The Dancers of Noyo (21 page)

             
Franny didn't say anything, but she kept looking uneasily toward the Hunters. "What happens after I shoot?" I asked.

             
"If you hit the center, a bridge will come down. Go right on over then, Sam. You must hurry. I'll follow."

             
I wondered why she wanted to be last over, but the Hunters were beginning to drift away from the still writhing gray tissue. I unlimbered my bow and picked out my truest arrow. I aimed very carefully, remembering
Pomo
Joe's lessons. I released the string.

             
The
arrow went straight and clean
into the gold, with a solid
thunk
. Instantly a plank shot out at floor level from the other side. I didn't recognize it for a bridge immediately. "Cross!" Franny said imperatively. "Hurry up!"

             
I obeyed. There was a slender handrail on one side of the plank. Franny was right at my heels as we ran across the moat.

             
The instant we were over she pressed her hand down hard on the bottom edge of the dartboard. Then she pushed me into the corridor and down to the floor. "Brace
yourself
," she said.

             
There was a crash. A steel curtain had shot down between us and the moat. A split second later there was a terrific explosion. The ground shook. It was like a big dog shaking a shoe. Back in Boonville they must have thought it was an earthquake.

             
I had my arm around Franny. We were still on the floor. "So that was why you wanted to be last over," I said.

             
"Yes. There wasn't time to explain about the steel curtain and the explosion. Father had it set to self-destruct."

             
I picked myself up and looked about me. Francesca's father had certainly had some unpleasant drug dreams. But we had come through. The smell of formaldehyde was less here, the light was
better,
the place altogether had a more normal a
ir
. We had come through.

-

             
"I thought I heard voices," the man with the whip said. He gave the remains of the meal we had been eating a scornful glance. "I suppose you know you're trespassing."

             
Franny and I looked at each other; he looked at us and made the lash of his whip run and ripple along the floor. It wasn't a neat, dainty whip like a riding crop, but a brute of a thing, with a lash that must have been twenty feet long and a stock that was about as thick as the thin part of a
ballbat
.

             
"Trespassing?" Franny said after an instant. "My name is Francesca O'Hare. I'm O'Hare's daughter."

             
"Are you?" the whip man said. "I don't see that that has anything especial to do with it." He was a tall, heavy man a few years older than I, with a heavy, sagging face. "You seem to have been making yourselves quite at home in the lab kitchen. Those are my cookies, I think."

             
Franny turned dull red. "I bought those cookies in Boonville a couple of weeks ago myself," she said. "As far as trespassing goes, who are you? What are you doing here?"

             
"Oh. I suppose I should have introduced myself. My name is Jack Binns, dear heart, and I'm from the
R
othein
Foundation. I pop in every other day or so to see how the embryos in the growing tanks are getting along.

             
"Not that I have anything to do with their development—the whole process is automatic—but I do feel involved with them.
You must know about the
embryos
, if you're really O'Hare's daughter." He picked up one of the chocolate biscuits from the plate and began to munch on it. "I can't think how you got into the lab. The place is locked up like a bank."

             
"Never mind that," I said. "Is the Foundation going to keep on growing
an
distributing the Dancers just the way O'Hare did?"

             
"Well, we'll keep on giving them to tribes that ask for them. I don't know how long we'll keep on with the growing. There are four in the tanks now, and it takes them about fourteen months from the initial clone to maturity.

             
"Actually, our interest in the Dancers is experimental. I'm working on a piece of independent research in connection with them."

             
"Unh," I said. "What's the research about?"

             
"Well, the title of my paper will be:
"
T
he
effect that the introduction of a Dancer has on the economy and religious expression of three typical Mendocino coast tribes.' I may take up the question of social relationships, too. It depends on how much material I can get." He took another cookie from the dish.

             
I said, "The Dancers are highly unpopular with all the younger tribesmen."

             
"That may be," Binns answered. "But we don't intend to give them out unless we're asked. I told you that.

             
I said, "There are a good many indications that the Dancers have had a hand in some pretty dirty business."

             
"Are there?" Binns answered. He sounded interested, and not just sarcastic. "It's certainly possible. The Dancers I've had contact with have impressed me rather unfavorably. But it's not my responsibility, after all." He made the lash of the whip snake smoothly on the floor.

