"What exactly is a Mother?" Mike Wilkins and Jim Parker have to ask this question, for in their 28th century world, women are unknown, children appear seemingly from nowhere, and "fatherhood" is the government-assigned duty of some, but not all, men. They still drive gasoline-powered cars, cigarettes are common, and their guns fire bullets, not laser beams. A man appears with the answer to their question, and the two Army officers find themselves drawn into a conspiracy to expose the hidden history of women. They learn of a man-made biological catastrophe that pitted the sexes against each other, and how the government's truly unique reaction to this crisis led to the rise of an absolute monarchy in America, and placed mankind's future in a very precarious position. Mike and Jim have serious doubts about the story at first, but when they find evidence to support it, and lives are terminated because of it, they become its most ardent advocates. They only hope that they are in time to save humanity from a fate literally worse than death.