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40 Proud Heritage

There had to be easier things than shepherding a pregnant, disabled Titanide through a dark terrain that would have daunted a mountain goat. On the other hand, Chris could think of some things that were probably harder, and many things less pleasant. The company was some compensation, and the fact that the path was marked for them. Everything balanced, and it came to seem as if that were the way it should be. Valiha's arms grew stronger, but their pace did not improve because she was gaining weight. They had to be more careful than ever lest her growing awkwardness provoke a slip that might hurt her still-fragile forelegs. As she neared her term, the new delights of anterior sex play tapered off and stopped. But the frontal sex got even better as her legs improved. He gradually lost the exciting, exotic sense of alienness he had once felt when he was around her, to the point he sometimes wondered how she had ever looked odd. Yet with familiarity grew an easy acceptance that drew them closer.
Valiha swelled like a ripening pumpkin. She grew more radiantly beautiful and, curiously, more mottled with brownish freckles.
There would be few surprises. Chris began completely ignorant of Titanide birthing, but by the time Serpent was ready to be born he knew as much as Valiha. He had been making many assumptions that led to needless apprehension.
He knew, for instance, that Valiha was not using a general pronoun when she called her child he. That had been planned with the other two parents. He knew—but still could not quite believe—that Valiha was in communication with the fetus in a way she never satisfactorily described. She claimed they had decided on his name together, though she had influenced him because of a circumstance beyond her control. That concerned the Titanide custom of naming a child after the first instrument he or she owned. The custom was no longer universal, but Valiha was traditional and had been working for some time on the first instrument for her son: the serpent, a sinuous tube of wood played like a brass horn. In the cavern, her choice of building materials had been limited.
He knew the birth would not be painful, would not take long, and Serpent would be born able to walk and talk. But when she told him she hoped the child would be able to speak English, Chris's first thought was that she was a fool. He did not say that but expressed his doubt.
"I know," Valiha said. "The Wizard is dubious, too. This is not the first time an attempt has been made to birth a child with two milk tongues. Yet even the Wizard will not say it cannot be done. Our genetics is not yours. Many things happen differently inside us."
"Like what?"
"I know nothing of the scientific side of it. But you must admit we are different. The Wizard has successfully crossed Titanide eggs with the genetic matter of frogs, fish, dogs, and apes in the laboratory."
"That goes against everything I ever read about genetics," Chris admitted. "Not that I know much either. But what does that have to do with Serpent speaking English? Even if he had human parents—which you say he doesn't—all we can do when we're born is yell."
"The Wizard calls it the Lysenko effect," Valiha said. "She has demonstrated to her own satisfaction that Titanides can inherit acquired characteristics. We—those of us who postulate that English might be passed on—speculate that if sufficiently reinforced, it could be done. You once asked me if I had swallowed a dictionary. That is almost true. For the experiment it is necessary that all the parents know all English words. This is a goal one can never attain, but we have good memories."
"I can vouch for that." Something about it disturbed Chris, and it took him a long time to put his finger on it. Even when he had it, he was not sure just why it upset him, but it did.
"What I want to know is why," Chris said much later. "Why English when your own language is so beautiful? Not that I understand it, though I wish I could. From what I gather, aside from Cirocco and Gaby, who got it implanted in them, no human has ever gone beyond the pidgin stage in singing Titanide."
"It's true. We know the language instinctively, and humans, despite their often great intellectual attainments, have had no luck with it. Our songs will not parse and are seldom the same, even when the same thought is expressed. The Wizard has speculated there is a telepathic component."
"Whatever. My point is—or maybe I should say it's my question - why are you working so hard at this? What's wrong with Titanide? I think it's a miracle you're born knowing any language. Why try for English?"
"Perhaps you misunderstood," Valiha said. "Serpent will know how to sing. This is assured. I would not dream of trying to take that ability away from him. I would as soon wish he be born with only two legs as  . . .  oh, dear. Please—"
Chris laughed and said it was okay.
"I was alluding to a saying used when one is experiencing great difficulties. Then we say, 'Going at it on two legs, both of them on the left.'"
"Sure you were."
"I promise you that  . . .  you're teasing me again. I suppose I'll get used to it one day."
"Not if I can help it. You still haven't told me why you're doing this."
"I would think it would be obvious."
"Not to me."
She sighed. "Very well. As to why English, the first humans in Gaea spoke it, and it just caught on. As to why any human language  . . .  since first contact there have been more humans living here all the time. You don't come in great numbers, but you keep coming. It seems a good idea to know as much about you as we can."
"The unpleasant neighbors who've moved in to stay, huh?"
Valiha considered it. "I don't wish to sound disparaging about humans. As individuals, some of them are as nice as anyone could wish—"
"But as a race we're a pain in the ass."
"I shouldn't make judgments."
"Why not? You're as entitled to them as anyone else. And I agree with you. We're pretty ugly when we put our heads together and start thinking up atomic bombs and such. And as for most of the individuals  . . .  hell." He was experiencing a twinge of chauvinism he did not like but could not avoid. It made him think, try to find some defense to throw back at her. He could not. "You know," he said finally, "I'm just realizing that I've never met a Titanide I didn't like."
"I've met many," Valiha said. "And I know a lot more than you do. But I have never met a Titanide I could not get along with. I've never heard of one Titanide killing another. And I've never met a Titanide I hated."
"That's the key, isn't it? Your people get along a lot better than we do."
"I would have to say yes."
"Tell me. Tell me the truth. Just for a minute forget I'm human and—"
"I forget it all the time."
She was trying to lighten it, but Chris was not having it.
"Just tell me what you think of having humans in Gaea. What you think, and what Titanides in general think. Or are they divided?"
"Of course, there is division, but I agree with most that we would like to have more control. We are not the only intelligent race in Gaea and do not speak for anyone but ourselves, but in the lands where we live, in Hyperion and Crius and Metis, we would like to have a say in who is allowed to enter. I believe we would turn back ninety percent."
"That many?"
"Perhaps less. You asked me to be frank, and I will be. Humans brought alcoholism to Gaea. We have always enjoyed wine, but the beverage you call tequila and we call—"she sang a brief melody—"which translates as death-with-a-pinch-of-salt-and-a-twist-of-lime, has addictive properties for us. Humans brought venereal disease: the only malady of Terran origin that affects us. Humans brought sadism, rape, and murder."
"This all reminds me of Indians in America," he said.
"There is a resemblance, but I believe it to be fallacious. Many times on Earth a powerful technology met a weaker one and overwhelmed it. In Gaea, humans bring in only what they can carry, so that is not such a factor. In addition, we are not a primitive society. But we are powerless to do anything because humans have good connections."
"What do you mean?"
"Gaea likes humans. In the sense that she is interested in them and likes to observe them. Until she tires of them, we must accept whoever comes." She saw his face and suddenly looked as troubled as he did.
"I know what you're thinking," she said.
"What's that?"
"That if standards were set, you would not have passed them."
Chris had to admit she was right.
"You're wrong. I wish I could explain it to you better. You are upset about your episodes of violence." She sighed. "I see I must tell more. It is easy to deliver a righteous diatribe against the things about humans one doesn't like. There are many humans my people would bar unconditionally: the prejudiced, the small-minded, the faithless, the misguided. Those badly reared, who, when blameless children, were not taught how to be proper persons. We believe the root of human troubles lies in the fact that you must be taught, that you are born with nothing but savagery and appetite and more often than not have those urges reinforced into a way of life.
"Yet we have a love-hate relationship with your species. We admire and sometimes envy the fire of your emotions. Each of you has a streak of violence, and we accept that. It's easier since we are so much larger; without a gun, there is little chance any of you could harm any of us. One of the things we would like to do is ban those equalizing weapons. Lacking the spur of aggression, we cannot afford to let you be our physical equals.
"And there are among you individuals with life burning so brightly within them that we are dazzled by your brilliance. The best of you are better than the best of us. We know that and accept it. None of you is so nice as we are, but we have realized that niceness isn't everything. We have much to offer the human species. So far it has shown only the mildest interest, but we remain hopeful. But we would learn from you, too. We have tried long to absorb your fire by getting to know you. And since, in Gaea, Lysenko was right, we are now trying to breed you into us. That's why we learn English."
Chris had never heard her speak so long on anything, or so forcefully. He had thought he knew everything about her, and now he wondered why, since he was not normally such a fool as to think he could know everything about anyone. He knew, and had even mentioned to Valiha, that her manner of speech had gradually improved from the time he first met her. Now her vocabulary often left him far behind. When she needed to, she could express herself in his native language ten times better than Chris. This did not bother him; he knew she had revealed more of herself as she came to trust him more, and that was as it should be. But something else disturbed him.
"I don't want to sound harsh, but I have to ask this. Is that what that business with the egg was all about? Lysenkoism?"
"I don't want to sound harsh either, but I will not lie to you. Yes, that entered into it. But I would never have done it with you without something much stronger. I speak of love, which so far as I know is the only emotion identical in humans and Titanides."
"Cirocco didn't think so."
"She is wrong. I realize that, commonly, love is bonded with jealousy and covetousness and territoriality in humans, and it never is in Titanides. That does not make the emotion different. It is simply that few humans experience love uncolored by these other things. You must take my word for that; it is one of the things I mentioned that we do better than humans. Humans have written and sung for thousands of years on the nature of love and never succeeded in defining it to anyone's satisfaction. Love is no mystery to us. We understand it thoroughly. It is in song—and its close friend poetry—that humans have come closest to it. That is one of the things we could teach humans."
Chris wanted to believe that but was still disturbed by something he could not quite bring into the open. She had explained how she could tolerate his spells of violence. Maybe it was just that, deep down, he could not believe it.
"Chris, would you come touch me?" she asked. "I feel I have upset you, and I don't like that feeling."
She must have seen his hesitation because tears started in her eyes. They sat only a meter apart, yet he felt a gulf had opened between them. It frightened him because only a short time ago he had felt very close to her.
"I'm terribly afraid," Valiha said. "I'm afraid that in the end, we will be too alien to each other. You will never understand me, and I will never understand you. And you must! I must!" She stopped and made herself slow down. "Let me try again. I will never give up.
"I said the best of you are better than us.
"I tell you that any of us can see it. Serpent will see it immediately, newborn, when he looks at you. I can see it, and I could not describe it if I had read a thousand dictionaries. When one of those better humans appears, we can tell it. But if I brought a group of them together, you would be at a loss to say what they had in common. It is no one quality, and it is not even always the same qualities. Many of them are brave, and others are cowards. Some are shy, and others brash. Many are intelligent, but others are far from geniuses. Many are outwardly exuberant; they taste life better; they burn with a brighter fire than we have ever seen. Others, to human senses, are quite subdued, as you are at times, but to our eyes the light shines through. We don't know precisely what it is, but we want some of it if we can have it without the urge to self-destruction that is the bane of your species. Perhaps even then, because its warmth is so glorious.
"We have a song for it. It is—" She sang it, then rushed on in English, as if she felt time were against her and she would once again fail to reach him. "In translation, that is, roughly, 'Those-who-might-one-day-sing,' or, more literally, 'Those-who-can-understand-Titanides.' If they want to. The word grows unwieldy, I fear.
"Cirocco is such a human. You have not felt one-hundredth of her heat. Gaby was one. Robin is. A handful of people back in Titantown. The settlement we passed in Crius. And you. If you were not, I could no more love you than a stone, and I love you fabulously."
That was a funny way to put it, Chris thought. And: what a coincidence that all four of us possessed this elusive quality. And again: it's such a shame, because she's a great person, but how do I tell her  . . . ?
But that was all swept away by a feeling Chris was later to describe as like a drowning man's having his life pass before him all in an instant, or possibly the flash of genius that is so often spoken of—with a corollary that read "How have I been an idiot for so long"—and, in the end, might best be expressed as the sudden realization that he loved her fabulously, too.
She saw the flash of his emotion—if he had wanted proof of her propositions, that would have been it, but he didn't need it—and while he was trying to think of something more intelligent to say than "I love you, too," she kissed him.
"I told you you loved me," she said, and he nodded, wondering if he would ever stop grinning.
 
