Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  One of his people forced Snake’s head back, exposing her throat. North was so tall that Snake could still watch him lower the dreamsnake.

  The fangs sank into her carotid artery. Nothing happened. She knew nothing would happen. She wished North would realize it and let her go, let her lie down on the cold sharp rocks to sleep, even if she never woke up. She was too tired to fight any more, too tired to react even when North’s follower relaxed his hold. Blood trickled down her neck to her collarbone. North picked up another dreamsnake and held it at her throat.

  When the second dreamsnake bit her, she felt a sudden flash of pain, radiating from her throat all through her body. She gasped as it receded, leaving her trembling.

  “Ah,” North said. “The healer is beginning to understand us.” He hesitated a moment, watching her. “One more, perhaps,” he said. “Yes.”

  When he bent over her again, his face was in shadow and the light formed a halo of his pale, fine hair. In his hands, the third dreamsnake was a silent shadow. Snake drew back, and the grip of North’s followers on her arms did not change. The people who held her acted as if hypnotized by the black gaze of the serpent. Snake lunged forward, and for a moment she was free, but fingers like claws dug into her flesh and the man she had bitten snarled in fury. He dragged her back, twisting her right arm with one hand and digging the nails of his other into her wounded shoulder.

  North, who had stepped away from the scuffle, came forward again. “Why fight, healer? Allow yourself to share the pleasure my creatures give.” He brought the third dreamsnake to her throat.

  It struck.

  This time the pain radiated through her as before, but when it faded it was followed with her pulsebeat by another wave of agony. Snake cried out.

  “Ah,” she heard North say. “Now she does understand.”

  “No…” she whispered.

  She silenced herself. She would not give North the satisfaction of her pain.

  The followers released her and she fell forward, trying to support herself with her left hand. This time the intensity of the sensation did not fade. It built, echoing and re-echoing through the canyon of her body, reinforcing itself, resonating. Snake shuddered with every beat of her heart. Trying to breathe between the agonizing spasms, she collapsed onto the cold hard rock.

  Daylight filtered into the crevasse. Snake lay as she had fallen, one hand flung out before her. Frost silvered the ragged edges of her sleeve. A thick white coat, of ice crystals covered the tumbled rock fragments of the floor and crept up the side of the crevasse. Fascinated by the lacy pattern, Snake let her mind drift among the delicate fronds. As she gazed at them they became three-dimensional. She was in a prehistoric forest of moss and ferns, all black and white.

  Here and there wet trails cut the traceries, throwing them abruptly back into two-dimensionality, forming a second, harsher pattern. The stone-dark lines looked like the tracks of dreamsnakes, but Snake knew better than to expect any of the serpents to be active in this temperature, active enough to slide over ice-covered ground. Perhaps North, to safeguard them, had taken them to a warmer place.

  While she was hoping that was true, she heard the quiet rustle of scales on stone. One of the creatures, at least, had been left behind. That gave her comfort, for it meant she was not entirely alone.

  This one must be a hardy beast, she thought.

  It might be the big one that had bitten her, one large enough to produce and conserve some body heat. Opening her eyes, she tried to reach out toward the sound. Before her hand could move, if it would move, she saw the serpents.

  Because many more than one remained. Two, no, three dreamsnakes twined themselves around each other only an arm’s length away. None was the huge one; none was much larger than Grass had been. They writhed and coiled together, marking the frost with dark hieroglyphics that Snake could not read. The symbols had a meaning, of that she was sure, if she could only decipher them. Only part of the message lay within her view, so, slowly and stiffly, she turned her head to follow the connecting tracks. The dreamsnakes remained at the edge of her sight, rubbing against each other, their bodies forming triple-stranded helices.

  The serpents were freezing and dying, that must be it, and somehow she had to call North and make him save them. Snake pushed herself up on her elbows, but she could move no farther. She struggled, trying to speak, but a wave of nausea overcame her. North and his creatures: Snake retched dryly, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up and help purge her of her revulsion. She was still under the effects of the venom.

  The stabbing pain had faded to a deep, throbbing ache. She forced it back, forced herself to feel it less and less, but she could not maintain the necessary energy. Overwhelmed, she fainted again.

