She brought him a robe. It was white and smooth and shiny, and on Earth he would have known it as satin. There were underdrawers of a less shiny material resembling cotton.
He hesitated, a holdover from his Earth life when the sexes were cautious about naked exposure, then rolled out of bed and quickly donned the garments. Gerta, after all, had been his gentle nurse for a length of time he couldn't begin to estimate. It might have been weeks, though he had only been aware of days. During that time he knew she had aided him in all that was necessary, or else the magic was of a kind that allowed him to heal while suspending all body functions. That seemed unlikely! So though his memories were blurred, he was sure that Gerta had seen all of him, and all his functions.
"I haven't been up before, have I, Gerta?"
"Yes, you have. With me walking you."
"I don't remember."
"No. The healing clouds as it soothes and rebuilds the mind."
He thought about that, and he also thought of how very capable he felt on his feet. Gerta handed him a pair of soft slippers with curled toes. As he sat down to put these on he marveled that both slippers were decorated with large buckles, and that the buckles were silver. The designs on the silver changed as his feet entered the slippers. He had given up wondering what the point of such magic was. Art did not need a point.
He stood up, looked around the room, and spotted a door. He was certain he had looked at it for hours on end, but now it was like seeing it for the first time. It, too, had decorated silver panels that changed in their own fashion in their own time.
"I will take you to the workplace, John. You are now quite well. The magic has finished its work."
He marveled as he followed her. She moved quite fast for someone with such short legs. He felt a kindness toward her, a feeling that he might have had for a younger sister.
They went under stone archways, through some rooms without windows, and finally came out in a large natural amphitheater. Here there were many flop-eared men, wearing pointed caps not unlike Rud stockelcaps, and leather aprons. They were working at individual anvils. The cauldron around which the work centered contained silver in the molten state. The fire burning so brightly beneath the cauldron must, he realized, be of a magical nature to melt silver.
As he watched, one of the flopears walked to the cauldron carrying an armload of silvery, scaly-patterned skin. He turned the skin around in his hands and tossed it into the cauldron. Another flopear on a scaffold stirred the cauldron with a long ladle.
"My God!" John said. He whistled, then could do no better than to repeat his exclamation: "My God!"
The skin was serpentskin, and was purest silver! Shades of dragons with golden scales! Was there nothing that couldn't be in different existences?
His mind went back, scrabbling frantically for a shred of sanity. High school, science teacher getting his attention: "This article tells how shellfish ingest heavy metal and how the metal migrates to their shells. The flesh of these shellfish is unfit to eat, and the coloration metallic. I suggest you read this and report on it for tomorrow's class." John had nodded, sorry that he had thrown the paper wad, and he wanted now to shout back through the years: "Yes, and immortal dragons live on and on for centuries!" Serpents that were as immortal as dragons, ingesting silver instead of gold, the silver migrating through centuries to those brightly shining scales?
A flopear who had been going from anvil to anvil, checking the work, came up to them. He was no taller than Gerta, but his head was larger and he had the facial expression of a harried foreman.
"He healed, Gerta?"
"Yes, healed."
"Good. He will trade well."
Gerta squirmed. "I don't like to think of that, Harlick."
"No matter. You know the way."
"Yes."
John stared at them. "Trade? Me? To others like yourselves?"
"To others like yourself, John."
"Like me? People like me but with pointed ears?"
"Ears, pointed? No, John. Ears like ears on you mortal folk. Tiny ears low on the sides of your head." She tried not to show her distaste for this abnormal configuration.
John thought of this as they left the workplace and ambled back the way they had come. On the return he saw that there were many cottages but that the rooms he had been in were in fact inside a cliff. There were other doorways in the cliff, and some round holes that might have been bored by lasers.
"What will happen to me, Gerta? Will I be a slave?"
"I don't know, John. The roundears have their ways and we have ours. Their king of Hud buys all mortals who are prisoners of flopears if they are healthy. They trade for their own kind. What they do with them, I do not know."
John Knight pondered that, and was not reassured. It was quite possible that he would be better off remaining with the flopears, if he had any choice in the matter.
Kian tried to concentrate on other things than their punishment. He had discovered that he could think for himself without Lonny knowing his thoughts, but if he thought in terms of speaking, she knew them immediately. This was nice to know if they were going to be spending an eternity together. But would they? Would their thoughts and those of the serpent gradually merge, becoming one? Maybe that was what would eventually happen, but maybe it could be slowed, if not stopped. What they had to do, he felt, was concentrate on thinking thoughts that were human. That might enable them to merge while retaining human nature and intellect, instead of descending to serpent level.
John Knight, his father, had talked about were-animals once. He said it was all superstition and invention, but that some people believed in them. On Earth anything might be possible. Wolves and cats and other Earth creatures holding the spirits of humans and changing with them from time to time. Perhaps these stories owed their existence to beings like the flopears. If spirits could exist, and he was inclined now to believe that they might, then why couldn't there be two apparent species that shared the same spirits? If the serpents were truly immortal ancestors of the flopears, then was it strange that the…
His thought faded out, distracted by the serpent's feeding. The rock had a peppery taste. Seasoned with silver. The bad aspect of it was that he was beginning to like it. The worst of it was that he thought of the ingesting and could not otherwise concentrate. The serpent nature was taking over!
