The Dancers of Noyo (25 page)

             
We had left the house in Point Arena in a great hurry, going out the back way as the bowmen were coming in at the front. I had shoved the Avenger in the face who barred our passage, and before he could shoot at us we had been on the bike and off.

             
We hadn't tried to mislead pursuit; we had gone
charging down Highway One straightforwardly. But I had seen a girl on the street, as we flew past the Point Arena service station,
who
had looked exactly like Franny. The resemblance had been astonishing. She had the same walk, the same way of holding her head, and, of course, the same clothes. If the Mallo Pass people saw her, they were sure to think she was the one they were hunting. It should take them some little time to discover their mistake. So we should have a slight lead.

             
When we had got to Anchor Bay I had thought it would be better to try to take cover with the tribe there than to go on barreling down Highway One, sitting ducks for the Avengers to pick off. But I didn't know whether Wally could be persuaded to have the tribe he to protect us. We were nothing to him.

             
"Unh," he said with a grunt. "Yeah, I guess I could make everybody keep quiet about your being here. But why should I? You'd have to make it worth my while." He looked sideways at me.

             
He obviously didn't want money. (And if
he had, he could have had the tribe manufacture reasonable quantities of shell currency for intertribal use). For some reason, I thought he must be after my bow. It was a very good bow, much better than the limp pieces of wood the Anchor Bay people were packing around on their backs. No wonder they were eating slugs—what could they shoot worth eating with those limber atrocities? I wouldn't have been surprised to hear they made bows from eucalyptus.

             
"What do you want me to give you?" I said after a moment. "I haven't time to bargain with you. If you aren't willing to misdirect the Mallo Pass people, we'd better be on our way."

             
Franny was sitting on the bike, holding her hands over her eyes. Wally looked at her curiously. Then he said, "I hear you have a kind of rig—you might call it a suit—"

             
My eyebrows went up a little. "Go on," I said. "What kind of a suit?"

             
"
...
It makes the person
who's
wearing it look like a grizzly bear," Wally said.

             
I tried not to let my disapproval show in my face. Every medicine man ought to know how the suits work, and Pomo Joe had taught me good and constructive uses for the one we had. But there is no denying that the suits are classically used to intimidate or eliminate people with whom one is at odds.

             
"Where did you hear about that sort of suit?" I asked. "Who told you?"

             
Wally looked confused. He rubbed his nose. "I don't know," he said finally. T
don't
remember where I heard."

             
"Are you a medicine man?" I asked. Medicine men do know things about other medicine men—there's a sort of grapevine—and the county agent, who isn't a medicine man at all, had known about my suit.

             
"Why, no," Wally said. "I guess you could call me a politician." He grinned. "But I'd
li
ke to have one of those suits."

             
He didn't know who had told him. Maybe nobody had. It seemed to me that the legends were coming back. People were beginning to fear the uncanny man-animal who lurked on the hillside at midnight, an invincible obsidian dagger in his hand. The coast was
repeopling
itself with figures from its ancient past.

             
The first owners of the land, the Pomo, had known every tree and rock in their tribes' ambience. We had driven them out or out-reproduced them. But the Grail Journey had become the sunbasket journey. The old ways were coming back.

             
"What would you use the suit for if you had it?" I asked.

             
"What
do
you
use it for?" he countered. "But
I'll
send the Mallo Pass people on by, and see that the whole tribe keeps quiet about your being here, if you'll promise to get me that suit."

             
He would, I thought, keep his word. T can't let you have the suit," I said, "but I'll tell you what: I'll teach you the rudiments of double-seeing, and show you young men how to make proper bows, if you'll hide my girl and me for a couple of days."

             
Wally pursed up his mouth—he had a mean, flat mouth
—
and shook his head. "Not good enough," he said. "I'll have to let the Mallo Pass Avengers have you when they come."

             
Abruptly I was fed up. I'd been on the run for
days,
I'd been short of food, of sleep, of shelter, friends and sex. And now this blackmailing basket-weaver was threatening to turn Franny and me over to the people who'd made a determined attempt to drown her.

             
"I'd advise you not to try turning us over to the Avengers," I said. "Even if your conscience is perfectly clear—and I don't think it is; you've broken at least two serious taboos—it's not safe to annoy
a
medicine man who understands Frenzy Way."

             
"
Hunh
?"
Wally blinked and looked slightly disturbed. "Frenzy Way? What's that?"

             
"Like having been bitten by
a
mad dog," I answered briefly. "It's a nasty way to die."

             
Wally licked his lips. "
...
If you're so smart about magic, why don't you get rid of the Mallo Pass people that way?"

