethys Sea, also called Lac Mer, still survives in the Pliocene, spreading lagoons far into Central Asia.

Deirdre is Mercy's huge white Pyrenean mountain dog, who is pregnant and went through the gate with her.

The second day's program covers shelter and fire, minimizing environmental hazards, orienteering, and fishing and trapping, with a survival kit test.

Claude carries Gen's carved wooden Zakopane box in a zip compartment of his backpack; it weighs almost nothing.

The Little Joker is a nonborn exiled from his home world, with a ghastly sense of humor and great talent for improvising tools; he plans smithing.

The Smallholder Unit is a kit of tools, decamole appliances, seeds and a fleck library for setting up a subsistence farm.

The Virgin Huntress is a sinister woman who apparently harmed an auberge counselor in order to qualify as a recidivist.

Vitredur is a glassy, eversharp, nearly indestructible toolhead material that degrades after about 200 years, like decamole.

The old cottage hides the time-gate in its cellar wine-keep; counselors lead guests in and emerge alone after half an hour.

Castle Gateway is a whitewashed stone fortress with a barbican, corner towers and no central keep, guarding the time-portal and resembling English castles like Bodiam.

Guardians wear white tunics with blue cords and dark metal neck-rings, and escort arrivals from the time-portal to Castle Gateway.

The interview committee questions new arrivals about their skills and equipment; members wear blue tunics with white cords.

Tully is a mild, nervous older member of the interview committee who seems afraid of new arrivals and evasive about Exile society.

The Firvulag sacked Burask and drove its bareneck population into the Hercynian Wilderness.

A northern caravan travels to Finiah, and travellers who fail Epone's tests are sent on it.

Jean-Paul is Epone's servant who clamps prisoners into the chair, fits the coronet and inventories possessions.

Epone is a very tall, ageless, beautiful woman with glowing unhuman eyes who overpowers Richard's mind with a seductive illusion before testing him.

The Tanu rule the Many-Colored Land, claiming to rule kindly, and have transformed a small corner of it; their capital is Muriah.

Creyn is a Tanu lord nearly 2.5 meters tall, with pale pupil-less blue eyes and long jointed fingers, and he is not human.

Kosta is a guide who leads the dazed Elizabeth to a room at Castle Gateway and calls Creyn 'Lord'.

Muriah is the Tanu capital city, on the White Silver Plain in the south of the Many-Colored Land.

Aiken's chameleon poncho blends into its surroundings, letting him hide in shadows.

Pitkin is the Castellan of Castle Gateway, an efficient administrator who processes arriving time-travelers and sorts them into useful stock or discards.

The coronet measures and artificially enhances metapsychic faculties, showing colored sparks for farsensing, coercion, psychokinesis, creativity and redaction.

Basil is an Alpine-garbed prisoner who plays a recorder and has been in the pen six days; he tells Claude how others fared.

Waldemar leads the caravan of prisoners north to Finiah, about 400 km and six days, traveling by night first, then by day after the Hercynian Forest.

Chalikos are domesticated, intelligent, clawed, horse-related mounts; soldiers' torcs let them control the animals, and stirrups have ankle chains for prisoners.

Waldemar claims the Firvulag will track down escapees and torment their minds until they go mad or die.

A prisoner who attacked a mess attendant was clubbed, collared, and became docile; the collar cannot be removed.

The pen holds eight women and thirty-three men, roughly a week's catch of time travelers, enclosed by pierced stone walls over three meters high and patrolled by guards.

Raimo is a towheaded silver-torc prisoner who bitterly calls Pliocene Exile a hell-world and blames Madame Guderian.

Sukey, 27, is a former juvenile officer from an orbital colony whose silver torc activated latent redactor ability; she tried to heal Stein incompetently.

Zdenko is Creyn's captal, a dark-minded Tanu with a boil in his armpit aggravated by his breastplate.

The Castle of Glass in Goriah has a high spire with a parapet and glass-floored turret.

Large beasts of burden resembling short-necked giraffes, used in caravans.

The party will travel down it by boat; upstream travel is not feasible, so caravans of chalikos and hellads carry goods north.

A Tanu tradition seen as a fast, multicolored streak of light racing through the forest; Creyn will not explain it.

Tanu anthropologist-like student of culture, host at Roniah; hopes Bryan's Galactic Milieu knowledge will help the two races' society flourish.

Traditional Tanu sports event held around the end of October, about two months away.

Breezy human servant who takes Bryan to his room and explains casualties from the time-portal are usually healed.

Bormol's wife, a skilled medic said to be better than Creyn, who will treat the injured Stein.

Dougal, a ginger-bearded knight, is Epone's broken victim; he calls her 'belle dame sans merci' and cries out to Aslan.

A prisoner in a Tyrolean hat, a keen mountaineer, came to Exile to climb the Pliocene Alps and plays a flute; he expects to become a slave.

Cameron's Sluice is a violent canyon rapid on the Rhône that Tanu passengers cannot bear, so they are put to sleep.

A fortified island town on the Lower Rhône with a walled quay, watergate and a spired palace, surrounded by marsh.

Highjohn is a jovial skipper of the riverboat Mojo, has run the Rhône-Med route for sixteen years and never lost a boat.

Mojo is an inflatable riverboat about fourteen meters long with a telescoping mast, roller sail, auxiliary engine and rigid transparent bubbletop canopy.

A blood-smeared golden hoop was taken from Epone's remains and thrown far into the lake, where it sank.

Tat, a Japanese ronin, braced a spear against an amphicyon's leap but was crushed beneath the dying animal.

A group in the Tanu capital city that handles the technology of the torcs and the metapsychic theory behind them.

Psychokinetic Tanu lord of Darask, whose heraldic colors are red and amber.

A human woman wearing a golden torc, she is Cranovel's wife and bears twins after a dangerously prolonged labor.

A black Irishman wearing a silver torc, he serves as major-domo of Darask's palace and guards the prisoners.

Five Gypsies, ignoring Claude's warning about torc-susceptible chalikos, put on slain soldiers' armor and went back to attack the suspension bridge guardpost.

