The Dancers of Noyo

by Margaret St. Clair

  He brought the glasses back, refilled, and a plate of the cheese biscuits made in Petaluma. "There's something similar," he said thoughtfully, "between the, air, chemical conscience and the way the Grail Pilgrimage works."

  "What's the similarity?" I asked. I looked around the big redwood-paneled room appraisingly. Two or three of Farnsworth's paintings were hanging on the walls, painted mainly in shades of red. Was it because of them or the splintered door jamb that I disliked the room so much? I rather thought it was the door jamb. My growing uneasiness seemed to center there.

  "I shouldn't think the state of mind would be the same," I went on. "The state of mind of chemical-conscience people and Pilgrims, I mean. You don't, unh, live other fives than your own, do you?"

  "No, though just after I have my shot I do have the sensation of being compelled to behave otherwise than the way I actually feel. It wears off after a while, and ... But what I meant about a similarity is in the way the chemical conscience and the Grail Journey state of mind are mediated."

  "You know something about that?" I asked. I was getting very interested. And yet my uneasiness about the house was increasing. I thought with longing of the glass driveway outside, of running down it toward Highway One, of beginning to dance. The glass would make a pleasant crunching sound as I stamped in the dance. But if I left Farnsworth, I'd probably have another extra-life ... I'd better stay here.

  "I know something about the way the chemical conscience is mediated," he answered. He bit off the words precisely with his thin lips. "You see, the, ah, conscience is only partly physical, partly a matter of a drug given the patient. At least half the effect is secured by means that one might describe as magical."

  Magical ... The word returned me to a fantasy that I had had just before Farnsworth picked me up: that I was wandering through a world magically wasted, full of dry lightnings, toward a crucial conflict with some malign sage. Magic had seemed to crackle and flash over the surface of the pavement; and when the Mercedes had stopped near me it had, for an instant, seemed a sorcerer's flying chariot.

  "Well, I've certainly been having some strange experiences," I answered cautiously. "You mean they were somehow caused by magic? I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

  He pressed his lips thoughtfully. "Well, in the, ah, chemical-conscience therapy there is an object, a material object, to which the patient's moral sentiments have been magically attached. Something of the same sort might be true of the experiences of Pilgrims on the Grail Journey."

  "You mean, like in witchcraft?" I asked. I spoke from a fog; it wasn't that I was beginning to be somebody else than Sam McGregor, but that I was experiencing, in my own person, a sort of horror—of the house and of the man—that got between me and what I was saying. I tried to fight down the feeling; I was afraid of making a fool of myself. And yet the horror persisted. To feel horror-struck was, I supposed, better than having another extra-fife, and as long as I remained in Farnsworth's company it seemed that I was in little danger of abruptly becoming somebody else. But I was so on edge that when Farnsworth raised his wine glass and sipped from it, I almost jumped up from my chair.

  Farnsworth looked at me from under his eyebrows with curiously direct and limpid eyes. "Witchcraft? In a way. I think that in the case of the Grail Pilgrims a material object has been made the focus for an immaterial force. This force has been controlling what you experienced. Call it witchcraft if you like."

  He bent over the Franklin stove and poked at the ashes in it. "I'll make a fire," he said. "It's cool tonight."

  While he was gone I looked at the door jamb and wondered what had splintered it. When Farnsworth came back with the wood and had got the fire going, he said, "The object might be back in Noyo, or it might be something you're carrying. Whichever it is, it must have been possessed in some special way."

  I tried to think. Farnsworth's big hands were clasped loosely around the poker. Finally I said, "Would I know what the object was?"

  "Oh, no, not consciously. But you may be able to remember. Was anything given to you, or taken away from you, just before you left on the Pilgrimage?"

  "They took my motorbike away from me," I said. "And they gave me some food and a bundle of wooden passports."

  "It probably isn't the motorbike," Farnsworth said. "It's too big a thing to act as a focus where only one man is concerned. It might be the food, but I don't think so. It's most likely the bundle of passports. Most likely they've smeared the passports with one of your body secretions—urine or sweat or tears or blood. That would do the trick."

  "But—Gee-Gee came running after me with them!"

  "Who's Gee-Gee?" Farnsworth asked.

  I explained about Gee-Gee and the Russian Gulchers, ending, "They'd let me go off without the passports, and I don't think they'd have done that if the passports were necessary for my having more extra-lives. They certainly wanted me to have more of the lives, so I'd be sure never to regain my own identity."

  Farnsworth shrugged. "It may have been a simple oversight. Or it might have been a trick to find out how confused as to your identity you actually were. Do you mind letting me see the passports?"

  I handed them to him silently. He looked them over, his lips pursed. Then he said, "You don't really need them, do you?"

  "No. In fact, I don't understand why the Noyo Dancer gave them to me. They're really no use."

  "Um-hum." He pinched his lips thoughtfully. "Look," he said, "I'd like to try something. It may make you uncomfortable for a minute, but I think you'll feel better afterward. OK?"

  I remembered my distrust of him. Still, I didn't think he could do much mischief while I was watching him, though I felt a sudden longing for my bow. (What had happened to it? I must have left it behind at Russian Gulch.) "All right," I said.

  He looked at the slips of wood a moment longer. Then he opened the doors of the Franklin stove and tossed them into the heart of the flame.

  It may have been only suggestion, but I felt sweat break out on my forehead. The room seemed stiflingly hot. The slips of wood had caught fire and were burning brightly. Then, as the fire died away and the wood fell into ashes, I drew a deep breath. For the first time in ten days or so, I felt almost completely normal. It was wonderful. A cloud had passed away from my mind.

  Farnsworth was watching me smilingly. "You feel better, don't you? I thought you would. Of course, the extra-lives will remain a part of your personality, as if they had actually happened. We can't help that. But I don't think it will bother you too much."

  "No ... I don't know how to tell you how grateful I am. You've done something, unh, wonderful for me."

  "You see, a person who's had the chemical conscience can be of some real help," he said lightly. "How about another drink to celebrate?"

  "I really oughtn't to accept any more favors from you," I said. (Actually, I was longing to get away from him, though I felt a perfectly real gratitude.) "I ought to be on my way."

  "Oh, come now! Even if you're planning on going on with the Grail Journey, you can't make much progress at night. Why don't you stay here tonight? You can get on your way early in the morning. I'll just make up a bed for you—" He smiled at me.

  I couldn't think how to refuse. Finally I said, rather awkwardly, "OK, thanks."

  Farnsworth began to bustle around, getting sheets and blankets out of a rough redwood cupboard. "Here," he said as he started to leave the living room with his armload, "you might like to look over this scrapbook. You can read about me and see how much the chemical therapy has changed me." He laughed as he pushed the scrapbook toward me, but he seemed painfully nervous and I wondered why.

  Left alone, I opened the scrapbook and began to leaf through it. I put it down almost immediately. Farnsworth, it seemed, had been a viciously sadistic murderer who had killed his victims by driving iron stakes into their arteries.

  I glanced toward the front door. I couldn't remember whether or not I had seen him lock it when we first entered the shack. As q
uietly as I could—I was, of course wearing moccasins—I went toward it. Farnsworth came out of the bedroom just as I was about to touch the knob.

  "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.

  -

  Chapter IX

  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 the 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 lightly. 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."

  "It 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?"