Dreamfall (Cat, 3)

Cat, a halfbreed telepath and protagonist of earlier novels Catspaw and Psion, joins a research team on Refuge, the homeworld of the Hydrans—his mother's people. He quickly becomes involved in trouble when he helps a Hydran woman escape human pursuers. The Hydran population on Refuge has been decimated and confined to a bleak designated "homeland" by Tau Biotech, a powerful corporate state. Tau controls Refuge's sole unique natural resource: dreamfall, the tangible residue of thoughts cast off by cloud whales. While the Hydrans consider the dreamfall sacred, Tau views it as exploitable data. Caught between Tau's interests and desperate Hydrans fighting to reclaim their world, Cat must find a way to use the ruins of the past as a weapon against Tau's brutality in order to save his people and himself.