Serpent's Gift

by A. C. Crispin

  Heather shrugged. "No, everything's fine," she said, wondering what he was leading up to.

  "You've got a long break between your Intro to Nonhuman telepathy class and Intro to Calculus," he said. "I'd like us to meet twice a week, right after that Telepathy class. Would that be convenient?"

  "You mean meet for counseling sessions," Heather said flatly. shit, I've had enough therapy to last me forever! she thought disgustedly. Rob nodded. "I see most of the freshmen on a regular basis," he replied blandly.

  "You see all the freshmen twice a week?" she asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  "When necessary," he said evenly. "We'll just spend time together, talking, playing games, maybe watching some of my movies." He smiled at her. "I've got one I bet you'll like. it's about a kid who can do anything with computers because he's got a computer link in his brain."

  Shit! Heather barely restrained herself from leaping out of her chair and bolting from the room. Does he know? But how could he? A moment's consideration convinced her that there was no way Rob Gable could know.

  No, it had been nothing but a shot in the dark, coincidence. Don't forget all those "pranks" you played back on Earth, using computers. This shrink just did his

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  homework, reading the files ... Her heart subsided in her chest.

  Managing a feeble smile, she said casually, "I like computers. And I'm good with them. They're really simple to deal with, compared to people." Heather glanced down. "They never yell at you or beat you when you make a mistake, either."

  "I know you've had a rough time of it," Rob said, and his dark eyes were sympathetic. "But you strike me as the kind of person who doesn't let adversity stop her. Now is your chance, Heather. Things can be different here at StarBridge. I argued that after you'd made such excellent progress at Melbourne, you deserved this chance. We-all want you to succeed, believe me."

  He took a deep breath. "But.. . Heather, I have to remind you that your admission is provisional, and whether you stay will depend on you. I'll help you as much as I can. I want you to come see me if you have any problems, or just need to talk. Hing is also a good listener, as you've probably already discovered."

  Heather realized with relief that the interview was drawing to a close. Most of the time she found it easy to fool adults, but; Gable was smart... and disconcertingly observant. "Thank you, Dr. Rob," she said gravely. "I appreciate your help. I'll try not to let you down."

  "We need strong telepaths, Heather. Just like we need people like Hing to translate and Khuharkk' to become interrelators."

  The girl stiffened at his mention of her nemesis. "Are you going to make me apologize to him?" she asked bluntly. She'd been surprised that he hadn't demanded it immediately. Adults were like that.

  "No," Rob said. "I'm going to leave the decision about that up to you. If things go well, and you really begin to fit in here one of these days you'll want to tell Khuharkk' that you're sorry. Just as I think that one of these days Khuharkk'

  will feel that he should apologize for frightening you. But it'll mean more; if you both reach that decision on your own. When that day comes, let me know. When both of you are ready, I'll set up a meeting."

  You'll wait until hell freezes over, then, Heather thought, she kept her gaze candid and steady as she nodded.

  Rob keyed a notation into his computer link, then stood up to| indicate the interview was over. "Thanks very much for coming,| Heather. I'll see you on Thursday, right after your Telepathy class okay?"

  Heather nodded and rose in her turn. "Okay, Dr. Rob."

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  **

  That same afternoon, Serge and Professor Greyshine took one of the small skimmers out to their dig for a couple of hours of excavation.

  The caverns where the artifacts had been discovered lay beneath the jagged peaks known as the Lamont Cliffs, named after the Desiree's famous Captain. These mountains had existed for millennia--far longer than the asteroid had been an asteroid. The mountains and the caverns beneath them were the only features that were known to have survived intact from the time when the StarBridge asteroid was still part of a living planet.

  Approximately two hundred fifty million years ago, a stray comet had crashed into a medium-sized, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphered world,

  shattering it. The remains of that ruined world still orbited Shassiszss' sun, much as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbited Sol. The Mizari had begun mining their asteroid belt nearly seven thousand years ago. The asteroids were, to varying degrees, rich in radonium, the substance that generated tremendous amounts of power--enough to propel spaceships into metaspace.

