“Stay away!” Snake cried, but an emaciated hand tried to ease Melissa from her arms. Snake lunged down and bit. She felt the cold flesh yield between her teeth until she met bone; she tasted the warm blood. She wished she had sharper teeth, sharp teeth with channels for poison.
North’s follower pulled back with a yelp, tearing his hand away, and Snake spat out his blood. North and the others grabbed and held her while they took Melissa away from her. North twined his long fingers in her hair, holding her head back so she could not bite again. They forced her out of the narrow split in the rock. Fighting them, she staggered to her feet as one of the followers turned toward the platform with Melissa. North jerked her hair again and pulled her backwards. Her knees collapsed. She tried to get up again but she had nothing left to fight with. Her left hand around her right shoulder, blood trickling between her fingers, she sagged to the ground.
North let go of Snake’s hair and went to Melissa, looking at her eyes and feeling her pulse. He glanced back at Snake.
“You shouldn’t have kept her from my creatures.”
Snake raised her head. “Why are you trying to kill her?”
“Kill her! I? You don’t know a tenth what you think you know. You’re the one who’s endangered her.” He left Melissa and came back to Snake, bending down to capture several serpents. He put them in a basket, holding them carefully so they could not bite.
“I’ll have to take her out of here to save her life. She’ll hate you for ruining her first experience. You healers flaunt your arrogance.”
Snake wondered if he was right about arrogance; if he was, then perhaps he was right, too, about Melissa, about everything. She could not think properly to argue with him. “Be kind to her,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry,” North said. “She’ll be happy with me.” He nodded to his two followers. As they came toward Snake she tried to rise and prepare herself for one last defense. She was on one knee when the man she had bitten grabbed her by the right arm and pulled her to her feet, wrenching her shoulder again. The second follower held her up from the other side.
North leaned over her, holding a dreamsnake. “How certain are you of your immunities, healer? Are you arrogant about them, too?”
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. Blood trickled down her neck to her collarbone. North’s follower let go of her hair, and Snake saw North picking up another serpent.
When the second dreamsnake bit her, she felt a sudden flash of pain, radiating from her throat all through her body. She gasped as the pain 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 thought she felt the grip on her arms loosen for an instant, as if the followers who held her were hypnotized by the black gaze of the serpent. She 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. Snake stumbled, the strength flowing out of her like blood.
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 receded 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, half-supporting 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 pit. 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 on the pit’s floor and crept up the side of the crevasse. Here and there wet trails cut the traceries, forming a second, harsher pattern. The stone-dark lines looked like the tracks of dreamsnakes, but that was ridiculous. It was too cold.
Then Snake heard the quiet rustle of scales on stone, and before she could move, she saw the serpents.
Two, no, three dreamsnakes twined themselves around each other only an armslength away. 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 just 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 to move, 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.
She roused herself from sleep, not unconsciousness. All the hurts remained, but Snake 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. Unless his followers worshipped him for pain, the venom could not affect her as it affected them. She did not know if the reason was her healers’ immunities, or the resistance of her will. It did not really matter.
She did understand now 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 in the frigid pit.
By protecting the dreamsnakes, her people had prevented them from maturing. The mistake was inevitable, for they were too valuable to risk in experimentation. It was safer to count on the rarely successful nuclear-transplant clones and the occasional spontaneous maturation for a few new dreamsnakes than to threaten the lives of those the healers already had.
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Snake smiled at the simplicity of the solution. Of course the healers’ dreamsnakes so seldom 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 the last simplicity: hoping mature serpents would meet each other, the healers followed tedious plans to put the serpents 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, or even imagine, just how alien.
Two by two. Snake laughed silently-
Her mental laughter faded away into a sad smile of regret. She had made so many mistakes, her people had made so many mistakes: with dreamsnakes, they had only succeeded by mistake.
And now that Snake understood, perhaps it was all too late.
When Snake came to herself again, the frost and the cold had disappeared, and the black rock beneath her warmed her through. She eased herself upright, testing herself. Her shoulder merely ached. She did not know how long she had slept, but the healing had already begun.
Snake stood up: she felt unsteady, as if she had suddenly become very old. But her strength was still there; she could feel it gradually returning.
Moving slowly, she inspected her prison in daylight. Its walls were rough but not fissured; she could see no toe or fingerholds. The edge was three times higher than she could leap even when she was not injured. She could see only one possibility for escape, but she did not intend to leave without taking what she had come for.
Snake sat down and unwrapped Melissa’s headcloth from her shoulder. The wound was not exactly clean, but it would not become infected and it was heavily scabbed over. For now, a bandage was unnecessary. She ripped a couple of narrow strips from one edge of the stained square of cloth and gathered the rest of it into a makeshift bag. Four big dreamsnakes lay languorously nearby. Snake 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 even two were forming fertile eggs. She caught three other serpents, but the rest had vanished. She walked across the stones more carefully, looking for a sign of lairs, but found nothing. Either the holes were too well-concealed for her to find without a more careful search, or North had returned and taken most of the dreamsnakes away. Snake tied the cloth shut with one strip of material, and tied the whole thing to her belt with the other, leaving a long tether.
