
This novel is the fifth in the Company sequence, which is about Dr. Zeus, an all-powerful 24th-century corporation that utilizes time travel and immortal cyborgs to preserve (or loot) the past. The Botanist Mendoza, one of Dr. Zeus's immortal employees, has never recovered from the tragic deaths of her two lovers--one in the 16th and the other in the 19th century--two amazing men who, strangely enough, were physically identical. Her violent reaction to the second man's death, her ungovernable psychic powers, and her possession of forbidden knowledge about the Company has led to her 3,000-year-long exile in 150,000 B.C. California. But one day, to her astonishment, a man who strongly resembles her two lost loves arrives in a time shuttle. He is Alec Checkerfield, and, like his two predecessors, he is a classified Company project with abilities beyond the ordinary. When Alec discovers the truth about his origins, he isn't particularly happy about it, and the man intended to be a Company tool may, in fact, be the one person capable of bringing it down....