This convoluted conclusion to Baker's Company novels (after The Machine's Child
) explores the events leading up to July 8, 2355, the moment when the Silence falls and all future contact is cut off for the immortals and cyborgs who travel through time collecting human artifacts on behalf of the profit-hungry Dr. Zeus Inc. As the Silence draws near, splinter groups begin jockeying to benefit. A human cabal plots, somewhat hilariously, to take out the cyborgs with poisoned chocolates. The cyborg Lewis, desperate to warn others of the injury done him, lies wounded in a burrow, telling disoriented stories to a woman with strange powers. On a deserted island, Mendoza bears two children to her husband, Edward, and gives them the minds of her ex-lovers, Alec and Nicholas, proving that cyborgs are capable of creation. The intertwining stories all come together in an explosive denouement that heralds the end of the Company, but the beginning of something strange and new. (July)
