Jesse’s brother glanced away, intently watching something else for a moment. He looked at Snake again. “Well, I hope you believe what I tell you now. A storm’s gathering, so I suggest you give me the message and leave yourself time to find shelter.”
Even if he was lying to her, he was not going to let her inside. Snake no longer even hoped for that.
“Her message is this,” Snake said. “She was happy out here. She wants you to stop lying to your children about what it’s like outside your city.”
Jesse’s brother stared at Snake, waiting, then suddenly smiled and laughed once, quickly and sharply. “That’s all? You mean she isn’t coming back?”
“She cannot come back,” Snake said. “She’s dead.”
A strange and eerie mixture of relief and sorrow passed over the face that was so like Jesse’s.
“Dead?” he said softly.
“I could not save her. She broke her back—”
I never wished her dead.“ He drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly. ”Broke her back… a quick death, then. Better than some.“
“She did not die when she broke her back. Her partners and I were going to bring her home, because you could heal her.”
“Perhaps we could have,” he said. “How did she die?”
“She prospected in the war craters. She couldn’t believe the truth that they are dangerous, because you told her so many lies. She died of radiation poisoning.”
He flinched.
“I was with her,” Snake said. “I did what I could, but I have no dreamsnake. I could not help her die.”
He seemed to be staring at Snake, through her.
“We are in your debt, healer,” he said. “For service to a family member, for bringing us news of her death.” He spoke in a distressed, distracted tone, then suddenly looked up, glaring at her. “I don’t like my family to be in debt. There’s a payment slot at the base of the screen. The money—”
“I want no money,” Snake said.
“I can’t let you in!” he cried.
“I accept that.”
“Then what do you want?” He shook his head quickly. “Of course. Dreamsnakes. Why won’t you believe we have none? I can’t discharge our debt with dreamsnakes — and I’m not willing to exchange my debt to you for a debt to the offworlders. The offworlders—” He stopped; he seemed upset.
“If the offworlders can help me, let me speak to them.”
“Even if I could, they’d refuse you.”
“If they’re human, they’ll listen to me.”
“There’s… some question about their humanity,” Jesse’s brother said. “Who can tell, without tests? You don’t understand, healer. You’ve never met them. They’re dangerous and unpredictable.”
“Let me try.” Snake held out her hands, palms up, a quick, beseeching gesture, trying to make him understand her. “Other people die as Jesse died, in agony, because there aren’t enough healers. There aren’t enough dreamsnakes. I want to talk to the offworlders.”
“Let me pay you now, healer,” Jesse’s brother said sadly, and Snake might as well have been back at Mountainside. “The power in Center is precariously balanced. The council would never permit an outsider to deal with the offworlders. The tensions are too great, and we won’t chance altering them. I’m sorry my sister died in pain, but what you ask would risk too many more lives.”
“How can that be true?” Snake said. “A simple meeting, a single question—”
“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.