Knowing the processes of Titanide birth was not the same thing as understanding the linked minds of the mother and child. Nor did Chris comprehend the nature of that link. He pestered her with questions about it, and determined that, yes, she could ask Serpent a question and he could answer it, and no, Serpent could not tell her if he knew how to speak English.
"He thinks in pictures and song," she explained. "The song is not translatable except emotionally; in a sense Titanide song never is, and that's why no human has been able to compile a dictionary of Titanide. I hear and see what he thinks."
"Then how did you ask him what he wanted to be named?"
"I pictured the instruments it was feasible to make down here and played them in my mind. When his awareness indicated delight, I knew he was Serpent."
"Does he know about me?"
"He knows you very well. He doesn't know your name. He will ask that quite soon after birth. He is aware that I love you."
"He knows that I'm human?"
"He knows it very well."
"What does he think about that? Will it be a problem?"
Valiha smiled at him. "He will be born without prejudice. From that point, it is up to you."
She was lying on her side in a comfortable spot Chris had prepared. The birth was close, and Valiha was serene, delighted, in no pain. Chris knew he was acting as badly as any first-time father outside the delivery room and could not help it.
"I guess I still don't understand a lot of things," he admitted. "Will he come out, sit up, and start offering his opinions on the price of coffee in Crius, or will there be a goo-goo and ga-ga stage?"
Valiha laughed, paused for a moment while the muscles of her belly worked like a hand squeezing a water balloon, and took a sip of water.
"He will be weak and confused," she said. "He will see much and say nothing. He is not truly intelligent at this point. It is as if his thinking pathways have been packed in grease for shipment, needing to be cleansed upon arrival before use. But then . . . " She paused, listening to something Chris could not hear, then smiled.
"You'll have to let that wait," she said. "He is almost here, and there is a ritual I must perform, passed down through my chord for generations."
"Sure, go ahead," he said hastily.
"Please indulge me," she said. "I could do it with beauty in my own song, but since he will speak English, I've decided to break with tradition and sing it in that language  . . .  also because you are here. But I'm not sure of my ability to make it beautiful in English, so my prose might sound awkward in—"
"Don't apologize to me, for God's sake," he said, waving his hands. "Get on with it. There may not be time."
"Very well. The first part is set, and I merely quote. I add my own words at the end." She licked her lips and looked into space.
"'Yellow as the Sky Are the Madrigals.'" She began to sing.

