Starblood

PROLOGUE
    Timothy was not human. Not wholly.
    If you include arms and legs in a definition of the human body, then Timothy did not meet the necessary criteria. If you count two eyes in that definition, Timothy was also ruled out, for he had but one, and even that was placed in an unusual position: somewhat closer to his left ear than a human eye should be and definitely an inch lower in his overlarge skull than was the norm. Then there was his nose: it totally lacked cartilage; the only evidence of its presence was two holes, ragged nostrils punctuating the relative center of his bony, misshapen head. There was his skin: waxy yellow like some artificial fruit and coarse with large, irregular pores that showed like dark pinpricks bottomed with dried blood. There were his ears: very flat against his head and somewhat pointed, like the ears of a wolf. There were other things which would show up on closer examination: his hair (which was of different texture than any racial variant among the normal human strains), his nipples (which were ever so slightly concave instead of convex), and his genitals (which were male, but which were contained in a pouch just below his navel and not between his truncated limbs).
    There was only one way in which Timothy was even remotely human, and that was in his brain, his intellect But even here, he was not entirely normal, for his IQ was slightly above 250, placing him well within the limits of "genius."
    He was the product of the artificial wombs, a strictly military venture intended
to
produce living weapons: beings with psionic abilities who just possibly might bring the Asians to their knees. To a certain type of military mind, the human body is little more than a tool to be used as the officer wishes,, and such were the men in charge of the wombs. When results like Timothy slid from the steamy chambers, gnarled and useless specimens, they shook their heads, ignored public condemnation, and went on with their mad work.
    Timothy was placed in a special home for subhuman products of the wombs, where it was expected he would die within five years. It was in his third year there that they came to realize Timothy (he was the T birth in the fifth alphabetical series, thus his name) was more than a mindless vegetable… it happened at feeding time. The nurse had been dutifully spooning pap into his mouth, cleaning his chin as he dribbled, when one of the other "children" in the ward entered its death throes. She hurried off to assist the doctor, leaving Timothy hungry.
    Due to the training of a new staff nurse that afternoon, he had inadvertently been skipped during the last meal. He was ravenous now. When the nurse did not respond to his caterwauling, he tossed about on the foam mattress. Legless and armless as he was, there was nothing he could do to reach the bowl of food that rested on the table next to his crib, painfully within sight of his one, misplaced eye. He blinked that eye, squinted it, and lifted the spoon without touching it. He levitated the instrument to his mouth, licked the pablum from it, and sent it back to the bowl for more.
    It was during his sixth spoonful when the nurse returned, saw what he was doing, and promptly fainted dead away. That same night, Timothy was moved from the ward. Quietly.
    He did not know where they were taking him. Indeed, lacking the sensory stimulation afforded most three-year-olds, he did not even care. Without proper stimulation, he had never developed rational thought processes. He understood nothing beyond the basic desires of his own body: hunger, thirst, excretion. He could not wonder where they were taking him.
    He was not permitted to remain ignorant for long. The military hungered for success (they had only had two others) and hurried his development They tested his IQ as best they could and found it slightly above average. They were jubilant, for they had feared they would have to work with a psionically gifted moron. Next, the computers devised an educational program suited to his unique history, and initiated it at once.
    They expected him to be talking in seven months: he was verbalizing in five weeks. They expected him to be reading in a year and a half; he was quantitatively absorbing on a college level in three months.
    Not surprisingly, they found his IQ rising. Intelligence quotient is based on what an individual has learned, as well as what he inately knows. When Timothy had first been tested, he had learned absolutely