She sat up and scrubbed herself all over with sand. The stream flowed around her and spilled through the outlet onto the sand. Snake’s hands lingered on her body. The pleasure of cool water, relaxation, and touch reminded her with an almost physical shock how long it was since anyone had touched her, since she had acted on desire. Lying back in the pool, she fantasized about Arevin.
Barefoot and bare-breasted, her robe slung over her shoulder, Snake descended from the bathing-pool. Halfway back to Grum’s camp, she stopped short, listening again for a sound that had touched the edge of her hearing. It came again: the smooth slide of scales on rock, the sound of a moving serpent. Snake turned carefully toward the noise. At first she saw nothing, but then, finally, a sand viper slid from a crack in the stone. It raised its grotesque head, flicking its tongue out and in.
With a faint mental twinge, recalling the other viper’s bite, Snake waited patiently until the creature crawled farther from its hiding place. It had none of the ethereal beauty of Mist, no striking patterns like Sand. It was simply ugly, with a head of lumpy protuberances and scales of a muddy dark brown. But it was a species unfamiliar to the healers, and, more, it was a threat to Arevin’s people. She should have caught one near his camp, but she had not thought to. That she had regretted ever since.
She had not been able to vaccinate his clan because, not yet knowing what diseases were endemic, she could not prepare the right catalyst for Sand. When she returned, if she were ever permitted to return, she would do that. But if she could capture the viper sliding softly toward her, she could make a vaccine against its venom as well, as a gift.
The slight breeze blew from the viper to her; it could not scent her. If it had heat-receptors, the warm black rocks confused it. It did not notice Snake. Its vision, she supposed, was no better than any other serpent’s. It crawled right in front of her, almost over her bare foot. She leaned down slowly, extending one hand toward its head and the other out in front of it. When the motion startled it, it drew back to strike and put itself right in her grasp. Snake held it firmly, giving it no chance to bite. It lashed itself around her forearm, hissed and struggled, showing its startlingly long fangs.
Snake shivered.
“You’d like a taste of me, wouldn’t you, creature?” Awkwardly, one-handed, she folded her headcloth up and tied the serpent into the makeshift bag so it would frighten no one when she returned to camp.
She strolled down the smooth stone trail.
Grum had readied a tent for her. It was pitched in shade, its side flaps open to catch the faint cool early-morning breeze. Grum had left her a bowl of fresh fruit, the first ripe berries of the summertrees. They were blue-black, round, smaller than a hen’s egg. Snake bit into one slowly, cautiously, for she had never eaten one fresh before. The tart thin juice spurted from the berry’s broken skin. She ate it slowly, savoring it. The seed inside was large, almost half the volume of the fruit. It had a thick casing to protect it through the storms of winter and long months or years of drought. When she had finished the berry, Snake put the seed aside, for it would be planted near the oasis, where it would have a chance to grow. Lying down, Snake told herself to remember to take a few summertree seeds with her. If they could be made to live in the mountains, they would be a good addition to the orchard. A moment later she fell asleep.
She slept soundly, dreamlessly, and when she awoke that evening, she felt better than she had for days; she felt good. The camp was quiet. For Grum and her grandchildren, this was a planned rest-stop for their pack animals and themselves. They were traders, returning home after a summer of bartering and buying and selling. Grum’s family, like the other families camped here, held hereditary rights to a portion of the summertree berries. When the harvest was over and the fruit dried, Grum’s caravan would leave the desert and travel the last few days to winter quarters. The harvest would begin soon: the air was bright with the fruit’s sharp scent.
Grum stood near the corral, her hands folded across the top of her walking stick. Hearing Snake, she glanced around and smiled. “Sleep well, healer-child?”
“Yes, Grum, thanks.”
Squirrel looked almost ordinary among Grum’s horses; the old trader fancied appaloosas, piebalds, paints. She thought they made her caravan more noticeable, and probably she was right. Snake whistled and Squirrel tossed his head and cantered toward her, kicking his heels, completely sound.
