Across the Spectrum (51 page)

“I am sorry—”

“Hold her,” Snake said. “We have the night to go.”

During Mist’s second convulsion, the young man held her
firmly and was of some real help. Afterward, Snake answered his interrupted
question. “If she were making poison and she bit you, you would probably die.
Even now her bite would make you ill. But unless you do something foolish, if
she manages to bite, she’ll bite me.”

“You would benefit my cousin little if you were dead or
dying.”

“You misunderstand. Mist can’t kill me.” Snake held out her
hand so he could see the white scars of slashes and punctures. He stared at
them, and looked into her eyes for a long moment, then looked away.

The bright spot in the clouds from which the light radiated
moved westward in the sky; they held the cobra like a child. Snake nearly
dozed, but Mist moved her head, dully attempting to evade restraint, and Snake
woke herself abruptly. “I mustn’t sleep,” she said to the young man. “Talk to
me. What are you called?”

As Stavin had, the young man hesitated. He seemed afraid of
her, or of something. “My people,” he said, “think it unwise to speak our names
to strangers.”

“If you consider me a witch you should not have asked my
aid. I know no magic, and I claim none.”

“It’s not a superstition,” he said. “Not as you might think.
We’re not afraid of being bewitched.”

“I can’t learn all the customs of all the people on this
earth, so I keep my own. My custom is to address those I work with by name.”
Watching him, Snake tried to decipher his expression in the dim light.

“Our families know our names, and we exchange names with our
partners.”

Snake considered that custom, and thought it would fit badly
on her. “No one else? Ever?”

“Well . . . a friend might know one’s name.”

“Ah,” Snake said. “I see. I am still a stranger, and perhaps
an enemy.”

“A
friend
would
know my name,” the young man said again. “I would not offend you, but now you
misunderstand. An acquaintance is not a friend. We value friendship highly.”

“In this land one should be able to tell quickly if a person
is worth calling friend.”

“We take friends seldom. Friendship is a great commitment.”

“It sounds like something to be feared.”

He considered that possibility. “Perhaps it’s the betrayal
of friendship we fear. That is a very painful thing.”

“Has anyone ever betrayed you?”

He glanced at her sharply, as if she had exceeded the limits
of propriety. “No,” he said, and his voice was as hard as his face. “No friend.
I have no one I call friend.”

His reaction startled Snake. “That’s very sad,” she said,
and grew silent, trying to comprehend the deep stresses that could close people
off so far, comparing her loneliness of necessity and theirs of choice. “Call
me Snake,” she said finally, “if you can bring yourself to pronounce it. Saying
my name binds you to nothing.”

The young man seemed about to speak; perhaps he thought
again that he had offended her, perhaps he felt he should further defend his
customs. But Mist began to twist in their hands, and they had to hold her to
keep her from injuring herself. The cobra was slender for her length, but
powerful, and the convulsions she went through were more severe than any she
had ever had before. She thrashed in Snake’s grasp, and almost pulled away. She
tried to spread her hood, but Snake held her too tightly. She opened her mouth
and hissed, but no poison dripped from her fangs.

She wrapped her tail around the young man’s waist. He began
to pull her and turn, to extricate himself from her coils.

“She’s not a constrictor,” Snake said. “She won’t hurt you.
Leave her—”

But it was too late; Mist relaxed suddenly and the young man
lost his balance. Mist whipped herself away and lashed figures in the sand.
Snake wrestled with her alone while the young man tried to hold her, but she
curled herself around Snake and used the grip for leverage. She started to pull
herself from Snake’s hands. Snake threw herself and the serpent backward into
the sand; Mist rose above her, open-mouthed, furious, hissing. The young man
lunged and grabbed her just beneath her hood. Mist struck at him, but Snake,
somehow, held her back. Together they deprived Mist of her hold and regained
control of her. Snake struggled up, but Mist suddenly went quite still and lay
almost rigid between them. They were both sweating; the young man was pale
under his tan, and even Snake was trembling.

“We have a little while to rest,” Snake said. She glanced at
him and noticed the dark line on his cheek where, earlier, Mist’s tail had
slashed him. She reached up and touched it. “You’ll have a bruise,” she said.
“But it will not scar.”