  Snake roused herself from sleep, not unconsciousness. All the hurts remained, but she knew she had beaten them when she forced them away, one by one, and they did not return. She was still free, and North could not enslave her with the dreamsnakes. The crazy had described ecstasy, so the venom had not affected Snake as it affected North’s followers. She did not know if that was because of her healer’s immunities, or because of the resistance of her will. It did not really matter.

  She did understand why North had been so certain Melissa would not freeze to death. The cold remained, and Snake was aware of it, but she felt warm, even feverish. How long her body could sustain the increased metabolism she did not know, but she could feel her blood coursing through her and she knew she did not have to fear frostbite.

  She remembered the dreamsnakes, active beyond possibility on the frost-jeweled ground.

  That all must have been a dream, she thought.

  But she looked around, and there among the dark hieroglyphics of their trails coiled a triplet of small serpents. She saw a second triplet, then a third, and suddenly in pure astonishment and delight she understood the message this place and its creatures had been trying to give her. It was as if she were the representative of all the generations of healers, sent here on purpose to accept what was offered.

  Even as she wondered at how long it had taken to discover the dreamsnakes’ secrets, she understood the reasons. Now that she had fought the venom off, she could understand what the hieroglyphics told her, and she saw much more than the many triplets of dreamsnakes copulating on the frigid stones.

  Her people, like all the other people on earth, were too self-centered, too introspective. Perhaps that was inevitable, for their isolation was well enforced. But as a result the healers had been too shortsighted; by protecting the dreamsnakes, they had kept them from maturing. That, too, was inevitable: dreamsnakes were too valuable to risk to experimentation. It was safer to count on nuclear-transplant clones for a few new dreamsnakes than to threaten the lives of those the healers already had.

  Snake smiled at the clarity and simplicity of the solution. Of course the healers’ dreamsnakes never matured. At some point in their development they needed this bitter cold. Of course they seldom mated, even the few that spontaneously matured: the cold triggered reproduction as well. And finally: hoping mature serpents would meet each other, the healers followed tedious plans to put them together…two by two.

  Isolated from new knowledge, the healers had understood that their dreamsnakes were alien, but they had not been able to comprehend just how alien.

  Two by two. Snake laughed silently.

  She recalled passionate arguments with other healers in training, in classes, over lunch, about whether dreamsnakes might be diploid or hexaploid, for the number of nuclear bodies made either state a possibility. But in all those passionate arguments, no one had been on the side of the truth. Dreamsnakes were triploid, and they required a triplet, not a pair. Snake’s mental laughter faded away into a sad smile of regret for all the mistakes she and her people had made for so many years, hampered as they were by lack of the proper information, by a mechanical technology insufficient to support the biological possibilities, by ethnocentrism. And by the forced i
solation of earth from other worlds, by the self-imposed isolation of too many groups of people from each other. Her people had made mistakes: with dreamsnakes, they had only succeeded by mistake.

  Now that Snake understood, perhaps it was all too late.

  Snake felt warm and calm and sleepy. It was thirst that roused her to wakefulness; thirst, then memory. The crevasse was perhaps as bright as it ever got, and the stones Snake lay on were dry. She moved her hand and felt heat seep into it from the black rock.

  She eased herself upright, testing herself. Her knee hurt but it was not swollen. Her shoulder merely ached. She did not know how long she had slept, but the healing had already begun.

  Water dripped in a tiny quick rivulet through the other end of the crevasse. Snake stood up and went toward it, bracing herself against the rock wall. She felt unsteady, as if she had suddenly become very old. But her strength was still there; she could feel it gradually returning. Kneeling beside the stream, she cupped water in her hand and drank cautiously. The water tasted clean and cold. She drank deeply, trusting her decision. It was exceedingly difficult to poison a healer, but she did not much care right now to challenge her body with more toxins.

  The near-freezing water ached in her empty stomach. She put thoughts of food aside and stood up in the center of the crevasse, turning slowly to inspect it in daylight. The walls were rough but not fissured; she could see no toe- or fingerholds. The edge was three times higher than she could leap even if she were not injured. But, somehow, she had to get out. She had to find Melissa, and they had to escape.

