After a cataclysmic stellar war, peace has come to the trillion human beings who live on the Civilized Worlds. In Neverness, the City of Light, the pilots of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians resume their ancient quest to discover the real purpose of the human race. Crucial to their success will be a mastery of the One Memory, believed to hold the secret of how humanity might evolve. Thomas Rane is the Order’s Lord Remembrancer. He has become the teacher to a new generation of humans called the Asta Siluuna – the star children – and so has a crucial part to play in the development of the human race. But at the end of the war, his beloved – the mysterious and beautiful Maria – died. Memory is strange, and Rane comes to believe that Maria might have survived the storm. Perhaps a memory virus left over from the war has robbed her of her identity and she wanders the streets of Neverness, lost and alone. Perhaps she's still out there, among the stars.