"'In the beginning was God, and God was the wheel, and the wheel was Gaea.
And Gaea took from her body a lump of flesh and made of it the first Titanides and gave them to know that Gaea was God.
The Titanides did not dispute her.

They spoke to Gaea, saying, "What would you have us do?"
And Gaea replied, "Have no other Gods but me.
Be fruitful and multiply, but be aware that space is limited.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Know that when you die, you return to dust.
And do not come to me with your problems. I will not help you."
And thus the Titanides received the burden of free will.

" 'Among the first was one called Sarangi of the Yellow Skin.
He went with many others to the great tree and saw that it was good.
In time he was to found the Madrigal Chord.
He looked out upon the world and knew that life tasted sweet, yet one day he would die.
This thought was a sad one, but he remembered what Gaea had said and wondered if he could live on.
He loved Dambak, Violone, and Waldhorn. The four of them sang the Sharped Mixolydian Quartet, and Sarangi became the hindmother of Piccolo. Dambak was the forefather, Violone the foremother, and Waldhorn the hindfather.'"
The song went on in that vein for some time. Chris listened more to the music than the words because the lists of names had little meaning for him. Descent was traced exclusively through the hind-mother, though the other parents were always mentioned.
Chris could not have traced his parentage back through ten generations as Valiha proceeded to do, yet he knew his forebears went back through thousands or millions of generations to apes or Adam and Eve. With Valiha, ten generations was the entire story. Serpent would be the eleventh. It brought home more forcefully than anything he had heard just what it was to be a Titanide, a member of a race that knew it was created. While he did not know how accurate the opening words of her song were, they could be literally true. The Titanides had been created around the year 1935. Even an oral tradition could cope with that time span, and the Titanides were meticulous record keepers.
But the song was more than just a list of her hindmothers and the ensembles they had used to produce the next generation. She sang songs of each, sometimes lapsing into the purity of Titanide, more often staying in English. She listed the brave and good things they had done but did not omit failings. He heard tales of suffering from the years of the Titanide-Angel War. Then the Wizard arrived, and the songs, more often than not, mentioned the stratagems employed to attract her attention to proposals at Carnival.

"' . . .  and Tabla was favored of the Wizard.
Singing the Aeolian Solo, she gave birth to Valiha, of whom little has thus far been sung and who will leave the singing of her song to future generations.
Valiha loved Hichiriki, born by the Phrygian Quartet in another branch of the Madrigal Chord, and Cymbal, a Lydian Trio from the Prelude Chord.
They quickened the life of Serpent (Double-flatted Mixolydian Trio) Madrigal, who will sing his own song'"
She stopped, cleared her throat, and looked down at her hands.
"I told you it would be rough. Perhaps Serpent will do better, when his time comes. Though the song flows like a river in Titanide, in English—"
"You did him proud," Chris said. "This isn't the best beginning, though, is it?" He waved his hand at the darkness and the barren rocks. "You should have had Hichiriki and Cymbal and all your friends gathered around."
"Yes." She thought about it. "I should have asked you to sing."
"You'd have soon regretted it."
She laughed. "Hum, then. Chris, he's here."
He certainly was. A glistening shape was moving slowly but inexorably. Chris felt the powerful urge to do something: boil water, call a doctor, comfort her, ease his passage  . . .  anything. But if his entrance into the world had been any quicker, he would have squirted across the ground like a pinched watermelon seed. Valiha had her head pillowed on her arm and was chuckling softly. If a doctor was needed, it was for Chris, not Valiha.
"Are you sure there isn't anything I should do?"
"Trust me." She laughed. "Now. You can pick him up—being careful not to step on the umbilicus, which he will need a little longer. Carry him to me. Lift him with both arms beneath his belly. His trunk will fall forward, so don't let him hit his head, but do not be alarmed by it."
She had already told him all that, but it was well she repeated it. He did not feel competent to pick his nose at the moment, much less handle a newborn Titanide. But he went, knelt, and looked at him.
"He's not breathing!"
"Don't be alarmed by that either. He will breathe when he's ready. Bring him to me."
Serpent was a shapeless puddle of sticks and moist skin. For a moment Chris literally could not make head or tail of him; then it all sprang into focus, and he saw a sweet-faced little girl-child with matted pink hair pasted to her sleeping face. No, not a child  . . .  she had fully formed breasts. And not a girl either. That was merely the trick all Titanides played on all humans, which was to seem female no matter what their actual sex. The forepenis was there between his front legs, complete with pink pubic hair.
He was going to be gentle, do it gingerly. After a few tries, he gave that up and put his back into it. Serpent massed nearly as much as Chris. He was a slippery bundle, but there was not a drop of blood on him. He looked like a starving urchin, with matchstick legs longer than Chris's own. He was narrow-hipped and had a short body and long trunk, which promptly fell forward loosely when Chris lifted him. As Chris carefully payed out the loops of umbilical cord while bringing him around to his mother, Serpent stirred, and one of his hind legs kicked Chris in the shin. It was not too painful, but then he began a fitful struggle. Valiha sang something, and he calmed instantly.
Chris handed him to Valiha, who arranged him in front of her and held his upper body against her own. His head lolled. Chris noticed that it was as Valiha had said it would be: the umbilical did not attach under his belly but vanished into his anterior vagina, just as the other end still trailed from Valiha.
He had not known what to expect. He had seen young Titanides but none as young as this. Would he be able to love it? So far, he thought Serpent looked . . .  he would not go so far as to say ugly. Funny-looking was the best he could come up with. But then he had always thought newborn humans were funny-looking, at best, and they were bloody into the bargain. He hated the squeamishness he felt—it did not mesh well with Valiha's description of him as a lusty, life-loving human, and that had been the nicest thing anyone had said about him in a long time—but he still felt it. Serpent most closely resembled an undernourished fourteen-year-old girl who had just been fished out of the bottom of a lake. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation seemed called for.
Serpent wheezed loudly, coughed once, and began to breathe. He did it noisily for a few breaths, then found the rhythm. Shortly afterward he opened his eyes and was looking right at Chris. Either the sight was too much for him, or he was not seeing anything too well; he blinked and burrowed his face between his mother's breasts.
"He'll probably be cranky for a while," Valiha said.
"I would be, too."
"What do you think of him?"
Here we go, Chris thought. "He's beautiful, Valiha."
She frowned and looked at Serpent again, as if wondering if she had missed something.
"You can't be serious. Your use of English is better than that."
Feeling as if he were jumping off the deep end, Chris cleared his throat and said, "He's funny-looking."
"That's the word. He'll get a lot better rather quickly, though. He has a lot of promise. Did you see his eyes?"
They busied themselves cleaning up. Valiha combed his hair and Chris washed and dried him. And Valiha had been right: he did improve. His skin was warm and soft when dry, quickly banishing the picture of a drowned ragamuffin. The umbilical cord soon withered, and he was on his own. It would be a long time before he stopped looking skinny, but there was no longer the suggestion of starvation. Rather, as his muscles toned, he looked supple and glowing with health. It was not long before he held his torso erect unaided. He watched them with glittering brown eyes as they fussed over his young body, but he did not say a word. Valiha was watching him, too. She was as excited as Chris had ever seen her.
"I wish I could explain this to you, Chris," she said. "This is the most wonderful . . .  I remember it so well. Suddenly to be aware, to feel yourself awakening from a state of simple desires and to feel a larger world taking shape around you, full of other creatures. And the growing urge to talk, almost like the building of an orgasm. The first formation of the idea that it is possible to communicate with others. He has the words, you see, but without experience to give them substance they are still mysteries. He will be full of questions, but he will seldom ask you what something is. He will see a rock and think, So that is a rock! He will pick it up and think, So this is picking up a rock! He will be asking many questions of himself, providing his own answers, and the sensation of discovery is so glorious that a Titanide's most common fantasy is of rebirth, the desire to live it over. But there will be plenty of questions for us. Sadly, a lot of them will be the unanswerable ones, but that is the burden of life. We must do our best with them and try at all times to be kind. I hope you will be patient and let him develop his own armor of fatalism at his own pace with no prompting from us because it can be a—"
"I will, Valiha, I promise. I'm sure I'll be watching you for quite a while to get hints on what you want, and I'll stay in the background as much as possible. But the big question on my mind is still the crazy experiment of yours, whether or not he will be able to—"
"You are a human," Serpent said quite distinctly.
Chris stared into the wide-set eyes looking guilelessly back at him, realized his mouth was still open, and shut it. Serpent's mouth carried the hint of a smile as elusive as the Mona Lisa's. The conversational ball was in his court, and all he had wanted to do was stay in the background.
"I'm a very surprised human. I—" He stopped when Valiha shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Chris examined his words. All right, wit was not called for. He had to hit a middle ground between goo-goo and the Gettysburg Address, and he wished he knew where it was to be found.
"What is your name?" Serpent asked.
"I'm Chris."
"My name is Serpent."
"I'm happy to meet you."
The smile emerged in full, and Chris felt warmed by it.
"I'm pleased to meet you, too." He turned to his mother. "Valiha, where is my serpent?"
She reached behind her and handed him the lovingly carved serpentine horn clad in soft leather. He took it, and his eyes sparkled as he held it and turned it in his hands. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, and a dark bass tone drifted into the air.
"I'm hungry," he announced. Valiha offered him a nipple. His curiosity was such that he could not give it his whole attention. His eyes roamed, and his head twisted, and he just managed to keep the nipple in his mouth. He looked at Chris, then at his instrument, still held tightly in his hand, and Chris saw an expression of awed wonder come into the Titanide's eyes. Chris knew, at that moment, that he and Serpent were thinking the same thought, though each with a different meaning.
So this is a Serpent.
 
