Red Dust

It is the second year of the Emperor's silence, and a terraformed Mars is dying - the high, cold deserts expanding as lakes shrink and forests wither: But in a newborn spring, a young man sets out from the Bitter Waters danwei - unaware that his journey will carry him to the far ends of the planet... and beyond. A lowly Contract Agronomist Technician with a blood connection to the ruling Ten Thousand Years, Wei Lee's life-path is forever altered when he chances upon the crashed spacecraft of a runaway female anarchist. Agreeing to transport the prisoner deep into the Martian wild at his powerful kinsman's request, Lee soon discovers he has been cruelly betrayed - and that he, his charge and the future itself are all seriously imperiled. And so begins the strange odyssey of Wei Lee - as he follows the words and music of a rock 'n' roll demi-god across dry river and dust sea, toward an inevitable confrontation in information space with the true lord of the living and the dead. For myth, circumstance, and a viral kiss have transformed Wei Lee from man to reluctant deity - setting him adrift in a remolded world of cowboys, tribal Yankees and feral children... anointing him savior of a red planet doomed by a dread conspiracy of religious destruction born on a machine-run green wilderness called Earth.
An agricultural researcher in internal exile on a politically repressive Mars rescues a survivor of a crashed spaceship. His captive infects the researcher with strange cultures that protect the researcher and set him off in search of his missing parents. As he travels he finds himself the central figure in an exploding revolution against the cruel Martian government.