The Dancers of Noyo (2 page)

             
"How is he?" I asked Joan.

             
She shrugged.
"Confused.
Nobody expected him back so soon. When you finish eating, Sam, why don't you go talk to him? Maybe you could clear things up a bit."

             
"I'll go now," I said, getting to my feet. "Where is he?"

             
"I saw him over by the dance circle
...
no, he's sitting on the ground by -Red Virtue's house." She pointed. "Don't forget to bring back my soup bowl. They're in short supply."

             
"OK." I walked over to Julian. I couldn't see the dance circle from there, but I could hear the thud of the drum and feel the heavy stamping of the dancers' feet.

             
Julian was leaning up against the side of the hut, as Joan had said. The light wasn't very good, but I could see that his head was drooping forward on his chest. I sat down beside him, the soup bowl still in my hands, and settled myself comfortably against the redwood bark. He didn't move. I ate a few mouthfuls of the soup. Finally I said, "Hello."

             
He didn't raise his head. "Who is it?" he asked finally, in a flat voice.

             
I felt a thrill of alarm. I was used to the Mandarins being stoned half out of their heads, but Julian had always been an alert type. He'd been the sort of chap who could wake out of sound sleep, grab his bow, and start shooting. I said, Tm Sam, Sam McGregor. Don't you know me?"

             
"Oh," he said. He moved so that his head lolled back against the wood. I saw that his eyes were glazed.

             
"I'm glad you're back,
Jule
," I said. I finished the soup. "Unh—did you see the Grail?"

             
"What?"

             
"I said
,
did you have the Grail Vision?"

             
"I don't think so. I only got as far as Elk."

             
I didn't know how to ask him whether he thought he'd get into trouble with the Dancer for only having gone that far. He had been supposed to get to Gualala before turning around and starting home. "Anyhow, you're back," I said at last. I couldn't think of anything better to say.

             
For the first time he looked at me. "Am I?" he asked. "You said you were Sam somebody. Do you mind telling me my name?"

             
I told him. "Julian?" he repeated. "And my mother called me Day Star?" He shook his head. "I
know
that's not right. My name's something different, different entirely." He sat for a moment with his head in his hands. Then he got to his feet. "Perhaps if I dance I'll be able to remember," he said. He moved off slowly, in the general direction of the dance circle.

             
He'd hated dancing before he made the trip down the coast. It seemed fantastic that good old
Jule
would go to dance deliberately. I stared after him. I hadn't thought the trip would do him any good; he'd hated making it. But I hadn't anticipated this.

             
I put the soup bowl down. The smell of
woodsmoke
was in the air. The campfires, fed largely with driftwood, burned with sea-green and purple flames. I was thinking about going off to bed when one of the Avengers, a bush-bearded type named Brotherly Love, came up.
There was a six-foot-long bow in his hand. "It's time you did a little dancing, Bright Moon," he said to me.

             
There was a slight pause. Then I said, "I'm not going to do any more dancing. I've had enough of it."

             
B. Love made a beckoning motion with his free hand. Two more Avengers appeared. These were armed with three-foot-long clubs of mountain mahogany. One stood on either side of me. "You'd better come along and talk to the Dancer," Brotherly said.

             
Was there any point in resisting? I sat still for a moment, counting up my chances. Everybody my age hated dancing, but there hadn't been any open resistance to it yet. Besides, there were a lot more of the Avengers than there were of us. Youth was in the minority in the tribe; the Mandarins, passionate ecologists all, had restricted the number of then offspring even after the plagues had helped reduce the pressure of population on environment. This was one point we juniors joined them on. But it meant that in case of a fracas with our elders we were outnumbered more than two to one.

             
More Avengers were coming up momently, some with bows, some with clubs,
some
with both. Slowly, with what dignity I could muster, I got to my feet. "OK. Where is the Dancer?" I said.

             
"He's watching the dancers, of course," Brotherly said. "Where else would a Dancer be?" (Perhaps I should explain here that, in this account, there is a great difference between Dancer and dancer. The former is an android, theoretically immortal, grown
in vitro
by the famous O'Hare. But a dancer is just human, a young, male human, who would rather not be dancing.)

             
The dance circle was near the sweathouse, where the dancing took place in the winter. It was a large, flat, dusty space with a big spruce tree growing in the center. Tonight the space was illuminated by two flaring torches of pitch-pine, stuck in brackets on the side of the sweat-house.