“If it were true, that serpents sting with their tails, you
would be restraining both the fangs and the stinger, and I’d be of little use.”

“Tonight I’d need someone to keep me awake, whether or not
they helped me with Mist. But just now, I would have had trouble holding her
alone.” Fighting the cobra produced adrenalin, but now it ebbed, and her
exhaustion and hunger were returning, stronger.

“Snake . . . ”

“Yes?”

He smiled, quickly, embarrassed. “I was trying the pronunciation.”

“Good enough.”

“How long did it take you to cross the desert?”

“Not very long. Too long. Six days. I don’t think I went the
best way.”

“How did you live?”

“There’s water. We traveled at night and rested during the
day, wherever we could find shade.”

“You carried all your food?”

She shrugged. “A little.” And wished he would not speak of
food.

“What’s on the other side?”

“Mountains. Streams. Other people. The station I grew up and
took my training in. Then another desert, and a mountain with a city inside.”

“I’d like to see a city. Someday.”

“I’m told the city doesn’t let in people from outside,
people like you and me. But there are many towns in the mountains, and the
desert can be crossed.”

He said nothing, but Snake’s memories of leaving home were
recent enough that she could imagine his thoughts.

∞

The next set of convulsions came, much sooner than Snake
had expected. By their severity she gauged something of the stage of Stavin’s
illness, and wished it were morning. If she was going to lose the child, she
would have it done, and grieve, and try to forget. The cobra would have
battered herself to death against the sand if Snake and the young man had not
been holding her. She suddenly went completely rigid, with her mouth clamped
shut and her forked tongue dangling.

She stopped breathing.

“Hold her,” Snake said. “Hold her head. Quickly, take her,
and if she gets away, run. Take her! She won’t strike at you now, she could
only slash you by accident.”

He hesitated only a moment, then grasped Mist behind the
head. Snake ran, slipping in the deep sand, from the edge of the circle of
tents to a place where bushes still grew. She broke off dry thorny branches
that tore her scarred hands. Peripherally she noticed a mass of horned vipers,
so ugly they seemed deformed, nesting beneath the clump of desiccated
vegetation. They hissed at her; she ignored them. She found a thin hollow stem
and carried it back. Her hands bled from deep scratches.

Kneeling by Mist’s head, she forced open the cobra’s mouth
and pushed the tube deep into her throat, through the air passage at the base
of the tongue. She bent close, took the tube in her mouth, and breathed gently
into Mist’s lungs.

She noticed: the young man’s hands, holding the cobra as she
had asked; his breathing, first a sharp gasp of surprise, then ragged; the sand
scraping her elbows where she leaned; the cloying smell of the fluid seeping
from Mist’s fangs; her own dizziness, she thought from exhaustion, which she
forced away by necessity and will.

Snake breathed, and breathed again, paused, and repeated,
until Mist caught the rhythm and continued it unaided.

Snake sat back on her heels. “I think she’ll be all right,”
she said. “I hope she will.” She brushed the back of her hand across her
forehead. The touch sparked pain: she jerked her hand down and agony slid along
her bones, up her arm, across her shoulder, through her chest, enveloping her
heart. Her balance turned on its edge. She fell, tried to catch herself but
moved too slowly, fought nausea and vertigo and almost succeeded, until the
pull of the earth seemed to slip away and she was lost in darkness with nothing
to take a bearing by.

She felt sand where it had scraped her cheek and her palms,
but it was soft. “Snake, can I let go?” She thought the question must be for
someone else, while at the same time she knew there was no one else to answer
it, no one else to reply to her name. She felt hands on her, and they were
gentle; she wanted to respond to them, but she was too tired. She needed sleep
more, so she pushed them away. But they held her head and put dry leather to
her lips and poured water into her throat. She coughed and choked and spat it
out.

She pushed herself up on one elbow. As her sight cleared,
she realized she was shaking. She felt the way she had the first time she was
snake-bit, before her immunities had completely developed. The young man knelt
over her, his water flask in his hand. Mist, beyond him, crawled toward the
darkness. Snake forgot the throbbing pain. “Mist!” She slapped the ground.

