Dreamsnake

Snake let it pass. Grum’s explanation was quite wrong; Squirrel was no more a hybrid than any of Grum’s horses, except at a single short gene complex. But Squirrel was resistant to the venom of Mist and Sand, and though the cause was different, the result was the same as if he were a mule. His immunities were so efficient that his system quite likely did not recognize haploid cells, the sperm, as “self,” and so destroyed them.

“You know, Snake-child, I once had a mule that was a good stud. It happens sometimes. Maybe this time.”

“Maybe,” Snake said. The chance that her pony’s immunities had left him fertile was no more remote than the chance of getting a fertile mule: Snake did not feel she was deceiving Grum with her cautious agreement.

Snake returned to her tent, let Sand out of the serpent case, and milked him of his venom. He did not fight the process. Holding him behind the head, she squeezed his mouth open gently and poured a vial of catalyst down his throat. He was much easier to drug than Mist. He would simply coil up sleepily in his compartment, little different from normal, while the poison glands manufactured a complicated chemical soup of several proteins, antibodies for a number of endemic diseases, stimulants to the immune systems of human beings. Healers had been using rattlers much longer than they had had cobras; compared to Mist, the diamondback was tens of generations and hundreds of genetic experiments more adapted to catalytic drugs and their changes.

Chapter 5

In the morning, Snake milked Sand into a serum bottle. She could not use him to administer the vaccine, for each person required only a small amount. Sand would inject too much of it too deeply. For vaccinations, she used an inoculator, an instrument with a circle of short, needle-sharp points that pressed the vaccine down just beneath the skin. She returned the rattler to his compartment and went outside.

The people from the camps had begun to gather, adults and children, three or four generations in each family. Grum stood first in line with all her grandchildren around her. Altogether there were seven, from Pauli, the oldest, to a child about six, the little girl who had polished Swift’s tack. They were not all Grum’s direct descendants, for her clan’s organization depended on a more extended family. The children of her long-deceased partner’s siblings, of her sister, and of her sister’s partner’s siblings, were equally considered her grandchildren. All those people had not come with her, only those who were her apprentices as future caravannaires.

“Who’s first?” Snake asked cheerfully.

“Me,” Grum said. “I said me, so me it is.” She glanced at the collectors, who stood in a colorful huddle off to one side. “You watch, Ao!” she called to the one who had asked for Snake’s broken gear. “You’ll see it doesn’t kill me.”

“Nothing could kill you, old rawhide-skin. I wait to see what happens to the others.”

“ ‘Old rawhide-skin’? Ao, you old ragbag!”

“Never mind,” Snake said. She raised her voice slightly. “I want to tell you all two things. First, some people are sensitive to the serum. If the mark turns bright red, if it hurts sharply, if the skin is hot, come back. I’ll be here till evening. If anything is going to happen it’ll happen before then, all right? If someone’s sensitive I can keep them from getting sick. It’s very important that you come to me if you feel anything worse than a dull ache. Don’t try to be brave about it.”

Among the nods and agreements Ao spoke up again. “This says you might kill.”

“Are you foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong if you break your leg?”

Ao snorted in derision.

“Then you’re not foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong and let yourself die if you overreact.” Snake took off her robe and pushed up the very short sleeve of her tunic. “The second thing is this. The vaccination leaves a small scar, like this one.” She went from group to group, showing them the mark of her first immunization against venom. “So if anyone wants the scar in a place less obvious, please tell me now.”

Seeing the tiny innocuous scar calmed even Ao, who muttered without conviction that healers could stand any poison, and then shut up.

Grum came first in line, and Snake was surprised to see she was pale. “Grum, are you all right?”

“It’s blood,” Grum said. “Must be, Snake-child. I don’t like to see blood.”

“You’ll hardly see any. Just let yourself relax.” Talking to Grum in a soothing voice, Snake swabbed the old woman’s arm with alcohol-iodine. She had only one bottle of the disinfectant left in the medicine compartment of the serpent case, but that was enough for today and she could get more at the chemist’s in Mountainside. Snake squeezed a drop of serum onto Grum’s upper arm and pressed the inoculator through it into her skin.

Grum flinched when the points entered, but her expression did not change. Snake put the inoculator into alcohol-iodine and swabbed Grum’s arm again.

“There.”