There was a civilization, now decadent, on the Pacific coast, and nomads on the central plains herding bison and crossbreeding them with Asian cattle, and a civilization around the Great Lakes and one in the Mississippi Valley, and a new one, five or six centuries old, along the Atlantic and in the Appalachians. Technological level pre-mechanical, water-and-animal power; a few subsectors, such as Styphon's House Subsector, had gotten as far as gunpowder.

This new timeline is a world of princes and princesses, kings and queens, castles and knights; a far cry from Calvin Morrison's home timeline (and our own), Europo-American, Columbia Subsector. After his unexpected drop from the transposition conveyer, Calvin meets the local peoples and is given the name Lord Kalvan, in Zarthani, the Indo-Aryan tongue of the inheritors of Styphon's House Subsector. He quickly learns that the technology and cultural level is about par with the 16th Century of his own timeline.