Edenborn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edenborn is a 2004 novel by Nick Sagan. It is the sequel to Idlewild, and takes place 18 years after that book.
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In the aftermath of a global plague, a group of gengineered posthumans are trying to rebuild society by cloning children. The children are protected from the plague by a specially-engineered retrovirus. One group, in Munich, Austria, is composed entirely of posthumans. The other, in Luxor, Egypt, is human. The two camps have an exchange program.
Haji, of the Luxor camp, is going to Munich this year with two of his siblings. A devout Sufi, he is amazed by the mores and technology of the posthumans. There, he meets Penny, an overconfident girl who wants to become important. Haji's sister died on the previous year's exchange, and Haji suspects the Munich VR network.
The VR network is run by a woman named Pandora. A posthuman, Pandora does not want to choose between the two camps. As well as this, she is mourning the loss of Halloween, the man she loves, who abandoned both factions to live in isolation in North America. She is curious as to how small items are showing up in VR. They are the work of a trickster called Deuce, who sees himself as the successor to "Hermes, Loki, Prometheus, Raven and Coyote".
Deuce is the son of Halloween. When Deuce makes his strike on the Munich computer network(revealing a range of mood-suppressing drugs and subliminal codes that the Munich camp use to keep their children in line), Pandora goes to Michigan to confront Halloween(she thinks he is responsible), but agrees to take Deuce back to Munich to face a punishment. But Penny, recently unbalanced by the news of the mood-supresants, is secretly working with Deuce, and the two elope.
Meanwhile, Pandora is tracking monkeys in the Amazon. The plague wiped out the world's primates, so the continued survival of the monkeys is important if a vaccine is to be found. An answer is found - a special sap the monkeys eat - but Rashid, a human boy on the expedition, suddenly falls ill and the groups goes back to Munich for medical care. The answer is chilling - Rashid overdosed on his retrovirus tablets, and the retrovirus began to mutate.
With crises everywhere, Halloween comes to Munich to track down his son. After brief recriminations, Isaac - leader of the Luxor camp - tells them that the three children on the exchange course(and presumably the other human children) are also suffering and will soon die.
Deuce and Penelope go to Britain, and begin a 'last-couple-on-Earth' fantasy. But Penny insists that on fulfilling the fantasy, and the pair go to an air force base and acquire weaponry. After they accidentally shoot down Pandora over the Mediterranean, they travel to Munich with a rocket launcher. However, when Penny threatens to fire, Halloween shoots her. Deuce commits suicide, his idea of his father shattered.
In the aftermath, the various leaders realise that all their problems came from deceit and trickery. They all move to Munich, where they begin to build, hopefully, a better world.
There is also a subplot concerning Haji. Haji discovers that he is a clone of Dr. James Hyoguchi, the creator of the original posthumans, who left instructions asking to be resurrected in the body of a clone. Confronting Isaac, his father, with this, his father denies an ulterior motive. However, when Haji lies dying, Isaac admits that he was going to use the children to bring back those scientists (all of them are clones of the scientists on that project), because Isaac had lost his faith in God and himself. Haji, devout still despite this shock, forgives Isaac his deception but makes him promise not to tell the other children.
