In the ruins of Farringay, a city of Earth's distant future, a frightened five year old girl reaches out with her mind to Hankura, a young telepathic Aledan boy on his way to Velran aboard a starship passenger freighter. When he feels her fear and despair, he wants to help her. He recognizes that she is a latent telepathic healer and feels a strong connection with her---so strong, he promises to come back. Twenty years after that meeting, Hankura still feels the connection with Michelle Marlow of Earth. Her realities become his nightmares and his dreams are shared fantasies. After Michelle is nearly killed in a street fight in Farringay, Hankura is overwhelmingly compelled to go there and rescue her. In this hypothetical future, the mother world of humanity is in a state of ruin with its various territories held by violently diverse political groups run by crime lords. Except for the Starport at Farringay, Earth is a very dangerous place. Hankura makes ground fall and finds Michelle---Chelle, as Hankura calls her---easily. She doesn't really understand why he has misgivings about returning to Aledus. She only knows he feels he has to return to reconcile with his family. Aledus is a world where telepathic psions are a scorned minority that faces discriminatory laws and repression. All psions must wear distinctive patches on their clothing that designate them as such. Psionic children are taken from their parents at age ten and placed in the Aledan Psi Institute for indoctrination and brainwashing against using their gifts. It amounts to government sanctioned torture, and so is the psi testing that Hankura and Chelle must endure at the Aledan Psi Institute before they can work and travel freely as any psion on Aledus. Life on Aledus for the psi-mates is more difficult than they ever dreamed. It could very well cost them their lives and nearly does.
