Inside the tent someone uncovered a clear bowl of lightcells. The blue bioluminescence spilling through the entrance washed over the black sand.
“Healer, Jesse wants you.” Merideth stood outlined in the glow, voice stripped of music, tall and gaunt and haggard.
Snake carried Mist inside. Merideth did not speak to her again. Even Alex looked at her with a fleeting expression of uncertainty and fear. But Jesse welcomed her with her blinded eyes. Merideth and Alex stood in front of her bed, like a guard. Snake stopped. She did not doubt her decision, but the final choice was still Jesse’s.
“Come kiss me,” Jesse said. “Then leave us.”
Merideth swung around. “You can’t ask us to go now!”
“You have enough to forget.” Her voice trembled, but not from fear. Her hair clung in tangles to her forehead and her cheeks, and what was left in her face was endurance near exhaustion. Snake saw it and Alex saw it, but Merideth stood, shoulders hunched, staring at the floor.
Alex knelt and gently raised Jesse’s hand to his lips. He kissed her almost reverently, on the fingers, on the cheek, on her lips, afraid of hurting her. But she laid her hand on his shoulder and kept him a moment longer. He rose slowly, silent, looked at Snake, and left the tent.
“Merry, please say goodbye before you go.”
Defeated, Merideth knelt beside her and brushed her hair back from her bruised face, gathered her up and held her. She returned the embrace. Neither offered consolation.
Merideth left the tent, in a silence that drifted on longer than Snake meant it to. When the footsteps faded to a whisper of sand against leather, Jesse shuddered with a sound between a cry and a groan.
“Healer?”
“I’m here.” She put her palm under Jesse’s outstretched hand.
“Do you think it would have worked?”
“I don’t know,” Snake said, remembering when one of her teachers had returned from the city, having met only closed gates and people who would not speak to her. “I want to believe it would have.”
Jesse’s lips were darkening to purple. Her lower lip had split. Snake dabbed at the blood, but it was thin as water and she could not stop the flow.
“You keep going,” Jesse whispered.
“What?”
“To the city. You still have a claim on them.”
“Jesse, no—”
“Yes. They live under a stone sky, afraid of everything outside. They can help you, and they need your help. They’ll all go mad in a few more generations. Tell them I lived and I was happy. Tell them I might not have died if they had told the truth. They said everything outside killed—so I thought nothing did.”
“I’ll carry your message.”
“Don’t forget your own. Other people need…” She ran out of breath, and Snake waited in silence for the command that would come next. Sweat slid down her sides. Mist sensed her fear and coiled tighter on her arm.
“Healer?”
Snake patted her hand.
“Merry took the pain away. Please let me go before it comes back.”
“All right, Jesse.” She freed Mist from her arm. “I’ll try to make it as quick as I can.”
The handsome ruined face turned toward her. “Thank you.”
Snake was glad Jesse could not see what was about to happen. Mist would strike the carotid artery, just beneath the jaw, so the poison would flow to Jesse’s brain and kill her instantly. Snake had planned that out very carefully, dispassionately, at the same time wondering how she could think about it so clearly.
Snake began to speak soothingly, hypnotically. “Relax, let your head fall back, close your eyes, pretend it’s time to sleep…” She held Mist over Jesse’s breast, waiting as the tension flowed away and the slight tremor ceased. Tears ran down her face, but her sight was brilliantly clear. She could see the pulse-beat in Jesse’s throat. Mist’s tongue flicked out, in. Her hood flared. She would strike straight forward when Snake released her. “A deep sleep, and joyful dreams…” Jesse’s head lolled, exposing her throat. Mist slid on Snake’s hands. Snake felt her fingers opening as she thought, Must I do this? and suddenly Jesse convulsed, her upper spine arched, flinging her head back. Her arms went rigid and her fingers spread and tensed into claws. Frightened, Mist struck. Jesse convulsed again, hands clenching, and relaxed completely, all at once. Blood pulsed in two thin drops from the marks of Mist’s fangs. Jesse shuddered, but she was already dead.
Nothing was left but the smell of death and a spirit-empty corpse, Mist cold and hissing atop it. Snake wondered if Jesse somehow had felt the pressure grow to breaking point, and had stood the pain as long as she could to save her partners this memory.
Shaking, Snake put Mist in the case and cleaned the body as gently as if it were still Jesse. But there was nothing left of her now; her beauty had gone with her life, leaving bruised and battered flesh. Snake closed the eyes and drew the stained sheet up over the face.
She left the tent, carrying the leather case. Merideth and Alex watched her approach. The moon had risen; she could see them in shades of gray.
“It’s over,” she said. Somehow, her voice was the same as ever.
Merideth did not move or speak. Alex took Snake’s hand, as he had taken Jesse’s, and kissed it. Snake drew back, wanting no thanks for this night’s work.
“I should have stayed with her,” Merideth said.
“Merry, she didn’t want us to.”
Snake saw that Merideth would always imagine what had happened, a thousand ways, each more horrible than the last, unless she stopped the fantasy.