             
The Dancer was standing with his back to us. He was slightly below normal human height, of a uniform deep dusky red, the color of
a bad
sunburn. I mean, he was red all over—the backs of his heels, his ha
ir
,
the
irises of his eyes. Even the whites of his eyes were of a medium pink. Though the weather was cool—it doesn't warm up on this part of the California coast until September—the Dancer was naked except for a breechclout. I don't know whether or not he was a functional male. I always wanted to call him "it". There was a long, heavy whip, a bull-whip, in his hands. A low platform, an elevation made of redwood logs, put his head rather above those of the dancers. He was looking at them fixedly.

             
The dancers were nearly all young men. Among them were only two women, the older women we called Mandarins. They were all stamping heavily around in the circle, raising their knees waist-high and then bringing their feet down with a heavy, jarring thud that shook the ends of the spine. A drummer, hitting on a slab of wood with a rawhide mallet, was keeping time. -

             
Besides the usual tribal costume of moccasins and khaki pants, the dancers, even the women, were wearing "dance shirts", garments of coarse white cotton cloth, the sleeves crudely applied, painted in conventionalized eagle designs in thick red and blue paint. Some of them had feather fringes at the sleeves and neck. The feathers ought to have been eagle feathers but they were probably from seagulls. The faces of a few of the dancers were painted with yellow and green pigment. Sun and moon, with stripes on the cheeks, were the favorite designs.

             
The Dancer let me stand waiting between my guards for three or four minutes while he contemplated the dancing. Then he turned to face us. "Who is this?" he said.

             
"It's Bright Moon," Brotherly said officiously. "He refuses to dance."

             
The Dancer (of course it had known perfectly well what I was doing there) transferred its attention to me.

             
"Why don't you want to dance?" it asked.

             
"
...
It's a waste of time. And it makes my head ache."

             
"The dance is the road to spiritual enlightenment," it told me. It had a mushy voice, like an overripe apple. "It is a road that all young men should take."

             
"I don't need it. I'm already studying with Pomo Joe."

             
The Dancer didn't think this remark was worthy of an answer. It switched its whip back and forth absently for a minute or two. "The dance has great power," it said at last. 'It can heal the sick, raise the dead,
make
men invulnerable. It brings blessings on the individual and on his tribe. Why do you refuse these blessings?"

             
I didn't think this remark needed an answer. There was a silence. One of the dancers slowed and stumbled, and the Dancer reached out its long whip and flicked him with it.

             
"He
doesn't seem to be getting much benefit from the dance," I said.

             
"Never mind that."
It was getting annoyed; its body-smell, a little like that of ripe watermelon, came to me. "
...
You're a bad influence, Bright Moon,"

             
"Sorry."

             
"I'll give you until tomorrow noon to change."

             
"You mean
,
to start dancing?"

             
"Either that, or to leave on the Grail Journey."

             
"Grail Journey?"
I said. I was surprised, "I thought I wasn't considered nearly ready for that. I haven't danced half long enough."

             
"We'll make an exception in your case."

             
"What happens if I refuse both the alternatives?"

             
"You will die."

             
"The county agent might object to having a tribesman murdered," I said with more assurance than I felt.

             
It showed its pink teeth in a laugh. "It will be suicide, not murder. The county agent will have nothing to say. I will make you kill yourself."

             
Was it bragging of its hypnotic powers, or saying that it could rig my death to make it look like suicide? I stared at the thing. After a second it made a dismissing gesture with its hand, and the Avengers took me away. As we walked through the cluster of huts people looked at me curiously, but nobody spoke to me.

             
My guards left me at the door of the Noyo Inn. "We'll be around at noon to get your answer,"
B.L
. said.

             
I went up to the room I was occupying. One of the windows was broken, and the bed sagged, but it was comfortable enough. I sat on the edge of the bed wishing Pomo Joe would come back. He was off visiting his relatives on the reservation—the real reservation, for genuine Indians, at Round Mountain—and I didn't know when to expect him. He was just about the only person older than
myself
that I had any confidence in.

             
I didn't sleep much. About three o'clock, when the Pleiades were coming up in the east, one of my pals knocked at my door. He identified himself as Mao Briggs.

             
"Hi, Sam," he said when I had let him in. "Want to go fishing with us? We'll be back by ten.
"

             
"
Nope."

             
" 'He
who does not work, neither shall he eat
'
," Mao quoted. "It's been quite a while since you've gone out fishing and helped with the nets."

             
Fishing nets was one of three supports of the tribe's rudimentary economy. The other two were the women's basket-making and donations from the California Republic government.