Three men in a head in a boat. Not the boat's head, an actual head of one of the three men. To say nothing of Mendoza. Poor old future playboy-turned-patsy-for-Martian-mass-murder Alec is obliged to live mentally and virtually with two earlier variations of himself, an effort to create a non-immortal enforcer type to do Dr Zeus' dirty work and maybe deal with ll the immortals piling up around the Silence in the future, from which no signal leaks. First order of business is to rescue Mendoza from an abominable prison in the deep past, after which she is physically restored but mentally amnesiac, leaving our beloved botanist a bit blank and pliable and naive, though there is a sense that she is enjoying a brief respite against the onset of recovered memory. meanwhile, Joseph slips into madness as he puts his own father back together and plots revenge against Alec. All the while the unknowable future creeps closer, and plans are laid and preparations for war discreetly seeded through time.