Dreamsnake

“You can’t understand, I told you that. One has to grow up here and deal with the forces here. I’ve spent my life learning.”

“I think you have spent your life learning how to explain away your obligations,” Snake said angrily.

“That’s a lie!” Jesse’s brother was enraged. “I would give you anything I had it in my power to give, but you demand impossibilities. I can’t help you find new dreamsnakes.”

“Wait,” Snake said suddenly. “Maybe you can help us in another way.”

Jesse’s brother sighed and looked away. “I’ve no time for plots and schemes,” he said. “And neither do you. The storm is coming, healer.”

Snake glanced over her shoulder. Melissa was still nowhere to be seen. In the distance the clouds hugged the horizon, and flurries of windblown sand skittered back and forth between earth and sky. It was growing colder, but it was for other reasons that she shivered. The stakes were too high to give up now. She felt sure that if she could just get inside the city, she could seek out the offworlders by herself. She turned back to Jesse’s brother.

“Let me come inside, in the spring. You have techniques our technology isn’t advanced enough to let us discover.“ Suddenly, Snake smiled. Jesse was beyond help, but others were not. Melissa was not. ”If you could teach me how to induce regeneration—“ She was astonished that she had not thought of the possibility before. She had been completely and selfishly concerned with dreamsnakes, with her own prestige and honor. But so many people would benefit if the healers knew how to regenerate muscle and nerves… but first she would learn how to regenerate skin so her daughter could live unscarred. Snake watched Jesse’s brother and found to her joy that his expression was relieved.

“That is possible,” he said. “Yes. I’ll discuss that with the council. I’ll speak for you.”

“Thank you,” Snake said. She could hardly believe that finally, finally, the city people were acceding to the request of a healer. “This will help us more than you know. If we can improve our techniques we won’t have to worry about getting new dreamsnakes—we’ll be better at cloning them.”

Jesse’s brother had begun to frown. Snake stopped, confused by the abrupt change.

“You’ll have the gratitude of the healers,” Snake said quickly, not knowing what she had said wrong, so not knowing how to repair it. “And of all the people we serve.”

“Cloning!” Jesse’s brother said. “Why do you think we’d help you with cloning?”

“I thought you and Jesse—” She caught herself, thinking that would upset him even more. “I merely assumed, with your advanced—”

“You’re talking about genetic manipulation!” Jesse’s brother looked ill. “Turning our knowledge to making monsters!”

“What?” Snake asked, astonished.

“Genetic manipulation—Gods, we have enough trouble with mutation without inducing it deliberately! You’re lucky I couldn’t let you in, healer. I’d have to denounce you. You’d spend your life in exile with the rest of the freaks.“

Snake stared at the screen as he changed from rational acquaintance to accuser. If he was not a clone with Jesse, then his family was so highly inbred that deformities were inevitable without genetic manipulation. Yet what he was saying was that the city people refused themselves that method of helping themselves.

“I won’t have my family indebted to a freak,” he said without looking at her, doing something with his hands. Coins clattered into the payment slot beneath the screen. “Take your money and go!”

“People out here die because of the information you hoard!” she shouted. “You help the drivers enslave people with your crystal rings, but you won’t help cure people who are crippled and scarred!”

Jesse’s brother started forward in a rage. “Healer—” He stopped, looking beyond Snake. His expression changed to horror. “How dare you come here with a changeling? Do they exile the mother as well as the offspring out there? And you lecture me on humanity!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want regeneration, and you don’t even know you can’t reform mutants! They come out the same.” He laughed bitterly, hysterically. “Go back where you came from, healer. There can be no words between us.”

Just as his image began to fade, Snake scooped up the coins and flung them at him. They clattered against the screen, and one jammed in the protective panel. Gears whined, but the panel would not completely close, and Snake felt a certain perverse satisfaction.

Snake turned away from the screen and the city to look for Melissa, and came face to face with her daughter. Melissa’s cheeks were wet with tears. She grabbed Snake’s hand and blindly pulled her out of the alcove.

“Melissa, we’ve got to try to set up a shelter—” Snake tried to draw back toward the alcove. It was nearly dark, though it was morning. The clouds were no longer gray but black, and Snake could see two separate whirlwinds.

“I found a place.” The words came hard: Melissa was still crying. “I—I hoped they’d let you in but I was afraid they wouldn’t, so I went looking.”