Six million years ago, at the dawn of the human starfaring era, Abigail Gentian split herself into a thousand clones and launched them into the galaxy. Their objective: to gather more memories and wisdom than one single human being could ever accumulate in a universe bound by Einstein's laws. Periodically, the shatterlings of Gentian Line meet for a grand bacchanalian reunion, where, over the course of a thousand heady nights, they exchange memories.But all is not well: two wayward shatterlings, Campion and Purslane, are about to be late - decades late - for Gentian Line's thirty-second reunion. Their crime is compounded by the fact that they have consorted - shared experiences together - during the course of one of their galaxy-looping circuits. And even worse than that: they are in love. The only thing standing between them and possible excommunication from the Line is a golden robot called Hesperus, one of the Machine People, the other great meta-civilization occupying the Milky Way. But Hesperus is an amnesiac, and all he can recall is a vague sense that he was on a mission of desperate importance before his memory was wiped.The lovers are hoping their prestigious guest will mitigate their punishment, but when they intercept an unexpected distress signal telling them to avoid the reunion system at all costs, censure by their fellow clones becomes the least of their worries.After six million years of stability, someone has decided it's time to end Gentian Line. Read Less