Dreamsnake (6 page)

They planned to break camp that evening and cross the lava flow in darkness.
Snake would have preferred to wait a few more days before moving Jesse at all,
but there was no choice. Jesse’s spirits were too readily changeable to keep her
here any longer. She knew the partnership had already overstayed its time in the
desert. Alex and Merideth could not hide the fact that the water was running
low, that they and the horses were going thirsty so she could be cleaned and
bathed. A few more days in the canyon, living in the sour stench that would
collect because nothing could be properly washed, would push her down into
depression and disgust.

And they had no time to waste. They had a long way to journey: up and across
the lava, then east to the central mountains that separated the black desert
into its western half, where they were now, and its eastern portion, where the
city lay. The road cutting through the west and east ranges of the central
mountains was a good one, but after the pass the travelers would enter the
desert again, and head southeast, for Center. They had to hurry. Once the storms
of winter began, no one could cross the desert; the city would be isolated.
Already the summer was fading in stinging dust devils and windblown eddies of
sand.

They would not take down the tent or load the horses until twilight, but they
packed all they could before it became too hot to work, stacking the baggage
beside Jesse’s sacks of ore. Snake’s hand limbered up with the heavy work. The
bruise was finally fading and the punctures had healed to bright pink scars.
Soon the sand viper bite would match all the other scars on her hands, and she
would forget which one it was. She wished now that she had captured one of the
ugly serpents to take home with her. It was a species she had never seen before.
Even if it had turned out not to be useful to the healers, she could have made
an antidote to its venom for Arevin’s people. If she ever saw Arevin’s people
again.

Snake wrestled the last pack into the pile and wiped her hands on her pants
and her face on her sleeve. Nearby, Merideth and Alex hoisted the stretcher they
had built and adjusted the makeshift harnesses until it rode level between a
tandem pair of horses. Snake went over to watch.

It was the most peculiar conveyance she had ever seen, but it looked like it
would work. In the desert everything had to be carried or dragged; wheeled carts
would bog down in the sand or break in rocky country. As long as the horses did
not shy or bolt, the stretcher would give Jesse a more tolerable ride than a
travois. The big gray between the front shafts stood calm and steady as a stone;
apart from a sidelong glance as it was led between the back shafts, the second
horse, a piebald, showed no fear.

Jesse
must
be a marvel, Snake thought, if the horses she trains will
put up with such contraptions.

“Jesse says we’ll start a fashion among rich merchants wherever we go,”
Merideth said.

“She’s right,” Alex said. He unfastened a strap and they let the stretcher
fall to the ground. “But they’ll be lucky not to get kicked apart, the way most
of them break horses.” He slapped the placid gray’s neck fondly and led both
horses back to the corral.

“I wish she’d been riding one of them before,” Snake said to Merideth.

“They weren’t like that when she got them. She buys crazy horses. She can’t
bear to see them mistreated. The colt was one of her strays—she had him calmed
but he hadn’t found his balance yet.“

They started back toward the tent to get out of the sun as it crept across
the afternoon. The tent sagged on one side where two poles had been removed for
the stretcher. Merideth yawned widely. “Best to sleep while we have the chance.
We can’t afford to still be on the lava when the sun comes up.”

But Snake was filled with a restless uncertain energy; she sat in the tent,
grateful for the shade but wide-awake, wondering how the whole mad plan could
work. She reached for the leather case to check on her serpents, but Jesse woke
as she opened Sand’s compartment. She closed the catch again and moved closer to
the pallet. Jesse looked up at her.

“Jesse
…
about what I said
…
”
She wanted to explain but could not think how to start.

“What upset you so? Am I the first you’ve helped who might have died?”

“No. I’ve seen people die. I’ve helped them die.”

“Everything was so hopeless just a little while ago,” Jesse said. “A pleasant
end would have been easy. You must always have to guard against
…
the simplicity of death.”

“Death can be a gift,” Snake said. “But in one way or another it always means
failure. That’s the guard against it. It’s enough.”

