to increase life insurance premiums because of the declining life expectancy in the United States. Peg Mankiewicz, a journalist, identifies the body of the man in the freeway accident as her friend Decimus Jones. Later, Peg meets with her friend and influential ecologist, Austin Train, from whom the Trainites take their name. He has gone underground and is working as a mall Santa. Peg is one of the few people able to contact him. In Honduras, a group of UN investigators is looking into a famine nation ridden by civil war. They examine a ruined coffee farm and discover mysterious wormlike insects filling the roots of the plants with holes. They are known as Jigras and are immune to every known insecticide. Jacob Bamberley, heir to an oil fortune and head of Bamberley Trust, a charitable institution that manufactures Nutripon, a hydroponically-grown food product that is meant to provide relief in places afflicted by famine, gives his adopted son Hugh Pettingill a tour of the factory in Denver. Hugh is not impressed by his adoptive father's work. In Africa, in a village called Noshri, a nurse named Lucy Ramage is on hand to receive shipment of Nutripon when suddenly, the villagers seem to go insane and start murdering each other. She is saved by UN soldiers, who put down the riots. January A supersonic airliner flying over the Rockies causes an avalanche with its sonic boom that destroys a brand new ski resort in Towerhill, Colorado. A police officer, named Pete Goddard, becomes a hero after he saves a group of children trapped in the snow from being crushed by a steel beam. Peg learns from an autopsy that Decimus had a psychedelic drug in his system. Knowing that he was not a drug user, she decides to get to the bottom of it. Jacob, trying to debunk allegations that Nutripon was responsible for the violence at Noshri, is a guest on the Petronella Page show, a popular news show. The host forces him to eat a bowlful of it. Suddenly, a bomb threat forces the studio to be evacuated. February In Ireland, Doctor Michael Advowson is treating a young girl, who injured her toe after she played on a farm that was being used as a garbage dump. A visitor informs him to report to the United Nations to help investigate the Noshri riots. Philip is diagnosed with gonorrhea