  Snake felt lightheaded. Afraid she would panic herself, she breathed deeply and slowly for a few long breaths, keeping her eyes closed. It was difficult to concentrate because she knew North would return, perhaps any second. He would want to gloat over her while she was awake, since he had overcome her immunities and affected her with the venom. His hatred must wish to see her groveling like the crazy, begging until he obliged her and growing weaker each time he did. She shivered and opened her eyes. Once he realized its true effect on her, he would use it to kill her, if he could.

  Snake sat down and unwrapped Melissa’s headcloth from her shoulder. The material was caked and stiff with blood, and she had to soak away the layer next to her skin. But the scab on the wound was thick and she did not begin to bleed again. The wound was not exactly clean: the scar would be full of dirt and grit unless she did something about it soon. But it would not become infected and she could not take any time over it now. She ripped a couple of narrow strips off one edge of the square of cloth and gathered the rest into a makeshift bag. Four big dreamsnakes lay languorously on the rocks almost within reach. She captured them, put them in the sack, and looked for more. The ones she had were certainly mature, at that size, and perhaps one or two were even forming fertile eggs. She caught three more, but the rest of the dreamsnakes had vanished. She walked across the stones more carefully, looking for any sign of lairs, but found nothing.

  She wondered if she had imagined or dreamt the mating scene. It had seemed so real…

  Whether she had dreamt it or not, there had been many more dreamsnakes in the crevasse. Either their holes were too well concealed for her to find without a more careful search, or North had taken all the rest of the serpents away.

  A green motion at the edge of her vision drew her around. She reached for the dreamsnake and it struck at her. She pulled her hand back, glad to see that even after all that had happened her reflexes were quick enough to avoid the fangs. She was not afraid of the bite of one of the serpents: her immunity to the venom would be extremely high right now. Each time she was exposed to it, it would take even more to affect her the next time. But she did not want to experience a next time.

  She captured the last big dreamsnake and put it in her bag, tied the cloth shut with one strip of material, and tied the whole thing to her belt with the other, leaving a long tether.

  Snake could see only one way to escape. Well, there was another way, but she doubted she had enough time to build herself a ramp of fragmented stone and stroll out. She returned to the far end of the crevasse, to the narrow space where the walls came together, where she had held Melissa.

  Something tickled her bare foot. She looked down and saw the eggling dreamsnake gliding away. She bent down and picked it up, gently so as not to startle it. The horny tissue had fallen away, and the scales beneath were pale pink all around its mouth. In time they would turn scarlet. The tiny serpent tasted the air with its three-pronged tongue, butted its nose against her palm, and flowed around her thumb. She slipped it into the breast pocket of her torn shirt, where she could feel it moving only a layer of material away. It was young enough to tame. The warmth of her body lulled it.

  Snake braced herself in the narrow space. Leaning back, she pressed her shoulders and her spine against the rock. The wound had not yet begun to hurt again, but she did not know how much stress she could stand. She set herself not to feel the injury, but exhaustion and hunger made concentration difficult. Snake put her right foot against the opposite wall and pushed, bracing herself. Carefully, she placed her other foot on the wall and hung suspended between the two faces of the crevasse. She pushed with both feet, sliding her shoulders upward, pushing back and down with her hands. She slipped her feet a little higher and pushed again, creeping upward.

  A pebble came free beneath her foot and she slid, falling sideways. She scratched at the wall, scrabbling to keep herself in position. Rock tore at her elbows and back. She slammed down, landing hard and badly. Struggling for breath, Snake tried to rise and then lay still. Down and up reversed and shimmered. When they finally steadied, she drew in a long breath and pushed herself to her feet again. Her bad knee trembled slightly with the strain.

  She had not, at least, fallen on the dreamsnakes. She put her hand to her pocket and felt the little one moving easily.

  Gritting her teeth, Snake leaned back against the wall. She pushed herself upward again, moving more carefully, feeling for broken stone before she put any pressure on a new spot. Rock scraped her back and her hands grew slippery with sweat. She kept herself going; she imagined being able to look over the edge of her prison and she imagined hard ground and horizons.

