For the most part the story occupies itself with the secret diary of Edward Malone, a reporter at the Daily Gazette. The shocking fact revealed is the beheading of an eight year old boy in a quiet Cornwall town. This episode is linked to the mysterious discovery of a strange phenomenon named by zoologists "King of rats", that is a group of rats who live their lives, from birth, attached by their tails.
The events take place during the First World War and Malone finds himself involved with Dr. Stapleton, a bizarre entomologist with an enigmatic past, and an obscure mystery which takes them, first to Australia then to South Africa, on the trail of two famous entomologists who died in strange circumstances whilst studying underground termite communities.
Accompanying them on this trip were persons of exceptional brilliance eg. Eugène N. Marais, a Southafrican writer, Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician, and an Italian physician expert in radio-technology. These people were alive at the time these events took place. Behind the curtain we become aware of the disturbing manuvers of international power, that want to take the opportunity to develop a powerful weapon which is directly related to the termite's system of communication.
Early on, the scene returns to the incident in Cornwall where Malone and the others discover an enormous underground kingdom of giant mantis, ruled by a large gellatinous mass that produces cerebral activity (the Queen's Mind) with the ability to modify reality. In order not to suffocate with a continuous manifestation of fatty gelatinous matter, the Queen depends on the devotion of a group of local children. Only they know of the existence of that extraordinary place.
The second part of the story returns to the findings in Malone’s diary, that bring us to the present, and is the cause of great mystery. Another journalist, a modern day Malone, retraces his footstapes and vanishes without a trace.
The third part takes place in the 1600's. Terrible events throw a tranquil Italian convent into caos. A Saints Inquisition is investigating the events surrounding the miracles of a monk. Finally the much awaited and ambiguous epilogue.