Yosh stays behind to bury or protect the body of his friend Tat from scavengers, then plans to walk north to the Marne alone.

Agharta is the peaceful realm inside Hollow Earth where violence is not allowed; Sukey fears Felice would not be admitted.

A tiny, friendly early cat befriends Claude at the spring and rides in his jacket pocket, purring.

A steep sediment-fan cascade where the Rhône plunges over the continental brink into the dry Mediterranean basin; boats drop at about eighty km/h.

The wave engulfed the White Silver Plain, drowning the gathered Tanu, Firvulag and humans, including King Thagdal.

In the Pliocene the Schwarzwald was higher and more sinister than in the tamed twenty-second century, with a steep escarpment about 1.5 km high facing the Proto-Rhine rift valley.

Brede's mate was an interstellar organism, now dead; a glass model of it sits on the table.

A mighty river born in the Water Caves beneath the Feldberg; its underground Dark section becomes the Bright Ystroll, flowing to the northeast.

Stainless steel eversharp dagger with a gold hilt that killed Epone; iron is hypothesized to be lethal to torc-wearing exotics.

Wisest of the Firvulag who followed Felice's group; he caused an illusion that seized Dougal's mind.

A hollow 10,000-year-old sequoia in the Vosges, about 100 meters tall, used by free humans as a safe-house in times of danger.

Hidden Springs is the largest Lowlife settlement, with about thirty homes and 85 humans, hidden under trees from Tanu sky-searchers.

Malign, deformed mutant Firvulag who delight in psychic torment; they captured seven boat escapees.

Turbaned Lowlife metalsmith who can smelt iron and proposes making iron arrowheads, lance tips and blades.

Lord of Finiah, enraged by Epone's killing, whose Flying Hunt will search the Vosges for Felice.

Roughly two hundred escaped humans, mostly men, ordinary-looking and unafraid, who proudly use the Tanu's insulting name and resist the exotics.

Lugonn won the first Great Ordeal against Sharn and then sacrificed himself by accepting his own Spear's thrust through the eyes; his body was left at the crater.

Martha and Stefanko have the technical knowledge to make the aircraft and the Spear operational.

Tanu Battlemaster and Lord of Goriah in Brittany; can levitate fifty riders by psychokinesis.

Giant Native American, last chief of the Wallawalla and former Washington Supreme Court justice; Sergeant at Arms and Warlord in Chief of the Lowlives.

Sharn-Mes and Pallol plan to engineer the humans' deaths and to control Felice.

The Grave's location is lost to the Firvulag, and it likely holds still-operational gravo-magnetic aircraft left behind there.

Skin is a Tanu psychoactive membrane that, with a Tanu healer's PK and redact powers, heals patients comparably to Milieu regeneration tanks.

The Spear is a photonic weapon left with Lugonn at the Ship's Grave; it is said to be enough to turn the war if obtained.

Has very limited flight experience; the egg-craft were highly automated.

The Sword, a photonic weapon, is held by Nodonn in Goriah as trophy of the Grand Combat, which the Tanu have won forty years running.

The King has his own reasons for keeping the survey secret and will seek Bryan's life.

Uwe heads Hunting and Public Safety and will test all newcomers for shape-changers using iron needles.

Ayfa is a female Firvulag general commanding Warrior Ogresses, strong in farsense, attacking from the Black Forest side.

Lulo is Yeochee's shape-changing concubine, who can take the form of a cobra or a lamia and also appears as a plump blonde woman.

Mariposa is a newly captured human cook, formerly of Krelix Plantation and a Mexican pizza parlor, whose pizza Yeochee loves.

A giant female Firvulag Great Captain with glowing red eyes, in black-glass armor with gold; she opposes any Firvulag-Lowlife alliance.

Sugoll is a bad-tempered, not very loyal Howler who claims to rule the Feldberg country and may know the Danube route.

High King of the Firvulag, he lives in a mountain fortress in the Vosges and can shapeshift and project illusions, impressing visitors with a giant armored guise.

Humans of Elder Earth call Meadow Mountain the Feldberg.

A Turkish circus man who domesticated chalikos, helladotheria and amphicyons for the Tanu, enabling mounted Hunts and Combats.

Iskender-Kernonn, a Turk called Lord of Animals, once used his perverted talents for the Tanu; Firvulag warriors ambushed and killed him.

Claude identifies the attacking boar as Kubanochoerus, supposedly extinct by the Pliocene; it weighed about eight hundred kilos and stalked the party downwind.

The Howler boats emerged from a cave onto a river that flows to the Rhine, leading toward the High Vrazel landing.

A human psychobiologist, formerly Eusebio Gomez-Nolan, devised the silver and gray torc system; the Tanu made him a demigod in Muriah.

A dark, dense conifer forest where fungi and slime molds dominate the understorey, glowing at night; it took the party eight days to cross.

A sacred month-long period before and after the Grand Combat week during which Tanu and Firvulag will not fight each other.

Entrance to the Water Caves via lift buckets, about two hours' march from the meeting place; leads to the Dark Ystroll.

A dwarfish, ugly Firvulag-kind emissary of Sugoll with a birdlike skull and neat, beautiful clothing; he guides the travelers sullenly. His name is Kalipin.

A black uranium and radium ore, veined with yellow, forming the knoll where Sugoll sat; Claude blames it for the mutations.

Calistro the goat-boy announces that Sister Amerie, the Chief and many others are arriving at Hidden Springs Canyon.

Dejah is a small cat who guards Amerie's cottage and growls at shape-changers.

Denny Johnson is Lowlife Warlord Pro Tem; his fighters arrived by barge and wiped out the attackers.

The Grand Love Feast is held around May Day, six months after the Grand Combat, when the star culminates at noon; Tanu and Firvulag celebrate it separately.

A small Singhalese iron-smelter who, using an iron-bolt crossbow, shot three Tanu engineers in the mine building and planted containers in molten rock.

Iron works against both Tanu and exotics like Howlers and Firvulag; the Lowlives intend it as a secret weapon against the Tanu.

