The Dancers of Noyo

by Margaret St. Clair

  Franny sat holding her head and sniffling. The room was getting lighter. "Let's be getting on to Bodega," I said at last. I felt that I had had a bellyful of perils and troubles. I wanted a quiet room, food, sleep, and eventually sex with Franny. I think we both felt this item had been on the agenda for a long time, but we'd always been too anxious or too tired. "The bike may still be out in the street."

  I got to my feet and started toward the door. "Wait," Franny said softly. "Men with bows are coming up on the porch."

  -

  Chapter XVII

  The tribe at Anchor Bay hadn't got itself a Dancer. According to Wally, who seemed to be a sort of headman, they had no desire for one. All their energies went into basketry—they made beautiful baskets, with months of work required for even the small ones—and abalone fishing. They considered grilled slugs a delicacy, in the best Yokiah-Boyah fashion. They were the most self-consciously Pomo of any tribe I had encountered. Wally even looked like a Pomo: short and very broad-framed, with a broad, flat face and a thin, straight nose.

  The tribe was currently living at what had been a private campground in pre-plague days. The abalone fishing was good there, and the tribe's children liked playing the abandoned swimming pool. Somewhat back from the beach there were a couple of shacks, scorned by the archaizing tribesmen. I had my eye on one of them as a nest for Franny and me.

  We had left the house in Point Arena in a great hurry, going out the back way as the bowmen were coming in at the front. I had shoved the Avenger in the face who barred our passage, and before he could shoot at us we had been on the bike and off.

  We hadn't tried to mislead pursuit; we had gone charging down Highway One straightforwardly. But I had seen a girl on the street, as we flew past the Point Arena service station, who had looked exactly like Franny. The resemblance had been astonishing. She had the same walk, the same way of holding her head, and, of course, the same clothes. If the Mallo Pass people saw her, they were sure to think she was the one they were hunting. It should take them some little time to discover their mistake. So we should have a slight lead.

  When we had got to Anchor Bay I had thought it would be better to try to take cover with the tribe there than to go on barreling down Highway One, sitting ducks for the Avengers to pick off. But I didn't know whether Wally could be persuaded to have the tribe he to protect us. We were nothing to him.

  "Unh," he said with a grunt. "Yeah, I guess I could make everybody keep quiet about your being here. But why should I? You'd have to make it worth my while." He looked sideways at me.

  He obviously didn't want money. (And if he had, he could have had the tribe manufacture reasonable quantities of shell currency for intertribal use). For some reason, I thought he must be after my bow. It was a very good bow, much better than the limp pieces of wood the Anchor Bay people were packing around on their backs. No wonder they were eating slugs—what could they shoot worth eating with those limber atrocities? I wouldn't have been surprised to hear they made bows from eucalyptus.

  "What do you want me to give you?" I said after a moment. "I haven't time to bargain with you. If you aren't willing to misdirect the Mallo Pass people, we'd better be on our way."

  Franny was sitting on the bike, holding her hands over her eyes. Wally looked at her curiously. Then he said, "I hear you have a kind of rig—you might call it a suit—"

  My eyebrows went up a little. "Go on," I said. "What kind of a suit?"

  "... It makes the person who's wearing it look like a grizzly bear," Wally said.

  I tried not to let my disapproval show in my face. Every medicine man ought to know how the suits work, and Pomo Joe had taught me good and constructive uses for the one we had. But there is no denying that the suits are classically used to intimidate or eliminate people with whom one is at odds.

  "Where did you hear about that sort of suit?" I asked. "Who told you?"

  Wally looked confused. He rubbed his nose. "I don't know," he said finally. T don't remember where I heard."

  "Are you a medicine man?" I asked. Medicine men do know things about other medicine men—there's a sort of grapevine—and the county agent, who isn't a medicine man at all, had known about my suit.

  "Why, no," Wally said. "I guess you could call me a politician." He grinned. "But I'd like to have one of those suits."

  He didn't know who had told him. Maybe nobody had. It seemed to me that the legends were coming back. People were beginning to fear the uncanny man-animal who lurked on the hillside at midnight, an invincible obsidian dagger in his hand. The coast was repeopling itself with figures from its ancient past.

  The first owners of the land, the Pomo, had known every tree and rock in their tribes' ambience. We had driven them out or out-reproduced them. But the Grail Journey had become the sunbasket journey. The old ways were coming back.

  "What would you use the suit for if you had it?" I asked.

  "What do you use it for?" he countered. "But I'll send the Mallo Pass people on by, and see that the whole tribe keeps quiet about your being here, if you'll promise to get me that suit."

  He would, I thought, keep his word. T can't let you have the suit," I said, "but I'll tell you what: I'll teach you the rudiments of double-seeing, and show you young men how to make proper bows, if you'll hide my girl and me for a couple of days."

  Wally pursed up his mouth—he had a mean, flat mouth—and shook his head. "Not good enough," he said. "I'll have to let the Mallo Pass Avengers have you when they come."

  Abruptly I was fed up. I'd been on the run for days, I'd been short of food, of sleep, of shelter, friends and sex. And now this blackmailing basket-weaver was threatening to turn Franny and me over to the people who'd made a determined attempt to drown her.

