Four extraordinary people-each with a supernatural or freakish talent-and an equally extraordinary machine are the central figures of this dazzling novel. What they do and what is done to them is a story of high imagination and hilarity-and a sobering lesson about the consequences of being different.

When the government's monolithic central computer is told of the existence of an Ozark mountain boy, who controls the Poltergeist phenomenon; a sacramental prostitute of Deva, Indian goddess of erotica; a former company clerk, who writes indelible, blue fire with the tip of his nose; and a young soldier, AWOL from the government's clandestine corps of elite murderers, programmed to kill anything that comes within their four-foot radii, it orders the F.D.I. (Federal Deviation Investigation) to bring them in for trial.

The plot concerns their efforts to remain free. The result is a major work of fiction, combining erudition and enormous imagination with lyric flights of comedy.