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Corry Csurik has a scar on her lip. It’s because she’s a mutie.
Most people don’t know that, just by looking. There’s plenty of ways a person could get a scar like that, people don’t assume “mutie” straight off. But Corry’ll tell anyone who asks how she got it, she ain’t ashamed.
Everyone in Silvy Vale knows of course, and none of them mind one bit. Least ways, none of the younger ones mind, some of the adults probably do, but none of them says nothing. Folks in Silvy Vale know better, nobody dares say anything against Corry or her Mama, not since the Mutie Lord came and set things straight.
Corry was born in the hospital in Hassadar like the rest of her siblings, and she came out with her lip split in two and a hole going up straight through the top of her mouth. Mama showed her pictures when Corry asked, and it looked real delightfully gruesome, but the doctors in Hassadar fixed it up right quick, and all she’s got to show for it now is the scar.
Corry’s the oldest of Lem Csurik’s kids, all of them born down at Hassadar General. She’s the oldest and the only mutie, except that she’s also not. Corry could have had a big sister, born way back ages ago, before Mama even went and got her education. Her name was Raina and she was a mutie just like Corry, except she was born up here in Silvy Vale instead of down in Hassadar, and she was murdered by her grandmother.
That’s when the Mutie Lord came, to bring justice for Raina, because Mama walked all the way down the mountain and asked him.
There ain’t many Count’s sons, Corry thinks, who’d go and do a thing like that for any baby, let alone a mutie one. But the Mutie Lord did. There’s folks as says that the Mutie Lord only came because Raina was a mutie, but Mama says that ain’t so. The Mutie Lord came because he cared. Because the Mutie Lord cared about Mama and he cared about Raina, and he cared about justice, even in Silvie Vale.
Old folks up here still talk about old Count Piotr, who fought the Cetagandans from these mountains. Most poor folks in other districts don’t care much for their counts one way or the other, but us as belongs to the Vorkosigans are different. Old Count Piotr was a legend, not the sort as stays far away in some castle, but the substantial sort, as gets its hands dirty and is of some use. Everyone’s proud of Count Aral, of course, because he was Regent and Prime Minister and all, and Mama says it was him as let her tell about Raina, gave her an audience all formal like, and sent the Mutie Lord to be his Voice, so Corry supposes he’s all right enough too. But it’s the Mutie Lord, who will be Count one day, who is the best of all of them, Corry thinks.
Mama and Da go down to Hassadar sometimes to argue with folks about Silvie and the rest of the villages up here in the Dendariis. What sort of things they need up here to make their lives better, and what sort of things they really don’t need, whatever the Countess says.
(Mama’s got a whole lot of respect for the Countess on account of all the things she’s done for them as lives out in the backcountry, enough she named Corry after her even. But the lady’s got some strong ideas about what it is they should want when it comes to modernizing and so forth, and Mama gets right fed up sometimes explaining to her and her city experts that it ain’t their right to get to decide what’s best for them, them as belong to these mountains are more than capable of doing that on their own.)
Anyway, Mama goes down to Hassadar a lot, and she brings the kids along too a lot of the time, and it was in Hassadar that some city boy punched Corry for calling the Mutie Lord the Mutie Lord.
Corry just stared at him sorta aghast for a second after, because didn’t this boy’s da ever tell him it ain’t right to hit girls? But then Corry supposed he could be from a modern family that thought that old fashioned chivalry was a kind of oppression, so maybe the punching was a sort of compliment.
“Don’t you dare call Lord Vorkosigan that, he’s our Count’s son and I won’t let some backcountry bumpkin disrespect him,” the boy said.
And if he’d had the sense to stop there, Corry might’ve let it be, might even have apologized. Because there’s folks as think calling anyone a mutie ain’t right on account of the word itself being dirty. Corry’s never agreed with it, mind, so far as she can see, words is words, it’s people as have to go and be rude about it. But if the boy just didn’t like calling him the Mutie Lord on account of the word, that’d be fair enough. But then he had to go and keep talking.
“Lord Vorkosigan isn’t a mutant, he was deformed by a soltoxin attack, but his genes are as good as anyone’s.”
Corry’d crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes at him real stern, “What difference does that make?” She said.
The boy looked baffled, “It’s the whole point isn’t, it? We can’t have a Count with some kind of mutation. The whole line would be tainted. And a mutation like that , they say he’s completely deformed.”
Corry’d turned her eyes into a full on glare then, she knew how to be right scary when she wanted, “There ain’t nothing wrong with being a mutie, I’m a mutie,” Corry said, and the boy stared at her, shocked, that she was a real honest breathing mutie standing in front of him, and that she’d said it right out like that in broad daylight, “D’you think it matters to the Mutie Lord one bit how he got the way he did? Bet it don’t hurt less to have his bones all stunted and fragile on account of soltoxin instead of a mutant gene. And anyhow, if you’re so worried about the precious bloodline, you know for certain any Vorkosigan babe’d be cooked up in one of them fancy uterine replicators and gene cleaned and all. But it don’t matter either way, because being all mutie looking as he is doesn’t make the Mutie Lord any less of a Count’s heir a smidge. It don’t make him less clever, and it don’t make him less kind, and it don’t make him less wise, and he’ll be best of all the Vorkosigans there ever was when he’s count, mark my words. So you’ll take it back, else I’ll have more than words for you, and you may be egalitarian enough to hit a girl, Piotr Gansy,” (that being the boy’s name) “But I’m betting you ain’t so egalitarian you’d fancy being beat by one.”
The boy didn’t apologize, but he did run off, and Corry supposed that was satisfaction enough. She likes to think she gave him something to think on, at least.
Corry thinks on it often enough, certainly, her and the Mutie Lord. Because the Mutie ain’t a mutie, technically, but he looks it, and Corry is a mutie, but she don’t. The folks in Silvy Vale, they know what’s what these days. But Corry’s heard folks down in Hassadar, grown folks she ain’t in any position to lecture. They talk about the Mutie lord, and sometimes they talk something ugly. And Corry supposes it’s even worse in other places, where folks aren’t predisposed to like him, him being their very own Vorkosigan, and she supposes it was worse when he was younger, before he went and got himself made Lord Auditor and all. And there ain’t nothing he can do about it, because everyone who looks at him sees a mutie.
Corry’s not sure what she wants to do with herself when she’s grown, but she’s got an idea of going to university on one of Countess Cordelia’s scholarships, maybe all the way in Vorbarr Sultanna. She’ll have a choice then, of whether or not she’ll tell folks she’s a mutie. She supposes it ain’t none of their business, really, but she thinks she’ll tell anyway. Because she can , see, and Raina can’t.
Mama says that uterine replicators are getting more and cheaper all the time. By the time Corry’s ready to be thinking of having children of her own, maybe there’ll be some even for folks in Silvy Vale. Someday, maybe there won’t be any more muties like Corry. There’s always been accidents, though, and there’s always been war, and Corry can’t see that changing any time, so there’ll always be muties like the Mutie Lord.
It matters , Corry thinks. It matters how folks think, and it matters how folks see each other. It matters what and who folks count as important. They learned that, they as live in Silvy Vale, when the Mutie Lord came all the way out to bring justice for Raina. So Corry’ll tell folks she’s a mutie, because she was lucky, growing up in Silvy Vale. She’ll say it because it matters, and she won’t be shamed. She’ll say it for all those as don’t get a choice whether to say or no.