The Dancers of Noyo

by Margaret St. Clair

  "Go 'way," Franny said to it in a choking voice. "Go somewhere else, you nasty, nasty thing." I felt she was frowning fiercely and compressing her lips.

  The fetch turned head-over-heels, came through the glass of the window, reversed itself, and went out through the wall into the hall. I heard a stifled gasp from somebody, probably Jeb.

  Franny was muttering something. It must have had some effect on the fetch's behavior, for after a moment Jeb said in a trembling voice, "I have to go to the latrine. Got to take a leak. Maybe a crap."

  "Oh, sure, go on, Jeb," Glorious said in a slightly less tremulous voice, though only slightly so. "Get out and go to the can before it touches you again. It's awfully wet."

  I heard Jeb's feet, not quite running, in the hall. "He's gone," Glorious said, "and I'll bet he doesn't come back tonight. Now we can talk better. Can you get rid of that thing, though? When it touches me, it feels so wet."

  "I can try," Franny said. It was the first time she had spoken to him. Once more she muttered. Glorious sighed, so deeply that I could hear him through the door. "That's better," he said. "Thanks."

  "You were talking about being a medicine man," I prompted.

  "Oh. Well, another thing I think would be nice about it would be having all that power."

  I thought of my actual limitation, and grimaced. "The object isn't getting power, especially," I said.

  "Oh, I suppose not, but—"

  "I could do a preliminary test on you," I said, "but we'd have to be on the same side of the door for me to do it."

  "I couldn't do that ... Well, if you'd promise you wouldn't try to escape—"

  His voice was uncertain and nervous.

  "I promise we won't leave unless we have your free permission," I said. I was .beginning to have hopes of Glorious. "On my youth initiation word of honor."

  "OK." There was the click of the lock, and the door opened. The hall was quite dark except for the light of a candle—home-dipped, I thought—burning in an abalone shell on the floor.

  I got the copper disk from my medicine bag and had Glorious look in it. "We're going to share a dream," I said. I began describing to him, in soft, simple phrases, what it had been like to be Alice the cadaver. He listened, breathing shallowly. Actually, he was in a light hypnotic sleep. His knees began to buckle. I had him sit down against the wall. Franny was a silhouette against the weak light of the candle.

  I kept on with my description. He was sighing heavily. I put my right hand over his eyes, pressing with my thumb and third finger against his temples, and I changed from the account of my experiences as Alice to a morbid vision of the two of us suffocating under layers—slabs—of pale flesh slimy with beginning decay. It was straight out of Poe, and it almost made me sick myself, but it was very effective. Glorious was wriggling like an eel.

  I let him go. He stopped threshing around. Then he drew a deep breath, and coughed. "Brrr!" he said. "That was awful. Are all medicine man dreams that bad?"

  "Oh, no, but you have to go through a number of bad ones." (Pomo Joe had never put me through anything as bad as the rotting flesh one, but I wanted to impress Glorious.) "... I think you could be a medicine man, yes, if you wanted to work at it."

  "I'm not sure I do," he answered, getting shakily to his feet. "But you must have a lot of power." It was the second time he had mentioned power.

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

  The light was poor, but he seemed to be blushing, literally and actually blushing. "You, you, unh, ever make, make charms for people?" he asked with difficulty.

  "Sometimes. What kind of a charm?" I was pretty sure I knew, but I wanted to be sure.

  "To make girls—" Here Glorious stuck, seeming to think that he'd said enough. He looked at me imploringly.

  "Oh, that kind of-a charm. Well, I can't make one for you now. I haven't the materials. But I promise solemnly to get a first-rate charm to you, something to make you popular with the girls and people generally, within a week after we get to Bodega. I promise as a medicine man, as well as on my youth initiation word of honor. Of course, I'll have to get to Bodega first."

  His face lit up, but he hesitated. "I'm not supposed ... Would the charm really work?"

  "Of course. I make good charms. Meantime, find an older woman who likes you and tell her all about yourself. Tell her your troubles and the things you're anxious about." I figured that if he could get himself seduced the charm would be quite sufficient to make him OK with all the girls he could handle.

  "Thanks," he said, "thanks." He was smiling almost as happily as if he already had the charm and the girl—or girls—he wanted, "Come around to the back of the hotel," he went on. "We don't want anybody to see you leaving. Your bike's parked on the far side of the dance circle." He led the way.

  "Will you get into any trouble for letting us go?" Fran asked softly. We were picking our way over the piles of rubble by the uncertain light of the candle.

  Glorious shrugged. "Not too much. I may get a lashing, because our Dancer will be disappointed. But he's not a cruel man. I'll tell him that I let you out to go to the toilet, and that the fetch tried to strangle me then. The Dancer knows the fetch is scary. Jeb will back me up—Glorious, I thought, had at least one attribute of a successful medicine man: he was good at thinking up convincing lies.

  We got to the dance circle—deserted now, under a waning moon—and found the bike. We got astride it. Farewells were said. Glorious reminded me once more about the charm. A few moments later we were rolling down Highway One toward Bodega.

