"Escaping his guilt over the death of his father by trekking through Europe in the fall of 1986, 18-year-old Miles Townsend meets another man fleeing his troubles on a train from Paris to Spain. Vikram Bhat, an itinerant ex-academic living above the Hotel Kashmir in Barcelona, befriends Miles and invites him to visit his city, where Miles meets and falls in love with Vikram's roommate, Anna de Wit, a grad student with a genius for languages. While Miles pursues a romance with her (despite the presence of her current boyfriend, the insufferable but handsome Anders), Vikram's life is imploding. Arrested on a minor charge, Vikram is soon wanted by the police as a suspected terrorist. On the run, Vikram leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for Anna and Miles to follow, and they find him in Granada, where he plans to buy back a stolen case from the hotel's former desk clerk and Anders, Anna's now ex-boyfriend. Betrayed at the exchange for the case, Vikram must take drastic action, which inadvertently reveals his identity. Vikram's real name is Araviku, and he's not human, just a very convincing impostor. He comes from a distant planet the inhabitants call "Our World," which is dying from the effects of climate change, and the case contains a gene bank Vikram believes could save his planet. Grooming Anna for the time when he could ask her to accompany him back to his world as an ambassador from Earth (but putting it off because he doesn't really want to leave), he is forced to ask Anna and Miles to return with him after they're chased to Portugal by Anders, who turns out to be another alien in disguise. Ushered through a wormhole to Our World and Vikram's city of Danevesu, Anna and Miles meet the beautiful, bird-like people who've carved a technological marvel out of a cliff overlooking the sea on a denuded, flooded planet, where other nations struggle for survival. The aliens, sexually liberated by their lack of gender differences, are taken by Miles and Anna, but have ulterior motives for bringing them there. Vikram soon takes them away from Danevesu, however, and leads them to the island laboratory of his one-time colleague, Berejian, whom he's convinced can use the biological material in the recovered case to reverse Our World's ecological decline. But, collaborating with Anders and theocratic fanatics in the country of Bandary, Berejian designs a deadly pathogen to wipe out the remaining population of Our World. With Anders in possession of the pathogen, he travels to Danevesu to deliver the biological weapon, leaving Vikram, Miles, and Anna to die. They manage to escape the island but return to a Danevesu already hit by Berejian's pathogen. The leaders of Danevesu try to send Miles and Anna back to Earth and safety, but only Miles makes it through. In Danevesu, Anna witnesses a two-pronged attack by the Bandarians, as the citizens are laid low by disease while the city is bombarded from the sea. Miles, back in Barcelona, immediately regrets wanting to go back-fleeing the trouble on Our World just as he had run away from home after the death of his father. He runs into Anders at the Hotel Kashmir bar, back on Earth in human form to stay. While engaged in a destructive bar fight that Miles is losing badly, they're both arrested and thrown in jail. But a Bandarian victim of Anders's treachery finds Anders in his cell and takes him back to Bandary, sending Miles back to Danevesu at his request. Back in the alien city, Miles finds they have survived by a combination of resourcefulness and dumb luck-including the timely flooding of Bandary's capital-and now plot how to retaliate against Bandary. When Miles suggests they help the survivors stuck underwater in Bandary instead, the Danevesans have to decide if they should save their hated nemesis. Their choice to help Bandary decides the fates of Miles, Anna, Vikram, and all the inhabitants of Our World"--