Otto McGavin is an Anglo-Buddhist who has been recruited as a spy defending human and alien rights for the interstellar clandestine government agency known only as TBII. Each job takes him to a new planet with wildly different rules and brutal abuses that he must investigate and put a stop to. He takes on a new implanted personality for each job, with his own self buried, ready for action when necessary. But he faces a loss of self as the jobs he does become more personally horrific, and the artificial personalities and hypnotic training suppress more of his own being.