"Kian?" Lonny asked.
"Yes, Lonny." He had to be careful. He wanted to merge with her, and he doubted that he should. Because their mergence would be but the prelude to mergence with the serpent, and that would be the end of their humanity. Somehow he must get out of this body and into his own and go back to his home frame and Rud and find the girl she resembled. Only—how long had it been?
"Kian, do you think we can ever return? Be in our own bodies again?"
"Of course! What a question." Yet it was only the echo of his own doubt. His belief in that return was diminishing, but he didn't want to discourage her. He thought of the words of a song and tried singing it to her: "Oh, bring back, bring back, bring back my body to meeeee." It was a parody he had sung as a child, but it would do.
"I'm afraid, Kian! I just want to taste the silver and feel our body working."
"Not our body, Lonny! Get that out of your head!" Of course she had no head of her own at the moment, but it was no time to quibble about terms. "You're human, not serpent! You're a beautiful girl!"
"Am I, Kian? Do you really think that?"
"Of course it's true! Of course! I'm going to marry someone who looks just like you. I'm going to—" He fought back a surge of doubt. "I'm going to—to return."
"You really think so, Kian?"
"Yes, we're both going to return." How, he had no idea, but he had to cling to the belief.
"I mean, that I'm beautiful?"
"Yes, yes, I told you."
"You really mean it?"
He laughed, the mental version even more natural than the physical one. How could she doubt that? Their poss
ible escape might be hard to believe, but her beauty was certain! "Of course!"
She evidently picked up more of that thought than he had intended. "You find me beautiful," she said, believing. "And you would like to—to hold me and kiss me and—"
"I didn't say that!" he protested.
"But it's true, isn't it?"
He discovered to his surprise that it was. He wanted to do it all with her! "Yes, but—"
"Yet you will marry this other girl?" Now she was angry. He felt the surge of it, and he could not deny the justice of it.
"I have to, Lonny. I can't marry you. I'm from another frame. That just wouldn't be right."
"Not right?"
"My—my father came to our frame from another, and—" He tried to sort out the immense skein of complications that his father's consortion with two women of Rud had generated. Kian himself was one result, and Kelvin another. What mischief. Was he to spread it farther by doing the same thing?
"Kian, Kian, I love you!" she cried, and the emotion washed through him, demolishing his bastion of objectivity as a wave destroys a castle of sand.
"I love you, Lonny," he replied helplessly.
"I want to—to do those things with you. To hold you, and kiss you, and—"
"No!"
"And make love to you," she concluded. "And you feel the same."
It was as though they were blending, melding like silver. He knew he must not allow that. He tried to resist, but simply could not think. "We—we have no bodies," he said desperately. Was that a commitment to do it at such time as they did recover their bodies? Then how could he return to his own frame? He was lost either way.
"Oh, Kian!"
"Oh, Lonny, I did not mean to—"
"I think we can do it now, Kian. Let me try."
"Now? But—"
Then he felt her kiss on his lips. He might not have a mouth, but he had the awareness of his human anatomy, and so did she, and it was certainly a kiss.
He tried once more to resist. "We shouldn't—"
She embraced him. Her spirit within the serpent interacted with his, and the sensation was exactly like a physical embrace, only more so, because there was nothing to get in the way. In physical bodies there could be no complete understanding; people more or less pretended that they understood each other, but it could be deceptive, as it had been with his father and his mother. His father had hardly known his mother at all! But here there were no physical barriers. He knew Lonny was speaking truly, and she knew he was not. The act of sex, physically, was said to be knowledge, but it could be nothing like this!
He gave up the unequal struggle. "Oh, Lonny! Lonny, Lonny, Lonny!" In one sense he was speaking her name, but in another he was speaking her essence, in that repetition possessing her and being possessed by her.
"Kian, Kian, Kian!" And she of him, similarly.
They no longer fought it at all. They came together, more intimately than either had imagined possible, and—
With a slurping, sucking motion daylight broke into their one functioning eye. Jolted out of their incipient mergence, they raised their silver head to the setting sun and breathed in through their nostrils and the air passages covered by their scales. They undulated, crawled, and wriggled out of the rock tunnel they had made.
Boys with big floppy ears were there for them. They shivered all their length, anticipating gentle touches, the soothing strokes, the exhilarating yet calming scent.
The boys held out their blossoms and touched their nostrils with the pink and blue flowers. They sucked in the scent in great waves. It filled their being, taking away all doubt and hope and questions. Taking away, finally, all sense of duality, and of self. They were one with the serpent.
CHAPTER 14
The Cliffs
JAC HESITATED OUTSIDE THE tent flap, dreading to go inside. Death had always been upsetting, though he had seen enough of it in his time. He thought of Heeto and the girl sitting in there side by side watching the body. He wanted her badly, but there could be no mistaking where her heart was. He would try to comfort her, and then, if the stranger's body had deteriorated the least little bit, he would bury him himself. Steeling himself for an unpleasant sight, he pushed on into the tent.
