PROLOGUE

Things have a way of working out, if not always as planned. So it was with the Amalgamation that marked the establishment of the sociopolitical organization that came to be known as the Humanx Commonwealth. Contact having been established and maintained for some sixteen years, it was assumed by those advising both of the hesitant, uncertain species that procession to second-stage contact would take place within a predesignated time frame and would involve the implementation of carefully considered procedures, intricately designed programs, and closely scrutinized agendas.

That it did not happen this way was no fault of those charged with implementing the voluminously compiled and mutually agreed-upon contact strategy. All those involved, thranx and human alike, had done their work conscientiously and well. It was simply that, as history shows, there are times when events do not occur as planned. Physics included, the universe is not a perfectly predictable place. Action super-cedes fabrication. Stars that are not supposed to go nova for a billion years do. Flowers that are expected to blossom die.

Anticipated ambassadors did not have the opportunity to exchange formal greetings. Innumerable carefully drawn covenants withered for lack of execution, made superfluous by unexpected realities. Formal protocols were rendered extraneous. Thus are the ways of virtuous diplomacy foully ambushed.

Chance chose a poet as its champion, while coarse circumstance on its behalf conscripted a murderer.