A faint breeze whispered through the heat, making Snake feel almost cool.

“What’s wrong, healer?”

“I was afraid,” Snake said. “I was afraid you might be dying. If you were,
you had the right to ask my help. I have the obligation to give it. But I
can’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When my training ended my teachers gave me my own serpents. Two of them can
be drugged for medicines. The third was the dream-giver. He was killed.”

Jesse reached out instinctively and took Snake’s hand, a reaction to her
sadness. Snake accepted Jesse’s quiet sympathy gratefully, taking comfort in the
sturdy touch.

“You’re crippled too,” Jesse said abruptly. “As crippled in your work as I.”

Jesse’s generosity in comparing them that way embarrassed Snake. Jesse was in
pain, helpless, her only chance of recovery so small that Snake stood in awe of
her spirits and her renewed grasp on life. “Thank you for saying that.”

“So I’m going back to my family to ask for help— and you were going back to
yours?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll give you another,” Jesse said with certainty.

“I hope so.”

“Is there any question?”

“Dreamsnakes don’t breed well,” Snake said. “We don’t know enough about them.
Every few years a few new ones are born, or one of us manages to clone some,
but—” Snake shrugged.

“Catch one!”

The suggestion had never occurred to Snake because she knew it was
impossible. She had never considered any possibility other than returning to the
healers’ station and asking her teachers to pardon her. She smiled sadly. “My
reach isn’t that long. They don’t come from here.”

“Where?”

Snake shrugged again. “Some other world
…
” Her
voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.

“Then you’ll come with me beyond the city’s gates,” Jesse said. “When I go to
my family, they’ll introduce you to the offworlders.”

“Jesse, my people have been asking Center’s help for decades. They won’t even
speak to us.”

“But now one of the city’s families is obligated to you. Whether my people
will take me back I don’t know. But they’ll be in debt to you for helping me,
nevertheless.”

Snake listened in silence, intrigued by the possibilities lying in Jesse’s
words.

“Healer, believe me,” Jesse said. “We can help each other. If they accept me,
they’ll accept my friends as well. If not, they’ll still have to discharge their
debt to you. Either one of us can present both our requests.”

Snake was a proud woman, proud of her training, her competence, her name. The
prospect of atoning for Grass’s death in some other way than begging forgiveness
fascinated her. Once every decade an elder healer would make the long trip to
the city, seeking to renew the breeding stock of dreamsnakes. They had always
been refused. If Snake could succeed
…

“Can this work?”

“My family will help us,” Jesse said. “Whether they can make the offworlders
help us too, I don’t know.”

During the hot afternoon, all Snake and the partners could do was wait. Snake
decided to let Mist and Sand out of the satchel for a while before the long trip
began. As she left the tent, she stopped beside Jesse. The handsome woman was
sleeping peacefully, but her face was flushed. Snake touched her forehead.
Perhaps Jesse had a slight fever; perhaps it was just the heat of the day. Snake
still thought Jesse had avoided serious internal injuries, but it was possible
that she was bleeding, even that she was developing peritonitis. That was
something Snake could cure. She decided not to disturb Jesse for the moment, but
to wait and see if the fever rose.

Walking out of camp to find a sheltered place where her serpents would
frighten no one, Snake passed Alex, staring morosely into space. She hesitated,
and he glanced up, his expression troubled. Snake sat down beside him without
speaking. He turned toward her, staring at her with his penetrating gaze: the
goodnaturedness had vanished from his face in his torment, leaving him ugly, and
sinister as well.

“We crippled her, didn’t we? Merideth and me.”

“Crippled her? No, of course not.”

“We shouldn’t have moved her. I should have thought of that. We should have
moved the camp to her. Maybe the nerves weren’t broken when we found her.”

“They were broken.”

“But we didn’t know about her back. We thought she’d hit her head. We could
have twisted her body—”

Snake put her hand on Alex’s forearm. “It was an injury of violence,” she
said. “Any healer could see it. The damage happened when she fell. Believe me.
You and Merideth couldn’t have done any of that to her.”