  The asteroid that the Mizari had donated for the site of StarBridge Academy was one of the largest; it contained enough radonium to power the school for ten thousand years.

  Nothing could have seemed more lifeless, more barren, than this airless cone-shaped chunk; pitted by impact craters, slagged by the fires of its ancient catastrophe, it had a stark, rugged landscape with an eerily close horizon.

  The asteroid's natural gravity was only one-tenth gee, even less than Earth's Moon. Due to the irregular shape of the rock chunk, the gravity fluctuated slightly, depending on one's location. At times it would seem to a person standing on the surface that he or she was leaning to one side or the other in order to remain upright--an extremely disconcerting experience, requiring special adjustment and coaching when wearing a spacesuit. Serge was used to it after five months of work, and still he had to fight the tendency to overcompensate, lest he topple over.

  The young teacher and the Professor had pressurized and thrown up an artificial gravity field in the two main caverns. Otherwise, their surveys and excavations would have been extremely difficult if they'd been hampered by heimets 'and heavy gloves. Other caverns opened off the ones they'd pressurized and sealed off with temporary airlocks, but the two

  archaeologists were limited in money and equipment, so

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  they'd been forced to confine their explorations to the areas where the Horizons Unlimited engineers had discovered the artifacts.

  After cycling the airlock that protruded slightly from the rugged cliff face, Serge and Greyshine stepped into the main cavern and removed their pressure suits. Automatically, they checked the artifacts beneath their faintly glowing stasis fields. Al the protective fields were functioning normally.

  Serge stared down at the songharp for a long moment, his eyes caressing its graceful lines. The musician inside him longed to touch its chords, coax sweet piping notes from its carved neck and graceful body.

  Resolutely he suppressed that urge, and walked away from the artifacts, out into the cavern. It was a large one, fifty meters long by nearly thirty wide and twenty high. The floor of the place was fairly smooth, covered as it was by the glassy, fused silicate. In contrast, much of the ceiling was gouged and irregular, studded with the remains of stalactites that had broken off during the long-ago cataclysm. The walls were brownish-orange, with extrusions of a dark gray basalt running through them.

  The slagged rock in the cave was the result of melting that had occurred during the destruction of the planet. The ancient impact had seared the doomed world, turning most of its exposed surfaces to a silicate layer between ten and twenty centimeters deep.

  Serge lifted aside the proton magnetometer (affectionately known in English as a "banjo" because of its shape) and took the portable sifter out, then stood a moment surveying their site with mingled affection and frustration. They'd worked so hard, yet they'd barely made a good start on the excavation!

  Marking off the cavern's rocky floor were stakes with bright- colored cords stretched between them to measure off four-meter- square grids. Each square was separated by a balk of raised soil that served as a walkway and additional divider. In the middle of the cavern ran the exploratory trench, which Serge and the Professor had cleared to a depth of one meter.

  Careful not to knock soil into the already excavated grid
s, Serge walked along the balk to grid number LC-C1-16 (which stood for Lamont Cliffs, Cavern One, Grid #16). He'd only begun this grid the day before and had barely cleared it down to the earth and rock-dust level below the patches of slagged silicate.

  Kneeling down beside the area he'd left off the day before; yesterday, Serge powered up the sifter and set to work. Across'

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  the cavern, Greyshine worked on extending the exploratory trench another meter.

  Serge's sifter, like many technological marvels, was originally a Mizari invention. The small vacuuming unit sucked up soil and analyzed it, even as it probed electronically four centimeters into the packed ground, searching for any artifacts, no matter how small.

  Glancing at the analysis scanner, he noted that he was still in the diatomaceous layer of pale gray soil. The chalky, microscopic remains of planktonlike sea creatures gave it its light color. The sifter analyzed the soil, but found nothing but soil within its range. No bone fragments, artificial materials, splinters of wood or metal... nothing. Serge was disappointed, but hardly surprised; the magnetometer would have picked up any objects larger than four or five millimeters.

