The Gentle Hand

In the centuries between the Gene War and the dawn of the Exile War, the Gentle Hand grew and evolved into a quasi-monastic order of public servants dedicated to making the Union’s quasi-government work.

Born out of a need to keep telepathy and mind control from leading the human race back down the path to extinction, their first imperative was “Never rule.” The Archons tried to be a master race. That must never happen again. So Gentle Hands were raised from birth to understand themselves as servants, following orders, doing what was needed.

Because their telepathy and telekinesis made it very hard to successfully use force against them, most of the time Gentle Hands enforced the law — or “Union policies” as the Union preferred to say it. They did other work, especially in the court system and in interactions between planetary governments. But most of their time went to Union Policy Enforcement.

If the first imperative was “Never rule,” the second imperative was “Never let the gene for telepathy get out of control.”

Although engineered into the human race at first, telepathy and telekinesis were dominant inheritable traits. They passed from mother or father to son or daughter, regardless of whether both parents were telepathic or just one. To ensure that every telepath born was born into the Gentle Hand’s training about service and humility, they lived within an ironclad framework of marriage and children. Gentle Hands married only other Gentle Hands. They had two children per couple, and only two, to keep the number of telepaths stable.

For around 300 years, it had worked. It wasn’t perfect. Sometimes someone with the gene for telepathy was born outside of the Hand. Those were quickly tracked down, however, and brought back to Servants’ Yard. Other than those rogues, the dangerous gift of telepathy belonged exclusively to those trained to use it safely…