  She heard a noise and froze.

  It’s nothing, she thought. One piece of stone hitting another. Volcanic rock always sounds alive when it clashes against itself.

  The muscles in her thighs trembled with strain. Her eyes stung and her vision sparkled with sweat.

  The sound came again. It was no clattering rock but two voices, and one of them was North’s.

  Nearly sobbing with frustration, Snake slid back into the crevasse. Going down was just as hard, and it seemed to take an interminable length of time before she was far enough to jump the rest of the way. Her back and her hands and feet scraped against stone. The noise was so loud in the enclosed space that she was sure North would hear it. As a rock clattered down the side of the crevasse, Snake flung herself to the ground, curling her body around the sack of dreamsnakes. She froze there, by sheer will concealing the tremors of fatigue. Needing desperately to pant for breath, she forced herself to breath slowly, as if she were still asleep. She kept her eyes nearly closed, but she saw the shadow that fell over her.

  “Healer!”

  Snake did not move.

  “Healer, wake up!”

  She heard the scuff of a boot against stones. A shower of rock fragments rained down on her.

  “She’s still sleeping, North,” Snake’s crazy said. “Like everybody else, everybody but you and me. Let’s go to sleep, North. Please let me sleep.”

  “Shut up. There isn’t any venom left. The serpents are exhausted.”

  “They could give just one more bite. Or let me go down and get another, North. A nice big one. Then I can make sure the healer’s really sleeping.”

  “What do I care if she’s really sleeping or not?”

  “You can’t trust her, North. She’s sneaky. S
he tricked me into bringing her to you…”

  The crazy’s voice faded away with his and North’s footsteps. As far as Snake could hear, North did not bother to reply again.

  As they left, Snake moved only enough to put her hand over the pocket of her shirt. The eggling was, somehow, still all right; she could feel it moving slowly and calmly beneath her fingers. She began to believe that if she ever got out of the crevasse alive, the tiny dreamsnake would too. Or perhaps she had the order reversed. Her hand was shaking; she drew it away so it would not frighten her serpent. Turning slowly over on her back, she looked at the sky. The top of the crevasse seemed an immense distance from her, as if each time she had tried to scale the walls they had risen higher. A hot tear trickled from the corner of her eye back into her hair.

  Snake sat up all at once. Getting to her feet was slower and clumsier, but finally she stood in the narrow space between the walls and stared straight ahead at the face of the rock. The scraped places on her back rubbed against the stone, and the wound in her shoulder was perilously close to tearing open. Without looking upward, Snake put one foot against the wall, braced herself, wedged herself in with her other foot, and started up again.

  As she crept higher and higher, she could feel the cloth of her shirt shredding beneath her shoulders. The knotted headcloth rose from the ground and scraped up the wall beneath her. It started to swing; it was just heavy enough to disturb her balance. She stopped, suspended like a bridge from nowhere leading nowhere, until the pendulum below shortened its oscillation. The tension in her leg muscles increased until she could hardly feel the rock against her feet. She did not know how near the top she was and she would not look.

  She was higher than she had got before; here the walls of the crevasse gaped wider and it was harder for her to brace herself. With every tiny step she took up the wall she had to stretch her legs a little farther. Now she was held only by her shoulders, by her hands pushing hard against the rock, and by the balls of her feet. She could not keep going much longer. Beneath her right hand, the stone was wet with blood. She forced herself upward one last time. Abruptly the back of her head slipped over the rim of the crevasse and she could see the ground and the hills and the sky. The sharp change nearly destroyed her balance. She flailed out with her left arm, catching the edge of the crevasse with her elbow and then with her hand. Her body spun around and she snatched at the ground with her right hand. The wound in her shoulder stabbed her from spine to fingertips. Her nails dug into the ground, slipped, held. She scrabbled for a toehold and somehow found one. She hung against the wall for a moment, gasping for breath and feeling the bruises over her hipbones where she had slammed into the stone. Just above her breast, in her pocket, squeezed but not quite crushed, the eggling dreamsnake squirmed unhappily.