  Strange to think that this was once the ocean floor of an alien sea on a planet in the Serenity Sector, he thought, moving the sifter to his other hand to begin the right side of the grid square. I wonder whether the caverns existed when this soil layer went down, or whether they came later, after the mountain range pushed up out of the sea?

  Glancing over at the Professor, Serge saw he was bent over the songharp, comparing its designs to a display on his computer link. The alien was tall, standing more than a head higher than Serge, who was tall for a human male. With his sharp, pricked ears, luxurious silver-gray coat, and long muzzle surrounding sharp teeth, Greyshine could have auditioned to play opposite Little Red Riding Hood--though his forehead was higher and more domed than any Terran lupine. Humor and intelligence softened his greenish-gold eyes, and his bipedal stance also helped dispel his wolflike aspect.

  "Greyshine" was the literal English translation of the soft whine that was his name. During their time together, Serge had learned to speak Heeyoon, and since the Professor knew no human languages at all, they either conversed in Heeyoon or Mizari when they talked. Catching the human's eye, the alien turned off the computer link and came over to squat beside Serge on the balk, watching as he sifted.

  "I should be able to finish this square today," the man said in Heeyoon.

  "Even though this portable sifter makes the work go slowly." He massaged his forearms, grimacing as sore muscles complained. How fortunate that my hands don't tire, he thought sardonically, hating the feel of artificial flesh against the living.

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  "You have been spending many hours out here alone, Serge," the Professor said. "Do not think I haven't noticed your dedication. You're working too hard." If "I want to uncover an artifact that we can claim as our own discovery," Serge said, frustration edging his voice. "It disturbs me that every one of these finds was handed to us like a gift by those idiotic engineers, who knew no better than to move them!"

  Greyshine sighed gustily. "You must be prepared to accept failure, Serge. All of our neutron scans have indicated that both these cavern floors are now empty. The only reason we are even using the sifter is to eliminate the possibility that some tiny fragments have not shown up on the neutron scans."

  "I wonder why the Mizari abandoned the artifacts," Serge said thoughtfully.

  "Even if there was an accident and the cavern depressurized, they could have come back in wearing protective fields and retrieved their belongings."

  "Impossible to say," the Professor stated the obvious. "Perhaps there were fatalities associated with our supposed accident, and they felt these caverns were illomened."

  "If that's the case, then I wish they had left the bodies," Serge said, realizing after he'd spoken how ghoulish that sounded, but knowing that the Professor would understand what he really meant. "Finding skeletons would be conclusive proof."

  "Indeed it would," the Heeyoon agreed. "But life and archaeology seldom have such easy solutions, Serge. We may conjecture and theorize until the stars freeze over, and we will unfortunately never know for certain. That is the nature of the work."

  Absently, the Professor examined his clawed, stubby fingers that resembled a dog's paw--except they were far bigger, and the digits were elongated.

  One of them was opposable, the equivalent of a human thumb. "I have scratched myself," he muttered, licking the injury clean as fastidiously as any house cat. "I have been examining the marks around the cavern entrances and on the floors, and there are indications that they had begun to improve this chamber and the other one . .. some of this smoothing is clearly artificial, not caused by the cataclysm."

  Serge had a feeling the alien had something else he wanted to say, but was unsure of how to broach the subject. His comments' had a rather abstracted air. For a moment he was tempted to ask Greyshine bluntly what he had on his mind, but he decided to bide his time. "If they were fusing the chamber floors so as to create a smooth surface for them to glide across, that would explain why

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  the artifacts were partially embedded in the slag," he replied. "At least... they were partially embedded before those fools moved them," he added sourly.

  "Yes."

  "Can we identify the type of equipment they would have used, and use it to provide another dating check?"

  "No," Greyshine said. "Unfortunately not. The sheltered location and the vacuum makes it impossible to tell whether the fusingand pressurization attempts were made three weeks ago, three months ago, three thousand years ago--or three million. Mizari equipment and techniques have simply not changed that much for thousands of years. They have been civilized and technologically advanced far longer than your people--or mine."

