The Only Ones, by Carola Dibbell

The Only One, by Caola Dibble

The Only Ones is billed as a near future, post-pandemic science fiction novel.  But there is nothing post-pandemic about it.  Millions are dying and continue dying of diseases, great and small, and no one is more susceptible to these diseases than children.  This is a world in which orphans abound, streets and buildings are regularly sprayed with industrial strength antiseptics, and people are hosed down with anti-pathogen solutions as they move zone to zone.  Government institutions shatter or fray.  Cities and suburbs retain some form of order, while rural areas are lawless.  

But not everyone is susceptible to the diseases.  There are those called “hardys,” mostly women, who are immune to some or many of the diseases.  In a world where children are dying at an alarming rate, there is a demand for children; and where there is a demand, a supply follows.  Black market cloners pop up around the world, and females resistant to disease are highly prized.

We meet 19-year-old Inez Fardo at the Farm.  The Farm is a group of techies who want to cash in on the black market.  Inez’s life has not been nice.  She is an orphan schooled through 3rd grade and whose lineage is unknown.  When adoptive mother died in a fire, she was sold to someone who rented her to Johns and medical personnel interested in performing tests on human guinea pigs.  At 19 years of age, Inez has been scraped, cut, mutilated, raped, and has sold some of her teeth to get money (coupons) to stay alive.  But Inez has one thing going for her.  She is special type of hardy, a hardy resistant to all diseases.  Inez has never been sick, not even the common cold, all her short life.  She is the only one known to be resistant to all disease.  She is at the Farm to provide a wealthy woman who lost all her children within the same month with a new one, a hardy child.  The problem: Inez cannot have children.  Her reproductive organs were mutilated during the tests, but not so mutilated she can’t produce eggs.  The solution: clone her using her eggs and soma.  

They grow five fetuses in a tank, but only one manages to live and be born — Ani is her name.  But at the last moment the wealthy client bails, and Inez is left with the child.  At this point the SF takes a backseat to the story of Inez raising Ani — The Only Ones — in a harsh and unforgiving world, a social commentary on what it is like to be poor and different in a society that never accepts them. I’m not a hard SF fan, although I do like space opera.  I’m a social SF fan, the kind of SF that is disguised social commentary, and this novel delivers social commentary is spades.

Inez is one of the most fully realized characters in literature.  She is unforgettable.  I know I will always remember Inez as if she was once a real part of my life.  The story is narrated by Inez, and her voice is one of the most attractive parts of this novel.  She can read and write but is uneducated, so her dialog and thoughts are in bursts of staccato, short sentences.  But don’t underestimate Inez, she is the wisest person in the room, and she is hell bent on Ani getting an education and having a better has than she has had.  

The theme and mantra of this story is “Still Alive,” a phrase you will see again and again and that takes on special meaning given the world in which Inez and Ani live.  (Ani means “unique” and “beautiful.”)  To go any further would reveal major spoilers, so I’ll stop here except to say that you will be rooting for Inez all the way, and that you won’t soon forget her after you finish reading the last word on the last page of this wonderful book.