The sight that met his eyes was shocking, even to him. The lovely, recently intended sacrifice was stretched out by the body of the stranger, and both were apparently dead. She had joined him in suicide!
Heeto sat cross-legged by their heads, a leather fan in his hands. There were no buzzing flies.
"Master, I could not stop her! She took the berries. She followed him."
Trembling, Jac wiped perspiration from his forehead. The bodies were so perfect! All day long and no bloat and no smell. That beautiful face, that perfectly formed body, that had to go into the ground before it began to rot. Burying the bodies was going to be the most unpleasant task he had performed in his life! Yet it had to be done, and quickly.
"When did she—?"
"This morning, Master. Just after you left."
He had had to choose this day to get supplies for the camp! He should have known that Lonny had something like this in mind, and taken those berries away before she got to them! Yet he had also had to get his mind off the problem, and work or activity helped.
"We'd better—" He choked on the word "bury" and simply motioned at them.
"Master, I do not believe that they are dead."
"They're not breathing. Have they any heartbeats?"
Heeto shook his head. "No breathing, no heartbeats, but also no stink and no bugs."
"I'm not sure that means anything, Heeto." Yet maybe, just possibly, it did!
"I've touched them, Master. I have taken their hands. It's strange, Master, but I felt something besides their cold flesh. I was floating, Master, or felt I was floating, though I did not leave this tent. I was somewhere dark. There were rocks about, and dirt, and I could feel them the length of my body. It was not her body and it was not his; it was a serpent's."
"A serpent's!"
"Yes, Master. I waited to tell you. I thought that perhaps—"
"Yes, yes, I want to try!"
"That is not what I mean, Master. I thought that perhaps you would know."
"I know only what the stranger Kian told me. But if a serpent has them—has their spirits—"
"Is that possible, Master?"
"I don't know." He sat down by the dwarf, took a good grip on his feelings, and reached for Lonny's hands.
They were cold, but there was no stiffness. Proof, perhaps, that this was not actually death. He gripped the hands and closed his eyes. "Is this the way you did it, Heeto?"
"Yes, Master, but that was this morning. I had not the courage to try it again. Perhaps it will not work now. Perhaps I only imagined it."
"No, no. something's happening! I sense black and roughness and—a taste."
"A taste. Master?"
"Dirt! Bah, ugh! Now a more peppery taste. Silver! Silver ore! She likes it; he doesn't. They're inside it, inside the serpent!"
"I told you, Master!"
"Now I'm seeing something. Something through an eye. One eye. The serpent's eye!"
"Only one eye, Master?"
"Yes, only one. Now she and he are talking—talking in the serpent. I don't know the words, I don't know what they are saying, but… they seem to be—" He swallowed, disliking this, but obliged to recognize the truth of it. "They are attracted to each other. They are kissing, and embracing, and—" He took a deep breath. "And they seem to be merging, mingling as one mind. It's like sex, only so strange, and—" How he wished he were the one experiencing that! "Now—oh! Light! Outside, ground. Boys with flowers, extending them toward the eye. The flowers touch the nostrils, it breathes in and—"
He pulled himself away, dropping her hands. It was an experience he had never imagined. He looked at Heeto and the bodies, and he trembled and shook in every part.
"Are you all right, Master?" Heeto's hands were on him, touc
hing his face.
He continued to shake. "It's—it's—I think it's digesting them!"
"Then they will die?"
He tried to still his shaking hands. "I think they must! I think they must! And, Heeto, this is mad, but—I think the one-eyed serpent is the one he killed!"
"Killed, Master? With your spear? In the eye socket?"
"That's the one! The very one! I'd swear to it!"
"Calm down, Master! Calm down!"
"We can't bury them, Heeto. Not until, until—"
"Until morning?"
"Until we have to! Until we know they are gone for good and there is only the serpent left."
"Master, that's so, so sad."
"Very sad, Heeto," he agreed heavily. "Very, very sad." With difficulty he got his hands to stop shaking. It was such a monstrous thing to think of her there. To imagine her spirit, or "astral self," as Kian Knight had called it, becoming a part of that gigantic serpent.
"We will leave the bodies in the tent for as long as we can. For now, we'd better sleep outside."
"There's nothing we can do, Master? Nothing to save them?"
"Nothing I know of," he said, wishing it were otherwise.
That night there was no way he could sleep. He kept throwing off his blanket, getting up, pacing, and then lying down again. All he could think about was her, she of the beautiful eyes and long, flowing blond hair. If only there were some way to save her, to bring that splendid body of hers back to life.
At dawn he moved quietly about the camp so as not to awaken anyone. He got his best and biggest spear and tiptoed with it to his horse. He saddled and bridled the mare, rubbed her muzzle, and called her "Betts, my pet." He fastened the spear to the saddle with his best rope and walked the mare until they were clear of the camp. He hiked up his sword, mounted, and rode at an easy walk. He had gone only a short distance when he heard the other horse. Turning around, he was quite surprised to see Heeto riding after him. He waited. The dwarf pulled up.