Marialena, Victualer in Chief, says stores can feed five hundred people for two weeks.

Kawai, 86, runs Domestics and says only about a hundred boiled-leather helmets and chest guards will be ready.

Philemon thinks later phases of Madame's plan should be left to her return, being uneasy even about completing phase one.

Francesco was captured by Howlers while hunting and returned a day later blinded, maimed and mindless.

The 'Sigmund' who returned was actually a female Howler who replaced the real man and cut off her own hand to avoid carrying iron.

The committee is preparing the attack on Finiah: Rhine staging camp, masked trail, pontoon ramps, camouflage nets, bandages, rations and armor.

The mouthpiece star of the Trumpet constellation marks the Grand Combat when it culminates at midnight over Finiah and High Vrazel, around October 31 or November 1.

Vanda-Jo heads Public Works and finished a 106-kilometer masked trail to the Rhine staging area.

Its rho-field will keep Tanu from touching the aircraft and probably deflect lances and arrows, leaving mental attack as the main danger.

The Kaiserstuhl is an extinct volcano on the Rhine's eastern bank, site of Finiah and a barium mine.

The mine, vital for making torcs, was blasted by Claude; lava buried the entrance and refinery, but the administration building with purified barium survived.

Senior Firvulag warrior, doyen of the Great Ones in Pallol's absence; his endorsement convinced the others to adopt the Lowlife tactic.

Bles invaded the garrison headquarters in a reptilian illusion and appeared to devour Commander Seaborg.

A silver-torc garrison commander who died calmly broadcasting final orders to defenders at the inner-city gate.

A Tanu farsensor of the Farsensor Guild, unable to summon help, who tried to command Marshak and was killed by Burke.

A gray-torc soldier of Finiah's garrison who gave the first alarm, then fought alone and quietly, avoiding telepathy because the Firvulag can detect it.

Appears as a flayed centaur and howls to destroy enemy minds.

A Firvulag dwarf who carried Homi over the cooling lava crust, protected by a joint mental screen.

Sad-eyed human psychokinetic adept who helps Velteyn evacuate the Tanu civilians via the roof.

Lord Aluteyn Craftsmaster leads the Guild of Creators, but his authority has recently been challenged, possibly to be settled at the Grand Combat.

Its headquarters lie outside the city on the southern slope of the Mount of Heroes, lit white and red.

Twice yearly, at the Grand Combat's end in November and the Grand Loving in May, criminals and unfit humans are ritually executed.

Six million years in the past, the mountain was called the Mount of Heroes; its caves became crypts for Great Ones and later served as prison and interrogation sites.

Nontusvel is Mother of the Host, Thagdal's wife, with red hair; her ur-mothermind read Bryan's memories and she took Mercy's portrait.

Place on the heights above Muriah where redactors work, where Tasha-Bybar treats silver-torc women.

Anastasya-Bybar, a human time-traveler, taught the Tanu to reverse the sterilization of human women, saving latent ova; she arrived about ten years after the gate opened.

Greg-Donnet is the Tanu Eugenics and Genetics Master and a human time-traveler given an honorary gold torc.

Kernonn, now mourned, created the beasts the Tanu use for riding, hauling and guarding.

It tests the human population for latent metapsychic ability; the Tanu have such devices at their principal cities, though some latents slip through.

Ogmol is a half-blood Tanu-human scholar of the Guild of Creators, with a high voice, heroic physique and the King's jade eyes; he is Bryan's assigned guide.

Wagner is a gray-torc human courtier who escorts the time-travelers; Lady Eadone arranged human music for them.

The arbiter bibendi shakes a glass chain, the chain of silence, to halt music and noise and call for quiet.

Delbaeth is the Firvulag Shape of Fire, a feared enemy that Thagdal fears and many Tanu champions have failed to destroy.

Riganone is a Tanu noblewoman who fusses over the humans and praises Sukey; she serves hipparion and skunk dishes.

Imidol is the youngest and most aggressive of the siblings, a metacoercive who hates Gomnol and demands Elizabeth be killed, body and mind.

The Low Mêlée is the first death-battle of the Grand Combat; now only gray-torc humans take part, in elimination bouts ending in a free-for-all.

Afaliah is where Nodonn's hand can be fixed and the One-Handed Warrior portent wiped out.

Culluket is a redactive Interrogator who most resembles his mother; the Host rarely seek him for healing, as some think he is too zealous in scrutinizing pain.

Leyr, a banished Coercer and Katlinel's father, agrees to challenge Imidol for the Coercer Guild leadership and to join Aiken Drum's cohort.

Former Battlemaster who preached brotherhood between Tanu and Firvulag, branded a traitor and punished for five hundred years.

The College of Redactors, headquarters of the Guild of Redactors, sits high on the Mount of Heroes above Balearis, with no guards.

Lady Zealatrix Olar is a Tanu healer who becomes Sukey's teacher at the House of Healing and gives her the honorific Minivel.

Alberonn is a hybrid warrior-illusionist of Mayvar's faction who waits at the cave mouth for Aiken and Stein.

Bleyn fears reactionaries will cause a fiasco: eight cities have not replied to the Grand Loving invitation and Celadeyr declined.

First Comer Lord of Afaliah, a Creator-Coercer who demanded the High King's help against Delbaeth.

Gold-torc human farspeaker, pregnant with a Tanu child, delegated by Mayvar to shepherd Stein; she reveals Sukey is at Bybar's for fertility restoration.

Gordon is a peevish silver Redactor who escorts Dedra and Stein to Tasha's tower, and is dismissed by Dedra.

Half-human daughter of deposed Lord Coercer Leyr; she fears the Host might kill hybrids if the culture-impact survey is unfavorable.

Redactor Guild armor is ruby-red and bears a tree laden with jeweled fruits.

Lord of Swords runs the fighter school at Muriah and coerces Stein to accept his courteous reply while dismissing Mayvar and Aiken.

Vrenol is a young Tanu Huntsman who nearly lost the plesiosaur through showing off, then killed it and took the trophy head.

