“She isn’t in danger! She doesn’t need to protect herself — who would ever touch her?”
“You touch me!” Melissa ran to Snake and flung herself against her. Snake hugged the child close.
“You—” The mayor straightened and stepped back. Brian, appearing silently, supported him before his leg failed him. “What does she mean, Ras? Why is she so frightened?”
Ras shook his head.
“Make him say it!” Melissa cried, facing them squarely. “Make him!”
The mayor limped to her and stooped down awkwardly. He looked Melissa directly in the face. Neither he nor she flinched.
“I know you’re frightened of him, Melissa. Why is he so frightened of you?”
“Because Mistress Snake believes me.”
The mayor drew in a long breath. “Did you want him?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Ungrateful little brat!” Ras yelled. “Spiteful ugly thing! Who else but me would ever touch her?”
The mayor ignored Ras and took Melissa’s hand in both his.
“The healer’s your guardian from now on. You’re free to go with her.”
“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”
The mayor lurched back to his feet. “Brian, find me her guardianship papers in the city records — Sit down, Ras — And Brian, I’ll want a messenger to ride into town. To the menders.”
“You slaver,” Ras growled. “So this is how you steal children. People will—”
“Shut up, Ras.” The mayor sounded exhausted far beyond his brief exertion, and he was pale. “I can’t exile you. I have a responsibility to protect other people. Other children. Your troubles are my troubles now, and they must be resolved. Will you talk to the menders?”
“I don’t need the menders.”
“Will you go voluntarily or would you prefer a trial?”
Ras lowered himself slowly back into the chair, and finally nodded. “Voluntarily,” he said.
Snake stood up, her arm around Melissa’s shoulders, Melissa with an arm around her waist and her head turned slightly so the scar was almost concealed. Together they walked away.
“Thank you, healer,” the mayor said.
“Good-bye,” Snake said, and shut the door.
She and Melissa walked through the echoing hallway to the second tower.
“I was so scared,” Melissa said.
“So was I. For a little while I thought I’d have to steal you.”
Melissa looked up. “Would you really do that?”
“Yes.”
Melissa was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry! What for?”
“I should have trusted you. I didn’t. But I will from now on. I won’t be scared any more.”
“You had a right to be scared, Melissa.”
“I’m not now. I won’t be any more. Where are we going?” For the first time since Melissa had offered to ride Squirrel, her voice held self-confidence and enthusiasm with no undertone of dread.
“Well,” Snake said, “I think you should go on up north to the healers’ station. Home.”
“What about you?”
“I have one more thing I have to do before I can go home. Don’t worry, you can go almost halfway with Gabriel. I’ll write a letter for you to take, and you’ll have Squirrel. They’ll know I sent you.”
“I’d rather go with you.”
Realizing how shaken Melissa was, Snake stopped. “I’d rather have you come too, please believe me. But I have to go to Center and it might not be safe.”
“I’m not afraid of any crazy. Besides, if I’m along we can keep watch.”
Snake had forgotten about the crazy; the reminder brought a quick shock of memory.
“Yes, the crazy’s another problem. But the storms are coming, it’s nearly winter. I don’t know if I can get back from the city before then.” And it would be better for Melissa to become established at the station, before Snake returned, in case the trip to Center failed. Then, even if Snake had to leave, Melissa would be able to remain.
“I don’t care about the storms,” Melissa said. “I’m not afraid.”
“I know you’re not. It’s just that there’s no reason for you to be in danger.”
Melissa did not reply. Snake knelt down and turned the child toward her.
“Do you think I’m trying to avoid you now?”
After a few moments, Melissa said, “I don’t know what to think, Mistress Snake. You said if I didn’t live here I could be responsible for myself and do what I thought was right. But I don’t think it’s right for me to leave you, with the crazy and the storms.”
Snake sat back on her heels. “I did say all that. I meant it, too.” She looked down at her scarred hands, sighed, and glanced up again at Melissa. “I better tell you the real reason I want you to go home. I should have told you before.”
“What is it?” Melissa’s voice was tight, controlled; she was ready to be hurt again. Snake took her hand.
“Most healers have three serpents. I only have two. I did something stupid and the third one was killed.” She told Melissa about Arevin’s people, about Stavin and Stavin’s younger father and Grass.
“There aren’t very many dreamsnakes,” Snake said. “It’s hard to make them breed. Actually we never make them breed, we just wait and hope they might. The way we get more is something like the way I made Squirrel.”
“With the special medicine,” Melissa said.
“Sort of.” The alien biology of dreamsnakes lent itself neither to viral transduction nor to microsurgery. Earth viruses could not interact with the chemicals the dreamsnakes used in place of DNA, and the healers had been unsuccessful in isolating anything comparable to a virus from the alien serpents. So they could not transfer the genes for dreamsnake venom into another serpent, and no one had ever been successful in synthesizing all the venom’s hundreds of components.
“I made Grass,” Snake said, “and four other dreamsnakes. But I can’t make them anymore. My hands aren’t steady enough, the same thing’s wrong with them that was wrong with my knee yesterday.” Sometimes she wondered if her arthritis was as much psychological as physical, a reaction against sitting in the laboratory for hours at a time, delicately manipulating the controls of the micropipette and straining her eyes to find each of the innumerable nuclei in a single cell from a dreamsnake. She had been the first healer in some years to succeed in transplanting genetic material into an unfertilized ovum. She had had to prepare several hundred to end up with Grass and his four siblings; even so, her percentage was better than that of anyone else who had ever managed the task. No one at all had ever discovered what made the serpents mature. So the healers had a small stock of frozen immature ova, gleaned from the bodies of dreamsnakes that had died, but no one could clone them; and a frozen stock of what was probably dreamsnake sperm, cells too immature to fertilize the ova when they were mixed in a test tube.
Snake believed her success to be a matter of luck as much as technique. If her people had the technology needed to build one of the electron microscopes described in their books, she felt sure they would find genes independent of the nuclear bodies, molecules so small they could not be seen, too small to transplant unless the micropipette sucked them up by chance.
“I’m going to Center to deliver a message, and to ask the people there to help us get more dreamsnakes. But I’m afraid they’ll refuse. And if I have to go home without any, after I lost mine, I don’t know what will happen. A few dreamsnakes might have hatched since I left, some might even have been cloned, but if not, I might not be allowed to be a healer. I can’t be a good one without a dreamsnake.“
“If there aren’t any others they should give you one of the ones you made,” Melissa said. “That’s the only thing that’s fair.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to the younger healers I gave them to, though,” Snake said. “I’d have to go home and say to a brother or sister that they couldn’t be a healer unless the dreamsnakes we have reproduce again.” She let out her breath in a long sigh. “I want you to know all that. That’s why I want you to go home before I do, so everyone gets a chance to know you. I had to get you away from Ras, but if you go home with me, I don’t know for sure that things will be much better.”