Lenny June is your average happy-go-lucky expat, out for a good time and a quick buck. And on Tyr Mayam, a technologically backward planet riven by religious rivalries, he has it easy. It helps that he's quick-witted, handsome, and an exclusive member of the Galactic Confederation's Terran delegation to a world that's been declared an ethnologically protected zone for the next 500 years. But Lenny's life is about to change. For one, his fiancée is due from Earth any day now. And Tyr Mayam, with its doomsday cults and competing sects, has surprises in store, buried deep in ancient history...

Lenny June's got problems. It's one thing when your boss thinks you're an idiot, but another when he sends two religious fanatics to murder you. And they're not the only threat: an interstellar assassin has killed his fiancée, and is running around in her body. What are they all after? Mysterious gemstones known as Eiam's Tears. Even as Lenny tries to figure out why they're so valuable, the race is on by land and sea and air to Eiam country, a barren wasteland banned centuries ago after a mythical catastrophe. Still, Lenny has the element of surprise. And a monk who thinks he's a god...

The race is on through forbidden Eiam territory as Lenny June, his boss the Terran Ambassador, and the galactic cartel assassin Sebshem Antal Nya, all converge on the coveted prize: shards of a deity vanquished in spectacular aerial combat long ago. These fragments, known as the god's tears, are not only proof of a superior if extinct form of life, but holy artifacts being used in... a mysterious resurrection ritual. Will Lenny June outsmart his wily boss and elude Nya, his fiancée's murderer, to whom he is now irresistibly chemically attracted?

Life is good again for Lenny June, legal attaché to the Terran delegation on the developing planet of Mayam. After all, he's bested his scheming former boss the ambassador, ditched an intergalactic cartel's deadly hit woman out in the forbidden wastelands, and gotten away with the priceless relic they were all after: the ancient head of a dead god. But then... who is trying to kill him? Why did the diplomatic core decide not to promote him, and instead, send out a new ambassador... with Lenny's fiancée? And could it be that head isn't actually as dead as he thought?