Duat was the mother-planet of the Tanu and Firvulag, whose war-ravaged climate drove the people to evolve into two distinct forms.

The Host of Nontusvel tries to drive Elizabeth to suicide by mental compulsion, seeing her operant-metafunction genes as a potential lethal threat.

Kuhal is the PK adept, Second Lord Psychokinetic to Nodonn, among the four directors of the attack on Elizabeth.

Lene is Brede's home planet, a daughter-world of Duat that retained limited space travel.

Brede's room without doors is a mentally silent sanctuary no outside mind can enter, with enriched oxygen that promotes euphoria, inside her windowless villa.

Ships are giant sentient organisms that travel faster than light via upsilon-fields, and can be motivated only by love; each had a Spouse from Brede's race.

Fian died after eating a poisonous pink narcissus bulb while his brother Kuhal was out hunting.

The hyainailouros is a ton-heavy sabertooth-hyena creature recently brought from an African expedition.

Kersic is an island east of Aven, later split into Corsica and Sardinia, where outlaw humans live; Tanu periodically hunt them out.

Phobosuchus is a fifteen-meter prehistoric crocodilian with a two-meter skull, brought from the River Laar estuaries and subdued by Nodonn for the test.

The Great Brackish Marsh is a green saltmarsh fed by a Spanish river, stretching about 150 km west toward dry desert below sea level.

Muriah runs a black market that supplied Krug '03 champagne.

Four of the five eligible High Table survivors support Aiken, according to him; hybrids were admitted to it only after sixty years.

The Song is sung through linked minds; it was sung for the dead Bybar and is now to be sung for the living.

Bleyn, a hybrid strong in PK and coercion, objects to abandoning Aiken and stays to wait; he trained Aiken and Stein.

Bunone and her three warrior-maids also decide to wait for Aiken and Stein.

The cave system is a honeycomb of tunnels; beyond Delbaeth's chamber Stein hears surf, indicating the Atlantic lies close.

A chestnut-haired gold-torc human woman in sapphire armor died in Velteyn's bedchamber without wounds, apparently from mental assault; Felice took her torc.

Axel is the Iron Master of the Royal Siderurgical Establishment, an early defector from the Lowlife Iron Villages, and a human chauvinist proud of barenecks.

Jafar is a swarthy physician, freed from a gray torc, who treats Madame and will stay to care for refugees with Lucy and Lu-butu.

About 550 freed refugees remain in the camp, many shocked and depressed; the strongest will be sent to establish the Nancy ironworks settlement.

Felice smashed skylights of the Coercer Guild Headquarters and emptied its tore factory of treasure.

Gert and Hansi know what kind of boat the expedition needs.

The High King wants a new dynasty from Elizabeth's genes.

In the hyperspatial ordeal, Elizabeth's redactive power held Brede's psyche together while rerouting her torc-conditioned circuits into operancy.

The torc factory is a large marble and bronze cube in northern Muriah, flush with an escarpment, and is the strike-force's target.

Black torc is a fatal syndrome in Tanu children under puberty: neural linkages degenerate, causing agony and death within about three weeks; removing the torc worsens it.

The golden sacred cauldron of the Creators Guild, normally seen only at the Grand Combat, where the Lord Creator fills it.

A confidential survey; only three copies were printed, for the King, Ogmol and Bryan, and the computer data was then wiped, leaving no other record.

The Great South Road runs along the west bank of the Rhône, with Tanu caravans and silvers at plantations nearby.

The kidnapped Rhône boatman, whose torc was removed, suffers severe withdrawal; his screaming worsens each time he is woken, and he is near insane.

Felice's PK lets her lift the boat out of the spinning water, and she draws on the minds of others to strengthen it.

Harry's boat is a pneumatic express craft with silver hull, a spruce-green band and its name painted on bow and stern; its roof panel broke in the rapids.

The Great Retort is a glass vessel on a high scaffold where cowards are sent as punishment.

Medor is a Firvulag First Comer and Sham's deputy; his illusory aspect is a spiny black wereinsect.

This huge spring feeds the canal and was the reason the battleground was sited there since the Tanu first came to Aven.

Fian is Kuhal's twin brother, gravely injured with infected head and facial wounds, and his will to live has nearly vanished.

The golden box holds an iron tool that can safely cut torcs from humans; Mary-Dedra retrieved it from Coercer House basecourt.

The isthmus is riddled with caves and faults; Felice's final cut through it lets the Atlantic pour in, forming a waterfall.

A two-faced woman in fifteenth-century dress, neither human nor Tanu, appears to Basil, says she needs his help, and wraps his friends in the Skin.

Felice blasts the fjord entrance and its cindercone, burying the channel in rubble and killing flamingos and marshland.

A dead plesiosaur washed ashore on the Alboran Volcano after being swept through the newly formed Straits of Gibraltar into the flooding Mediterranean basin.

A Firvulag who leads the ambush patrol, torments captives with illusions and neural blows, and is hailed a hero for capturing Tony.

Fafnor and Karbree were newly accoladed Firvulag Great Ones, replacing the dead Bles and Nukalavee.

Whichever of Nodonn or Aiken Drum has the better-performing attachés will face Pallol; the rivals then duel, the winner either swearing fealty to the king or challenging him.

Tetrol is a feathered-serpent Firvulag champion who objected that the Gnomish Council had not voted on the Tourney.

The dike between Spain and Africa collapsed, releasing a 230-meter wave of the Western Ocean toward the White Silver Plain.

His mate is more timid than he is and waits for him in the forest.

She reacted with screaming anger when he held the gleaming object and flung it away.

Volume III of the Saga of Pliocene Exile; it concerns a realignment of power in the Many-Colored Land and a new-old menace from the west.

As a child he found a shining sun-colored object that his mother angrily snatched away and flung aside; he never forgot it.

Hual was to bring the Sword of Sharn from Goriah for the Grand Quest and died in the ambush.

Marc's younger brother, a mutant who was a bodiless brain; he defeated Marc's Rebellion with his wife Illusio and was made a saint by the Milieu.