Something tickled her bare foot. She looked down and saw the eggling dreamsnake gliding away. Bending down, she picked it up, gently so as not to startle it. 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.
She returned to the far end of the crevasse, where the walls came together in a point. Wedging herself into the narrow space they formed, she leaned back and pressed her shoulders and her spine against the rock. The wound did not yet hurt more, but she did not know how much stress it could stand. 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 on the tumbled floor, 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.
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 slid back into the fissure and pushed herself upward again. 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.
The sound came again: footsteps, approaching.
Nearly sobbing with frustration, Snake slid back into the pit. Her back and her hands and feet scraped against stone and the noise was so loud that she was sure North would hear it. Snake flung herself to the ground, curling her body around the sack of dreamsnakes. She froze there, by shear will concealing the reflexive tremors of fatigue.
“Healer!” North said.
Snake did not move.
“Healer, wake up!”
She heard the scuff of a boot against stones. A shower of pebbles rained down on her, but still she did not move.
After an interminable time, North’s footsteps receded again.
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. Her hand was shaking; she drew it away so it would not frighten her serpent.
She sat up all at once. Getting to her feet was slower and clumsier, but finally she stood at the end of the fissure. 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 until the pendulum below slowed its oscillation. The tension in her leg muscles turned to pain, and 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 pit 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. The sharp change nearly destroyed her balance. She flailed out with her left arm, catching the edge of the pit with her elbow and then with her hand. Her body spun half-around and she snatched at the ground with her right hand. The wound in her shoulder stabbed pain to her 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. Just above her breast, in her pocket, squeezed but not quite crushed, the eggling dreamsnake squirmed unhappily.
With the last bit of strength in her arms, Snake heaved herself over the edge and lay panting on the horizontal surface, her feet and legs still dangling in the pit. She crawled the rest of the way out. The torn headcloth scraped over stone, the fabric stretching and fraying. Snake pulled it gently until the makeshift sack lay beside her. Only then, with one hand on the serpents and the other almost caressing the solid ground, could Snake look around and be sure that she had climbed out unobserved. For the moment, at least, she was free.
She unbuttoned her pocket and looked at the eggling, hardly believing it was unharmed. Rebuttoning her pocket, she took one of the baskets from the pile beside the crevasse and put the mature serpents in it. She slung it across her back, rose shakily to her feet, and started toward the tunnels circling the crater.
But she could not remember which one had let her in. It was opposite the single large refrigeration duct, but the crater was so large that any one of three exits might be the one she wanted.
Maybe it’s better, Snake thought. Maybe they always go in through the same one a
nd I’ll get another that’s deserted.
Or maybe no matter which one I take I’ll meet someone, or maybe all the others lead to dead ends.
At random, Snake entered the leftmost tunnel of the three possibilities. The torches meant North’s people must use it for something. But most of them had burned to stubs, and Snake crept through darkness from one vague, flickering point to another. Each new light had to be the tunnel’s mouth, but each time she found another fading torch. The corridor stretched onward. However harried she had been before, however exhausted she was now, she knew the first tunnel had not been this long.
One more light, she thought. And then—?
At the next torch she stopped and turned around. Only blackness lay behind her. The other flames had gone out, or she had rounded a curve that blotted them from her view. She could not bring herself to backtrack.
She walked through a great deal of darkness before she saw the next light. She wanted it to be daylight, made bargains and bets with herself that it would be daylight, but knew it was merely another torch before she reached it. It had nearly died; it flickered to an ember. She could smell the acrid smoke of an ebbing flame.
When the next torch appeared she hardly noticed it. It did not cast enough light to help her make her way. Her shoulder hurt so much that she had to slide her hand beneath her belt and hug her arm in close against her body.
Suddenly she was standing on a hillside in daylight beneath the strange twisted trees. She looked around blankly, then stretched out her left hand and stroked rough tree bark. She touched a fragile leaf with her abraded, broken-nailed fingertip.
Snake wanted to sit down, laugh, rest, sleep. Instead, she turned right and followed the hillside around, hoping the long tunnel had not led her half the hill or half the dome away from North’s camp. She could think of no other place to look for Melissa.
The trees thinned out into a clearing. Snake almost walked into it before she stopped herself and pulled back into the shadows. All the people she had seen with North, and more, lay sprawled on the ground, asleep: dreaming, Snake supposed. Most lay face up with their heads thrown back, their throats exposed, revealing puncture marks and thin trickles of blood among many sets of scars. Snake looked from person to person, recognizing no one, until her search reached the other side of the clearing. There, touched by the shade of an alien tree, the crazy lay dreaming.
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