The child lived up to everything Valiha had said about him.
The word "coltish" might have been coined for him alone. He was lanky, awkward, eager, and frisky. When it came time to walk, he tottered for all of ten minutes and then lost interest in every gait but the breakneck gallop. Ninety percent of him was legs, and most of that was knees. His angularity precluded the elegant bearing of his elders, yet the seeds of it were there. When he smiled, there was no need of glowbirds.
He had great need for affection, and they did not spare it. He was never far from a physical touch. A kiss from Chris was accepted as eagerly as one from his mother, and as eagerly returned. He loved to be stroked and petted. Valiha tried to nurse him lying down, but he would have none of it. She stood supported on her crutches while he embraced her. Often he would fall asleep while nursing, standing up. Valiha could then move away and leave him there, his chin on his chest. He would sleep irregularly for three kilorevs, then give it up forever.
For many days Chris regarded him as a disaster looking for a place to happen. It had been trouble enough easing Valiha through the rough places. All he had needed was an adventurous youngster to age him prematurely, and Serpent filled the role well. But nothing happened, as Valiha had predicted. Eventually Chris stopped worrying about it. Serpent knew his limits, and while he was constantly seeking to expand them, he did not go beyond them. Titanide children had a built-in governor; while they could not be made accident-proof, they suffered mishaps at about the same rate adult Titanides did. Chris wondered about this—toyed with the idea that the difference between humans and Titanides might be the absence of foolhardiness—but he was in no mood to complain.
Serpent succeeded so well in brightening things that for quite a long time Chris seldom thought of something that had caused him much worry for the first part of the trip. But the worry came back strongly when they found Robin's heavy winter coat and a pile of equipment beside one of her trail marks.
"I told her to keep this at all costs," he fretted, holding it up for Valiha to see. "Damn it, she doesn't understand cold at all, does she?"
"What does cold taste like?" Serpent wanted to know.
"I can't answer that, child," Valiha said. "You'll have to wait and taste it yourself. She had other clothing, Chris. If she wore all of it . . . "
"Who is Robin, Chris?"
"A good friend and companion," he said, "who I'm afraid will be in very bad trouble if we don't catch up to her."
"May I wear that?"
"You can try it on, but you'll get too hot. Then you can carry it and these other things. Will you?"
"Sure, Chris. If you can catch me."
"We'll have none of that, my man. And stop giggling at me. I can't help it if I'm slow. But can you do this?" He stood on one pointed toe—easy in the low gravity—and did a ballet dancer's pirouette, one finger touching the top of his head, and finished with a bow. Valiha applauded, and Serpent looked suspicious.
"What, on one foot? I can't—"
"Ha! Gotcha. Now come and . . . "
He stopped and turned. Behind him was a light brighter than any he had seen in  . . .  he had no idea how long. There was a low rumble that he realized had been on the edge of his hearing for quite a while. There was the sound of a distant explosion.
"What's that? Is it—"
"Hush. No questions yet. I  . . .  Valiha, get him down behind that rock. Stay as low as you can until—"
Suddenly a voice was speaking through an amplifier. The echoes distorted it almost beyond recognition, but Chris heard his own name and Valiha's. More flares burst and floated gradually down on little parachutes, and the roaring became the familiar sound of helicopters. The voice was Cirocco's. She had come for them at last.
 

