The Smoke Ring

The descendants of the crew of the Discipline no longer remembered their Earth roots or the existence of Sharls Davis Kendy, the computer-program despot of the ship, until Kendy initiated contact once more. Fourteen years later, only Jeffer, the Citizen's Tree scientist, knows that Kendy is still watching and waiting. Then the Citizen's Tree people learn for the first time of the Admiralty, a large society living in free fall. And it is likely that the Admiralty has maintained, intact, Discipline's original computer library.