"I told you it would be rough. Perhaps Serpent will do better, when his time comes. Though the song flows like a river in Titanide, in English-"
"You did him proud," Chris said. "This isn't the best beginning, though, is it?" He waved his hand at the darkness and the barren rocks. "You should have had Hichiriki and Cymbal and all your friends gathered around."
"Yes." She thought about it. "I should have asked you to sing."
"You'd have soon regretted it."
She laughed. "Hum, then. Chris, he's here."
He certainly was. A glistening shape was moving slowly but inexorably. Chris felt the powerful urge to do something: boil water, call a doctor, comfort her, ease his passage ... anything. But if his entrance into the world had been any quicker, he would have squirted across the ground like a pinched watermelon seed. Valiha had her head pillowed on her arm and was chuckling softly. If a doctor was needed, it was for Chris, not Valiha.
"Are you sure there isn't anything I should do?"
"Trust me." She laughed. "Now. You can pick him up-being careful not to step on the umbilicus, which he will need a little longer. Carry him to me. Lift him with both arms beneath his belly. His trunk will fall forward, so don't let him hit his head, but do not be alarmed by it."
She had already told him all that, but it was well she repeated it. He did not feel competent to pick his nose at the moment, much less handle a newborn Titanide. But he went, knelt, and looked at him.
"He's not breathing!"
"Don't be alarmed by that either. He will breathe when he's ready. Bring him to me."
Serpent was a shapeless puddle of sticks and moist skin. For a moment Chris literally could not make head or tail of him; then it all sprang into focus, and he saw a sweet-faced little girl-child with matted pink hair pasted to her sleeping face. No, not a child ... she had fully formed breasts. And not a girl either. That was merely the trick all Titanides played on all humans, which was to seem female no matter what their actual sex. The forepenis was there between his front legs, complete with pink pubic hair.
He was going to be gentle, do it gingerly. After a few tries, he gave that up and put his back into it. Serpent massed nearly as much as Chris. He was a slippery bundle, but there was not a drop of blood on him. He looked like a starving urchin, with matchstick legs longer than Chris's own. He was narrow-hipped and had a short body and long trunk, which promptly fell forward loosely when Chris lifted him. As Chris carefully payed out the loops of umbilical cord while bringing him around to his mother, Serpent stirred, and one of his hind legs kicked Chris in the shin. It was not too painful, but then he began a fitful struggle. Valiha sang something, and he calmed instantly.
Chris handed him to Valiha, who arranged him in front of her and held his upper body against her own. His head lolled. Chris noticed that it was as Valiha had said it would be: the umbilical did not attach under his belly but vanished into his anterior vagina, just as the other end still trailed from Valiha.
He had not known what to expect. He had seen young Titanides but none as young as this. Would he be able to love it? So far, he thought Serpent looked... he would not go so far as to say ugly. Funny-looking was the best he could come up with. But then he had always thought newborn humans were funny-looking, at best, and they were bloody into the bargain. He hated the squeamishness he felt-it did not mesh well with Valiha's description of him as a lusty, life-loving human, and that had been the nicest thing anyone had said about him in a long time-but he still felt it. Serpent most closely resembled an undernourished fourteen-year-old girl who had just been fished out of the bottom of a lake. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation seemed called for.
Serpent wheezed loudly, coughed once, and began to breathe. He did it noisily for a few breaths, then found the rhythm. Shortly afterward he opened his eyes and was looking right at Chris. Either the sight was too much for him, or he was not seeing anything too well; he blinked and burrowed his face between his mother's breasts.
"He'll probably be cranky for a while," Valiha said.
"I would be, too."
"What do you think of him?"
Here we go, Chris thought. "He's beautiful, Valiha."
She frowned and looked at Serpent again, as if wondering if she had missed something.
"You can't be serious. Your use of English is better than that."
Feeling as if he were jumping off the deep end, Chris cleared his throat and said, "He's funny-looking."
"That's the word. He'll get a lot better rather quickly, though. He has a lot of promise. Did you see his eyes?"
They busied themselves cleaning up. Valiha combed his hair and Chris washed and dried him. And Valiha had been right: he did improve. His skin was warm and soft when dry, quickly banishing the picture of a drowned ragamuffin. The umbilical cord soon withered, and he was on his own. It would be a long time before he stopped looking skinny, but there was no longer the suggestion of starvation. Rather, as his muscles toned, he looked supple and glowing with health. It was not long before he held his torso erect unaided. He watched them with glittering brown eyes as they fussed over his young body, but he did not say a word. Valiha was watching him, too. She was as excited as Chris had ever seen her.
"I wish I could explain this to you, Chris," she said. "This is the most wonderful... I remember it so well. Suddenly to be aware, to feel yourself awakening from a state of simple desires and to feel a larger world taking shape around you, full of other creatures. And the growing urge to talk, almost like the building of an orgasm. The first formation of the idea that it is possible to communicate with others. He has the words, you see, but without experience to give them substance they are still mysteries. He will be full of questions, but he will seldom ask you what something is. He will see a rock and think, So that is a rock! He will pick it up and think, So this is picking up a rock! He will be asking many questions of himself, providing his own answers, and the sensation of discovery is so glorious that a Titanide's most common fantasy is of rebirth, the desire to live it over. But there will be plenty of questions for us. Sadly, a lot of them will be the unanswerable ones, but that is the burden of life. We must do our best with them and try at all times to be kind. I hope you will be patient and let him develop his own armor of fatalism at his own pace with no prompting from us because it can be a-"
"I will, Valiha, I promise. I'm sure I'll be watching you for quite a while to get hints on what you want, and I'll stay in the background as much as possible. But the big question on my mind is still the crazy experiment of yours, whether or not he will be able to-"
"You are a human," Serpent said quite distinctly.
Chris stared into the wide-set eyes looking guilelessly back at him, realized his mouth was still open, and shut it. Serpent's mouth carried the hint of a smile as elusive as the Mona Lisa's. The conversational ball was in his court, and all he had wanted to do was stay in the background.
"I'm a very surprised human. I-" He stopped when Valiha shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Chris examined his words. All right, wit was not called for. He had to hit a middle ground between goo-goo and the Gettysburg Address, and he wished he knew where it was to be found.
"What is your name?" Serpent asked.
"I'm Chris."
"My name is Serpent."
"I'm happy to meet you."
The smile emerged in full, and Chris felt warmed by it.
"I'm pleased to meet you, too." He turned to his mother. "Valiha, where is my serpent?"
She reached behind her and handed him the lovingly carved serpentine horn clad in soft leather. He took it, and his eyes sparkled as he held it and turned it in his hands. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, and a dark bass tone drifted into the air.