---

---

40 Proud Heritage

There had to be easier things than shepherding a pregnant, disabled Titanide through a dark terrain that would have daunted a mountain goat. On the other hand, Chris could think of some things that were probably harder, and many things less pleasant. The company was some compensation, and the fact that the path was marked for them. Everything balanced, and it came to seem as if that were the way it should be. Valiha's arms grew stronger, but their pace did not improve because she was gaining weight. They had to be more careful than ever lest her growing awkwardness provoke a slip that might hurt her still-fragile forelegs. As she neared her term, the new delights of anterior sex play tapered off and stopped. But the frontal sex got even better as her legs improved. He gradually lost the exciting, exotic sense of alienness he had once felt when he was around her, to the point he sometimes wondered how she had ever looked odd. Yet with familiarity grew an easy acceptance that drew them closer.
Valiha swelled like a ripening pumpkin. She grew more radiantly beautiful and, curiously, more mottled with brownish freckles.
There would be few surprises. Chris began completely ignorant of Titanide birthing, but by the time Serpent was ready to be born he knew as much as Valiha. He had been making many assumptions that led to needless apprehension.
He knew, for instance, that Valiha was not using a general pronoun when she called her child he. That had been planned with the other two parents. He knew—but still could not quite believe—that Valiha was in communication with the fetus in a way she never satisfactorily described. She claimed they had decided on his name together, though she had influenced him because of a circumstance beyond her control. That concerned the Titanide custom of naming a child after the first instrument he or she owned. The custom was no longer universal, but Valiha was traditional and had been working for some time on the first instrument for her son: the serpent, a sinuous tube of wood played like a brass horn. In the cavern, her choice of building materials had been limited.
He knew the birth would not be painful, would not take long, and Serpent would be born able to walk and talk. But when she told him she hoped the child would be able to speak English, Chris's first thought was that she was a fool. He did not say that but expressed his doubt.
"I know," Valiha said. "The Wizard is dubious, too. This is not the first time an attempt has been made to birth a child with two milk tongues. Yet even the Wizard will not say it cannot be done. Our genetics is not yours. Many things happen differently inside us."
"Like what?"
"I know nothing of the scientific side of it. But you must admit we are different. The Wizard has successfully crossed Titanide eggs with the genetic matter of frogs, fish, dogs, and apes in the laboratory."
"That goes against everything I ever read about genetics," Chris admitted. "Not that I know much either. But what does that have to do with Serpent speaking English? Even if he had human parents—which you say he doesn't—all we can do when we're born is yell."
"The Wizard calls it the Lysenko effect," Valiha said. "She has demonstrated to her own satisfaction that Titanides can inherit acquired characteristics. We—those of us who postulate that English might be passed on—speculate that if sufficiently reinforced, it could be done. You once asked me if I had swallowed a dictionary. That is almost true. For the experiment it is necessary that all the parents know all English words. This is a goal one can never attain, but we have good memories."
"I can vouch for that." Something about it disturbed Chris, and it took him a long time to put his finger on it. Even when he had it, he was not sure just why it upset him, but it did.
"What I want to know is why," Chris said much later. "Why English when your own language is so beautiful? Not that I understand it, though I wish I could. From what I gather, aside from Cirocco and Gaby, who got it implanted in them, no human has ever gone beyond the pidgin stage in singing Titanide."
"It's true. We know the language instinctively, and humans, despite their often great intellectual attainments, have had no luck with it. Our songs will not parse and are seldom the same, even when the same thought is expressed. The Wizard has speculated there is a telepathic component."
"Whatever. My point is—or maybe I should say it's my question - why are you working so hard at this? What's wrong with Titanide? I think it's a miracle you're born knowing any language. Why try for English?"
"Perhaps you misunderstood," Valiha said. "Serpent will know how to sing. This is assured. I would not dream of trying to take that ability away from him. I would as soon wish he be born with only two legs as  . . .  oh, dear. Please—"
Chris laughed and said it was okay.
"I was alluding to a saying used when one is experiencing great difficulties. Then we say, 'Going at it on two legs, both of them on the left.'"
"Sure you were."
"I promise you that  . . .  you're teasing me again. I suppose I'll get used to it one day."
"Not if I can help it. You still haven't told me why you're doing this."
"I would think it would be obvious."
"Not to me."
She sighed. "Very well. As to why English, the first humans in Gaea spoke it, and it just caught on. As to why any human language  . . .  since first contact there have been more humans living here all the time. You don't come in great numbers, but you keep coming. It seems a good idea to know as much about you as we can."
"The unpleasant neighbors who've moved in to stay, huh?"
Valiha considered it. "I don't wish to sound disparaging about humans. As individuals, some of them are as nice as anyone could wish—"
"But as a race we're a pain in the ass."
"I shouldn't make judgments."
"Why not? You're as entitled to them as anyone else. And I agree with you. We're pretty ugly when we put our heads together and start thinking up atomic bombs and such. And as for most of the individuals  . . .  hell." He was experiencing a twinge of chauvinism he did not like but could not avoid. It made him think, try to find some defense to throw back at her. He could not. "You know," he said finally, "I'm just realizing that I've never met a Titanide I didn't like."
"I've met many," Valiha said. "And I know a lot more than you do. But I have never met a Titanide I could not get along with. I've never heard of one Titanide killing another. And I've never met a Titanide I hated."
"That's the key, isn't it? Your people get along a lot better than we do."
"I would have to say yes."
"Tell me. Tell me the truth. Just for a minute forget I'm human and—"
"I forget it all the time."
She was trying to lighten it, but Chris was not having it.
"Just tell me what you think of having humans in Gaea. What you think, and what Titanides in general think. Or are they divided?"
"Of course, there is division, but I agree with most that we would like to have more control. We are not the only intelligent race in Gaea and do not speak for anyone but ourselves, but in the lands where we live, in Hyperion and Crius and Metis, we would like to have a say in who is allowed to enter. I believe we would turn back ninety percent."
"That many?"
"Perhaps less. You asked me to be frank, and I will be. Humans brought alcoholism to Gaea. We have always enjoyed wine, but the beverage you call tequila and we call—"she sang a brief melody—"which translates as death-with-a-pinch-of-salt-and-a-twist-of-lime, has addictive properties for us. Humans brought venereal disease: the only malady of Terran origin that affects us. Humans brought sadism, rape, and murder."
"This all reminds me of Indians in America," he said.
"There is a resemblance, but I believe it to be fallacious. Many times on Earth a powerful technology met a weaker one and overwhelmed it. In Gaea, humans bring in only what they can carry, so that is not such a factor. In addition, we are not a primitive society. But we are powerless to do anything because humans have good connections."
"What do you mean?"
"Gaea likes humans. In the sense that she is interested in them and likes to observe them. Until she tires of them, we must accept whoever comes." She saw his face and suddenly looked as troubled as he did.
"I know what you're thinking," she said.
"What's that?"
"That if standards were set, you would not have passed them."
Chris had to admit she was right.
"You're wrong. I wish I could explain it to you better. You are upset about your episodes of violence." She sighed. "I see I must tell more. It is easy to deliver a righteous diatribe against the things about humans one doesn't like. There are many humans my people would bar unconditionally: the prejudiced, the small-minded, the faithless, the misguided. Those badly reared, who, when blameless children, were not taught how to be proper persons. We believe the root of human troubles lies in the fact that you must be taught, that you are born with nothing but savagery and appetite and more often than not have those urges reinforced into a way of life.
"Yet we have a love-hate relationship with your species. We admire and sometimes envy the fire of your emotions. Each of you has a streak of violence, and we accept that. It's easier since we are so much larger; without a gun, there is little chance any of you could harm any of us. One of the things we would like to do is ban those equalizing weapons. Lacking the spur of aggression, we cannot afford to let you be our physical equals.
"And there are among you individuals with life burning so brightly within them that we are dazzled by your brilliance. The best of you are better than the best of us. We know that and accept it. None of you is so nice as we are, but we have realized that niceness isn't everything. We have much to offer the human species. So far it has shown only the mildest interest, but we remain hopeful. But we would learn from you, too. We have tried long to absorb your fire by getting to know you. And since, in Gaea, Lysenko was right, we are now trying to breed you into us. That's why we learn English."
Chris had never heard her speak so long on anything, or so forcefully. He had thought he knew everything about her, and now he wondered why, since he was not normally such a fool as to think he could know everything about anyone. He knew, and had even mentioned to Valiha, that her manner of speech had gradually improved from the time he first met her. Now her vocabulary often left him far behind. When she needed to, she could express herself in his native language ten times better than Chris. This did not bother him; he knew she had revealed more of herself as she came to trust him more, and that was as it should be. But something else disturbed him.
"I don't want to sound harsh, but I have to ask this. Is that what that business with the egg was all about? Lysenkoism?"
"I don't want to sound harsh either, but I will not lie to you. Yes, that entered into it. But I would never have done it with you without something much stronger. I speak of love, which so far as I know is the only emotion identical in humans and Titanides."
"Cirocco didn't think so."
"She is wrong. I realize that, commonly, love is bonded with jealousy and covetousness and territoriality in humans, and it never is in Titanides. That does not make the emotion different. It is simply that few humans experience love uncolored by these other things. You must take my word for that; it is one of the things I mentioned that we do better than humans. Humans have written and sung for thousands of years on the nature of love and never succeeded in defining it to anyone's satisfaction. Love is no mystery to us. We understand it thoroughly. It is in song—and its close friend poetry—that humans have come closest to it. That is one of the things we could teach humans."
Chris wanted to believe that but was still disturbed by something he could not quite bring into the open. She had explained how she could tolerate his spells of violence. Maybe it was just that, deep down, he could not believe it.
"Chris, would you come touch me?" she asked. "I feel I have upset you, and I don't like that feeling."
She must have seen his hesitation because tears started in her eyes. They sat only a meter apart, yet he felt a gulf had opened between them. It frightened him because only a short time ago he had felt very close to her.
"I'm terribly afraid," Valiha said. "I'm afraid that in the end, we will be too alien to each other. You will never understand me, and I will never understand you. And you must! I must!" She stopped and made herself slow down. "Let me try again. I will never give up.
"I said the best of you are better than us.
"I tell you that any of us can see it. Serpent will see it immediately, newborn, when he looks at you. I can see it, and I could not describe it if I had read a thousand dictionaries. When one of those better humans appears, we can tell it. But if I brought a group of them together, you would be at a loss to say what they had in common. It is no one quality, and it is not even always the same qualities. Many of them are brave, and others are cowards. Some are shy, and others brash. Many are intelligent, but others are far from geniuses. Many are outwardly exuberant; they taste life better; they burn with a brighter fire than we have ever seen. Others, to human senses, are quite subdued, as you are at times, but to our eyes the light shines through. We don't know precisely what it is, but we want some of it if we can have it without the urge to self-destruction that is the bane of your species. Perhaps even then, because its warmth is so glorious.
"We have a song for it. It is—" She sang it, then rushed on in English, as if she felt time were against her and she would once again fail to reach him. "In translation, that is, roughly, 'Those-who-might-one-day-sing,' or, more literally, 'Those-who-can-understand-Titanides.' If they want to. The word grows unwieldy, I fear.
"Cirocco is such a human. You have not felt one-hundredth of her heat. Gaby was one. Robin is. A handful of people back in Titantown. The settlement we passed in Crius. And you. If you were not, I could no more love you than a stone, and I love you fabulously."
That was a funny way to put it, Chris thought. And: what a coincidence that all four of us possessed this elusive quality. And again: it's such a shame, because she's a great person, but how do I tell her  . . . ?
But that was all swept away by a feeling Chris was later to describe as like a drowning man's having his life pass before him all in an instant, or possibly the flash of genius that is so often spoken of—with a corollary that read "How have I been an idiot for so long"—and, in the end, might best be expressed as the sudden realization that he loved her fabulously, too.
She saw the flash of his emotion—if he had wanted proof of her propositions, that would have been it, but he didn't need it—and while he was trying to think of something more intelligent to say than "I love you, too," she kissed him.
"I told you you loved me," she said, and he nodded, wondering if he would ever stop grinning.
 
