From the winner of the 1995 Nebula Award, a science fiction thriller about the Human Genome Project.

Pierre Tardivel is a scientist working on the Human Genome Project. He is a driven man, working with the awareness that he may not have long to live: he has a fifty-fifty chance of dying from the incurable Huntington's disease. While trying to get medical insurance he discovers that his insurer is secretly taking genetic samples of policy holders.

When he investigates what he thinks is merely a plot by the insurance company to illegally screen clients at risk from genetic diseases, he finds a string of unsolved murders of people insured by the company.

The implication is terrifying. With the help of the same scientific breakthroughs as Pierre himself is making, an insurance company is weeding out the weak and helpless to boost profits. But when Pierre investigates further, he finds that even this appalling scenario falls short of the evil enshrined in the truth behind the murders.