  Bodega was not many miles distant. I began to allow myself to hope. Franny coughed. "Don't look around," she said in a rather odd voice, "but I think the fetch is following us."

  -

  Chapter XIX

  The fetch had had nothing to do with our capture. It had gone floating off into the night a little while after Franny had mentioned it. But a mile and a half below Jenner we had run into six Avengers, on their way back from Bodega. There had been a wild chase back up Highway One; since my bike was carrying two, we were quickly overtaken. It made me sick now to think how close we had been to Bodega and freedom.

  The Avengers had taken us to Gualala, the terminus of the Grail Journey. There, after a long confab with the local Dancer, we had been stashed in the sweathouse. Our hands and feet had been tied together, and we had been gagged, though the gags weren't very tight. Franny was sitting opposite me. Her long hair was in her eyes, and she kept tossing her head to try to get it out of the way. Looking at her, I felt a vivid regret for our initial continence toward each other. It had seemed well-motivated at the time; we hadn't known each other very well, and there'd always been some immediate danger. But now I regretted every moment that I'd been with her and hadn't been between her legs.

  We were to be tried. I suppose simply shooting us would have been a little too raw, even for Avengers, in view of all the publicity their continued pursuit of us had caused. Or maybe they wanted to make examples of us.

  I wondered what the charge would be. Endangering the comfort and security of the Mallo Pass Dancers? Whatever they got us on, the trial was certain to be rigged. I had very little hope of surviving it.

  Franny had stopped tossing her head back and seemed to have gone to sleep. Her motionlessness didn't impress me as quite natural. It reminded me of how still she had been when she had lain in O'Hare's love trap at Point Arena.

  I hadn't anything to do except think. It was hot in the sweathouse. I thought of Pomo Joe, and wished it were possible to get some sort of message to him. I thought of Glorious, and felt sorry that he'd never get his love charm. But mostly I thought about Francesca, and wished I'd used my time with her better.

  Finally a kid of about eighteen came in carrying a gourd. "Would you like a drink?" he said. "It's hot in the sweathouse."

  I nodded, and he slipped my gag down and held the gourd to my lips. The water had a faintly bitter taste, but I was thirsty and swallowed avid
ly.

  As he got up from kneeling before me, the light from the smoke hole fell along his ribs inside his torn dance shirt; I saw that his back and sides were a mass of welts, some old and healed, some still bloody and new.

  "Where'd you get all those welts?" I asked. I was genuinely shocked by the nature and extent of his injuries.

  He gave me a look as if I were stupid beyond belief. "In the dance circle, where do you suppose? The Mandarins say we've got to have the sunbasket vision, and since we live at the end of the journey, whipping is the only way."

  "Do any of you ever have the vision?" I asked.

  He didn't answer my question. "How about her?" he asked, indicating Franny. "Wouldn't she like a drink, too? It's hot in here."

  "I think she's passed out," I said, "but you can try."

  He went over to Franny and touched her, not ungently, on the shoulder. She rolled under the touch, but didn't stir otherwise. "Still out," he said. "Too bad."

  He started to put my gag back on. "You didn't say whether or not any of you ever have the Grail Vision," I repeated.

  "—I'm not supposed to talk to you," he said.

  "The reason you're not supposed to talk to me is that I'm opposed to the Dancers and am trying to get rid of the whole system," I said. "Your elders are afraid I might corrupt your innocent mind."

  He looked upset and left the sweathouse without replacing my gag. He must have tattled, though, because before I could try to rouse Franny, an older man came in and gagged me much more tightly. He tightened my girl's gag too, though she was still insensible. I was left to my thoughts.

  The immediate physical savagery of the Gualala Mandarins toward their juniors rather surprised me. Were they intimidated by their Dancer and his chemical-conscience adviser to the point where they would tolerate seeing one of their young people covered with bloody welts? Jade Dawn, after all, had come to warn me against the Grain Journey, and I had the impression that most Mandarins of most tribes had to work rather hard at keeping their eyes closed to the effect of the Dancer system on the younger generation. It would be awfully difficult for Mandarins to shut their eyes to welts like those I had seen on the water-bringer's body. But perhaps they felt that welts were justified when it was a question of the sunbasket vision.

  My thoughts were getting blurred and peculiar, while my senses seemed to grow more and more acute. The thud of feet from the dance circle, which at first had been barely audible, now seemed to make the whole sweathouse shake. I wondered whether there had been some intoxicant in the water I had drunk from the gourd. Datura? Datura might make me feel the way I did; the Gualala Dancer might want me drugged and suggestible at the trial. In any case, there, wasn't much I could do about it now. I couldn't even try to vomit, since I was gagged.

  About half an hour later Franny opened her eyes and looked at me. She sighed deeply. She tried to say something, and then realized she was gagged.

  Her eyes moved. Her gaze traveled in the direction of the dance circle and then back to me several times. She was frowning intently, and I felt convinced she was trying to tell me something.

