"The large television screen placed in front of the Bucharest hospital reflected an initial anguish: Inti Huamán was moaning. Neither Fitzgerald, nor the Enestu, nor the medical assistants (all elderly), wanted to put India to sleep. Inti Huamán doubled over in pain. Thick drops of pain began to soak into the pillow. The crowd was silent and only various cries rose above the raindrops, the crickets of the crickets and the flaps of the pigeons. Huaraz was far away. The Andes were lost in the clouds. Javier, taciturn, awaited the birth of his son in the next room. All the space bases of man, lost in the wide solar system, hung, as on Earth itself, from that birth. Neither Bern nor its representatives, nor Moscow, nor Washington, nor London, nor Paris, missed that birth." --Translated from back cover.