An alien among us reveals a conspiracy going back centuries — a conspiracy in which the course of human history has been warped by exiled members of a galactic migration. Living among us, passing as us through an arduous course of corrective surgery, and controlling us through a gift called "The Bonding," the exiles have been forcing us to develop a means to return them to the fleet from which they were cast to the earth. Along the course of development, mistakes have been made, lives have been lost, and false paths have been taken. Now, in three narratives, an exile who sympathizes with us tells what lies behind our turbulent history — a great work of deception and death, but also of hope. Is he our benefactor, or, as his people calls him, a traitor to the stars?