“I hope you can believe this, Merideth,” she said. “Jesse said, ‘Merry took the pain away,’ and a moment later, just before my cobra struck, she died. Instantly. A blood vessel broke in her brain. She never felt it. She never felt Mist. Gods witness it, I believe that to be the truth.”
“It would have been the same, no matter what we did?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to change things for Merideth, enough to accept. It did not change anything for Snake. She still knew she would have been the cause of Jesse’s death. She saw the self-hatred vanishing from Merideth’s face, and she started toward the crumbled part of the canyon wall where the slope led up to the lava plain.
“Where are you going?” Alex caught up to her.
“Back to my camp,” she said dully.
“Please wait. Jesse wanted to give you something.” If he had said Jesse had asked them to give her a gift, she would have refused, but, somehow, that Jesse left it herself made a difference. Unwillingly, she stopped. “I can’t,” she said. “Alex, let me go.”
He turned her gently and guided her back to the camp. Merideth was gone, in the tent with Jesse’s body or grieving alone.
Jesse had left her a horse, a dark gray mare, almost black, a fine-boned animal with the look of speed and spirit. Despite herself, despite knowing it was not a healer’s horse, Snake’s hands and heart went out to her. The mare seemed to Snake the only thing she had seen in—she could not think how long—that was beauty and strength alone, without tragedy or pain. Alex gave her the reins and she closed her hands around the soft leather. The bridle was inlaid with gold in Merideth’s delicate filigree style.
“Her name is Slate,” Alex said.
Then Snake was alone, on the long trek to cross the lava before morning. The mare’s hooves rang on the hollow-sounding stone, and the leather case rubbed against Snake’s leg from behind.
She knew she could not return to the healers’ station. Not yet. Tonight had proved that she could not stop being what she was, no matter how inadequate her tools. If her teachers took Mist and Sand and cast her out, she knew she could not bear it. She would go mad with the knowledge that in this town, or that camp, sickness or death occurred that she could have cured or prevented or made more tolerable. She would always try to do something.
She had been raised to be proud and self-reliant, qualities she would set aside if she returne
d to the station now. She had promised Jesse to take her last message to the city, and she would keep the promise. She would go to the city for Jesse, and for herself.
At home in the healers’ station, Snake did not think of Center from one month to the next. But in the desert, among the caravannaires, life revolved around the city. Snake had begun to feel that her life too depended on it when at last the high, truncated mountain that protected it suddenly appeared, at dawn, before her. The sun rose directly behind the huge dark shape, outlining it in scarlet like an idol and turning the surrounding black sand iridescent.
Scenting water, sensing an end to their long journey across the eastern desert, the two horses raised their heads and quickened their tired pace. As the sun rose higher, the low thickening clouds spread the light into a red wash that covered the horizon. The storms of winter were all too close.
Melissa, Snake’s adopted daughter, awoke from her half-doze when Squirrel, the tiger-striped pony, broke into a jog. She gazed sleepily around them, and stared up at the mountain as its sunrise shadow enveloped them.
“I didn’t believe it was so big,” she said.
“Neither did I,” Snake said.
There was a wide dark pool at Center’s base, but no streams flowed into it, and none flowed away. A spring must feed it, Snake thought, from underwater, and then the water creeps out into the sand. At water’s edge, the ground cover of grass and low bushes grew lushly, but the summertrees had withered into rustling stalks. The wind whispered between the dry leaves and over the sand, coming first from one direction, then another, in the manner of winds near a solitary mountain.
Snake stopped when they reached the pool and Melissa halted beside her. Dismounting, Snake handed Slate’s reins to Melissa.
“Follow me when they’re finished drinking. I won’t go in without you so don’t worry. If the wind rises, though, come running. Okay?”
Melissa nodded. “A storm couldn’t come that quick, could it?” The child’s voice revealed the concern that her terribly scarred face could not show.
“I’m afraid it could,” Snake said.
She drank quickly and splashed water on her face. Wiping the drops on the corner of her headcloth she strode up the smooth ramp to a tall, narrow alcove sheltering the city’s entrance. She stopped before the steel gate. Generations of sandstorms had brushed the metal to a lustrous finish. But it had no handle, no bell-pull, no door knocker, no way Snake could see of summoning someone to let her in. She stepped forward, raised her fist, and banged it against the metal wall. The solid thud sounded not at all hollow. She pounded on the door again. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light in the recess, she saw that the wind-polished surface was actually concave, perceptibly worn down by the fury of the storms.
Her hand aching, she stepped back.
“About time you stopped that noise.”
Snake jumped at the voice and turned toward it. A panel clicked away into the side of the alcove and a window appeared. A pale man with bushy red hair glared out at her.
“What do you mean, beating on the door after we’ve closed?”
“I want to come in,” Snake said.
“You’re not a city dweller.”
“No. My name is Snake. I’m a healer.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Frowning, Snake waited until he stopped.
“So they’ve quit sending old crocks to beg, have they? It’s young ones now!” He laughed again. “I’d think they could choose somebody handsome.”
From his tone, Snake assumed she had been insulted. She shrugged. “Open the gate.”
