Clare, a Newearth Human Services Detective, wants what her partner, Bala, already has: a loving family. Given the chance to keep her job, grow a baby in a scientifically advanced artificial womb, and forgo pregnancy complications, Clare accepts an alien scientist's tempting offer. Now she can focus on the newest race on the planet, an ancient Neanderthal relative who sees humans as barbarians.

Desperate mechanical men, bent on saving their race from extinction, find hope in the newest bio-technology. When two hybrid sons are born, they are offered wildly different life experiences, setting in motion a future that advanced beings worried about but no one in the universe could have predicted.