the same person. ;) It is a good book - if ever you get a few hours away grab a copy at the library. ;) The story starts on the moon, where the last person to escape Earth has just arrived. Earth is now uninhabitable due to massive religious wars taking place over the use of an "imprinter", a device that enables one to imprint commands directly to a person's mind against that person's will. The moon base is overpopulated and systems are beginning to fail, so they decide to send a large portion of the population to a planet that they have just found is inhabitable, but they cannot send the technology along for that colony to be hightech, so they decide to imprint a set of commands covering basic survival techniques to the crew without them knowing. One person is completely against this, and so says that he will tell the general public, which would create a panic since the imprinters were responsible for Earth's destruction. The director of the council kills that man to prevent the panic and resigns, volunteering to go with the ship and to allow her mind to be the template to pass along, via the imprinters, to the future rulers of the colony. So, next we see Leland climbing upon a spire to put on the Helm (imprinter) and become the next ruler of....