Emerald Eyes | Page 8

the
Unification War. In the years that followed the war, it attained a
position of preeminence among the bodies that constituted the United
Nations.

The gene pattern that produced Carl Castanaveras was not successfully
reproduced until April the eighteenth, in 2035, when a design that
became Jane McConnell was successfully imprinted upon a sterile egg.
In creating her, Suzanne Montignet localized three unique genes that
Carl Castanaveras possessed and no other living human being did. Jane
McConnell was, aside from her gender, his clone. She was the first and
last instance in which Suzanne Montignet had to resort to relatively
clumsy cloning techniques to ensure that the gene complex took
properly. Johann MacArthur was brought to term late in 2036; unlike
Jane McConnell he was a true genie, assembled gene by gene until a
design was found that Suzanne Montignet approved. Six such others
were born between 2036 and 2042.
In 2040 Darryl Amnier was appointed to the position of Prosecutor
General to the Unification Council.
For over a decade the Bureau of Biotechnology Research, and the
Peaceforcers who controlled them, thought Carl Castanaveras a failure.
An interesting failure. He seemed slightly stronger than his muscle
mass should have warranted, with greater endurance; but his muscle
mass, even with conditioning, was not exceptional. He moved with
abnormal speed, and was emotionally unstable.
At the age of twelve, when puberty struck him with full force, Carl
Castanaveras awoke one day and found that he could read minds.
He let others know, among them a Unification Councilor named Jerril
Carson, who was at that time the Chairman of the Unification Council
to supervise the Bureau of Biotechnology Research. That was the first
mistake. By the time the other abilities began to manifest, he had
learned enough to know that in knowledge there is power. As he grew
older, what would be known, more than a thousand years later, as the
Gift of the House of November, grew also. Carl Castanaveras learned
to hide that which he did not wish revealed: throughout history, slaves
have always found this a useful skill.
They were slaves, no less so than the indentured hunters of twenty-third

Century Tin Woodman, or the blacks of the early American South.
After the first shakeout, the Peaceforcers had three facilities where their
experiments in genetic engineering were conducted; following the
death of pioneer genegineer Jean Louis de Nostri, the facilities were
consolidated under the control of Suzanne Montignet. The slaves--the
"genies"--were relocated along with the research teams; and the
telepaths met the de Nostri.
There were times when Shana de Nostri did not mind the fact that she
was not human, but now was not one of those times.
She sat brooding on the mat at the side of the gym as a group of five
Peaceforcers put Carl through his paces. Her girlfriend Lorette was
with her, and the two of them were striking enough that the four
Peaceforcers who were not engaged with Carl kept sneaking glances,
mostly at Shana. She was no better looking than Lorette, only less
modestly dressed. In gross physiological detail they resembled human
women closely enough that human men often found them attractive.
The differences were minor enough that a good cosmetic biosculptor
might have made them look human, had they desired to look human. At
one point, while he lived, Doctor de Nostri had, in a fit of conscience,
offered that option to the de Nostri. Their tails would have had to be
amputated, and their fur removed permanently; the claws would have
been replaced with fingernails. Facial reconstruction would have
lowered the very high cheekbones, replaced their flat, wide noses with
noses that protruded properly. Sexually they were more like humans
than the leopards from whom the balance of their genetic makeup was
derived; male and female genitalia closely resembled those of normal
humans. The females had breasts that would produce milk when one of
the maturing seventy-three de Nostri females finally bore children.
The de Nostri had rejected the offer: the de Nostri were proud of their
appearance.
Lorette had, like most of the female de Nostri, made concessions to the
morals of the--mostly American--humans among whom they now
found themselves. Her breasts were covered by a loose blouse, and her
genitals were covered by a pair of baggy pants that had been altered to

accommodate her tail.
Shana was nude except for her fur. Her nipples were clearly visible,
and a human who stared--and some had, though not more than
once--could have made out the outline of her genitalia through her fur.
She was damned if she would put on a second layer of skin when the
weather did not require it.
Now Carl sparred with a hulk of a Peaceforcer who had to outmass him
two to one. Shana and Lorette