Snake sat back on her heels. “I did say all that. I meant it, too.” She looked down at her scarred hands, sighed, and glanced up again at Melissa. “I better tell you the real reason I want you to go home. I should have told you before.”

“What is it?” Melissa’s voice was tight, controlled; she was ready to be hurt again. Snake took her hand.

“Most healers have three serpents. I only have two. I did something stupid and the third one was killed.” She told Melissa about Arevin’s people, about Stavin and Stavin’s younger father and Grass.

“There aren’t very many dreamsnakes,” Snake said. “It’s hard to make them breed. Actually we never make them breed, we just wait and hope they might. The way we get more is something like the way I made Squirrel.”

“With the special medicine,” Melissa said.

“Sort of.” The alien biology of dreamsnakes lent itself neither to viral transduction nor to microsurgery. Earth viruses could not interact with the chemicals the dreamsnakes used in place of DNA, and the healers had been unsuccessful in isolating anything comparable to a virus from the alien serpents. So they could not transfer the genes for dreamsnake venom into another serpent, and no one had ever been successful in synthesizing all the venom’s hundreds of components.

“I made Grass,” Snake said, “and four other dreamsnakes. But I can’t make them anymore. My hands aren’t steady enough, the same thing’s wrong with them that was wrong with my knee yesterday.” Sometimes she wondered if her arthritis was as much psychological as physical, a reaction against sitting in the laboratory for hours at a time, delicately manipulating the controls of the micropipette and straining her eyes to find each of the innumerable nuclei in a single cell from a dreamsnake. She had been the first healer in some years to succeed in transplanting genetic material into an unfertilized ovum. She had had to prepare several hundred to end up with Grass and his four siblings; even so, her percentage was better than that of anyone else who had ever managed the task. No one at all had ever discovered what made the serpents mature. So the healers had a small stock of frozen immature ova, gleaned from the bodies of dreamsnakes that had died, but no one could clone them; and a frozen stock of what was probably dreamsnake sperm, cells too immature to fertilize the ova when they were mixed in a test tube.

Snake believed her success to be a matter of luck as much as technique. If her people had the technology needed to build one of the electron microscopes described in their books, she felt sure they would find genes independent of the nuclear bodies, molecules so small they could not be seen, too small to transplant unless the micropipette sucked them up by chance.

“I’m going to Center to deliver a message, and to ask the people there to help us get more dreamsnakes. But I’m afraid they’ll refuse. And if I have to go home without any, after I lost mine, I don’t know what will happen. A few dreamsnakes might have hatched since I left, some might even have been cloned, but if not, I might not be allowed to be a healer. I can’t be a good one without a dreamsnake.“

“If there aren’t any others they should give you one of the ones you made,” Melissa said. “That’s the only thing that’s fair.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to the younger healers I gave them to, though,” Snake said. “I’d have to go home and say to a brother or sister that they couldn’t be a healer unless the dreamsnakes we have reproduce again.” She let out her breath in a long sigh. “I want you to know all that. That’s why I want you to go home before I do, so everyone gets a chance to know you. I had to get you away from Ras, but if you go home with me, I don’t know for sure that things will be much better.”

“Snake!” Melissa was angry. “No matter what, being with you will be better than — than being in Mountainside. I don’t care what happens. Even if you hit me—”

“Melissa!” Snake said, as shocked as the child had been.

Melissa grinned, the right side of her mouth curving up slightly. “See?” she said.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be all right,” Melissa said. “I don’t care what happens at the healers’ station. And I know, the storms are dangerous. And I saw you after you fought the crazy, so I know he’s dangerous too. But I still want to go with you. Please don’t make me go with anybody else.”

“You’re sure.”

Melissa nodded.

“All right,” Snake said. She grinned. “I never adopted anybody before. Theories aren’t the same when you actually have to start using them. We’ll go together.” In truth, she appreciated the complete confidence that Melissa, at least, had in her.

They walked down the hall hand in hand, swinging their arms like two children instead of a child and an adult. Then they rounded the last corner and Melissa suddenly pulled back. Gabriel was sitting outside Snake’s door, saddle-pack by his side, his chin on his drawn-up knees.

“Gabriel,” Snake said.

He looked up, and this time he did not flinch when he saw Melissa.

“Hello,” he said to her. “I’m sorry.”

Melissa had turned toward Snake so the worst of the scar was hidden. “It’s all right. Never mind. I’m used to it.”

“I wasn’t really awake last night…” Gabriel saw the look on Snake’s face and fell silent.

Melissa glanced at Snake, who squeezed her hand, then at Gabriel, and back at Snake. “I better — I’ll go get the horses ready.”

“Melissa—” Snake reached for her but she fled. Snake watched her go, sighed, and opened the door to her room. Gabriel stood up.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You do have a knack.” She went inside, picked up her saddlebags, and tossed them on the bed.

Gabriel followed her. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.” She opened the flaps. “I was last night, but I’m not now.”

“I’m glad.” Gabriel sat on the bed and watched her pack. “I’m ready to leave. But I wanted to say goodbye. And thank you. And I’m sorry…”

“No more of that,” Snake said. “All right.”

Snake folded her clean desert robes and put them in the saddlebag.

“Why don’t I go with you?” Gabriel leaned forward anxiously with his elbows on his knees. “It must be easier to travel with someone to talk to than alone.”

“I won’t be alone. Melissa’s coming with me.”

“Oh.” He sounded hurt. “I’m adopting her, Gabriel. Mountainside isn’t a place for her — no more than it is for you, right now. I can help her, but I can’t do anything for you. Except make you dependent on me. I don’t want to do that. You’ll never find your strengths without your freedom.“

Snake put the sack with her toothpowder and comb and aspirin and soap into the saddlebag, buckled the flap, and sat down. She took Gabriel’s soft strong hand.

“Here they make it too hard for you. I could make it too easy. Neither way is right.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it, the tanned, scarred back and the cup of her palm.

“You see how fast you learn?” She brushed her other hand across his fair fine hair.

“Will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know,” Snake said. “Probably not.” She smiled. “You won’t need to.”

“I’d like to,” he said wistfully.

“Go out in the world,” Snake said. “Take your life in your hands and make it what you want.”

He stood up, leaned down, and kissed her. Rising, she kissed him back more gently than she wanted to, wishing they had more time, wishing she had met him first in a year or so. She spread her fingers across his back and turned the embrace into a hug.

“Good-bye, Gabriel.”

“Good-bye, Snake.”

The door closed softly behind him.

Snake let Mist and Sand out of the serpent case for a short spell of freedom before the long trip. They glided over her feet and around her legs as she looked out the window.

There was a knock on Snake’s door.

“Just a minute.” She let Mist crawl up her arm and over her shoulder, and picked Sand up in both hands. It would not be long before he would grow too large to coil comfortably around her wrist.