Shariann Lewitt Libri

The colony world of Maya is run by the Changed: a carefully inbred aristocracy clustered in their hillside city, high above Babelion and its wretched swarms of poor colonists. For generations, the Changed have been altering their own genes and their children's. They're smarter, faster, longer-lived, better with computers, and acutely aware of their own superiority. What they don't admit is that they have become a separate species. Every year, the Changed allow a hand-picked group of human children to come up from Babelion and be tested alongside their own young. But the Changed know, as the humans do not, that it's a sham. The humans will always fail. They don't have the right genetic makeup and the years of intensive training it takes to mesh properly with the computer system where the test takes place. Their best will never be enough. It's a subtle way of teaching them their place. Then, one year, Arsen shows up: strong, smart, wildly charismatic, and not at all convinced of the superiority of the Changed. Still, he's nothing the system can't cope with -- until he hooks up with Della, Changed born and bred, but every bit as rebellious as Arsen. She, too, doubts that the serenely self-absorbed Changed have all the answers. What starts between Arsen and Della will tip their whole universe on its side and start it rolling downhill.

Artwork by Sol Lewitt. Edited by Christina Bechtler. Contributions by Charlotte von Koerber.