Gomnol identifies Marc as the leader of the invaders, a Concilium magnate and brother of Jon Remillard, who is Jack the Bodiless.

Lord of Sasaran, he was to bring a land force strong in psychokinesis, creativity and coercion, and died in the ambush.

The invaders' sigma force-field is a mirrored hemisphere about fifteen meters across that no Tanu weapon or psychocreative energy can penetrate.

The rebels and Aiken's party plan to go there to blast the top off the mountain with metaconcert.

The devils answer Felice's mental call to Culluket, terrifying her; she flees and they fail to track her.

The Flood's cataclysmic surge flooded the Mediterranean basin, and the waters keep rising, burying bodies in silt and drowning Aven's cliffs and caves.

Bulldog tarpon grow over three meters long, with the largest Old Ones near four meters and 300 kilos, and fight a hooked angler for up to twenty hours.

Cloud is Marc Remillard's child, who believes his powers have diminished and was never told of his aborted plans for the children.

Hagen is Marc Remillard's child, who believes his father's powers have diminished and was never told of Marc's aborted plans for the children.

The Rebellion challenged the galaxy and failed; its surviving leaders fled into exile in the Pliocene, and none of them were trained metapsychic preceptors.

Ocala is the place of exile for the surviving rebels and their grown second generation, who are bored with its intrigues and restrictions.

Agraynel is Mercy's unborn daughter, whom Mercy calls the Thagdal's daughter; Mercy soothes her with a maternal thought-song.

The Grand Loving, in May, is the official wedding where Mercy and Aiken have agreed to marry.

Fort Rusty is the main metalworking site, turning pig iron and bar stock into weapons; it lies about midway between the villages and Hidden Springs.

Hamid runs the turpentine still and prays toward Mecca when death seems certain.

Six villages along the Moselle (Iron Maiden, Hematite, Mesabi, Haut-Fourneauville, Vulcan, plus Fort Rusty) hold about 400 people, mostly male, and produce iron.

Orion Blue is the hillbilly-like mine foreman at Iron Maiden who directed the defense.

The enemy used a siege engine in the attack, showing they are adopting new warfare methods.

Tony is a metallurgical engineer and sane ex-silver who won high status under the Tanu through an improved barium-refining technique at Finiah.

The attackers used a counterweighted trebuchet, hauled by monsters, to lob boulders at the barracks roof.

Bardelask is a small, vulnerable citadel on the Rhône because Lord Daral and most of his knights drowned in the Flood.

During the six-hour descent Felice's psychic discharge formed a storm cloud over Black Crag, killing wildlife and sending the retainers fleeing.

About 3700 refugees fled; a third resettled in Spain. Firvulag deserted with the survival gear, and Afaliah's fanatics pursued them.

Brazos Ben is a master chaliko breaker who uses physical schooling plus gentle mental contact, letting gray and bareneck trainers work wild stock before final telepathic programming.

The voice summons the Remillard party to Calamosk after three hours, vehicle tops off and armaments demounted, for tea.

Congreve is commander of the Goriah receiving barracks, a gold human in blue coercer armor, who screens arrivals.

Eadnar is widow of Lord Gradlonn of Rocilan, a gifted textile and confectionery creator, and seems drawn to Alberonn.

Olone is a young honey-blonde Tanu coercer, Sullivan-Tonn's fiancee; she asks Aiken about kingly prerogatives, suggesting ambition.

Morna is a First Comer and farsensing elder of Rocilan who distrusts Aiken's human origins and his flouting of tradition, yet softens grudgingly.

The running W is a hobble-and-pulley foot line that drops a bucking chaliko to its knees, used carefully to teach it the trainer is master.

Huldah is a large, immensely strong, plain young woman who is simple-minded or childlike and devoted to the God from the Sea.

Isak is an old, frail, bald man who bullies his granddaughter Huldah and fears the Flying Hunt will come to Kersic.

A signal woodpile stands on the promontory's cleared space among umbrella pines, to be lit if the Hunt is sighted over the lagoon from Aven.

A derelict Firvulag coracle serves as Kuhal's shelter and as a boat towing Fian through the shallows.

The rising New Sea shortens the Var River sewage tunnel daily.

Kuhal and Fian's minds are joined as a single conjoined mind, the Brain, with each brother as a hemisphere.

King Sharn and Queen Ayfa made the alliance official, but tension between humans and Firvulag remains fragile.

Kiku is Yosh's huge, claw-footed chaliko mare, obtained from fleeing Tanu.

Kipol is a Firvulag toll-keeper at the twelfth troll-gate who appears as a reptilian troll; his shout-scare is a traditional Firvulag gag.

Malachee is a plump, rosy Firvulag innkeeper who runs Malachee's Toot and forbids martial demonstrations inside.

Nuckalarn is a spotty Firvulag adolescent at the tavern who tried to make Yosh leave his iron sword and was frightened by Yosh's threat.

Sunny Jim is a simple, friendly young man in buckskins heading to Goriah for a gold collar; he and Vilkas lack iron weapons.

Vilkas is a bitter, hostile Lithuanian ex-gray trooper who escaped Finiah and Burask, resents Firvulag and complains about his bad luck.

The Grove of May is being lavishly refurbished with a new maypole, amphitheatre, grottos and a Firvulag campground, worked by grays, humans and ramas.

Celadeyr believes the Flood presages the end of the Many-Colored Land and expects an apocalyptic Nightfall War ending Tanu and Firvulag.

Barenecks mutinied at the Rocilan candy factory after rogue gold-torcs overworked them and sold surplus on the black market; the golds were executed.

Tirone, Eadnar's sister, secretly belonged to the Peace Faction and sees Aiken as an agent of change away from the old battle-religion.

The river's course was changed by the avalanche and surge that followed Felice's death.

Boduragol of Afaliah is the nearest competent healer and Skin artisan and has charge of Kuhal.

Created when the children joined minds with their parents and helped Felice admit Atlantic water into the Mediterranean Basin; 9.7 km wide, 822 m high, will last under a century.

