The Dancers of Noyo

by Margaret St. Clair

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't think it's dangerous." She pushed past me and began feeling over the surface of the bed with both hands. After a moment she straightened. "It's OK," she said. "There's nobody in the bed." She giggled. "There's not even a mattress pad on it." She giggled again. Her voice was high, and I realized that hunger and fatigue were making her light-headed.

  I leaned the bike up against what seemed to be a dresser. "You lie down on the bed," I told her. "I'll sleep on the floor."

  "No! Lie down beside me." I heard the creak of springs as she sat down on the bed. "I don't want to sleep by myself," she went on. "I'd have nightmares about that rock all night."

  She meant, of course, the rock where she had been chained to drown. And plainly she didn't intend a sexual invitation. "All right," I said. I put my bow and quiver on the floor beside the bed, where they would be close to my right hand if I needed them in the night. Then I lay down beside her and took her hand.

  It was icy cold, and I thought her whole body was trembling. I wondered whether I should dose her with something from my medicine bag. But I didn't have any safe, quick-acting hypnotics, and what I did have required to be infused in boiling water. Not much help.

  Gradually her hand grew warm and her trembling quieted. Her breathing became even and deep. I found the sound soothing, and began to drift sleepward myself. My last conscious thought was a fear that if Mike, the Avenger whose bike we had taken, knew how much fuel there'd been in the tank, he'd be able to predict just about how many miles from Mallo Pass we'd be when we ran out of juice.

  The sun, pouring in through uncurtained windows, woke me. It was about five. I had slept only a few hours, but I felt much better, though very hungry. Should I wake Franny—we ought to get started—or let her sleep a little longer? She had been exhausted last night.

  She settled the question by sitting up on the bed and yawning. "Hello," she said. She grinned at me. "Boy, what a lot of dust!" she went on, looking around the little room. "I wonder how long it's been since anybody was here." She sniffed. "—I know what that smell that bothered us last night is," she said. "Look."

  She dived over the side of the bed and came up with two dusty, empty bottles that had once held Scotch. "There are fifty or sixty more of them under there," she reported. "A regular cache. Somebody has done a lot of heavy drinking in this room, and a little of the smell has stayed.

  "Let's go see if we can find some canned goods. There might be something in the kitchen. I'm so hungry I could eat a broiled slug, Pomo style."

  "OK," I said. "Keep back from the windows, Fran. There's always a chance one of your tribesmen might be going by."

  An upper cupboard in the kitchen held quinine water, several cans of tomato juice, and some bottles of Seven Up. Franny kept rooting around, and eventually she came up with a can of Boston brown bread, a package of cheese wafers, and a can of shrimp. Everything was dusty, but none of the cans had rusted; with these things and the tomato juice we had the makings of a fine breakfast, but Franny didn't seem satisfied.

  I opened the cans—the thought of the brown bread made me ravenous—and we sat down to eat. Franny divided the shrimp, which she plainly considered a delicacy, between us. Our mouths were soon full.

  "Has the Mallo Pass Dancer got itself a chemical-conscience man?" I asked as I munched on a cheese cracker.

  "No, it hasn't. Why would it?"

  "Oh, there seems to be a sort of tendency for Dancers and the chem-con men to get together as the Dancers get older. I wondered if it had happened in your tribe."

  "Un-unh, not yet."

  "It might be only a chance coincidence," I said. "I don't suppose the chemical-conscience people are all the same."

  "No, but they're more alike than you'd think," she said. "I used to work in a clinic in SF where they came in for their shots, and I saw a lot of them.

  "They all talk in that funny, precise way, for one thing. And they're the biggest gossips in the world. If one of them knows anything, all the others know it too. They can't keep their mouths shut about what happens to them. They get together in groups and twitter like birds, all in those finicky voices. I suppose it's the chemical that makes them act alike. They certainly haven't all committed the same crimes.

  "They'll even talk to outsiders, if they can't find any of their own sort to talk to. I've listened to yards of talk from them."

  We had eaten everything in sight. I was still thirsty and, since there wasn't any water in the sink, I opened a bottle of quinine water. Franny gathered up the remains of our meal and put them in a garbage can by the back door.

  She still had the dissatisfied air I had noticed before. She began opening drawers and poking around in the back of them. She even rooted around in the space under the sink.

  "What's the matter?" I said at last. "What are you looking for?"

  "Liquor," she answered. "He must have some scotch stashed away somewhere. Nobody would do all that drinking without having a reserve. And the house hasn't been looted. The liquor must be around somewhere."

  "What do we want with li—" I began, and then stopped myself, realizing I had been about to say something foolish. Scotch contains enough alcohol that it could be burned as fuel for the bike. If we could locate the reserve Franny suspected, we'd be in business again.

  She stood for a moment, thinking. Then she went in the bedroom and began looking there. She opened dresser drawers and looked under the dresser. She kept tossing her long black hair back over her shoulders. I enjoyed watching her as she searched, intent and absorbed. She seemed pretty well recovered from her ordeal of yesterday.