Knowing the processes of Titanide birth was not the same thing as understanding the linked minds of the mother and child. Nor did Chris comprehend the nature of that link. He pestered her with questions about it, and determined that, yes, she could ask Serpent a question and he could answer it, and no, Serpent could not tell her if he knew how to speak English.
"He thinks in pictures and song," she explained. "The song is not translatable except emotionally; in a sense Titanide song never is, and that's why no human has been able to compile a dictionary of Titanide. I hear and see what he thinks."
"Then how did you ask him what he wanted to be named?"
"I pictured the instruments it was feasible to make down here and played them in my mind. When his awareness indicated delight, I knew he was Serpent."
"Does he know about me?"
"He knows you very well. He doesn't know your name. He will ask that quite soon after birth. He is aware that I love you."
"He knows that I'm human?"
"He knows it very well."
"What does he think about that? Will it be a problem?"
Valiha smiled at him. "He will be born without prejudice. From that point, it is up to you."
She was lying on her side in a comfortable spot Chris had prepared. The birth was close, and Valiha was serene, delighted, in no pain. Chris knew he was acting as badly as any first-time father outside the delivery room and could not help it.
"I guess I still don't understand a lot of things," he admitted. "Will he come out, sit up, and start offering his opinions on the price of coffee in Crius, or will there be a goo-goo and ga-ga stage?"
Valiha laughed, paused for a moment while the muscles of her belly worked like a hand squeezing a water balloon, and took a sip of water.
"He will be weak and confused," she said. "He will see much and say nothing. He is not truly intelligent at this point. It is as if his thinking pathways have been packed in grease for shipment, needing to be cleansed upon arrival before use. But then . . . " She paused, listening to something Chris could not hear, then smiled.
"You'll have to let that wait," she said. "He is almost here, and there is a ritual I must perform, passed down through my chord for generations."
"Sure, go ahead," he said hastily.
"Please indulge me," she said. "I could do it with beauty in my own song, but since he will speak English, I've decided to break with tradition and sing it in that language  . . .  also because you are here. But I'm not sure of my ability to make it beautiful in English, so my prose might sound awkward in—"
"Don't apologize to me, for God's sake," he said, waving his hands. "Get on with it. There may not be time."
"Very well. The first part is set, and I merely quote. I add my own words at the end." She licked her lips and looked into space.
"'Yellow as the Sky Are the Madrigals.'" She began to sing.