  "I'd advise you not to try turning us over to the Avengers," I said. "Even if your conscience is perfectly clear—and I don't think it is; you've broken at least two serious taboos—it's not safe to annoy a medicine man who understands Frenzy Way."

  "Hunh?" Wally blinked and looked slightly disturbed. "Frenzy Way? What's that?"

  "Like having been bitten by a mad dog," I answered briefly. "It's a nasty way to die."

  Wally licked his lips. "... If you're so smart about magic, why don't you get rid of the Mallo Pass people that way?"

  "It's easier to control one man with magic than four," I replied. "Besides, the Mallo Pass people have magic of their own. You haven't. You have no protection. Frenzy Way would fasten on your bones."

  Wally snorted. "Once the Mallo Pass people pick you up you'll be helpless," he said. "You can't do much in the way of magic with four men holding you."

  "Can't I?" I answered. "If they catch us, they'll kill us. And while I'm dying I'll curse you. Not them, you. You haven't a chance."

  Even then he might not have agreed if Franny, who was still sitting on the motorbike, hadn't added her persuasive force to mine. She took her hands down from her eyes and gave Wally a long, deliberately hypnotic look.

  "You've broken three taboos," she said to him. "One about the offering of first fruits, one about menstruation that only your tribe has, and one about the scourging you got at the youth initiation. You cheated. You see, we know. You'd better help us."

  Wally licked his lips. He had turned pale. "What would you do?" he asked. "Tell?"

  "That would be one of the things," Franny said. She put her hands over her eyes again.

  Wally spat on the ground. "... A couple of stinking witches," he said. "Well—"

  I pressed our advantage. "But if you'll shelter us honestly, I'll work Blessing Way for you. And the infractions of taboo will be wiped out."

  Wally rubbed his nose. "OK," he said. "But I think you ought to give me the lessons in double-seeing too."

  I was in no mood to quibble. "OK," I said, "and throw in the instruction in bow-making."

  "What's wrong with our bows?" Wally said irritably. "There's not much we care to shoot around here ... You want to stay in one of the motel units?
Which one?" He sounded as if he had been allocating people to motel units all his life.

  "We want a place with privacy, where the Avengers won't come looking in the windows," I said. "How about that one?" I indicated the shack that had caught my fancy.

  Wally shook his head. "No good. The kids play there a lot. It's in an awful mess. There's a place back under the pines where nobody'd think of looking. It's like a real motel. There's only one window cracked, and there's a fireplace, and running spring water. Don't go building a fire in the fireplace, though—the Avengers might see the smoke."

  There was no need to answer this. Wally led Franny and me along an obscure path through some straggly pines to a sort of duplex motel. Clumps of pampas grass were growing on either side of the door. As Wally had said, the windows were intact.

  He fumbled in his pants pocket and produced a key. "Got to keep the kids out somehow," he said, unlocking the door. "There's a kitchen, too, but the stove doesn't work."

  We looked over his shoulder into a dim room with the curtains drawn. The one piece of furniture I noticed was the bed.

  "OK?" he said, looking at us.

  "OK," I answered. I wheeled the bike over the threshold and leaned it up against the wall in the corner. As soon as Wally had gone back through the pines, I put my arms around Franny and began kissing her. She returned my kiss sweetly and naturally. It was the first time we had ever kissed.

  I didn't know whether to try to take Franny to bed "immediately, or to suggest a snack, or to put up a magical barrier to keep the Avengers away. Franny solved the problem by getting bread and cheese from the bag under the bike and making sandwiches. I suppose we could have eaten hi the kitchen, but we both opted for sitting on the bed, where we chewed the sandwiches and drank herb beer.

  We ate enough to dull the edge of hunger—neither of us was as hungry as might have been expected, and our dining table, the bed, suggested other thoughts. Fran put the food back in the bag. She came and sat down beside me, smiling. I began kissing her again..

  The girls of my tribe, the Noyo tribe, are given instruction by older women in the mechanics and technique of intercourse during the Girls' Initiation, which takes place in the fall. It's a good idea; sex is too important to be left to mere chance. But my experience with Franny made me realize what an enormous difference there is between a bunch of little girls dutifully studying a school lesson, and the resources of somebody with natural talent.

  It was another demonstration of the truth of the old maxim that you can only teach people something who already know it. Franny wasn't much more than nineteen, and I don't think, from other things she said, that she'd had a great deal of real experience. But where sex was concerned, she was definitely what an occultist would call an old soul. Of course, I may have inspired her. I know she had an inspiring effect on me.

  Twice, at the height of our excitement, I thought I heard somebody moving about in the kitchen. I decided it was mice, and successfully ignored it. As to Fran, she either didn't hear it at all or decided to ignore it, as I did. As I drifted off to sleep, holding her in my arms, I thought I heard a faint sweet distant music, high and silvery, that reminded me of the distant music I had heard, so long ago, when I was starting the sunbasket journey.

  Once I was half-roused by a series of noises in the kitchen. I listened, clutching Franny, until the noises died away. Then I made a sleepy attempt at more sex.