“He’s been lonely for you.”
Snake scratched Squirrel’s ears as he pushed her with his soft muzzle. “Yes, I can see he’s been pining away.”
Grum chuckled. “We do feed them well. No one ever accused me and mine of mistreating an animal.”
“I’ll have to coax him to leave.”
“Then stay—come to our village with us and stay the winter. We’re no healthier than any other people.”
“Thank you, Grum. But I have something I have to do first.” For a moment she had almost put Jesse’s death out of her mind, but she knew it would never be far away. Snake ducked under the rope fence. Standing at the tiger-pony’s shoulder, she lifted his foot.
“We tried to replace the shoe,” Grum said. “But all ours are too big and there’s no smith to reforge his or make him a new one. Not here, not this late.”
Snake took the pieces of the broken shoe. It was nearly new, for she had had Squirrel reshod before ever entering the desert. Even the edges at the toe were still sharp and square. The metal itself must have been flawed. She handed the pieces back to Grum. “Maybe Ao can use the metal. If I take Squirrel carefully, can he get to Mountainside?”
“Oh, yes, since you can ride the pretty gray.”
Snake regretted having ridden Squirrel at all. Usually she did not. Walking was fast enough for her, and Squirrel carried the serpents and her gear. But after leaving Arevin’s camp she had felt the effects of the sand viper’s bite again, when she thought she had overcome them. Intending to ride Squirrel only until she stopped feeling faint, Snake had got on him, and then actually fainted. He carried her patiently, slumped as she was over his withers, on across the desert. Only when he began to limp did she come to, hearing the clank of the broken iron.
Snake scratched her pony’s forehead. “We’ll go tomorrow, then, as soon as the heat fades. That leaves all day to vaccinate people, if they’ll come to me.”
“We’ll come, my dear, many of us. But why leave us so soon? Come home with us. It’s the same distance as to Mountainside.”
“I’m going on to the city.”
“Now? It’s too late in the year. You’ll be caught in the storms.”
“Not if I don’t waste any time.”
“Healer-child, dear one, you don’t know what they’re like.”
“Yes, I do. I grew up in the mountains. I watched them down below every winter.”
“Watching from a mountaintop’s nothing like trying to live through them,” Grum said.
Squirrel wheeled away and galloped across the corral toward a group of horses dozing in the shade. Snake suddenly laughed.
“Tell me the joke, little one.”
Snake looked down at the hunched old woman, whose eyes were as bright and clever as those of a fox.
“I just noticed which of your horses you put him in with.”
Grum’s deep tan flushed pink. “Healer, dear girl, I planned not to let you pay for his keep—I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Grum, it’s all right. I don’t mind. I’m sure Squirrel doesn’t. But I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed come foaling time.”
Grum shook her head wisely. “No, I won’t, he’s well behaved for a little stallion, but he knows what he’s about. The spotty horses are what I like, especially the leopard ones.” Grum had a leopard-spot appaloosa, her prize: white with coin-sized black spots all over. “And now I’ll have stripy ones to go with them.”
“I’m glad you like his color.” Inducing a virus to encapsulate the proper genes had taken Snake a good bit of work. “But I don�
�t think he can get you many foals.”
“Why not? As I said—”
“He may surprise us—I hope he does, for you. But I think he’s probably sterile.”
“Ah,” Grum said. “Ah, too bad. But I understand. He’s from a horse and one of those stripy donkeys I heard about once.”
Snake let it pass. Grum’s explanation was quite wrong; Squirrel was no more a hybrid than any of Grum’s horses, except at a single short gene complex. But Squirrel was resistant to the venom of Mist and Sand, and though the cause was different, the result was the same as if he were a mule. His immunities were so efficient that his system quite likely did not recognize haploid cells, the sperm, as “self,” and so destroyed them.
“You know, Snake-child, I once had a mule that was a good stud. It happens sometimes. Maybe this time.”
