The Dancers of Noyo (14 page)

             
At last I got the slide of the snap pushed back and worked it loose from the metal link it was closed in. I
unwrapped
the chain from Harvey and let it drop away into the waves. Harvey must have realized that he had been released, for he turned his head toward me and muttered something.

             
It was impossible to think of getting this man, almost as heavy as I was and certain to be a dead weight, to go back to shore as I had come. I couldn't carry him, and he seemed hardly able to stand, let alone use the pole as a vaulting rod.

             
I clutched at the front of his sweatshirt with one hand, holding him against the rising rage of the water, and tried to think. Finally I decided the only possible thing was to take him back up over and along the steep rock ridge from the mainland.

             
I tried to explain my plan to him, but he seemed dazed. I put an arm around him, still holding my trusty pole, and started upward, out of the reach of the waves, pulling him with me. The slope was very steep, but not slippery, and I had the pole to lean on.

             
Harvey seemed lighter than I would have expected. My moccasins were so thoroughly wet that they clung to the rock like my bare feet, and this was a big help.
I
pulled Harvey along—he walked stiffly and high-kneed, like a puppet—and though there were two occasions when I was sure we would both go over and break our skulls on the rocks below, there was only one bad stretch of angry surf we had to cross.

             
"Hold on to the pole!" I told him. My plan was to use
the wood as a holdfast, wedging its end horizontally between the rocks, so Harvey and I could get from rock to rock to shore with the pole to cling to. I wedged it duly, but when I stood back to let him go first, he shook his head and remained holding to my arm.

             
I felt exasperated. But if he felt he couldn't, he probably couldn't. I led him into the water and almost pushed him across, making him go ahead of me. Just as my feet touched sand the pole broke, but by then we were both safe. Chilled and panting, we stood upon the scanty beach.

             
"Whew!"
I
said. "Harvey, that was
a—"
and then halted. The person with me wasn't Harvey at all. And, now that the scales had fallen from my eyes, I wondered how I could ever have mistaken this slender girl for Harvey. True, she was taller than women usually are, and her long black hair looked not unlike Harvey's. But her figure, though not buxom, was unmistakably feminine. Her face was scratched and gashed and bruised, her clothes were torn and slit in a dozen places. One of her eyes was swollen almost shut hi a bluish bruise.

             
For
a
considerable time she stood leaning on me, shuddering and gasping for breath. Then she leaned over and
vomited,
a long gush of clear water. She must have swallowed a lot of it.

             
"Thanks," she said finally. She was still panting hard, and spoke between gasps. "You saved my life
...
My name's Francesca O'Hare."

-

             
"O'Hare?" I said. "Are you related to O'Hare, the man that developed the Dancers?"

             
"I'm his daughter." Her teeth had begun to chatter, but I was too excited to notice it.

             
"If you're his daughter, he must have told you a good many things about the Dancers. Did he ever tell you how they—"

             
She began to cough, a long paroxysm that ended in a fit of retching. "Couldn't we sit down someplace?" she asked when she could control her windpipe. "They tied me up on the rock this
morning, and I've been there all clay. I thought I was going to die. I'm
...
tired." Her teeth were chattering so hard I had trouble understanding her.

             
It was clearly no time to question her. I helped her up the side of the gulch to a fairly level spot behind a clump of ceanothus, where we were sheltered from the teasing wind. When I touched her, I realized how cold she was. Her hands and arms had the bitter chill of sea water. She made me feel warm to myself.

             
I'd have to get her warm somehow. She was sitting with her head between her knees, exhausted, while her dark hair lay sodden along her back. I hunted around on
the steep slope until I found a few dry lengths of branch and pieces of root. Then I got out my fire-making stuff.

             
Francesca had raised her head and was looking at me. "I don't know about a fire," she said doubtfully. "They might see the smoke." Her teeth were not chattering quite so badly, but they were chattering enough that her speech was still blurred.

             
"T
hey'?"
I asked.

             
"The Avengers.
The people who tied me to the rock."

             
I looked around. The fog was coming in and the sun had almost set. "I don't think anybody will see the smoke or the glow," I said. "I'll only make a small fire."

             
"All right."

             
After I got the fire going, I took her hands and began to rub them. They were just as cold as ever, and the water from her sodden sweatshirt was still running down her arms.

             
I decided she'd better get out of the clothes she was wearing and give the fire a chance to warm her up. I started to pull the sweatshirt over her head, and she cooperated, instead of getting indignant or acting coy. I liked that.

