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the effrontery, did not protest because he was briefly speechless. Hanna decided to take advantage of his silence. She did know some history: her own.
    â€œMr. Charpentier,” she said, “I would like to tell you a story. I ask only that you listen.”
    Without turning to look at him, or waiting for a response, she began.
    â€œMy many-times-great grandmother was named Constanzia Bassanio. She was born on Earth, and she was a member of the first completely telepathic generation. Whatever plans the governments of Earth had for telepaths when they started the so-called New-Human Genetic Project had been dropped. They were already afraid of what they saw in people like Constanzia’s mother and father. They were terrified of children like Constanzia. And that fear seeped into the population of Earth like poison.”
    He wasn’t interrupting, at least.
    â€œBy the time Constanzia was six, no one identified as a telepath was safe anywhere on Earth. Many were murdered. So were others who were not telepaths; it was enough to point a finger and shout ‘New-human!’ and a mob would form.
    â€œThe governments of Earth built an enclave—a sanctuary, they called it—and moved the entire population of the New-Human Project into it. There were fifty to sixty thousand people there, all telepaths. Except the guards. They had to be true-human, because it’s hard for telepaths to learn to fight. We feel other people’s pain. And that first generation had not learned to block, even when it meant the difference between surviving and—not.”
    Charpentier had not moved. The tea was ready. Hanna filled two mugs and set them on the small table nearby. She still did not look at Charpentier, and she didn’t stop talking either.
    â€œConstanzia spent her entire childhood and adolescence in that enclave. Conditions were humane, but if she wanted to go out, she had to have an armed true-human escort. In time, people stopped asking to go out. At some point the guards had begun to feel that they were not guarding the telepaths from true-humans, but the other way around.”
    Hanna sat down and sipped tea.
    â€œAll this guarding was getting expensive. So the governments of Earth built another enclave, this one on Earth’s airless moon, where there was no population to guard against—or to guard. Earth’s satellite keeps one face always to the planet, a spectacular sight. I’ve seen it. But the enclave was built deep inside. The people in it never saw the home they had been torn from, and they never saw the sun.
    â€œThis enclave was segregated by gender. The governments of Earth were afraid to kill some sixty thousand people outright. There would have been a terrible outcry, even with the endemic hatred of telepaths. But this way the problem would, so to speak, die out. No more telepathic children, no more problem. And meanwhile the entire population was well away from Earth.
    â€œThe governments of Earth were so used to guarding, however, that they kept it up. It couldn’t have been easy for the guards, either. A telepath doesn’t just tell you he’s in pain; he makes you feel it with him. But by then the character of the true-humans chosen to be guards had by necessity changed. They were selected, so to speak, to be impervious to the suffering of others. At least that. I will not say they were chosen specifically to enjoy it. But many of them, it appears, did.
    â€œThe first weeks were terrible. The guards could not stand the bombardment of emotion. They urgently needed to force the captives to stop projecting their fear and grief, their loneliness at being separated from spouses and lovers and children, and they turned to violence. Many people were beaten, including Constanzia. It’s said she was badly scarred.
    â€œIt’s hard to keep beating innocent people if you see them as people, so steps were taken to make the people seem less human. They