Cyndia, Marc's wife, sonically sterilized him in an attempt to end Mental Man; Marc's mind struck her down in self-defense.

Elaby is the true mastermind of the Europe plan, quiet and synthesizing; he loves Cloud and manipulates Hagen.

Jillian owns a ketch moored in Manchineel Bay that will carry the expedition to Europe.

Owen Blanchard, frail, was Marc's best coercer in the Rebellion; he replaces Hagen on the Europe expedition as Marc's authority and backup farsensor.

Vaughn is a farspeech specialist who would keep Marc informed during the expedition.

The Black Lake lies deep beneath the Feldberg and few Howlers had ever crossed it.

Firvulag noble custom the monarchs skirted, claiming it had declined, so Howler brides go to Nionel with their families.

Nionel is a ghost city in the western wilderness near the Paris Basin, whose battleground the Firvulag plan to use for this year's Games.

The mill yields forty-three milling products; bypassing its sample analyzer and additive injection produces bad or contaminated flour.

Jorgensen, the mill's robotics supervisor, drowned in the Flood with most of his senior staff.

Mukherji was a bareneck technician who demanded gold-torc privileges from Celadeyr for his work.

Osgeyr, late Lord of Burask, was covetous and probably stored forbidden weapons rather than destroying them.

Treonet was a dead guild-brother of Aluteyn who fostered Elder Earth electronics; his mansion has a lab and large technical library.

The Tourney grounds have been refurbished by goblin émigrés, and the Howlers conjure rain every third night to keep the Field green.

Coadunation is a metapsychic state of mental Unity allowing peaceful colonization; only five non-Earth systems reached it in the Galactic Milieu era.

Uses redactive metafunction to calm the Cubs; Cloud says she loves Hagen and works on his brooding.

Jillian is Marc's daughter and a strong psychokinetic who generates the ketch's metapsychic wind on the midwatch.

The thirteen-meter ketch crosses the Sargasso toward Spain carrying weapons, docilization equipment and a hypnogogic projector.

Patricia lives across the garden from Marc's verandah, and he desires her, though his libido is drained.

Felice travels to Spain to offer 'the other lover' his choice.

The star-search fuses equipment to the operator's brain and replaces blood with fluid; the searcher works at night for 20 days, sleeping in stasis by day.

Steinbrenner examines Marc's body, finds no trauma above the neck seal and the helmet and carotid shunts intact.

A twelve-ton hoe-tusker with downcurving tusks charged Tony and Dougal on a jungle trail and was stunned by a hunter.

A converted dungeon under the castle storing confiscated twenty-second-century weapons and technology that the Tanu deemed unsuited to their culture.

A coercive redactor and son of Dionket who tried to brain-burn Aiken at a VarMesk banquet; Culluket reduced him to a drooling idiot.

After Miakonn's attack, Aiken installed an old PK-creator who ran the glass works as the new city-lord.

Owen modified one headset, marked with a scratch on an electrode, to docilize Felice; it is disguised as a healing mind-assay device.

Warshaw is a cultural anthropologist and psychotactician who votes to kill the children.

The speaker claims to be a genuine Grand Master redactor, and accuses another of being a coercer who forfeited the Unity.

The hypnogogic projector, meant to put Felice to sleep, is useless after twenty-seven years of tropical storage.

Porpoises are sentient, communicate telepathically, and are Felice's friends; Owen feared they would warn her of the expedition.

Armida is Darel's widow and ruler of the beleaguered Rhône city of Bardelask.

The Singing Stone is a psychoreactive beryl carved as a field stool, made by Firvulag craftsfolk as the new trophy of rivalry.

Disguised Howler maidens in red or green offer wreaths to men on May night; couples pass between bonfires to meadows outside Nionel.

Anastos is a former spacecraft design engineer among the new human companions who suggested the ancient flyers might carry weapons systems.

Mabino rescues Sharn-Ador by boat through the Paris Basin swamps and consoles him, allowing a brief time to weep.

The May Morning feast is held in Nionel, and couples hurry to the city gates to attend.

Rowane is a Howler woman who disguised herself as a beautiful red bride to seduce Tony, intending to bear his child.

Leads the main Firvulag host advancing on Bardelask.

A Firvulag half-blood changeling found as an infant by Isak on Aven; he named her and she became his lover and died after bearing Karin.

Daughter of Isak and the changeling Borghild; she bore Huldah and was killed in a Flying Hunt massacre.

Marc is angry at Manion for encouraging the Felice scheme and excludes him from the meeting.

Former Concilium magnate; stabbed to death in sick bay by Helayne.

Former Concilium magnate; stabbed to death in sick bay by Helayne.

Elirion is the last star in Marc's search sequence; its second planet is Poltroy, and it is useless for his purposes.

Van Wyk, a frog-like drinker, votes to kill the children and says Marc has failed after twenty-five years of searching.

Helayne is a distraught mother of fugitive children who accuses Marc of asking them to deceive their own children.

Kramer, a physicist, calculates the fugitives are about two thousand kilometers out and picks a weather system off Africa to drive them back.

Nial, child of the Keoghs, leads the fugitives' push against his parents.

Former Concilium magnate killed by Helayne.

Poltroy is in a miniature Ice Age; its inhabitants will become urbane diplomats in the Milieu but are now primitive cannibals.

Ragnar Gathen is a former starfleet strategist who oversees Kyllikki's solar impellers.

Led by Minanonn and Creyn, they believe in a caring Tana and reject the battle-religion's Nightfall War myth.

Aiken and Culluket's metaconcert has efficiency of only about 0.46, and Felice could destroy the team within two kilometers.

The combine runs at six knots on a solar impeller boosted by PK specialists, carrying children, sick people and PK workers.

Moreyn is city-lord of Var-Mesk, a glass technician with weak coercive powers whom chalikos dislike.

Phil Overton, a meteorological mind-viewer, spots an anomalous, unnaturally strengthening storm to the southeast and projects its track against the combine's course.

Thirty daredevil pilots, technicians and specialists, nicknamed by Denny Johnson, who are to go to the Ship's Grave under Basil's leadership.

