In the future, a ship of ten clones, known as a tendone, lands to exploit a mine that two non-clone humans have discovered on a faraway planet. An earthquake destroys the mine, killing nine of the ten clones, leaving the last one to learn to live as an individual.

In the future, a field ethnologist studies and gains access to a new culture by raising her two children there and learning through them. As the children mature, the culturally ascribed gender roles make life hard for the son.

In an alternative past where each human can access the minds of all other people at all times, a car crash causes one man to lose connection, and he becomes infatuated with the feeling of having a singular mind.