Poul Anderson, um conto sobre um mutante com poderes mentais em uma república lascada dos EUA nas Montanhas Rochosas?

História curta de Poul Anderson

"Cadeia de lógica", uma novela de Poul Anderson, segunda história em sua Crianças do Amanhã série.

Dos 60s,

A história foi publicada pela primeira vez (como "Lógica") em Ficção Científica EspantosaJulho 1947 (disponível no Internet Archive), mas era republicado em 1961 como a segunda parte de um "romance" de correção chamado Mundo do Crepúsculo.

situado numa república pós-apocalíptica dos EUA, centrada nas Montanhas Rochosas,

A história se passa na América pós-apocalíptica, mas no Centro-Oeste, não nas Montanhas Rochosas:

But that was sixteen or more years ago, and his memories of it were dim by now. The brief, incredible nightmare of a war that wiped out every important city in the world in a couple of months—its long-drawn aftermath of diseases, starvation, battle, work, woe, and the twisting of human destiny—that covered those earlier days, distorting them like rocks seen through a flowing stream. Now the campus stood in ruinous desolation, cattle staked out in the long grass, crumbling empty buildings staring with blind eyes at the shards of man.

After the cities went and the world's culture shattered into a fratricidal fighting for scraps, there was no more need for professors but a desperate shortage of mechanics and technicians. Southvale, a sleepy college town in the agricultural Midwest, drew itself into a tight communistic dictatorship to defend what it had. Those had been cruel times, when every stranger was met with guns. There had been open battles with wandering starvelings.

E o governo pode não ter influência em todos os lugares, mas também não é exatamente "fragmentado":

"It'll be a curious new culture," said Karen thoughtfully. "Scattered towns and villages, connected by airlines so fast that cities probably won't need to grow up again. Stretches of wild country in between, and—well, it'll be strange."

"Certainly that," said Wayne. "But we can hardly extrapolate at this stage of the game. Look, in places like this one people are pretty well back on their feet—blights and bugs and plagues just about licked, outlaws rounded up or gone into remote areas. Martial law was—ah—undeclared nine years ago, when the U.S. and Canada were formally united and Hugh Drummond was elected President."

A capital do novo governo está em um local chamado Taylor, Oregon, nas montanhas Cascade. (Isto é de "Filhos de amanhã" por Poul Anderson e FN Waldrop, a primeira história da série.)

personagem principal um jovem mutante

But Alaric—the ancient uncertain pain stirred in Wayne. He didn't know. Certainly the boy was mutant; an X-ray, taken when the town's machine had recently been put back into service, had shown his internal organs to be reversed in position. That meant little, it had happened before the war now and then, but apparently he also had moronic traits; for he spoke so little and so poorly, had flunked out of elementary school, and seemed wholly remote from the world outside him. But--well, the kid read omnivorously, and at tremendous speed if he wasn't just idly turning pages. He tinkered with apparatus Wayne had salvaged from the abandoned college labs, though there seemed to be no particular purpose in his actions. And every now and then he made some remark which might be queerly significant--unless, of course, that was only his parents' wishful thinking.

Well, Alaric was all they had now. Little Ike, born before the war, had died of hunger the first winter. Since Al's birth they'd had no more children. The radioactivity seemed to have a slow sterilizing effect on many people. And Al was a good kid—well-behaved, shy but not without affection; perhaps all you could really say against him was that he lacked color.

capaz de algum tipo de processamento paralelo mental, por exemplo, resolve o problema de fluxo turbulento;

"You see what I'm driving at," went on Wayne. "Our subhuman and human ancestors didn't need to see the world as a whole. They were only concerned with immediate surroundings and events. So we never evolved the ability to think of an entire entity. On a childish level, how many bricks can you visualize in your imagination, side by side and not quite touching? I believe the ordinary human limit is half a dozen. Alaric says he can see any number, and I believe him. He's a mutant."

"Some different brain structure," said Karen. "The X-rays don't show it, so it's probably a very subtle matter of cells or . . . what-you-call-'ems . . . colloids, or of organization."

"Al didn't have to think, in our ordinary sense of the word, to design that weapon," said Wayne. "His extensive knowledge of scientific principles and data coordinated in his mind to show him. Well, if my guess is right, then the cells of human bodies are resonant to a particular wave form. And at once he knew all the factors he'd need to generate that wave. It wasn't reasoned, as we reason, though it was thought—to him, thought on a very elementary, almost primitive level. Yet he didn't think of merely warning people."

"I get it," said Boyd. "Humans think in chains. He thinks in networks."

"Yes, that's about the size of it."

remanescente de `Brain Wave '....

Bem, o cão de Alaric também é um tipo de gênio mutante, talvez remanescente dos animais aprimorados Onda Cerebral:

The dog was warning him of danger from the south. But though the mutation shaping the canine brain had given it abnormal intelligence, he was still only a dog. He was not able to understand or reason above an elementary level. Three years ago, Alaric had noticed certain signs in the pup, and raised and trained it, and there was a curious partial rapport between them. They had cooperated before, to hunt or to avoid the wild dog-packs on their long hikes.