             
"It's easier to control one man with magic than four," I replied. "Besides, the Mallo Pass people have magic of their own. You haven't. You have no protection. Frenzy
Way would fasten on your bones."

             
Wally snorted. "Once the Mallo Pass people pick you up you'll be helpless," he said. "You can't do much in the way of magic with four men holding you."

             
"Can't I?" I answered.
"I
f they catch us, they'll kill us. And while I'm dying I'll curse
you.
Not them, you. You haven't a chance."

             
Even then he might not have agreed if Franny, who was still sitting on the motorbike, hadn't added her persuasive force to mine. She took her hands down from her eyes and gave Wally a long, deliberately hypnotic look.

             
"You've broken three taboos," she said to him. "One about the offering of first fruits, one about menstruation that only your tribe has, and one about the scourging you got at the youth initiation. You cheated. You see, we
know.
You'd better help us."

             
Wally licked his lips. He had turned pale. "What would you do?" he asked. "Tell?"

             
"That would be one of the things," Franny said. She put her hands over her eyes again.

             
Wally spat on the ground. "... A couple of stinking witches," he said. "Well—"

             
I pressed our advantage. "But if you'll shelter us honestly, I'll work Blessing Way for you. And the infractions of taboo will be wiped out."

             
Wally rubbed his nose. "OK," he said. "But I think you ought to give me the lessons in double-seeing too."

             
I was in no mood to quibble. "OK," I said, "and throw in the instruction in bow-making."

             
"What's wrong with our bows?" Wally said irritably. "There's not much we care to shoot around here
...
You want to stay in one of the motel units?
Which one?"
He sounded as if he had been allocating people to motel units all his life.

             
"We want a place with privacy, where the Avengers won't come looking in the windows," I said.
"How about that one?"
I indicated the shack that had caught my fancy.

             
Wally shook his head. "No good. The kids play there a lot. It's in an awful mess. There's a place back under the pines where
nobody'd
think of looking. It's like a real motel. There's only one window cracked, and there's a fireplace, and running spring water. Don't go building a fire in the fireplace, though—the Avengers might see the smoke."

             
There was no need to answer this. Wally led Franny and me along an obscure path through some straggly pines to a sort of duplex motel. Clumps of pampas grass were growing on either side of the door. As Wally had said, the windows were intact.

             
He fumbled in his pants pocket and produced a key. "Got to keep the kids out somehow," he said, unlocking the door. "There's a kitchen, too, but the stove doesn't work."

             
We looked over his shoulder into a dim room with the curtains drawn. The one piece of furniture I noticed was the bed.

             
"OK?" he said, looking at us.

             
"OK," I answered. I wheeled the bike over the threshold and leaned it up against the wall in the corner. As soon as Wally had gone back through the pines, I put my arms around Franny and began kissing her. She returned my kiss sweetly and naturally. It was the first time we had ever kissed.

             
I didn't know whether to try to take Franny to bed "immediately, or to suggest a snack, or to put up a magical barrier to keep the Avengers away. Franny solved the problem by getting bread and cheese from the bag under the bike and making sandwiches. I suppose we could have eaten hi the kitchen, but we both opted for sitting on the bed, where we chewed the sandwiches and drank herb beer.

             
We ate enough to dull the edge of hunger—neither of us was as hungry as might have been expected, and our dining table, the bed, suggested other thoughts. Fran put the food back in the bag. She came and sat down beside me, smiling. I began kissing her again
..

             
The girls of my tribe, the Noyo tribe, are given instruction by older women in the mechanics and technique of intercourse during the Girls' Initiation, which takes place in the fall. It's a good idea; sex is too important to be left to mere chance. But my experience with Franny made me realize what an enormous difference there is between a bunch of little girls dutifully studying a school lesson, and the resources of somebody with natural talent.

             
It was another demonstration of the truth of the old maxim that you can only teach people something who already know it. Franny wasn't much more than nineteen, and I don't think
,
from other things she said, that she'd had a great deal of real experience. But where sex was concerned,
she was definitely what an occultist would call an old soul. Of course, I may have inspired her. I know she had an inspiring effect on me.

             
Twice, at the height of our excitement, I thought I heard somebody moving about in the kitchen. I decided it was mice, and successfully ignored it. As to Fran, she either didn't hear it at all or decided to ignore it, as I did. As I drifted off to sleep, holding her in my arms, I thought I heard a faint sweet distant music, high and silvery, that reminded me of the distant music I had heard, so long ago, when I was starting the sunbasket journey.