Synopsis: From the back cover of the Pocket Books first edition: The millennial war left a sullen void where civilization once stood... But then the whales began their song - a mysterious song that resounded throughout the polluted seas and told an ancient heartbreaking tale that moved the survivors to revive an honored ritual... And at the vanguard stood Takahashi, self-appointed Death Lord - a man gone mad in the wake of the chaos. He saw himself an artist whose greatest creation was a living haiku, with a last line as exquisite as it was final - the end of all human life. Only one chance remained for Josh Nakamura, for his younger brother Didi, and for Ryoko, the beautiful daughter of a high minister of Japan. They must take the whale's legacy and leave the planet before they too became part of Takahashi's terrible poetic vision..