Out of a governement laboratory so sinsister and secret that its very name cannot be whispered and into the life of certain good and evil people come two escaped creatures, one murderous and one benign and both "changed, changed utterly" from the ordinary animals they once were. To the scientists who fashioned them they are the end products of experiments in genetic engineering and enhanced intelligence and they want them back. To the people who encounter them they spell either doom or a touching new kind of love. At the climax of this heart-stopping novel they will inevitably meet.