  But we were both awfully tired, and sleep took precedence over other needs.

  A little after sunset I was aroused for good and all by Franny, white-faced and urgent, shaking my shoulder desperately. "Wake up! The place is on fire! We've got to get out!"

  For a moment I couldn't focus on anything. The room was almost dark, and Franny's white face was a meaningless glimmer. I didn't know where I was. "What—?" I said querulously.

  "Get on your pants! Hurry! We've got to get out!" She tried to pull me up from the bed by main force.

  I could smell smoke. Somebody went by the window. Abruptly I was wide awake. I jumped into my pants, grabbed my bow, and hesitated. If the Avengers had fired the motel, they'd be waiting by the door of the unit to shoot us as we came out. "Get the bike!" Fran said urgently.

  There was a scream from outside, and then a rattle of arrows against the window. From the kitchen I heard the crackle of flames and felt a sudden burst of heat.

  We'd better be shot than burnt alive. I threw open the door.

  The shower of arrows I expected did not come. The four Avengers were shooting at something on the roof above their heads. In the growing twilight I could see that there was a human figure on the roof, or—it seemed for a moment—hovering above it. The outline was familiar, but I didn't know or care who it was. It was a distraction that offered us a chance to get out.

  I motioned to Franny to get on the bike. I stepped on the starter. We dashed through the Avengers with only two arrows being shot at us, one of which stuck in my pants leg.

  As we charged through the gathering darkness, toward Highway One and Bodega, I was conscious of a feeling of puzzlement. Who had set the fire? Wally, I was sure, had been convinced of the peril of turning us over to the Avengers. He wouldn't have betrayed us. But the motel had indubitably been on fire, and the Avengers had been shooting at its roof. They had hardly noticed us.

  Franny—I could feel her breasts pushing into my back—seemed to pick up my thoughts. "Wally did lie to them," she said. "He convinced them. They were starting to leave—they were just leaving—when they saw my fetch hovering above the roof. They thought it was supernatural, and they set the motel on fire. People think fire is good against magic."

  "Tour fetch?" I asked. I'd never heard this word before.

  "My double. Didn't you see it when we were leaving Point Arena? That was what we kept hearing moving around in the kitchen in the motel."

  I swallowed. It is very disconcerting to a young man to learn that the girl he has just been enjoying sex with has a sort of haunt attached to her. "... Have you always had it?" I asked after a minute.

  "No, of course not." She sounded annoyed. "I think I got it in the web. I had a feeling of—of being duplicated while I was there. I can't help it, you know."

  "Oh, sure." I was wondering whether the Avengers would decide that the fetch was actually Franny, and that we had both perished in the fire. It was improbable. Two arrows had been shot at us; the Avengers knew that somebody had escaped. They would keep on hunting us; in their eyes we were like the vectors of some dangerous disease. The mere knowledge that the Dancers could be killed—and in some quite simple way—was an infection we might transmit.

  Yet as we drove through the cool night toward Gualala I felt in better heart. A time for rest and pleasure had been given us. For an afternoon we had been more than fugitives. We had lived a little while.

  -

  Chapter XVIII

  The tribe at Tenner had made itself a fake Dancer. The tribe's Mandarins, unable to wait their turn patiently for one of O'Hare's coveted creations, had delegated one of their number to carry a whip, wear a loincloth, and be painted red. It wouldn't have fooled anybody for a moment who'd ever seen a real Dancer. It was obviously a tribesman painted up.

  Franny and I didn't learn this until somewhat later. We'd been out on the dry hillside, wrestling with Franny's fetch, when we'd been captured. I had expected serious trouble, with a message being sent up the coast to the Mallo Pass people saying we'd been taken. Then I realized that the Jenner people were outside what I might call the Dancer network, though their Mandarins were no less bent on having their young people put in the day dancing than my own tribe's had been. (It gave me a sort of homesick feeling to hear the thud of feet and see people my own age stamping around in a circle.). But the Jenner Dancer didn't have a bodyguard of Avengers, and I doubt he'd even heard of the chemical-conscience treatment, let alone of the idea of using chemically restrained murderers as advisors. The tribe at Jenner was a gentle and backward tribe.

&
nbsp; I couldn't understand at first why we'd been captured. If the tribe wasn't doing the bidding of a red-eyed Android from O'Hare's growing tanks, what would they want with Franny and me? Then I realized it was the fetch they were after. The bowmen who had taken us captive had seen Franny trying to put her incorporeal double through its paces. They had come up quietly, while Franny and I were too preoccupied to notice them, and when the light had glinted on the ectoplasmic cable that linked Fran with the translucent fetch, our capture had been assured. The whole tribe suffered from an unsatisfied hunger for marvels.

  We were taken before the fake Dancer, our hands tied behind us and the fetch floating loosely in our wake. The Dancer looked at us—he was a pleasant-featured man, middle-aged, with the paint peeling off his skin in big flakes—and pursed his lips. He held a whispered consultation with one of the bowmen. Then he said, "We want the girl to make her double do the things Peace Symbol saw her having it do."