The young man flinched and turned, frightened; the serpent
reared up, swaying over them, watching, angry, ready to strike, her hood
spread. She formed a wavering white line against black. Snake forced herself to
rise, feeling as though she was fumbling with the control of some unfamiliar
body. She almost fell again, but held herself steady, facing the cobra, whose
eyes were on a level with her own. “Thou must not go to hunt now,” she said.
“There is work for thee to do.” She held out her right hand to the side, a
decoy, to draw Mist if she struck. Her hand was heavy with pain. Snake feared,
not being bitten, but the loss of the contents of Mist’s poison sacs. “Come
here,” she said. “Come here, and stay thine anger.” She noticed blood flowing
down between her fingers, and the fear she felt for Stavin intensified. “Didst
thou bite me already, creature?” But the pain was wrong: poison would numb her,
and the new serum only sting . . .

“No,” the young man whispered from behind her.

Mist struck. The reflexes of long training took over:
Snake’s right hand jerked away, her left grabbed Mist as the serpent brought
her head back. The cobra writhed a moment, and relaxed. “Devious beast,” Snake
said. “For shame.” She turned and let Mist crawl up her arm and over her shoulder,
where she lay like the outline of an invisible cape and dragged her tail like
the edge of a train.

“She didn’t bite me?”

“No,” the young man said. His contained voice was touched
with awe. “You should be dying. You should be curled around the agony, and your
arm swollen purple. When you came back—” He gestured toward her hand. “It must
have been a sand viper.”

Snake remembered the coil of reptiles beneath the branches,
and touched the blood on her hand. She wiped it away, revealing the double
puncture of a bite among the scratches of the thorns. The wound was slightly
swollen. “It needs cleaning,” she said. “I shame myself by falling to it.” The
pain of it washed in gentle waves up her arm, burning no longer. She stood
looking at the young man, looking around her, watching the landscape shift and
change as her tired eyes tried to cope with the low light of setting moon and
false dawn. “You held Mist well, and bravely,” she said to the young man. “I
thank you.”

He lowered his gaze, almost bowing to her. He rose and
approached her. Snake put her hand on Mist’s neck so she would not be alarmed.

“I would be honored,” the young man said, “if you would call
me Arevin.”

“I would be pleased to.”

Snake knelt down and held the winding white loops as Mist
crawled slowly into her compartment. In a little while, when Mist had
stabilized, by dawn, they could go to Stavin.

The tip of Mist’s white tail slid out of sight. Snake closed
the case and would have risen, but she could not stand. She had not quite
shaken off the effects of the new venom. The flesh around the wound was red and
tender, but the hemorrhaging would not spread. She stayed where she was,
slumped, staring at her hand, creeping slowly in her mind toward what she
needed to do, this time for herself.

“Let me help you. Please.”

He touched her shoulder and helped her stand. “I’m sorry,”
she said. “I’m so in need of rest . . . ”

“Let me wash your hand,” Arevin said. “And then you can
sleep. Tell me when to awaken you—”

“I can’t sleep yet.” She collected herself, straightened,
tossed the damp curls of her short hair off her forehead. “I’m all right now.
Have you any water?”

Arevin loosened his outer robe. Beneath it he wore a
loincloth and a leather belt that carried several leather flasks and pouches.
His body was lean and well built, his legs long and muscular. The color of his
skin was slightly lighter than the sun-darkened brown of his face. He brought
out his water flask and reached for Snake’s hand.

“No, Arevin. If the poison gets in any small scratch you
might have, it could infect.”

She sat down and sluiced lukewarm water over her hand. The
water dripped pink to the ground and disappeared, leaving not even a damp spot
visible. The wound bled a little more, but now it only ached. The poison was
almost inactivated.

“I don’t understand,” Arevin said, “how it is that you’re
unhurt. My younger sister was bitten by a sand viper.” He could not speak as
uncaringly as he might have wished. “We could do nothing to save her—nothing we
have would even lessen her pain.”

Snake gave him his flask and rubbed salve from a vial in her
belt pouch across the closing punctures. “It’s a part of our preparation,” she
said. “We work with many kinds of serpents, so we must be immune to as many as
possible.” She shrugged. “The process is tedious and somewhat painful.” She
clenched her fist; the film held, and she was steady. She leaned toward Arevin
and touched his abraded cheek again. “Yes . . . ” She spread a
thin layer of the salve across it. “That will help it heal.”