The novel follows the exploits of Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac, as he attempts to discover who or what is behind the destruction of the Runcible on a remote colony.

network for too long, Cormac has been slowly losing his humanity, and takes the opportunity of this particular mission to disconnect and solve the mystery the old-fashioned way.

She and Arian have become suspicious of Ian, primarily due to his increasingly inhuman perspective on human affairs, a problem induced by years of being gridlinked.

Blegg informs him that the Samarkand incident was no accident, and also suggests that Cormac disconnect his gridlink, as he has been connected for too long a period of time and is becoming dehumanized.

After investigating a heat source at a remote outpost, they find two alien creatures able to live in the extreme conditions.

The Hubris AI starts to manufacture and deploy nanomycelium counteragents, both on ship and on the surface of Samarkand.

Meanwhile, back on Cheyne III, Pelter and Stanton have been repaired by black-market surgeon Sylac, and Arian has had a particularly hideous augmentation (an "aug") installed in his head.

They then pull the deranged golem, Mr. Crane, out of storage and escape from Cheyne III on a smuggling ship piloted by Jarvellis.

They find many of the inhabitants on Huma wearing a new type of aug created by a company known as DragonCorp, and Pelter and his crew are all outfitted with them, except for Stanton.

Back on Viridian, Cormac makes his way to the Magadar forest, the last known coordinates of Maker, taking a small group of planetary regulars with him.