Emergence

Nineteenth in Cherryh's Foreigner space opera series, this installment opens a fresh chapter for Bren Cameron, a human diplomat working between his species and the atevi, whose relations remain fragile. Five thousand people who escaped a ruined station far off in space are now crowded aboard Alpha Station, which orbits the atevi homeworld. Its supplies and living space are nearly exhausted, so the newcomers must soon be moved to the surface.

Tabini-aiji, the atevi leader with real political power, has assigned Bren to work out the transfer with the government on Mospheira, not the atevi mainland but the island set aside for humans. The newcomers belong to a faction that Mospheira split from two centuries earlier, and many Mospheirans have little appetite for taking them in.