When human genes go wild, reproduction can no longer be left to chance - and it is Robert Wellton, Chief of the Genetics Bureau, the most feared and hated man in the world, who decides who will mate with whom.
But nobody can tell Wellton whom to mate with! He alone knows that the Genetics Program is collapsing, for fewer Normals are found each yer - and his father, who had been Genetics Chief before him, had discovered that not all Deviates are nature's failures. Some are telepathic and long-lived - like Robert Wellton himself.
Thus is born the plan that Adam Wellton conceived and that Robert Wellton carries on - the creation of a Secret People. Born of Normal mothers, they are all Wellton's sons and daughters, bearing his improved genes - living hidden in a colony in the Canadian wilderness, protected from the hate and jealousy of civilization by Wellton, who stays in telepathic touch with them.
But disaster strikes when a bitter powerful committee, suspecting the existence of concealed Deviates, begins a relentless search for them. Wellton knows there can be only one result - he Secret People will be hunted down and wiped out!
