“It’s all right,” Snake said. “I understand what you’re saying. Be easy. With me it doesn’t matter.”

He looked up at her, as wide-eyed and surprised as the little girl in the stable had been when Snake looked at the new bruise instead of the old, ugly scar.

“You can’t mean that. I can’t talk to anyone. They’d be disgusted, like my father. I don’t blame them.”

“You can talk to me. I won’t judge you.”

He hesitated a moment more, then the words, pent up for years, rushed out. “I had a friend named Leah,” Gabriel said. “That was three years ago, when I was fifteen. She was twelve. The first time she decided to make love with anyone, more than just playing, you know, she chose me. She hadn’t finished her training yet, of course, but it shouldn’t have mattered because I’d finished mine. I thought.”

He was leaning against Snake, now, with his head on her shoulder, gazing with unfocused eyes at the black windows.

“Maybe I should have taken other precautions,” he said. “But I never even thought I might be fertile. I never heard of anybody who couldn’t handle biocontrol. Well, maybe not deep trance, but fertility.“ He laughed bitterly. ”And whiskers, but I hadn’t started growing any then.“ Snake felt him shrug as the smooth material of his shirt slid across the rough new fabric of her own. ”A few months later we had a party for her, because we thought she’d learned her biocontrol faster than usual. No one was surprised. Everything comes quickly to Leah. She’s brilliant.“ He stopped for a moment and simply lay against Snake, breathing slowly and deeply. He glanced up at her. ”But it wasn’t her biocontrol that stopped her menstruation, it was that I had made her pregnant. She was twelve and my friend and she chose me, and I almost ruined her life.“

Now Snake understood everything, Gabriel’s shyness, his uncertainty, his shame, even why he cloaked his beauty when he went outside: he did not want to be recognized; even more, he did not want anyone to offer him their bed.

“You poor children,” Snake said.

“I think we always assumed we’d partner, eventually, when we both knew what we were going to do. When we were settled. But who’d want an uncontrolled partner? They’d always know that if their control lapsed just a little, the other would have none. A partnering couldn’t last that way.” He shifted his weight. “Even so, she didn’t want to humiliate me. She didn’t tell anyone. She aborted it, but she was all alone. And her training wasn’t far enough along for that. She almost bled to death.”

“You shouldn’t treat yourself as if you’d hurt her out of spite,” Snake said, knowing that nothing as simple as words would be sufficient to make Gabriel stop despising himself, or to make up for the way his father treated him. He could not have known he was fertile, if he had not just been tested, and once one learned the technique it was not usually necessary to worry. Snake had heard of people incapable of biocontrol, but not very often. Only a person unable to care for anyone would have come unmarked through what Gabriel had undergone. And Gabriel quite obviously cared.

“She got well,” Gabriel said. “But I turned what should have been pleasure into nightmare for her. Leah… I think she wanted to see me again, but couldn’t make herself. If that makes sense.”

“Yes,” Snake said. Twelve years old: perhaps that had been Leah’s first realization that other people could influence her life without her control or even knowledge; it was not a lesson children learned willingly or easily.

“She wants to be a glass-former, and she had an appointment to assist Ashley.”

Snake whistled softly in admiration. Glass-forming was a demanding and respected profession. Only the best of its people could build solar mirrors; it took a long time just to learn to make decent tubed panels, or curved panes like the ones in the towers. Ashley was not one of the best. She was the best.

“Did Leah have to give it up?”

“Yes. It could have been permanently. She went the next year. But that was a year out of her life.” He spoke slowly and carefully but without emotion, as if he had been through this so many times in his mind that he had forced some distance between himself and the memory. “Of course I went back to the teacher, but when they tracked my reactions longer they realized I could only keep the temperature differential a few hours at a time. Not enough.”

“No,” Snake said thoughtfully, wondering just how good Gabriel’s teacher really could have been.

Gabriel drew back so he could look into her face. “So, you see, I can’t stay with you tonight.”

“You can. Please do. We’re both lonely, and we can help each other.”

He caught his breath and stood abruptly. “Don’t you understand—” he cried.

“Gabriel.”

He sat down slowly, but did not touch her.

“I am not twelve years old. You don’t need to be afraid of giving me a child I don’t want. Healers never have children. We take the responsibility for that ourselves, because we cannot afford to share it with our partners.”

“You never have children?”

“Never. Women do not bear them and men do not father them.”

He stared at her.

“Do you believe me?”

“You really still want me, even knowing — ?”

In answer, Snake stood up and began unbuttoning her shirt. The newness made the buttonholes stiff, so she stripped the shirt off over her head and dropped it on the floor. Gabriel stood up slowly, looking at her shyly. Snake unbuttoned his shirt and his pants as he reached out to hold her. When his pants slid off his narrow hips he began to blush.

“What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t been naked in front of anyone since I was fifteen.”

“Well,” Snake said, grinning, “high time.” Gabriel’s body was as beautiful as his face. Snake unfastened her pants and left them in a heap on the floor.

Taking Gabriel to her bed, Snake slipped under the sheet beside him. The soft glow of the lamp highlighted his blond hair and his fair skin. He was trembling.

“Relax,” Snake whispered. “There’s no hurry, and this is all for fun.” As she massaged his shoulders the tightness slowly left them. She realized she too was tense, tense with desire and excitement and need. She wondered what Arevin was doing.

Gabriel turned on his side and reached for her. They caressed each other and Snake smiled to herself, thinking that though no single experience could compensate Gabriel for the last three years, she would do her best to make a start.

Soon, though, she realized he was not prolonging the foreplay by intent. He was working to please her, still thinking and worrying much too much, as if she were Leah, a twelve year old whose first sexual pleasure was his responsibility. Snake got no joy out of being worked on, out of being someone’s duty. And, as well, he was trying hard to respond to her, failing, and growing more embarrassed by the second. Snake touched him gently, brushing his face with her lips.

Gabriel flung himself away from her with a curse and hunched over on his side with his back to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was so rough Snake knew he was crying. She sat up beside him and stroked his shoulder.

“I told you I’d make no demands.”

“I keep thinking…”

She kissed the point of his shoulder, letting her breath tickle him. “Thinking isn’t the idea.”

“I can’t help it. All I can offer anyone is trouble and pain. And now without even giving them any pleasure first. Maybe it’s just as well.”

“Gabriel, an impotent man can satisfy another person. You must know that. What we’re talking about now is your pleasure.”

He did not answer, did not look at her: he had flinched when she said “impotent,” for that was one difficulty Gabriel had not talked himself into until now.

“You don’t believe you’re safe with me, do you?”

He rolled over and looked up. “Leah wasn’t safe with me.”