  I don't know why—it was probably the effect of the datura, which warped my judgment—but I got the idea that the message she wanted to give me was about the physical activity of dancing. She wanted me to dance, or ... If I imitated the motions of the dance as well as I could in my bound condition, would our jailers be moved to take some action? What? I wanted them to ungag us and let us go, but I felt foggily that this was improbable. (My thoughts had stopped seeming peculiar to me, and I was convinced they were piercingly cogent and intelligent.)

  Franny was still moving her eyes. Something was being communicated urgently. It was certainly something about dancing. And Franny unquestionably wanted me to dance. Well, if I could fool my jailers into thinking I was out on the dance floor with the others ...

  I began to thump my bound legs rhythmically up and down on the floor, keeping the beat of the stamping thud I could hear coming from the dancers in the circle. For a long time nothing happened. My legs got extremely tired, and the ropes chafed me. I was so busy with my laborious pseudo-dancing that I didn't look at Franny the whole time. This was a pity, for she told me afterward that she'd been shaking her head at me constantly trying to get me to stop.

  Finally one of the Gualala Mandarins came in. He was carrying a whip. He stood watching me in silence for a few moments. I was still too high from the datura to realize how unfriendly his scrutiny was.

  At last he said, "What's the matter with you? Do I have to tie you up so tight you can't move at all?"

  I made a mumbling noise and rolled my eyes at him. "If you're so fucking crazy to dance," he went on, "it's too bad you didn't do it at Noyo. If you had, you wouldn't be in such a bad jam. Stop it, and be quiet. If I catch you bumping around like that again, I'll really beat you up."

  He hit me hard eight or ten times with the whip he was carrying. I was almost knocked over by the blows. Then he kicked me in the ribs. He went over to Franny and kicked her too, though not quite so hard. He stood looking at us menacingly for a few seconds. Then he went out. I thought I saw tears in Franny's eyes.

  Sweat was pouring down my sides. I felt angry and helpless, not far from tears myself. This immediate physical maltreatment—especially when it was directed against Francesca—was hard for me to take. But the blows had had the effect of knocking part of the datura intoxication out of me.

  Franny's hair had got in her face again, and she was trying to toss it out of the way. The sweathouse smelled of smoke, partly burned wood, and sweat. My gag was cutting off the circulation around my mouth.

  A lumpish bird came flapping in through the smoke hole in the roof. It made no noise, and after a moment I realized it was one of the typical Dancer hallucinations. They are usually of birds or animals. I don't think I've ever seen one of a human being. The bird circled twice above Franny's head and then dissolved in the air.

  Franny had got her hair out of her face and was sitting up as straight as she could. She caught my eye and then began to move her bound feet on the sweathouse floor. I was brighter this time, and soon understood that she was making motions of writing, of forming letters with her feet.

  It was hard for her to do. She moved her feet over and over again in the same sequence of motions, looking intently at me all the while. At last I realized she was making the letter B. I nodded to show I had understood.

  She nodded back, and began forming another letter. I got this one more easily: it was E. I nodded, and she went on to the next. It was N, clear enough. Bennet? Was that what my girl was spelling out? I watched with concentration while she shaped another N.

  Yes, it was Bennet. But why was she spelling it?

  Her eyes moved toward the dance floor again. Then, to make sure that I really understood, she laboriously spelled out, "Dancer".

  She had to stop. She couldn't get enough air through her gag, and moving her bound feet to make letters was awfully difficult for her. But I thought I knew now what she had been trying to tell me: that my Bennet-life held the clue to the destruction of the Dancers. I nodded in a way I meant to indicate comprehension.

  Franny drew a deep sigh and leaned up against the sweathouse wall with her eyes closed. She seemed asleep again. I felt she had gone back to where she had been. Now it was for me to decide where the possibilities in my Bennet-life lay.

  I reviewed what it had been like to be Bennet, from the time I had made my way down to the seashore, favoring my brittle bones, to the time I had felt such terrible bitterness at realizing O'Hare had tricked me and that I had been cheated out of the joy in dying that was my right.

  The joy in dying. The words seemed to hold a promise. The Dancers had been grown from cells from Bennet's mouth—that mouth that had tasted the drugged wine, and been moved to find the taste so unbearably bitter. But Bennet himself had looked forward to ecstatic death; death had seemed to him the highest of delights. Was it possible that his unnatural o
ffspring, the Dancers, could have similar feelings? Could the Dancers possibly harbor something like his drive toward death?

  Put so baldly, the idea seemed improbable. And yet Franny had indicated my Bennet-life as the means of destruction of the Dancers. They might, after all, in the depths of their peculiar android souls, feel a similar urge: toward dying. It might be so. Good. I would try to trigger it.

  -

  Chapter XX

  How do you trigger a death-wish in an android? I was still wondering about this when four tribesmen came to take us to be tried. We were ungagged and allowed to go to the latrine, Franny stumbling along between two grim middle-aged women. Then we were marched off in the direction of the dance floor, which was to serve as the court.

  "What'll we do with Gladness?" I heard one of. our jailers says to another. "He's had another fit."