             
When she was out of shirt and slacks I wrung them, out as well as I could and hung them on the side of the ceanothus. They wouldn't dry much at night, with the fog coming in, but it was better than her wearing them.

             
I started to ask her about her father, and then reflected that she had a lot of rock cuts on her face and hands. These are nasty wounds, apt to infect, and slow to heal at best. So I went sniffing around on the canyon-side until I found a nice patch of yarrow plants. I stripped the leaves from a couple and held them over the heat of the fire until they were wilted and soft and pliable. Then I pressed them down closely over her cuts, like a poultice. Yarrow is a good healing herb.

             
The wads of leaves must have felt good, for she smiled at me. "Do you feel well enough now to talk?" I asked her.

             
"Yes, if I don't have to talk too long.
"

             
"
Well, then, why were the Avengers trying to kill you?

             
"Because I'm O'Hare's daughter.
I mean, because I'd just been to see my father. He lives—lived at Sebastopol, you know. That's where he had his laboratory and the tanks where he grew the Dancers."

             
"Why would your visiting him make the Avengers want to kill you?"

             
"Because he told me something important about the Dancers.
And when I got back here, I was dumb enough to hint to some of my friends that I knew something. The news got around. And the Mallo Pass Dancer decided to kill me." She coughed, and drew a little nearer to the fire.

             
Again I got excited. O'Hare should certainly know the Dancers' secrets, if anybody would. And if he had told his daughter what he knew
...
"What did he tell you?" I demanded.

             
"I asked him—it was at breakfast, and we were just finishing our bacon—whether the Dancers were really immortal. He laughed and said no, certainly not, but the way to kill them was unusual. Simple, he said, but unusual—not the sort of thing anybody would be apt to think of.

             
"He was high on something when he said it. He was high most of the time, actually. He looked like an old, old man though he was only fifty. His face was one mass of wrinkles. It must have been all those drugs and mushrooms.

             
"Anyhow, I tried to get him to tell me what the way of killing them was, but he wouldn't. I think he wanted to tease me. I don't suppose he'd ever really have told me, because he was proud of the Dancers, and he knew people would kill them if they knew how it could be done.

             
"I asked him several times more, but all he did was
mutter
something about 'dominoes' and 'visions'. I didn't know what he meant. Then he grabbed at the tablecloth and fell over backward. He broke a lot of dishes. He'd had a stroke.

             
"I called a doctor, but before he could get there my father was dead."

             
"How long ago was all this?"

             
"Last week," she answered in an unemotional tone. She didn't seem to be overwhelmed with grief for her father, but that was easy to understand. "Why did you want
to.
know
?" she went on. "You're a Grail Pilgrim, aren't you?"

             
"Yes. I wanted to know because I'm in trouble with the Noyo Dancer, and I thought you might have found out something helpful. Also, I've been—"

             
I explained about the extra-lives to her, and told her the relevant portion of my life as Bennet, while she listened thoughtfully, warming her hands over the fire. Her smooth round breasts and long legs gleamed in the dim reddish light.

             
When I had finished, she said, "I think the clue as to how the Dancers can be destroyed lies somewhere in your life as Bennet."

             
"Why? What makes you think that?"

             
"I don't know why. I just do."

             
I went- over my experiences as Bennet mentally, but found no enlightenment. "Maybe the clue is there," I said, "but I don't know what it is." '

             
"It may come to you." She coughed. "What's your name?" she asked. "I can't just go on calling you 'you'."

             
"Sam McGregor. I'm a medicine man."

             
"Well, people call me Franny—Francesca is too long, and too formal. You don't have anything to eat, do you? The sea water
I
swallowed was filling, but not very nourishing."

             
The bag of acorn meal and the pemmican were gone long ago.
I
started to tell her I was sorry, I'd have to see if I could find some limpets on the rocks, when I remembered the pinch of chia meal in my medicine bag. Chia meal is extraordinarily sustaining and restorative;
I
'd been saving it for an absolute emergency. But it seemed to me that this was enough of an emergency to warrant using it. Franny had been through a sufficient physical ordeal without adding hunger to it.

             
The chia meal was wrapped in a twist of aluminum foil.
I
got it out, filled my folding cup with water, and mixed in about half a teaspoon of the meal to make a thin gruel.
I
handed it to Franny. "Drink this," I said.

             
She drank gratefully. "It's good," she said, giving the cup back to me. "What is it?"

             
"Ground-up seed of chia.
It's a kind of wild mint that grows down in southern California. I traded some herbs for it."
I
rinsed the cup out, and swallowed the
rinsings
. No use wasting even a little chia. What was left of the meal
I
rolled up carefully and put back in my
bag.