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Century Rain is a 2004 noir science fiction alternative history mystery novel by Wales author Alastair Reynolds ().
In a scene seemingly from another novel, Verity Auger finds herself responsible when her archaeology dig beneath the frozen ruins of some far-flung future Paris results in the death of one of her students. During her trial she is caught up in political infighting, and maneuvered into accepting a high risk assignment, without knowing what it entails.
But when she is summoned on a mission to Mars by the top-secret security agency Contingencies, Auger is more than relieved to be exempt from her tribunal and the years of prison that she would otherwise have to face. However, when she is taken to a secret underground base on the Martian moon Phobos containing an ancient alien relic that opens a portal to a distant part of the galaxy, and told that she is to go through it, she begins to have second thoughts about continuing with her mission. Things get even more bizarre when she finds out that at the other end of the portal is an alternative-history version of Earth in the year 1959 – almost 300 years behind her present-day – and that she is to retrieve a tin of documents that was left behind by Susan White, an earlier agent sent to "Earth Two", who died under mysterious circumstances.
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