First appeared in Asimov’s and
won a Hugo. Also up for Asimov's and Locus Poll Awards. Reprinted by Isaac Asimov.
What feels like a contemporary fantasy
gradually becomes SF. Mick Winger is
being interviewed by what sounds like the authorities, what kind of authorities
(their allegiances) becomes murky for a while.
Mick tells his story of growing up in an orphanage and giving people cancer
he doesn’t mean to kill--some he loves, some he didn’t feel deserved to die for
what they did.
At seventeen he’s working for
Mr. Kaiser who accepts him as he is, but he runs into a girl in Roanoke who
knows what he is and his abilities. He’s
a little attracted to her but he has to go home to Eden (in the Carolinas, but
likely intended to say you can’t go back to your Eden), but then he finds they’re
looking for him and will pull him to them, so he tries to go in the opposite
direction. He hitches with a guy traveling
to D.C. but when Mick falls asleep, the guy drops him off in Eden.
There he meets his blood
relatives who let him go to an orphanage because he was so powerful and could
have killed for not feeding him on time.
In the colony of his people, the kids go unwashed for the same
reason. They have an inbreeding program
to enhance abilities, but Mick doesn’t want to take part, so they try to kill
him. While he’s on the lamb, he learns a
little more about the girl from Roanoke and her people. They’re facing off for war.
Interesting meditation on the
Biblical concept of “eye for eye” so often used/implied in narratives, often unquestioned. Here, it's questioned.
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