It is now 3000 AD and with the help of other species, humans have spread into the galaxy, largely ruled by Merkatoria, a complex feudal hierarchy, with a religious zeal to rid the galaxy of artificial intelligence, which had been ruled by the past. was blamed for the war.
Fasin Tak who is the "slow seer" in the court of the Nascuron Dwellers. Nescuron's star system is cut off from the rest of the Mercatoria civilization after their portal (the only means of speed faster than light travel) was destroyed by the Beyonders. The Beyonders are a large fleet of space robbers that originated from the edges of the galaxy. Local Mercatoria followers await delivery of a wormhole connection from a neighboring system via sub-light speed travel.
The Nasqueron Dwellers are an advanced and ancient civilization of non-humanoids that inhabited gas giants. They lead an almost chaotic existence at the base of the yash, and inhabit most of the gas-giant planets in the Milky Way. They are the only major species outside the control of Merctoria, which is rumored to have destructive defensive weapons. Resident societies try not to be involved with "accelerated" species, they are sentient beings who experience life at the rate that humans experience it. Residents are one of the "slow" species that experience life at a very slow pace. Resident individuals live for millions of years, and the species has existed for billions of years, long before the foundation of Mercatoria. Slow seers like Tak are a lineage of researchers who try to gather information from vast but disorganized libraries of knowledge. They do this by artificially slowing down their metabolism to better communicate with the inhabitants.
Tak awaits a life of quiet schism, when he is amazed by his joining one of the mercatoria's religious-military orders. It is revealed that in a previous research expedition to the Dweller-inhabited gas-giant Nascaron, Tak inadvertently uncovered a book that contained information about the wormhole's mythical "inhabitant list" of coordinates of his own private system. Since the inhabitants live long enough to colonize the galaxy at sub-light speed, the existence of such a network itself was considered questionable.
The Dweller List is just a list of star systems. Portals are relatively small and can occur anywhere within the system, as long as it is a point of low gravitational gradient, such as the Lagrange point. The list is useless without a certain mathematical transformation needed to give the exact location of the portals. Tak will have to go on another expedition to Nescuron to find the Transform.
Archimandrite Luciferus is a tyrannical chieftain of the hungry cult. He is in loose alliance with Beyonders. He sets out to attack the Ulubis system from the Cluster Epiphany Five disconnect, while also aiming to keep the secrets of the Dweller Portals. A Merctoria counter-attack fleet rushes to rescue Ulubis against hungry cult ships and their Beyonder allies. Both fleets are forced to travel at low light speed, causing the inhabitants of the Ulubis system to curiously wonder who will come first.
Tak's search for the Transform leads him on a journey, partly through the Dweller Wormhole Network. In a back story, it is revealed that he has been out of sympathy with Mercatoria for some time, particularly over his treatment of artificial intelligence, and has in fact been a Beyonder agent. It is also learned that residents are resorting to artificial intelligence from Mercatoria harassment.
The Beyonder/Hungry Forces arrive and easily affect Ulubis' basic defenses. They discover to their dismay that the counter-attack force is arriving much sooner than predicted, and is superior. The Beyonder factions, despairing of finding out the secret in the time available before Tak and Ulubis are recaptured, retreat. Under Luciferus live the hungry. He makes a final attempt to force Tak to leave, threatening the residents with antimatter weapons. The residents react with a devastating blow to their fleet. Luciferus fled in pursuit of Mercatoria.
Tak returns from his journey and his memory is partially erased. He's still able to piece together the mystery from the remaining clues: There is a region of zero net gravitational attraction at the exact center of each massive body. The inhabitants have hidden wormhole portals in the center of all their captured planets, and conversion was never necessary. It is not clear whether the inhabitants will provide the necessary support in allowing other species to access their networks, now that the mystery is out.