“Maybe,” Snake said. The chance that her pony’s immunities had left him fertile was no more remote than the chance of getting a fertile mule: Snake did not feel she was deceiving Grum with her cautious agreement.
Snake returned to her tent, let Sand out of the serpent case, and milked him of his venom. He did not fight the process. Holding him behind the head, she squeezed his mouth open gently and poured a vial of catalyst down his throat. He was much easier to drug than Mist. He would simply coil up sleepily in his compartment, little different from normal, while the poison glands manufactured a complicated chemical soup of several proteins, antibodies for a number of endemic diseases, stimulants to the immune systems of human beings. Healers had been using rattlers much longer than they had had cobras; compared to Mist, the diamondback was tens of generations and hundreds of genetic experiments more adapted to catalytic drugs and their changes.
5
In the morning, Snake milked Sand into a serum bottle. She could not use him to administer the vaccine, for each person required only a small amount. Sand would inject too much of it too deeply. For vaccinations, she used an inoculator, an instrument with a circle of short, needle-sharp points that pressed the vaccine down just beneath the skin. She returned the rattler to his compartment and went outside.
The people from the camps had begun to gather, adults and children, three or four generations in each family. Grum stood first in line with all her grandchildren around her. Altogether there were seven, from Pauli, the oldest, to a child about six, the little girl who had polished Swift’s tack. They were not all Grum’s direct descendants, for her clan’s organization depended on a more extended family. The children of her long-deceased partner’s siblings, of her sister, and of her sister’s partner’s siblings, were equally considered her grandchildren. All those people had not come with her, only those who were her apprentices as future caravannaires.
“Who’s first?” Snake asked cheerfully.
“Me,” Grum said. “I said me, so me it is.” She glanced at the collectors, who stood in a colorful huddle off to one side. “You watch, Ao!” she called to the one who had asked for Snake’s broken gear. “You’ll see it doesn’t kill me.”
“Nothing could kill you, old rawhide-skin. I wait to see what happens to the others.”
“‘Old rawhide-skin’? Ao, you old ragbag!”
“Never mind,” Snake said. She raised her voice slightly. “I want to tell you all two things. First, some people are sensitive to the serum. If the mark turns bright red, if it hurts sharply, if the skin is hot, come back. I’ll be here till evening. If anything is going to happen it’ll happen before then, all right? If someone’s sensitive I can keep them from getting sick. It’s very important that you come to me if you feel anything worse than a dull ache. Don’t try to be brave about it.”
Among the nods and agreements Ao spoke up again. “This says you might kill.”
“Are you foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong if you break your leg?”
Ao snorted in derision.
“Then you’re not foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong and let yourself die if you overreact.” Snake took off her robe and pushed up the very short sleeve of her tunic. “The second thing is this. The vaccination leaves a small scar, like this one.” She went from group to group, showing them the mark of her first immunization against venom. “So if anyone wants the scar in a place less obvious, please tell me now.”
Seeing the tiny innocuous scar calmed even Ao, who muttered without conviction that healers could stand any poison, and then shut up.
Grum came first in line, and Snake was surprised to see she was pale. “Grum, are you all right?”
“It’s blood,” Grum said. “Must be, Snake-child. I don’t like to see blood.”
“You’ll hardly see any. Just let yourself relax.” Talking to Grum in a soothing voice, Snake swabbed the old woman’s arm with alcohol-iodine. She had only one bottle of the disinfectant left in the medicine compartment of the serpent case, but that was enough for today and she could get more at the chemist’s in Mountainside. Snake squeezed a drop of serum onto Grum’s upper arm and pressed the inoculator through it into her skin.
Grum flinched when the points entered, but her expression did not change. Snake put the inoculator into alcohol-iodine and swabbed Grum’s arm again.
“There.”
Grum peered at her in surprise, then glanced down at her shoulder. The pinpricks were bright red but not bleeding. “No more?”
“That’s all.”
Grum smiled and turned toward Ao. “You see, old pothole, it’s nothing.”
