Wizard

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 fu

"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 ski

"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 a

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..."