He stopped laughing. “We don’t let outsiders in.”
“I’ve brought a message from a friend to her family. I want to deliver it.”
He did not answer for a moment, glancing down. “All the people who went out came back in this year.”
“She left a long time ago.”
“You don’t know much about this city if you expect me to find you some crazy’s family.”
“I know nothing about your city. But she told me her people were related to the keepers of the gate. And I can see it—the hair, the forehead…the eyes are different, though. Hers are brown.” This city-dweller’s eyes were pale green.
The young man scowled. “Did she happen to mention,” he said, attempting sarcasm, “just exactly which family she’s supposed to belong to?”
“The ruling one.”
His scowl deepened. He glanced down and his hands moved, out of Snake’s view. After several minutes he looked up slowly, one eyebrow arched in astonishment. “Wait there.” His face dissolved in multicolored lines, and Snake realized she had been speaking to an image.
Nothing happened for some time. Snake leaned outside the shallow alcove and looked around.
“Melissa!”
There was no answer. The false window had turned dead black, and Snake was about to leave it to find her daughter when it wavered back to life.
“Where are you?” a new voice called. “Come back here.”
Snake glanced outside one last time and returned reluctantly to the image-carrier.
“You upset my cousin rather badly,” the image said.
Snake stared at the panel, speechless, for the speaker was astonishingly like Jesse, much more so than the younger man. This was Jesse’s twin, or her family was highly inbred. As the figure spoke again the thought passed through Snake’s mind that inbreeding was a useful way of concentrating and setting desired traits, if the experimenter were prepared for spectacular failures among the results. Snake was unprepared for the implied acceptance of spectacular failures in human births.
“Hello? Is this working?”
The red-haired figure peered out at her worriedly, and a loud hollow scratching noise followed the voice. The voice: Jesse’s had been pleasant and low, but not this low. Snake realized she was speaking to a man, not a woman as she had thought from the resemblance. Not Jesse’s twin, then, certainly. Snake wondered if the city people cloned human beings. If they did it often and could even handle cross-sex clones, perhaps they had methods that would be more successful than those the healers used in making new dreamsnakes.
“I can hear you, if that’s what you mean,” Snake said.
“Good. What do you want? It must be worrisome from the look on Richard’s face.”
“I have a message for you if you’re direct kin of the prospector Jesse,” Snake said.
The man’s pink cheeks whitened abruptly. “Jesse?” He shook his head, then regained his composure. “Has she changed that much in all these years, or do I look like anything but direct kin?”
“No,” Snake said. “You look like kin.”
“She’s my older sister,” he said. “And now I suppose she wants to come back and be the eldest again, while I’m to go back to being nothing but a younger?”
The bitterness of his voice was like a betrayal; Snake felt it like a shock. The news of Jesse’s death would not bring sorrow to her brother, only joy.
“She’s coming back, isn’t she?” he said. “She knows the council would put her back at the head of our family. Damn her! I might as well not have existed for the last twenty years.”
Snake listened to him, her throat tightening with grief. Despite the brother’s resentment, if Snake had been able to keep Jesse alive, her people would have taken her back, welcomed her back: if they could, they would have healed her.
Snake spoke with some difficulty. “This council—perhaps I should give the message to them.” She wanted to speak to someone who cared, someone who had loved Jesse, not to someone who would laugh and thank her for her failure.
“This is family business, not a matter for the council. You should give Jesse’s message to me.”
“I would prefer speaking to you face to face.”
“I’m sure you would,” he said. “But that’s impossible. My cousins have a policy against letting in outsiders—”
“Surely, in this case—”
“—and besides, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The gate’s locked till spring.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“Jesse would have warned me.”
He snorted. “She never believed it. She left when she was a child, and children never really believe. They play at staying out till the last minute, pretending they might get locked out. So sometimes we lose one who tests the rules too far.”
“She stopped believing almost everything you say.” Anger tightened Snake’s voice.
Jesse’s brother glanced away, intently watching something else for a moment. He looked at Snake again. “Well, I hope you believe what I tell you now. A storm’s gathering, so I suggest you give me the message and leave yourself time to find shelter.”
Even if he was lying to her, he was not going to let her inside. Snake no longer even hoped for that.
“Her message is this,” Snake said. “She was happy out here. She wants you to stop lying to your children about what it’s like outside your city.”
Jesse’s brother stared at Snake, waiting, then suddenly smiled and laughed once, quickly and sharply. “That’s all? You mean she isn’t coming back?”
“She cannot come back,” Snake said. “She’s dead.”
A strange and eerie mixture of relief and sorrow passed over the face that was so like Jesse’s.
“Dead?” he said softly.
“I could not save her. She broke her back—”
“I never wished her dead.” He drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “Broke her back…a quick death, then. Better than some.”
“She did not die when she broke her back. Her partners and I were going to bring her home, because you could heal her.”
“Perhaps we could have,” he said. “How did she die?”
“She prospected in the war craters. She couldn’t believe the truth that they are dangerous, because you told her so many lies. She died of radiation poisoning.”
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