The Lord and Lady Taphinal, agents of the Order of Law, traveled through time and space waging war to create peace. When Lady Zenica decried the self-defeating contradictions in that policy, she was overruled and pressured to subvert House Taphinals research and training programs to improve the outcome of the Orders violent interventions. Rather than submit, Zenica chose to disappear, leaving her husband behind to raise Corin, the young son that she foresaw would guide the Order out of its cultural impasse. Guided by his mothers love to Earth, Corin intervened on lifes behalf against humanitys insecurity. When Corin is beaten back and almost destroyed, life comes to his aid, reaching out to him through a Congolese concubine named Leelay.