Dr. Thongsa, a Tibetan, is pilot, mountaineer and physician on assault team Number Two; Phronsie dislikes him.

Mr. Betsy, formerly Merton Hudspeth, a Boeing senior research engineer, adopts the persona of Queen Elizabeth I and is a pilot-engineer in the Bastards.

Phronsie Gillis is Basil's loyal enforcer, feared by the Bastards and credited with deterring Thongsa and theft.

A valley about two hundred kloms northwest of Hidden Springs near the Proto-Seine headwaters, avoided by the Firvulag, filled with giant redwoods and dangerous bone crackers.

The Organic Mind joins about 3550 Tanu combatants and Marc Remillard's operants, led by Aiken as executive director, with offensive and defensive aspects.

Aldo Manetti is a mountaineer and Basil's friend who struck Nazir and tried to steal Number One with the Baroness as pilot.

The Baroness is a skilled pilot who longed to steal a flyer and escape to Pliocene Australia or China.

Bengt is principal pilot and enforcer on assault team Number Two.

Monte Rosa is the 9082-meter highest peak of the Pliocene Alps; Basil and Aldo want to climb it.

Nazir was cracked over the skull by Aldo during the attempted theft.

Number Two-Niner was the twenty-ninth and last exotic flyer to be repaired; it flew successfully on its test flight.

An Inuit engineer who has been practicing his telepathic broadcast range; he devises the plan to bury the Firvulag ambush with an icefall avalanche.

Seumas fell from a belly-hatch and broke both legs after proposing to steal a flyer; Betsy suspects Phronsie pushed him.

The King holds the metaconcert program, which previously belonged to Marc Remillard.

Cloud's grandfather, youngest child of Denis and Lucille, trained in utero; first human elected to the Concilium and made New Hampshire the center of human metapsychic work.

Thufan's aircraft is trapped by the kite cables with its hatch jammed. Aiken's Spear destroys it, killing the knights inside.

The Bastards' surgeon, who had said the spiders were harmless and treats Dougal's bite.

Veikko is a sensitive mind who collapses into a fetal ball when overwhelmed by the powerful mental shout.

The vaults beneath the castle hold Milieu weapons and devices, behind a bronze door, a complex code lock and a force-field.

The Adversary is Volume IV of the Saga of Pliocene Exile, about the struggle against the fall of Night and a return to the Galactic Milieu.

Machine that helps Marc generate the upsilon-field for d-jumps; it follows him through hyperspace.

The fused minds of Felice and Culluket survive as a microscopic, glowing speck buried under rock at a ford in the Rio Genii, burning at the edge of extinction.

Marc orders salvaged equipment set up aboard Kyllikki, using small sigmas so the children and Aiken Drum cannot farsense it clearly.

Marc relies on Peter and Jordy and their people to repair the CE rig and move the equipment aboard Kyllikki.

The veteran Rebels on Ocala fear Felice may have subsumed Marc and could wipe out Ocala, and they fear for the children and the time-gate.

The Rebel Children are allying with Aiken to escape their parents and open the time-gate from the Pliocene side.

Stun-gun used by Yosh to quiet the frenzied bear-dogs.

Powerful farsensor, grandson of Bardelask's ruler and leader of the relief column; his armor and mount glow violet.

Unseasonal fog spread across much of Europe in late August, regarded as a portent tied to the death of the One-Handed Warrior.

Six-year-old Cub who is knowledgeable and first recognizes the Waterfall's subsonic signature.

The five children of Ocala's third generation: Calinda, Joel, Riki, Hope and Davey.

A Franciscan friar and circuit rider of thirty years in Pliocene Europe, he travels to Black Crag to begin a mission conceived with another priest.

Godal is the steward at Black Crag; he and other Tanu retainers lack PK or coercive powers.

A double-barreled antique rifle in the Firvulag baggage; its blasts also punctured the pneumatic boat.

A human chemist and silver-tore Creator Guild member who makes candy; he plans an acetone solvent made from hardwood chips and quicklime to remove the foam.

The foam is polyurethane broken down and rebuilt to release hydrogen cyanide; it is fatal to humans and badly harms unshielded Tanu.

The man can d-jump without wearing the coverall, using his machine.

Black, hairy, peach-sized spiders infest the dungeon, hunting mice and dropping web-wrapped carcasses on prisoners; their bite is harmless, as the surgeon says.

Sigmas are defensive screens the vehicles raise; the voice threatens to zap the leader if they are erected.

An old infrared scanner with about seventy to eighty kilometer coarse range, linked to forty-year-old laser weapons that go plasmatic at seven kilometers.

Suffering pulmonary edema; being brought down the mountain from Camp Two on a decamole sledge by Basil and Taffy.

An amateur climber and technician whose face was scraped in the crevasse incident; he died in the avalanche cursing telepathically.

Parthol is the Tanu City-Lord of Calamosk, successor to Aluteyn; he was jailed in the Great Retort for killing his mother-in-law on a Hunt.

Mary-Dedra's hybrid baby, son of a Thagdal-line father, has black-torc syndrome though such children were supposed to be immune; he is unusually tough and has survived a month.

Redactive procedure that rechannels the baby's mind; it demands a strong coercer, and briefly made Brendan operant without his tore.

Fouletot led the ogress force that produced the lightning bolt destroying the cage.

Pingol led the gnome assault force but was slow to raise the mind-shield, losing some of his troops.

Gray-torced captive Werner had his tongue pulled out and bled to death after lipping off to a Firvulag called Spook.

The three-headed chimaera, lion at center with dragon and eagle bowed, becomes graceful and proportionate, and its reflection is Aiken himself.

Quicksilver Cave is a disused Firvulag cave about twenty kilometers southwest of the trails junction, with a mirror-floored pillared chamber.

Seriously wounded by Helayne.

Marc says Mental Man will live if the children are prevented from passing through the time-gate.

The Keoghs, top redactors, are now lost; they were among the few who knew Marc's secret.

Walter's wife; she chose to end her life in the Antarctic glacier silence.

