The Dancers of Noyo (12 page)

             
"You mustn't do that, you know," he said. "The
door's
locked. I don't like unlocked doors." He gave me a wolfish smile.

             
"I—"

             
"Oh, you've nothing to fear.
At least not immediately.
I'm still under chemical control.
"

             
"
Oh."

             
"Of course there's a brief interval between the urgent need for another shot and the restrictions the shots put on me, when I'm pretty much free to act as I please."

             
I swallowed. It sounded an awful lot like an announcement of intention. Was the door to the workshop locked too?

             
"No, it's not," he said as if he
were
reading my mind, "but I won't let you get there. Here." He threw a length of braided cord around my shoulders, in the manner of a stole. The cord was stuck with feathers at irregular intervals.

             
"It's a witches' ladder," he said, smiling pleasantly. "Perhaps you'd like to do a little dancing?" He tapped with his fingers on his forearm, making the fingers move like the feet of a dancing man.

             
My feet, whose activity I had already been so hard put to restrain, began to move of themselves.
I gave a sort of grunt. An instant later, I was stamping in the dance.

             
"I'll be back as soon as I change," he said. "And I'll give you a sporting chance. If you can stop dancing long enough to use it, here is the key to the front door." He threw it down on the coffee table where our wine glasses were still sitting.

             
I couldn't speak. A breath of horror, chilling and extravagant, had blown over me, and I wondered that my feet could still move. On the threshold of the workshop, he turned and looked at me, his lips drawn back from his teeth. "Don't go," he said, "—but of course you won't. I'll soon be back." He was smiling, intent on what lay before him; and yet I felt that he, almost as much as I, was mortally afraid.

             
He went out. I was shaking with fear, almost as dispossessed by that emotion from my normal self as I had been by my various extra-lives, but I was trying to remember one of Pomo Joe's lessons. What had he told me about resisting what people wanted me to do? Something about concentration ... or holding my mind above
...
Desperately I tried to concentrate my wavering attention on stopping the motion of my legs. It didn't help. It didn't help at all.

             
I went stamping around in a circle in the living room, bone-tired, loathing my legs, and listening involuntarily for noises from the workshop where Farnsworth had gone.

             
Around and around.
The key lay on the coffee table, as far out of reach as if it had been on the moon. I
passed,
the range of windows on the front of the shack two or three times.
Still no sound from Farnsworth.
What was he doing in the workshop, waiting for his chemical conscience to wane to the point where he could be free to be what he naturally was? And then, as I passed the windows for the third or fourth time, I saw somebody looking in.

             
It was a clay-colored face, slick-skinned, with no lips over the teeth. An instant later it was gone. And an instant after that I heard a sharp clicking sound at the workshop's outer door.

             
The sound was followed by a great cry, a dreadful cry, in Farnsworth's voice. It stopped me in my tracks, legs trembling, with no more need for dancing. I snatched up the key and then stood panting, wondering whether I ought not to try to rescue Farnsworth, and knowing that
it was perfectly impossible that I should ever do so.

             
I hesitated yet an instant longer. It seemed to me and
I
have never changed this opinion that one of
Famsworth's
victims had come back to settle scores with him. In any case it was none of my business.

             
Farnsworth's cry had been followed by a sort of clucking. I plucked the length of braided cord from my shoulders and threw it on the coals of the fire. I fitted the key into the lock and "turned it. I slipped out into the night.

-

             
After I left Farnsworth to his caller, I made better progress. The burning of the passports had freed me from my magical impediment, and I walked at a normal pace, under a normal sky. It was still beyond my capacity to integrate my extra-lives into the one unique existence of Sam McGregor, but at least Sam knew that the problem existed.

             
I missed my bow badly. Most of my life I had had a bow hanging on my back or in my hand, and the one I had lost at Russian Gulch had been a great favorite of mine. A good bow is like an extra arm to an archer, an arm with a particularly long reach.

             
Not having a bow affected my eating, too. The pemmican was gone, it was the wrong time of year for mussels, and -I was in no mood for fishing. But I could have had a rabbit for breakfast if I had had my bow. Rabbit ... I hadn't had a square meal for days. I'd better get a bow.

             
I ought to be able to get one at Albion or at Navarro. Harvey, at Navarro, was a good friend, and Tim, at Albion, was at least friendly.
The sooner the better.
I thought of the rabbit and my stomach growled.

