Alien Blood Author:Joan D. Vinge In the 23rd century, the interplanetary Human Federation is controlled by such giant hereditary combines as Centauri Transport, to whom the poor of any world are little more than slave labor. Psions - men and women who possess any sort of psychic abilities - are hated and feared.... particularly if they can learn Combine secrets. But a teenage p... more »ickpocket living on the periphery of society can get by. Even if-like Cat, whose green feline eyes mark him as the halfbreed child of a human and a telepathic alien - he's an outcast among outcasts. Yet survival is never certain, no matter how street-wise one may be. Cat is picked up for stealing and sentenced to hard labor in a mining camp. He knows it means almost certain death, so he's more than willing to cooperate when he's drafted into an experimental group researching how psions' powers work...
and how they can be controlled. The truth is, Cat's own considerable talents are locked away behind an almost impenetrable mental barrier. But before he can really awaken his telepathy, he is betrayed.« less
A different theme than usual SF in that mental abilities are used in a very different way. People with mental abilities are treated as the lowest class of citizen.