The hard muscles in his forearm relaxed. Snake took her hand away, relieved.
Alex’s stocky body held so much strength, and he had been controlling himself so
tightly, that Snake feared he might turn his own force unwittingly back on
himself. He was more important to this partnership than he appeared, perhaps
even more important than he himself knew. Alex was the practical one, the one
who kept the camp running smoothly, who dealt with the buyers of Merideth’s work
and balanced out the romanticism of Merideth the artist and Jesse the
adventurer. Snake hoped the truth she had told him would let him ease his guilt
and tension. For now, though, she could do no more for him.

As twilight approached, Snake stroked Sand’s smooth patterned scales. She no
longer wondered if the diamondback enjoyed being stroked, or even if a creature
as small-brained as Sand could feel enjoyment at all. The cool sensation beneath
her fingers gave her pleasure, and Sand lay in a quiet coil, now and then
flicking out his tongue. His color was bright and clear; he had outgrown his old
skin and shed it only recently. “I let thee eat too much,” Snake said fondly.
“Thou lazy creature.”

Snake drew her knees up under her chin. Against the black rocks, the
rattlesnake’s patterns were almost as conspicuous as Mist’s albino scales.
Neither serpents nor humans nor anything else left alive on earth had yet
adapted to their world as it existed now.

Mist was out of sight, but Snake was not worried. Both serpents were
imprinted on her and would stay near and even follow her. Neither had much
aptitude for learning beyond the imprinting, which the healers had bred into
them, but Mist and Sand would return when they felt the vibration of her hand
slapping the ground.

Snake relaxed against a boulder, cushioned by the desert robe Arevin’s people
had given her. She wondered what Arevin was doing, where he was. His people were
nomads, herders of huge musk oxen whose undercoats gave fine, silky wool. To
meet the clan again she would have to search for them. She did not know if that
would ever be possible, though she very much wanted to see Arevin once more.

Seeing his people would always remind her of Grass’s death, if she were ever
able to forget it. Her mistakes and misjudgments of them were the reason Grass
was gone. She had expected them to accept her word despite their fear, and
without meaning to they had shown her how arrogant her assumptions were.

She shook off her depression. Now she had a chance to redeem herself. If she
really could go with Jesse, find out where the dreamsnakes came from, and
capture new ones—if she could even discover why they would not breed on
earth—she could return in triumph instead of in disgrace, succeeding where her
teachers and generations of healers had failed.

It was time to return to the camp. She climbed the low rise of jumbled rock
that covered the mouth of the canyon, looking for Mist. The cobra was coiled on
a large chunk of basalt.

At the top of the slope Snake reached for Mist, picked her up, and stroked
her narrow head. She was not so formidable unexcited, hood folded, narrow-headed
as any venomless serpent. She did not need a thick-jowled head, heavy with
poison. Her venom was powerful enough to kill in delicate doses.

As Snake turned, the brilliant sunset drew her gaze. The sun was an orange
blur on the horizon, radiating streaks of purple and vermilion through the gray
clouds.

And then Snake saw the craters, stretching away across the desert below her.
The earth was covered with great circular basins. Some, lying in the path of the
lava flow, had caught and broken its smooth frozen billows. Others were clearer,
great holes gouged in the earth, still distinct after so many years of driving
sands. The craters were so large, spread over such a distance, that they could
have only one source. Nuclear explosions had blasted them. The war itself was
long over, almost forgotten, for it had destroyed everyone who knew or cared
about the reasons it had happened.

Snake gazed over the ravaged land, glad to be no nearer. In places like this
the effects of the war had lingered visibly and invisibly to Snake’s time; they
would persist for centuries beyond her life. The canyon in which she and the
partners were camped was probably not completely safe itself, but they had not
been here long enough to be in serious danger.

Something unusual lay out in the rubble, in line with the brilliant setting
sun so it was difficult for Snake to see. She squinted at it. She felt uneasy,
as if she were spying on something she had no business knowing about.