Emerald Eyes | Page 8

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 were practicing speaking in English, rather than the French they had learned as children. Though most of the staff spoke understandable, hideously accented French, most of the thirty or so genies with whom the de Nostri shared the buildings did not. It was a failing shared, in greater measure, by New York City's residents.
"I cannot see that it matters," said Lorette primly, running her claws gently through the brown and white striped fur that covered Shana's back and shoulders. "Talk to the telepath if you must, your boyfriend--"
Shana's muscles tensed, and she growled so quietly that no human and most genies who were not de Nostri would have heard it. Lorette's ears pricked slightly, and without pausing she continued, "--or only your friend, if you will have it that way. But--"
She broke off again; the Peaceforcer sparring with Carl had picked the boy up and thrown him a full five meters. Shana sucked in her breath, and her claws unsheathed of their own accord. The