Charles Oberndorf Knihy

In the enclosed urban sprawl of the Construct, a sexually transmitted disease called "hives" poses a deadly threat. The government controls the epidemic with concentration camps for the victims and sterile, state-run whorehouses for the healthy.When Anna Baxter's boyfriend commits suicide, she hires a male prostitute to help her recover from her grief. Ros Lawrence, her new lover, is trained as a caring companion as well as a sex partner- and what starts as a business transaction becomes a relationship neither Anna nor Rod could have imagined. But in a world where every touch is monitored and where the forces running the concentration camps are relentlessly opposed by terrorists with thei own agenda, an unlikely liason can be devastating.