Walter's second mate and former tactical analyst, wounded in the wrist by Helayne's knife.

The theory holds the time-gate site cannot be destroyed in the Pliocene because it still exists six million years later in the Milieu; no paradoxes allowed.

Former Deputy Chief Starfleet Operations (Strategy) under Ragnar Gathen; became a shipbuilder and later fell into alcoholism after his wife's suicide.

Bukin is a brownie head couturier of three centuries' career who designed Katlinel's iridescent pearl-lamé and gold-lace gown, calling it his masterpiece.

Cerebroenergetic enhancers are outlawed in the Milieu as too hazardous for the operator.

Evening markets, forbidden under Nodonn, now thrive in the Gyre; Firvulag sellers who appeared after the Armistice are absent.

Irena's father; injured on Kyllikki and died three days earlier. He wanted Irena and Veikko to have a child.

The expedition's base camp at 4322 meters on Monte Rosa, in decamole huts; the altitude sickens many.

The Gresson Icefall, rising at about fifty degrees, is the only viable icefall and the most perilous section of the climb.

Purtsinigelee's wife; the invaders paid her a pouch of gemstones worth more than five years' earnings for the household's slugs.

Telepath who comforts Veikko; she dreamed of traveling the Milieu with her father Arky when he died.

Lord Aronn is a Tanu psychokinetic on assault team Number Two.

Lusk is the young North American ATV wrangler; he says the fourplex vehicles can be disassembled for loading on aircraft.

Cheerful little Bastard factotum who circulates freely and made huge climbing boots for the high-pocketers.

A peaceable Firvulag dwarf who traps giant slugs in beer trays and pickles them for winter food and trade.

A musk-oil processor living a day west of Purtsinigelee, and the piedmont's most dedicated telepathic gossip.

The coverall is only a monitoring convenience, not a requirement for d-jumping.

Creyn's Guild is the custodian of the mitigator, which even Milieu science does not possess.

Jasmin Wylie shot at Marc with a Matsu carbine on Monte Rosa and missed.

The mitigator is a mental program that makes ultraluminal translation pain bearable; Ships teach passengers to generate their own.

A one-eyed Howler woman undergoes Skin-tank treatment hoping to look human, because a former silver-tore husband rejected her illusions; her last thought is of Tonee.

Its first blow was sabotaged: it rotated to blast the King's party with flame, but Aiken saved everyone with a psychocreative force globe.

The Establishment is a secure iron and steel complex in the Breton highlands with underground siderite mines, a blast furnace and a Bessemer converter.

The service lures travelers with free food and drink at Hilltop House and forces gray tores on them for the King's army.

Established at 5585 meters; most of the loads were left here.

The third couloir north of the dark black-ice one, about 900 meters long and sixty degrees steep; late snow slabs triggered a fatal avalanche there.

An amateur climber and technician; swept off by the avalanche slab, his flailing axe cut the rope between Nirupam and Basil, and he died saying goodbye.

Ridge where the team planned a permanent winch-belay ('flywalk') for later climbers, on the route to Camp 2.

A team member who died on the first day of the support operation, drowned after falling into a moulin in the glacier snout.

Kyllikki carries X-lasers locked in the forward hold; Marc could use them against the children.

City-Lord of Sasaran and High Tabler, tall and gangling, he escorts the convoy carrying precious cargo of Milieu weapons and Tony.

At seven, he is the eldest son of the Firvulag king and queen; his Nameday promotes him from infant to Warrior Youth, dropping his baby name Smudger.

The armored being has been watching Basil's efforts and experiments with d-jumping, carrying about 75 kilos of inert mass outside its armor via an upsilon-field.

The Rainbow Bridge over the River Nonol is a new cantilevered arch built by Nionel's Lowlife adoptees.

The fourth planet of the Goal system is home to peaceable, saurischian-descended humanoids with a low birthrate and an advanced technoeconomy, suited to Marc's breeding program.

The Yotunag are the cruelest mutant Howler kin of northern Fennoscandia; they attacked the mining camp and killed Trevarthen's party.

Alice guards the recovered Tony with a Bosch blaster, threatens to cook the armored attacker if he returns, and bespoke the King for help.

Amathon, a coercer lord, was feared killed by the Yotunag in the tunnel.

Dysprosium is refined for the Guderian Project; Tony's team produced 258 slugs, with 55 more needed.

The small battery-powered sigma-shield protected the captives from the Yotunag but also blocked their farspeech; it failed when the battery died.

Superluminal travel in the Galactic Milieu works by warping normal space with a u-field, generated by a machine or rarely by a teleporting metapsychic.

Healing treatment is working on the black-torc babies; they should be cured within a week and become operant, the first of a new generation.

Senior human technician who built the serpent device, with twenty-two years in special effects at Industrial Light and Magic.

Stage prop of twin black and gold serpents forming a ring; the losing side's tail bracelet is swallowed and electrostatic shocks hurt minds.

Human technician who is xenophobic toward the exotics and believes any sane human would take the time-gate home.

Mental contest in which participants stay seated to remain connected; standing up means resigning.

Twenty-five rhocraft took permanent hover station 4000 meters above the Field of Gold on the Fourth Day, fueling rumors of war.

Chee-Wu's incompetent engineering produced the faulty batch of wire that forced the delay.

The Duat Galaxy holds over eleven thousand Duat daughter-worlds; Marc and Elizabeth arrive there as brains in black armor, finding it close to Unity.

LeCocq reports 11,332 returnees went back through the gate, mostly humans without tores, with few Howlers and Tanu.

Andromeda lies 2.2 million light-years away; a round trip would take hardy humans about forty-eight years, so extragalactic travel is virtually proscribed.

Ordinary passengers tolerate about 40 df, meaning 40 light-years per subjective day in hyperspace; fast tracks hurt more, slow tracks less.

The Hub of the Milky Way is perilous and the only major part not mapped and explored by the exotic races.

Sentient creatures feel varying degrees of pain when breaking through into hyperspace; a power failure inside it strands a ship.

Duat is 270 million light-years from the Milky Way.