"'In the beginning was God, and God was the wheel, and the wheel was Gaea.
And Gaea took from her body a lump of flesh and made of it the first Titanides and gave them to know that Gaea was God.
The Titanides did not dispute her.
They spoke to Gaea, saying, "What would you have us do?"
And Gaea replied, "Have no other Gods but me.
Be fruitful and multiply, but be aware that space is limited.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Know that when you die, you return to dust.
And do not come to me with your problems. I will not help you."
And thus the Titanides received the burden of free will.

" 'Among the first was one called Sarangi of the Yellow Skin.
He went with many others to the great tree and saw that it was good.
In time he was to found the Madrigal Chord.
He looked out upon the world and knew that life tasted sweet, yet one day he would die.
This thought was a sad one, but he remembered what Gaea had said and wondered if he could live on.
He loved Dambak, Violone, and Waldhorn. The four of them sang the Sharped Mixolydian Quartet, and Sarangi became the hindmother of Piccolo. Dambak was the forefather, Violone the foremother, and Waldhorn the hindfather.'"
The song went on in that vein for some time. Chris listened more to the music than the words because the lists of names had little meaning for him. Descent was traced exclusively through the hind-mother, though the other parents were always mentioned.
Chris could not have traced his parentage back through ten generations as Valiha proceeded to do, yet he knew his forebears went back through thousands or millions of generations to apes or Adam and Eve. With Valiha, ten generations was the entire story. Serpent would be the eleventh. It brought home more forcefully than anything he had heard just what it was to be a Titanide, a member of a race that knew it was created. While he did not know how accurate the opening words of her song were, they could be literally true. The Titanides had been created around the year 1935. Even an oral tradition could cope with that time span, and the Titanides were meticulous record keepers.
But the song was more than just a list of her hindmothers and the ensembles they had used to produce the next generation. She sang songs of each, sometimes lapsing into the purity of Titanide, more often staying in English. She listed the brave and good things they had done but did not omit failings. He heard tales of suffering from the years of the Titanide-Angel War. Then the Wizard arrived, and the songs, more often than not, mentioned the stratagems employed to attract her attention to proposals at Carnival.

"' . . .  and Tabla was favored of the Wizard.
Singing the Aeolian Solo, she gave birth to Valiha, of whom little has thus far been sung and who will leave the singing of her song to future generations.
Valiha loved Hichiriki, born by the Phrygian Quartet in another branch of the Madrigal Chord, and Cymbal, a Lydian Trio from the Prelude Chord.
They quickened the life of Serpent (Double-flatted Mixolydian Trio) Madrigal, who will sing his own song'"
She stopped, cleared her throat, and looked down at her hands.
"I told you it would be rough. Perhaps Serpent will do better, when his time comes. Though the song flows like a river in Titanide, in English—"
"You did him proud," Chris said. "This isn't the best beginning, though, is it?" He waved his hand at the darkness and the barren rocks. "You should have had Hichiriki and Cymbal and all your friends gathered around."
"Yes." She thought about it. "I should have asked you to sing."
"You'd have soon regretted it."
She laughed. "Hum, then. Chris, he's here."
He certainly was. A glistening shape was moving slowly but inexorably. Chris felt the powerful urge to do something: boil water, call a doctor, comfort her, ease his passage  . . .  anything. But if his entrance into the world had been any quicker, he would have squirted across the ground like a pinched watermelon seed. Valiha had her head pillowed on her arm and was chuckling softly. If a doctor was needed, it was for Chris, not Valiha.
"Are you sure there isn't anything I should do?"
"Trust me." She laughed. "Now. You can pick him up—being careful not to step on the umbilicus, which he will need a little longer. Carry him to me. Lift him with both arms beneath his belly. His trunk will fall forward, so don't let him hit his head, but do not be alarmed by it."
She had already told him all that, but it was well she repeated it. He did not feel competent to pick his nose at the moment, much less handle a newborn Titanide. But he went, knelt, and looked at him.
"He's not breathing!"
"Don't be alarmed by that either. He will breathe when he's ready. Bring him to me."
Serpent was a shapeless puddle of sticks and moist skin. For a moment Chris literally could not make head or tail of him; then it all sprang into focus, and he saw a sweet-faced little girl-child with matted pink hair pasted to her sleeping face. No, not a child  . . .  she had fully formed breasts. And not a girl either. That was merely the trick all Titanides played on all humans, which was to seem female no matter what their actual sex. The forepenis was there between his front legs, complete with pink pubic hair.
He was going to be gentle, do it gingerly. After a few tries, he gave that up and put his back into it. Serpent massed nearly as much as Chris. He was a slippery bundle, but there was not a drop of blood on him. He looked like a starving urchin, with matchstick legs longer than Chris's own. He was narrow-hipped and had a short body and long trunk, which promptly fell forward loosely when Chris lifted him. As Chris carefully payed out the loops of umbilical cord while bringing him around to his mother, Serpent stirred, and one of his hind legs kicked Chris in the shin. It was not too painful, but then he began a fitful struggle. Valiha sang something, and he calmed instantly.
Chris handed him to Valiha, who arranged him in front of her and held his upper body against her own. His head lolled. Chris noticed that it was as Valiha had said it would be: the umbilical did not attach under his belly but vanished into his anterior vagina, just as the other end still trailed from Valiha.
He had not known what to expect. He had seen young Titanides but none as young as this. Would he be able to love it? So far, he thought Serpent looked . . .  he would not go so far as to say ugly. Funny-looking was the best he could come up with. But then he had always thought newborn humans were funny-looking, at best, and they were bloody into the bargain. He hated the squeamishness he felt—it did not mesh well with Valiha's description of him as a lusty, life-loving human, and that had been the nicest thing anyone had said about him in a long time—but he still felt it. Serpent most closely resembled an undernourished fourteen-year-old girl who had just been fished out of the bottom of a lake. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation seemed called for.
Serpent wheezed loudly, coughed once, and began to breathe. He did it noisily for a few breaths, then found the rhythm. Shortly afterward he opened his eyes and was looking right at Chris. Either the sight was too much for him, or he was not seeing anything too well; he blinked and burrowed his face between his mother's breasts.
"He'll probably be cranky for a while," Valiha said.
"I would be, too."
"What do you think of him?"
Here we go, Chris thought. "He's beautiful, Valiha."
She frowned and looked at Serpent again, as if wondering if she had missed something.
"You can't be serious. Your use of English is better than that."
Feeling as if he were jumping off the deep end, Chris cleared his throat and said, "He's funny-looking."
"That's the word. He'll get a lot better rather quickly, though. He has a lot of promise. Did you see his eyes?"
They busied themselves cleaning up. Valiha combed his hair and Chris washed and dried him. And Valiha had been right: he did improve. His skin was warm and soft when dry, quickly banishing the picture of a drowned ragamuffin. The umbilical cord soon withered, and he was on his own. It would be a long time before he stopped looking skinny, but there was no longer the suggestion of starvation. Rather, as his muscles toned, he looked supple and glowing with health. It was not long before he held his torso erect unaided. He watched them with glittering brown eyes as they fussed over his young body, but he did not say a word. Valiha was watching him, too. She was as excited as Chris had ever seen her.
"I wish I could explain this to you, Chris," she said. "This is the most wonderful . . .  I remember it so well. Suddenly to be aware, to feel yourself awakening from a state of simple desires and to feel a larger world taking shape around you, full of other creatures. And the growing urge to talk, almost like the building of an orgasm. The first formation of the idea that it is possible to communicate with others. He has the words, you see, but without experience to give them substance they are still mysteries. He will be full of questions, but he will seldom ask you what something is. He will see a rock and think, So that is a rock! He will pick it up and think, So this is picking up a rock! He will be asking many questions of himself, providing his own answers, and the sensation of discovery is so glorious that a Titanide's most common fantasy is of rebirth, the desire to live it over. But there will be plenty of questions for us. Sadly, a lot of them will be the unanswerable ones, but that is the burden of life. We must do our best with them and try at all times to be kind. I hope you will be patient and let him develop his own armor of fatalism at his own pace with no prompting from us because it can be a—"
"I will, Valiha, I promise. I'm sure I'll be watching you for quite a while to get hints on what you want, and I'll stay in the background as much as possible. But the big question on my mind is still the crazy experiment of yours, whether or not he will be able to—"
"You are a human," Serpent said quite distinctly.
Chris stared into the wide-set eyes looking guilelessly back at him, realized his mouth was still open, and shut it. Serpent's mouth carried the hint of a smile as elusive as the Mona Lisa's. The conversational ball was in his court, and all he had wanted to do was stay in the background.
"I'm a very surprised human. I—" He stopped when Valiha shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Chris examined his words. All right, wit was not called for. He had to hit a middle ground between goo-goo and the Gettysburg Address, and he wished he knew where it was to be found.
"What is your name?" Serpent asked.
"I'm Chris."
"My name is Serpent."
"I'm happy to meet you."
The smile emerged in full, and Chris felt warmed by it.
"I'm pleased to meet you, too." He turned to his mother. "Valiha, where is my serpent?"
She reached behind her and handed him the lovingly carved serpentine horn clad in soft leather. He took it, and his eyes sparkled as he held it and turned it in his hands. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew, and a dark bass tone drifted into the air.
"I'm hungry," he announced. Valiha offered him a nipple. His curiosity was such that he could not give it his whole attention. His eyes roamed, and his head twisted, and he just managed to keep the nipple in his mouth. He looked at Chris, then at his instrument, still held tightly in his hand, and Chris saw an expression of awed wonder come into the Titanide's eyes. Chris knew, at that moment, that he and Serpent were thinking the same thought, though each with a different meaning.
So this is a Serpent.
 