             
I said
deliberately
, "It would be a fine idea if the Dancers that are being grown in the tanks
now were to be destroyed. The ones that are already in existence, the mature ones, are enough of a headache to us." This was something Franny and I had discussed over our meal. We had decided that, next to our own immediate survival, destroying the growing tanks and their contents had top priority.

             
Binns raised his eyebrows. "Is that why you came here?
To try to kill the
embryonic
Dancers?
I imagine they'd take a good deal of killing, though they're at a vulnerable stage of their development just now."

             
"Um."

             
"The mature ones are said to be immortal, you know," he said, looking at us closely.

             
"Um."

             
"Well, it might be a good idea," he said. I felt a twinge of hope.

             
"But of course my first loyalty is to the Foundation," he went on. "And I have my research project to think of."

             
"You wouldn't consider—" Franny said.

             
"No, I'm afraid I wouldn't. Besides, a sociological experiment can be socially valuable. I'm afraid I'll have to ask the two of you to get out."

             
Neither Franny nor I moved. "Get out," he repeated in a louder voice. He flicked the whip, and its lash tip curled lightly and harmlessly around the wrist of the hand in which Franny was hold the teapot.

             
I did a lot of thinking in the next few
seconds
. Of the Dancers and their whips as we thudded around in the dance circle, of the wicked lash
Binns's
whip had, of the scourgings I had received at the youth initiations. I even wondered why the Dancers' whips were resented so much, while the scourgings we got at the manhood rites never bothered us. Then I jumped Binns. He ought to have known better than to try to intimidate a tribesman with a whip.

             
The only thing was really worried about was the integrity of my eyes. Binns was heavier than I, but a good deal slower. He did a good deal of whiplashing, and then tried to get me in the crotch with the butt of the whip. I tried one of the simple wrestling throws Pomo Joe had taught me, and got Binns to his knees. He turned out to be a vicious kicker. Finally Franny, who was circling around us with the teapot in her hand, managed to hit him over the head with it. The teapot broke, and Binns sagged and collapsed. He wasn't out, but he was considerably confused.

             
I cut the las
h
off the whip and tied him up with it. His eyes came back into focus and he began to curse me. I didn't see why I should put up with it, and I gagged him with one of the towels from beside the little sink. We left him
lying
on the floor, tied up and gagged, his eyes furious.

             
"I
t won't be easy to kill them," Fran said as we walked toward the part of the lab where the growing tanks were. "My father made the whole system closed. From the time the clones are put in the tanks and the nutrient solution starts circulating until the time, fourteen months later, when the Dancers are mature, it's never touched. There's no way of getting in to it."

             
"But there must be some way of getting into it to make repairs."

             
"It never needs repairs," Franny said.

             
"Why not
?"
I asked.

             
"Because both the lines and the tanks are alive.
If anything went wrong, they'd heal themselves."

             
Before
I
could investigate this statement, we came to the room where the growing tanks were. There were three of them, but only two seemed to be in use. They were big, clear-sided boxes, about seven feet long by five feet wide, and they were filled with some limpid, faintly glittering liquid. Lines, probably carrying the nutrient solution Franny had spoken of, were attached to both short axes of the tanks.

             
Within the tanks, hanging suspended like fishes in an aquarium, were the
embryonic
Dancers, two to a tank. They lay side by side, rigid and straight, with their arms close by their sides, like infants in swaddling clothes. They were only about a foot and a half long, but there was nothing chubby or childlike about them; they looked exactly like mature Dancers, except that they were a slightly paler red. Their eyes were open, and the whites were a brilliant red.

             
I
looked at them in silence for a moment, feeling the old hostility toward them flare up in me. There was
a
faint smell like blood in the a
ir
.

             
"What would happen if the tanks were opened?"
I
asked. "Would they die?"

             
"If the a
ir
got in, you mean? I suppose so. But it would be awfully hard to get the tanks open. I don't know how it could be done."

             
"
...
Well, but how are the Dancers taken out when they're mature? There must be some way of getting into the tanks then!"

             
"The tanks open spontaneously when a certain hormone is secreted by the mature Dancers. There's
a
constant interplay between the developing Dancers, the nutrient solution, and the growing tanks. The solution changes as the Dancers grow. But until they mature, the system is closed."

             
"What if the flow of nutrient were interrupted?"
I
asked.