             
I got to Albion about noon, having had a drink of water and a nap on the way. Here I should explain that
t
he older coastal towns, like Fort Bragg and Elk, tended to be deserted. The successive waves of plagues had been hard on the cleanly squares
who
had inhabited them, while the not-so-cleanly tribesmen had got off relatively ligh
tl
y. The tribes settled on beaches and river flats, where fishing was easy and the rivers offered water to drink. So I was always leaving the highway to go down to some river beach, where people were.

             
The Albion tribe is a large one. I could hear the steady thump of the dance before I saw anybody. Nobody paid much attention to me. Tim wasn't at the dance floor, and I finally found him sitting cross-legged in the sand, squinting as he looked out over the surf. The sun had burned him
a
dark brown, and he was so thin I could see all his ribs.

             
He got to his feet stiffly when I spoke to him. Greetings were exchanged, and I hinted that I'd like some lunch. He took me to where some women were making fish stew in
a
pot, and stood by while I refreshed myself. He didn't seem disposed to talk.

             
I'd met Tim five or six years ago, at
a
youth initiation at Jenner. We'd liked each other OK, but Tim had been
a
little too much my senior for me to be quite at ease with him. He still made me feel cubbish and uncomfortable.

             
I thanked the women for the stew (actually, it had needed garlic), and then asked Tim if he could get me
a
bow. "
I'll
do
a
spot of medicine-man work in exchange, if you like," I said.

             
He looked at me for so long before he answered that I got fidgety. "The tribe's been disarmed," he said at last. "There aren't any bows."

             
"But—how?
What happened?" I was really jarred. The bow is the characteristic tribal weapon. I didn't see how the Albion people could get along without archery.

             
Tim closed his eyes and then opened them. "Our Dancer took them away," he said.

             
"But—from everybody?
Even from its private army?"

             
"Un-
hunh
.
Even from its bodyguard."

             
Tim seemed to think that the conversation was over. I persisted. "Why did the Dancer disarm its own men?" I asked.

             
"It's getting worse as it ages," he said unwillingly. "Ours is one of the oldest Dancers on the coast. Only the one at Navarro is older. As to what its particular motive was—well, it's been trying to import a couple of the chemical-conscience people to add to its bodyguard. We think that may be why it wanted to disarm everyone."

             
"I
t hasn't got the chemical-conscience men yet?" I asked.

             
"No, we've managed to stop it so far." Tim shut his eyes again. Then he looked away from me, out over the sea.

             
"What happens if your Dancer
does
get its chemical henchmen?" I asked.

             
"We're not sure. We're frightened. But we don't know."

             
I thought of Gee-Gee, at Russian Gulch. She hadn't known either. "Maybe some of your Dancer's ideas are a little too raw for its bodyguard to carry out," I hazarded.

             
"Could be," Tim said.

             
"... I should think you people would be making new bows to take the place of those your Dancer took," I said.

             
"Um."

             
"Well, I certainly could use a bow," I said.

             
"If we
were
making bows," Tim answered, in an outburst of talkativeness, "we wouldn't give you one. You only want it to shoot animals with."

             
"I'm
as much opposed to the Dancers as you are," I answered. Even as I spoke I recognized the hollowness of the words.

             
Tim laughed. "Sorry, but I've seen too many fair-weather friends to give you one of our precious bows. There's a way out open to you—all you have to do is keep on going down Highway One until you get to Bodega, and you're out of the tribes' jurisdiction.

             
"I
won't blame you if you do it. Your tribe hasn't had a Dancer long enough for the situation to get serious. But I'm not going to give you a bow."

             
I was getting sore. Tim might be right—I didn't think he was—but he was too supercilious about it: "This is my fight too," I said. "The Noyo Dancer tried to wreck my mind. As far as that goes, have you made the Grail Journey yourself?"

             
"Faked it," Tim answered laconically.

             
"Then you haven't any right to exclude me from your struggle on the ground that I'd be a fair-weather friend. The Noyo Dancer picked me out to make an example of. It's an experience that changes a person."

             
"Um."
We had been walking along while we talked, and were now standing on the sand at the river mouth, well away from any of the others. Tim closed his eyes again—it was an annoying mannerism—and thought. Then he looked at me appraisingly. "OK," he said. "I do have a bow I've been working on. If you can string it, you can have it."

             
"Fair enough," I said.

             
He led me along the sand to a cluster of rocks. After some clambering, he came down with a bow in his hand. "Here," he said as he gave it to me. "Don't worry about it's being soft from the damp. I used waterproof glue."