The child lived up to everything Valiha had said about him.
The word "coltish" might have been coined for him alone. He was lanky, awkward, eager, and frisky. When it came time to walk, he tottered for all of ten minutes and then lost interest in every gait but the breakneck gallop. Ninety percent of him was legs, and most of that was knees. His angularity precluded the elegant bearing of his elders, yet the seeds of it were there. When he smiled, there was no need of glowbirds.
He had great need for affection, and they did not spare it. He was never far from a physical touch. A kiss from Chris was accepted as eagerly as one from his mother, and as eagerly returned. He loved to be stroked and petted. Valiha tried to nurse him lying down, but he would have none of it. She stood supported on her crutches while he embraced her. Often he would fall asleep while nursing, standing up. Valiha could then move away and leave him there, his chin on his chest. He would sleep irregularly for three kilorevs, then give it up forever.
For many days Chris regarded him as a disaster looking for a place to happen. It had been trouble enough easing Valiha through the rough places. All he had needed was an adventurous youngster to age him prematurely, and Serpent filled the role well. But nothing happened, as Valiha had predicted. Eventually Chris stopped worrying about it. Serpent knew his limits, and while he was constantly seeking to expand them, he did not go beyond them. Titanide children had a built-in governor; while they could not be made accident-proof, they suffered mishaps at about the same rate adult Titanides did. Chris wondered about this—toyed with the idea that the difference between humans and Titanides might be the absence of foolhardiness—but he was in no mood to complain.
Serpent succeeded so well in brightening things that for quite a long time Chris seldom thought of something that had caused him much worry for the first part of the trip. But the worry came back strongly when they found Robin's heavy winter coat and a pile of equipment beside one of her trail marks.
"I told her to keep this at all costs," he fretted, holding it up for Valiha to see. "Damn it, she doesn't understand cold at all, does she?"
"What does cold taste like?" Serpent wanted to know.
"I can't answer that, child," Valiha said. "You'll have to wait and taste it yourself. She had other clothing, Chris. If she wore all of it . . . "
"Who is Robin, Chris?"
"A good friend and companion," he said, "who I'm afraid will be in very bad trouble if we don't catch up to her."
"May I wear that?"
"You can try it on, but you'll get too hot. Then you can carry it and these other things. Will you?"
"Sure, Chris. If you can catch me."
"We'll have none of that, my man. And stop giggling at me. I can't help it if I'm slow. But can you do this?" He stood on one pointed toe—easy in the low gravity—and did a ballet dancer's pirouette, one finger touching the top of his head, and finished with a bow. Valiha applauded, and Serpent looked suspicious.
"What, on one foot? I can't—"
"Ha! Gotcha. Now come and . . . "
He stopped and turned. Behind him was a light brighter than any he had seen in  . . .  he had no idea how long. There was a low rumble that he realized had been on the edge of his hearing for quite a while. There was the sound of a distant explosion.
"What's that? Is it—"
"Hush. No questions yet. I  . . .  Valiha, get him down behind that rock. Stay as low as you can until—"
Suddenly a voice was speaking through an amplifier. The echoes distorted it almost beyond recognition, but Chris heard his own name and Valiha's. More flares burst and floated gradually down on little parachutes, and the roaring became the familiar sound of helicopters. The voice was Cirocco's. She had come for them at last.
 

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