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brown-eyed parents. With psions, we know now that
hundreds of genes determine the traits.”
    “If you know which do the trick,” Tiller said, “why not just
engineer a race of super-telepaths?”
    “It’s been tried.” My grandmother had been “born” that way. “But
the genes are linked to lethal recessives. Even if the fetus survives, its
brain is often abnormal. The Skolian Convention was written to discourage
governments from engineering psions.”
    Tiller tilted his head. “I thought it was written as a
protest against the formation of the Trader’s Aristo government.”
    A bead of sweat rolled down my neck. “It was.”
    “The Aristos were created in the Rhon project,” Rex said. “Rhon
was trying to engineer humans with a high resistance to pain. The Project’s
other purpose was to select for empathy.”
    “Rhon?” Tiller sat up straighter. “You mean like the Skolian government?”
    “No,” Rex said.
    “Your government isn’t called the Rhon?”
    Soz? Rex thought. Do you want me to stop?
    I tried to relax. No. Go ahead.
    “Our government is called the Assembly,” Rex said. “It’s a
council of the heads of state from the leading Skolian worlds.”
    “Then what’s Rhon?”
    “He was a geneticist,” Rex said. “The word is also used now
for the few remaining descendents of a human dynasty that ruled on the planet
Raylicon five thousand years ago.”
    “And that dynasty predates your modern government?” Tiller
said.
    “That’s right,” I said. “Six thousand years ago an unknown
race took humans from Mesoamerica on Earth, seeded the planet Raylicon with
them, and then disappeared.”
    “Why?” Tiller asked.
    I shrugged. “We haven’t figured it out yet.” I didn’t think
the Allieds had yet recovered from that shock. In Earth’s twenty-first century,
when she finally sent her emissaries to the stars, they got one hell of a jolt.
We were already here. We and the Allieds had rapidly absorbed each other’s
cultures and DNA, until now, less than two centuries later, it was hard to
believe we had been separated for millennia. But the differences were still
there, running deep under the surface. It would be a long time before we
stopped being wary of each other.
    Rex leaned forward. “The humans stranded on Raylicon developed
space flight and went looking for Earth. But they never found it. Their fragile
civilization rose—and fell—during your Stone Age.” He paused. “It wasn’t until
four centuries ago that we finally moved out to the stars again. Rhon began his
studies then. He worked with the descendents of the Raylican dynasty trying to
bring back the empathic traits that had made them legendary. That’s why people
call the few of them living now ‘the Rhon.’ It refers to their psi rating. When
Rhon finished with them, their ratings were too high to quantify.”
    “I had always assumed Rhon was their name,” Tiller said.
    Rex shook his head. “Their family name is Skolia. That’s why
the Imperialate is the Skolian Imperialate.” He glanced at me. “Though not all
of the Skolias use their name in everyday life.”
    Tiller considered us. “So Rhon selected for empathy and got
Skolians, and he selected for pain resistance and got Aristos? I still don’t
get it. What do Aristos want with empaths?”
    “Aristos have a KAB, but no KEB or paras,” I said. “And
their KAB is abnormal. It detects only emotions caused by pain. But they can’t
interpret that input. Their thalamus tries to decrease their sensitivity to it
by relaying the data to the pleasure centers of their brain. It triggers an
orgasm.” I gritted my teeth. “They’re a bunch of sadists. They get off on
torturing people.”
    “But why empaths?” Tiller persisted.
    A fan in the wall whirred erratically, with a hiccup that
grated on my nerves. I was having trouble breathing. “We send stronger signals.”
I couldn’t keep my voice steady any longer. “We—provide for them. The stronger
the