On a normal working day, feeling a bit under the weather but not to sick too go in to work, Lydon Prellig found himself being removed from his place of work in a wheelchair and transported to an isolation hospital. He had survived in a release of a toxic substance which had killed several dozen people and government scientists, led by the deliberately unpleasant Dr. Ermine, wanted to find out what was special about him.
   Prellig's 'speciality', when it was uncovered, turned out to be something so unexpected that he was transported to an official research station -- Research Station Cromwell -- which was housed in a former nuclear survival bunker. Here, Prellig learned that the government had a programme running to investigate and exploit the talents of telepaths, and that he was a unique creature -- an anti-telepath, who could not be 'scanned' even by the most powerful telepaths in the programme.
   Ripped from the life that he knew without even a 'by your leave', Prellig rebelled against the bland assumption that the government had the power to shut him in a hole in the ground 'in the national interest' -- and he showed that he had another hidden talent for the researchers to investigate.
   The assassination of the prime minister threw the country into turmoil. Rebellious elements used it as an excuse to assert themselves, the authorities clamped down and Prellig found himself the target of kidnap-or-kill operations by foreign powers. And at the end of Part 1 of the novel, Dr. Ermine was reporting his death to the residents of Research Station Cromwell.
   But there was a lot more to come ...