his is the story of a projection of life in the 25th century where people have been reduced to Cerebromorphs - disembodied brains stored in tanks in huge Depositories and wired up to computers, memory files and mammoth study programmes. In the tanks they are supposed to pass through various levels of understanding before they are liberated, implanted in hatchery-nurtured perfect bodies and sent back out into the pastoral paradise that flourishes outside. The novel follows a small group of these brains: that of a 12-year-old boy killed in an air crash; an ex-movie queen, fastidious, rich and lethal: a former Nigerian sculptor and the last of the great humanists.