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Ruby runs waldoes. Freelance. Construction, security - no job too large or small. And her favorite tool is Golem, 600 pounds of vaguely human-shaped, remote-operated power. Not an easy living, but it's better than most in half-sunken, greenhouse-heated, 21st-century New York. Best of all the waldoes go Outside, not Ruby. Ruby hates the Outside.

But when a Ruby/Golem tries to rescue a rich Egyptian from a collapsing skyscraper, and accepts the papers he presses into her hands as he dies, Ruby's in trouble. She may have to go Outside for real. All of which might be a lot easier if she hadn't stolen the diamonds off his body....

A broad, fascinating SF novel of murder, intrigue, family loyalty, and humanity's first steps to the stars, set in an immensely plausible near-future American Southwest scorched by global warming. Advanced biotech and brain-to-machine interfaces have melded in a secret project, creating full convincing human-shaped machines guided by faraway pilots; proxies. But who has the controls; and why?

More than a hundred years after a small band of humans stole an antimatter-fueled starship and headed away at near-lightspeed, a colony of those renegades' descendants are now struggling to survive on Brimstone, a barely-habitable world of ice and bitter cold four dozen light-years from Earth.

In the long run, they hope to slowly terraform Brimstone, making it, if not Earthlike, at least bearable. In the short run-well, life is hard, and everyone lives in everyone else's laps. Not easy for anyone. Particularly hard if, like Manda, you just aren't cut out to get along with others in conditions of constant crowding and zero privacy.

Most people wouldn't be eager to get away from the main colony and work on a scientific project in the howling frozen wastes. For Manda, it's a deliverance. But news of the intelligent life she discovers in Brimstone's depths will change everything-if she can bring the news back to her fellows alive. For, it turns out, there are political plots and counterplots still active in the colony, dangerous twists tracing back to Earth itself... and outward to the stars.