  From the bedroom she went to the bath. It was plainly no longer functional, the tub being filled with bottles, but she didn't find any unopened ones. The medicine chest contained only a package of hangover pills. The dining room was equally blank.

  She went into the living room. Here, under the big, high divan (the largest piece of furniture in the little house) she found what she was looking for. Two bottles of scotch.

  It was all she could find, though she kept on looking a little while longer. She wheeled the bike out from the bedroom while I opened the bottles. I poured their contents into the bike's fuel tank. The bike was no longer a gutless wonder. It would go again.

  "Where to?" I asked her.

  "How far can we get on two bottles of scotch?"

  I considered. "I don't know how well the stuff will burn," I answered. "Probably to Point Arena, if the detour isn't too long. Pretty certainly not to Boonville. Going to Boonville means a long walk in the hot sun, pushing the bike, with plenty of opportunities for your tribe's Avengers to catch up with us. On the other hand, we'd probably be a good deal safer on 101 than on the coast highway, once we get there."

  "You mean at Ukiah? Um."

  I had a feeling the choice was very important, and an equally strong feeling that no matter what choice we made, it would be wrong. I was still weighing probabilities when Franny gave a sort of start. She listened. Then she put her lips to my ear and whispered, "Somebody's coming."

  "Where?" I answered equally softly.

  "Up the drive. We'd better hide."

  I shoved the bike under the divan. Fran had already taken cover behind the big piece of furniture and I hurriedly joined her, crouching low as I remembered we could probably be seen from outside.

  I heard footsteps on the porch. My suspicion of the house had returned; I ought, I felt, to have realized before that it was a trap. A house with food, a bed, no windows broken, even liquor—it was simply too good to be true.

  The steps on the porch sounded lurching and uneven. There was a protracted fumbling with the key at the keyhole. Whoever it was had a key, which would seem to rule out the Avengers. And there did seem to be only one man.

  Stumbling steps in the hall. They entered the living room, where we were, and paused in front of the divan. A bad moment, but of course he couldn't know we were there. It sounded as if he put something down on the coff
ee table. Then he seemed to turn around and to be leaving the room.

  Cautiously I stuck my head around the edge of the divan. I saw a small man, gray-haired and balding, wearing a business suit. He didn't seem to have any whiskers, though I could only see the back of his head. In his right hand there was a gun. I'm no authority on guns, but it looked like a revolver.

  I felt a throb of dismay. My bow was hanging over my shoulder, but I knew I didn't have a chance against firearms. I wondered who he was. If he were the man who had stashed the scotch Franny had found—and his having the doorkey made it seem probable—he might well decide to look under the divan for his long-hidden bottles. Then what? Franny and I'd be in the soup.

  I heard him walk into the kitchen. I was glad Fran had cleaned up the remains of our breakfast. I wondered whether Franny and I would be able to get the bike out from under the divan, and ourselves out of the house, before he came back. His gun worried me.

  He came back from the kitchen so promptly that I was glad we hadn't tried it. He sat down on the divan; I heard the springs squeak. There was the crunkling of paper; he must be unwrapping the parcel he had placed on the table. And finally came a small, metallic noise that could be nothing but a bottle being uncapped.

  A splashing sound of liquid. He must be pouring some of the liquor—scotch, from the smell of it—into a glass. He had probably gone into the kitchen for mixer and the glass.

  A very short silence. Then he drank and swallowed audibly. I was sweating with impatience. How long was this gun-carrying dope going to sit there on the divan? Perhaps he'd go into the bedroom eventually, where he seemed to have done most of his drinking. Or perhaps he would not.

  He drank again. "Ah," he said. It was a rusty-sounding "ah," as if he were unlimbering his vocal cords.

  I wondered where the gun was. In his pocket? I hadn't heard him put it down on the coffee table. I hoped he'd shoot himself. Maybe he'd put it down so softly on the table that I hadn't heard it. Or maybe he'd left it in the kitchen.

  What kind of a person was he? Why had he come in carrying a gun? What would happen if Franny and I came out from behind the sofa, and told him we'd eaten his food, slept in his bed, stolen his scotch, and asked him to forgive us and send us on our way with his blessing? I didn't like his carrying a gun.

  It seemed a long time passed. He kept pouring and drinking. He made no more trips to the kitchen, which would seem to mean he was leaving out the mixer. After a while, he began to talk to himself.

  It was immediately obvious that, whoever he was, he wasn't one of the chemical-conscience people. His speech was blurred and babbling, wholly different from the clipped, precise utterance of the chem-con men. Well, that was one thing we didn't have to worry about, anyhow.

  "Long time," he said. "Long time no see." He was apparently addressing the bottle of scotch. "Old pal, I have missed you, missed you, missed you. Bits and sups in the city on Friday or Saturday night are not enough. Simply not enough. I have been needing to tie one on. And that is just what I am going to do. D.V."

  He drank in silence for a little while. Then I heard a series of noises I couldn't identify, followed by a number of faint metallic clicks as he seemed to put something down on the coffee table.

