Ancients Of Days

Time, Like A River, Must One Day Run Dry.
On an artificial world created and seeded with ten thousand bloodlines by the long-vanished Preservers, young Yama's ancestry is unique, for he appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the worshiped architects of Confluence. And on a day near the end of the world, Yama must finally acknowledge the power he neither anticipated nor desires.
To the common folk, the unshaped and aboriginal, he is the fulfillment of age-old prophecies. To the functionaries of the Department of Indigenous Affairs, he is a weapon to be molded and used in the bloody civil war raging at the planet's midpoint. But there are still others who have taken notice of Yama as he pursues the hidden secrets of his past. Intelligent powers older than the Builders, as old, perhaps, as the Preservers themselves, are pursuing Yama in turn. And they will stop at nothing to control his present, and, as a result, the future of everything that lives.
Author Biography:
Paul J. McAuley won a Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars. He won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards for his novel Fairyland. In addition he has published five other novels-including Child of the River,the first book of Confluence, and two collections of short stories. In 1995, his short story, The Temptation of Dr. Stein, won the British Fantasy Society Award. Mr. McAuley is a regular contributor to the British SF magazine Interzone and writes reviews for Foundation. He lives in London.