“We wait,” Ao said.
The morning progressed smoothly. A few of the children cried, more because of the sting of the alcohol than the shallow pricks of the inoculator. Pauli had offered to help, and amused the little ones with stories and jokes while Snake worked. Most of the children, and not a few of the adults, remained to listen to Pauli after Snake had vaccinated them.
Apparently Ao and the other collectors were reassured about the safety of the vaccine, for no one had yet fallen down dead when their turn came. They submitted stoically to needle pricks and alcohol sting.
“No lockjaw?” Ao said again.
“This will protect you for ten years or so. After that it’s safest to get another vaccination.”
Snake pressed the inoculator against Ao’s arm, then swabbed the skin. After a moment of grim hesitation, Ao smiled, for the first time, a wide, delighted smile. “We fear lockjaw. An evil disease. Slow. Painful.”
“Yes,” Snake said. “Do you know what causes it?”
Ao put one forefinger against the palm of the other hand and made a skewering gesture. “We are careful, but…”
Snake nodded. She could see how the collectors might get serious puncture wounds more often than other people, considering their work. But Ao knew the connection between the injury and the disease; a lecture about it would be patronizing.
“We never see healers before. Not on this side of the desert. People from other side tell us.”
“Well, we’re mountain people,” Snake said. “We don’t know much about the desert, so not many of us come here.” That was only partly true, but it was the easiest explanation to give.
“None before you. You first.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“I was curious. I thought I might be useful.”
“You tell others to come too. No danger for them.” Suddenly the expression on Ao’s weather-creased face darkened. “Crazies, yes, but no more than in mountains. Crazies everywhere.”
“I know.”
“Sometime we find him.”
“Will you do one thing for me, Ao?”
“Anything.”
“The crazy took nothing but my maps and my journal. I suppose he’ll keep the maps if he’s sane enough to use them, but the journal’s worthless to anyone but me. Maybe he’ll throw it away and your people will find it.”
“We keep it for you!”
“That’s what I’d like.” She described the journal. “Before I leave I’ll give you a letter for the healers�
�� station in the north mountains. If a messenger going that way took the journal and the letter there they’d be sure to get paid.”
“We look. We find many things but not books too often.”
“Probably it’ll never turn up, I know that. Or the crazy thought it was something valuable and burned it when he realized it wasn’t.”
Ao flinched at the thought of perfectly good paper being burned to nothing. “We look hard.”
“Thank you.”
Ao went off after the other collectors.
As Pauli finished the story of Toad and the Three Tree Frogs, Snake checked the children and was glad not to find the swelling and redness of any allergic reactions.
“‘And Toad didn’t mind not being able to climb trees any more,’” Pauli said. “And that’s the end. Go on home, now. You’ve all been very good.”
They ran off in a bunch, yelling and making frog-croak sounds. Pauli sighed and relaxed. “I hope the real frogs don’t think mating time’s arrived out of season. We’ll have them hopping all over camp.”
“That’s the kind of chance an artist takes,” Snake said.
“An artist!” Pauli laughed and started rolling up her sleeve.
“You’re as good as any minstrel I’ve ever heard.”
“Storyteller, maybe,” Pauli said. “But not a minstrel.”
“Why not?”
“I’m tone-deaf, I can’t sing.”
“Most of the minstrels I’ve met can’t make a story. You have a gift.”
Snake prepared the inoculator and put it against Pauli’s velvet-soft skin. The tiny needles sparkled in the drop of vaccine they held.
“Are you sure you want this scar here?” Snake asked suddenly.
“Yes, why not?”
“Your skin’s so beautiful I hate to mark it.” Snake showed Pauli her free hand, the scars. “I think I envy you a little bit.”
Pauli patted Snake’s hand, her touch as gentle as Grum’s but steadier, and with more strength behind it. “Those are scars to take pride in. I’ll be proud of the one you give me. Whoever sees it will know I’ve met a healer.”
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