  "We could open one of the other caverns and begin excavations," Serge suggested hopefully.

  The Professor wrinkled his muzzle, revealing his sharp ivory fangs. "The cost, I am afraid, would be prohibitive. If only Horizons Unlimited would give us another donation, we could work on pressurizing Cavern Three."

  "Rob mentioned that he will be having dinner with Jeffrey Morrow tonight,"

  Serge said. "They are friends, and Rob knows 'how much we need funding.

  Perhaps he will let Morrow know that we need another donation."

  "Perhaps . .." The Heeyoon trailed off, then gave Serge a sideways glance.

  The human eyed him warily, knowing the alien was finally about to voice what was on his mind. "Incidentally, as I was waiting beside the entrance to the shuttle dome, I noticed Hing walking with you, did I not?"

  Serge felt the hot rush of blood to his cheeks and silently cursed his Teutonic ancestors. He should have known. Greyshine, like most Heeyoons, was an incurable romantic and a relentless matchmaker. "Earlier today, I invited Hing to accompany us -when we took the class to see the dig. Then, later, I saw her again in the Spiral Arm and took that opportunity to give her the particulars about the field trip," he explained, not looking at his companion. "It saved me a call. Afterwards, she just happened to walk along as I was heading for the hangar, because she was going to the theater for a rehearsal, and it was on her way."

  "She has agreed to accompany us to the site?" The alien cocked his head at the human, his eyes gleaming with interest. "She told me yesterday that she was interested in seeing the dig," Serge said, careful to keep his tones casual. "And we can

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  always use another senior student to help shepherd the Intro class, so I invited her to come."

  "She is most welcome, of course!" Greyshine said. "Do not sound so defensive, Serge. I was simply pleased to see the two of you together today.

  Perhaps you will become mates again?"

  "Uh, Professor ..." Serge began, but the Heeyoon was off and running now, his eyes shining. 'Together, you belong together! You make such an attractive couple--you with you
r pale headfur and eyes like the midday sky on my world Arrrouhl, she with headfur the color of a starless night, and eyes as black' and sharp as the ice in the Dark Oceans of my world's second moon..."

  "Professor..."

  Oblivious, the Heeyoon went on cataloguing Hing's virtues. "Never forget, Serge, that mere beauty is fleeting, but Hing's quick wits and kind nature are worth far more in the end than shiny headfur and bright eyes, lad. I am growing older, and so is my mate, Strongheart, but in our love we will always be young." He looked straight at Serge. "You and Hing would make fine pups, together, my young friend. Both of you have strong teeth, shiny eyes, good minds."

  The human shook his head. "Simply because Hing agreed to come out to the site and assist us in chaperoning the freshi men around does not mean we are anything more than friends, Professor!"

  "But I saw her eyes, as she stared longingly into yours ..."

  "For perhaps two nanoseconds!" Serge snapped his fingers sharply. "You call that 'staring longingly'?" All at once he found himself laughing. It was impossible to be angry with Greyshine; he was so innocent in his

  matchmaking. "Professor... if Hing will have me as a friend, that would be wonderful. I don't dare hope for more," he said, knowing he was hoping ... he was unable to stop himself.

  The alien wasn't deceived. "But if you could win her back, you would be happy again, Serge," Greyshine insisted. "Don't think I haven't noticed how lost you have been without her."

  "I miss her, yes," Serge admitted. "But I do not intend to wreck my chance of regaining her friendship by pushing her. If, over time, she grows interested in renewing our old relationship, I'll know."

  "Time... yes, your species has time to take such a leisurely no-pressure approach to mating," the Professor sighed. "With my people it is different.

  We must, as your human poet put it, seize

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  the day--the moment! But your people have such splendid adaptations in your reproductive habits." He sighed again, longingly. |"What a delight it would be to have an ever-receptive mate, unbound by the dictates of her estrus cycle! To be able to mate as often as one chooses, ah, that would be bliss!"