The year is 1855. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic. The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage's perfection of his Analytial Engine. The scientists and industrialists are in charge, and history has been permanently and irrevocably altered. Not so human nature: conspiracy, intrigue, and treachery thrive. Against the brilliantly rendered panorama of this extraordinary yet eerily familiar society, three remarkable characters move toward a rendezvous with history: Sybil Gerald - fallen woman, politician's tart, daughter of a notorious Luddite agitator; Edward Leviathan Mallory - explorer and paleontologist, driven by the characteristic ambitions of the age; and Laurence Oliphant - diplomat, mystic, and spy. It is a box of punched Engine cards, of unknown purpose and origin, which draws these three together. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for...