  "Nothing like Russian Roulette to brighten up a dull afternoon, eh, old pal? Not that it's afternoon yet, in fact it's still seriously early. But the principle's the same. R.R. is a great little day-brightener."

  The clicks I had heard had apparently been five of the chambers of the revolver being unloaded. Was this nut going to sit on the divan getting drunker and drunker while he played suicide games with himself? It would make an awful mess if he succeeded in blowing his brains out. On the other hand, it would end the suspense.

  I thought he picked up the gun and then put it down again. "Or should I?" he said. "Why take chances, just to zip up a day? My luck's bound to run out sooner or later. Better not. 'Them as eats cakes What the Parsee man bakes Makes fearful mistakes.' Or is it frightful mistakes? I never can remember."

  He seemed to be reloading the revolver. If he'd been drinking as steadily as the noises would indicate, it might be possible for me to throttle him from behind before he could do anything effective with the gun. But I felt I'd better not risk it. He was bound to pass out after a while.

  Another silence. "Lonesome," he said self-pityingly. "Solitary drinking is lonesome. That's why they all call it a vice, a vice, a vice. I feel sorry for myself.

  "But then again, you meet the damnedest people in bars. That man last month in the Buena Vista who said he wanted parts from bodies. Arms and legs he said he wanted mainly, or was it eyes? Anyhow, he said he'd found a good supply. Whooooo!" The drinker blew out his lips explosively in a sound of rejection and distaste.

  "He had the damnedest way of talking," he went on. "Every word separate and distinct, just so, like a schoolteacher or a preacher. Said he lived around here or a friend of his did. I don't remember which."

  The drinker's own speech had deteriorated to the point where he was difficult to understand, but I got this well enough. So did Franny. I heard her give a very faint gasp.

  "I expect he was only trying to scare me. I expect he was only kidding. He kept talking about how he was paying his debt to society, and saying he was a law-abiding man. But what a thing to think about when you're drinking! Whoooeee!"

  Another silence. Then he said, "Best cure for horrors is more liquor. Need plenty. Used to have some stashed under couch."

  Before I realized what he was up to, he had leaned forward and plunged his hand back under the divan. He caught hold of my foot in its moccasin.

  He felt over it wonderingly for an instant, while I tried to keep absolutely still and project the idea that my foot was an empty bottle. Then he released me and got waveringly to his feet.

  "Come on out," he said. I heard a noise like a revolver being cocked. "Got gun. Knew you there all time. All the damn time."

  With what grace we could muster, Franny and I came out from behind the divan. The drinker was swaying like an aspen in a high wind, but he was indubitably holding the revolver and pointing it in our direction.

  "Say, how many of you are there behind couch?" he asked wonderingly. "Never mind. Go in bedroom. On in bedroom. Going to make example of you. High time."

  Sweat was running down my back. I got ready to jump, watching narrowly for the moment when his wavering gun arm would be pointed at the ceiling or the floor, away from Franny and me. It wasn't necessary. Before I could do more than tense my muscles, his knees buckled and he went forward on his face, the revolver pointed at the wall. For some reason it didn't go off.

  "Whew," Franny said.

  I took the gun carefully out of his hand and uncocked it. On the coffee table was one almost empty bottle of scotch, and another that hadn't even been opened. He certainly had been intending to tie one on.

  I got the motorbike out from under the divan and emptied both bottles into the fuel tank. "There," I said. "That ought to be enough to get us most of the way to Boonville, if that's where we want to go. We can buy more fuel there."

  "Have you any money, Sam?" Francesca asked after a second. "Because I haven't, myself."

  It is a measure of how tribalized I had become that the question really hadn't occured to me before. "No," I answered.

  "Then you'd better take some money out of his wallet. They won't accept shell currency at Boonville."

  I hesitated. I could justify our taking the scotch from the unknown; unless he were drunk, he wouldn't be tempted to play suicide games with himself, and we were removing the means of his being drunk. But a money theft bothered me. We'd eaten his food, taken all his liquor, and now we were going to rob an unconscious man.

  At the bottom of my medicine pouch there was an armlet of beads of "Pomo gold" strung on a leather lace. The beads were said to be quite valuable, when they were genuine, and these certainly were.

  I rolled him over, took his wallet from his pocket, and
counted over the money in it. I took what I considered a fair price for the armlet and put the rest of the bills back. The armlet I looped over the fingers of his right hand.

  "Let's go," I said. As we walked down the drive, still pushing the motorbike, I looked about for the means of transportation he had used to get here. I saw nothing. Somebody must have given him a lift.

  -

  Chapter XIII

  The scotch burned better than I had hoped. When we got to where a second detour sign led us back toward the coast, the needle on the fuel gauge hadn't budged from its initial position.

  I gave Franny an inquiring look. I wanted to get back on Highway One—as I said before, going inland seemed to me like running out on a fight—but, since her safety was involved, I felt she had a right to be consulted.