The Dancers of Noyo (26 page)

             
Once I was half-roused by a series of noises in the kitchen. I listened, clutching Franny, until the noises died away. Then I made a sleepy attempt at more sex.

             
But we were both awfully tired, and sleep took precedence over other needs.

             
A little after sunset I was aroused for good and all by Franny, white-faced and urgent, shaking my shoulder desperately. "Wake up! The place is on fire! We've got to get out!"

             
For a moment I couldn't focus on anything. The room was almost dark, and Franny's white face was a meaningless glimmer. I didn't know where I was. "What
—
?
" I said querulously.

             
"Get on your pants! Hurry! We've got to get out!" She tried to pull me up from the bed by main force.

             
I could smell smoke. Somebody went by the window. Abruptly I was wide awake. I jumped into my pants, grabbed my bow, and hesitated. If the Avengers had fired the motel, they'd be waiting by the door of the unit to shoot us as we came out. "Get the bike!" Fran said urgently.

             
There was a scream from outside, and then a rattle of arrows against the window. From the kitchen I heard the crackle of flames and felt a sudden burst of heat.

             
We'd better be shot than burnt alive. I threw open the door.

             
The shower of arrows I expected did not come. The four Avengers were shooting at something on the roof above their heads. In the growing twilight I could see that there was a human figure on the roof, or—it seemed for a moment—hovering above it. The outline was familiar, but I didn't know or care who it was. It was a distraction that offered us a chance to get out.

             
I motioned to Franny to get on the bike. I stepped on the starter. We dashed through the Avengers with only two arrows being shot at us, one of which stuck in my pants leg.

             
As we charged through the gathering darkness, toward
Highway One and Bodega, I was conscious of a feeling of puzzlement. Who had set the fire? Wally, I was sure, had been convinced of the peril of turning us over to the Avengers. He wouldn't have betrayed us. But the motel had indubitably been on fire, and the Avengers had been shooting at its roof. They had hardly noticed us.

             
Franny—I could feel her breasts pushing into my back
—
seemed to pick up my thoughts. "Wally
did
lie to them," she said. "He convinced them. They were starting to leave—they were just leaving—when they saw my fetch hovering above the roof. They thought it was supernatural, and they set the motel on fire. People think fire is good against magic."

             
"T
our
fetch
?" I asked. I'd never heard this word before.

             
"My double.
Didn't you see it when we were leaving Point Arena? That was what we kept hearing moving around in the kitchen in the motel."

             
I swallowed. It is very disconcerting to a young man to learn that the girl he has just been enjoying sex with has a sort of haunt attached to her. "
...
Have you always had it?" I asked after a minute.

             
"No, of course not."
She sounded annoyed. "I think I got it in the web. I had a feeling of—of being duplicated while I was there. I can't help it, you know."

             
"Oh, sure."
I was wondering whether the Avengers would decide that the fetch was actually Franny, and that we had both perished in the fire. It was improbable. Two arrows had been shot at us; the Avengers knew that somebody had escaped. They would keep on hunting us; in their eyes we were like the vectors of some dangerous disease. The mere knowledge that the Dancers could be killed—and in some quite simple way—was an infection we might transmit.

             
Yet as we drove through the cool night toward Gualala
I felt in better heart. A time for rest and pleasure had been given us. For an afternoon we had been more than fugitives. We had lived a little while.

-

             
The tribe at Tenner had made itself a fake Dancer. The tribe's Mandarins, unable to wait their turn patiently for one of O'Hare's coveted creations, had delegated one of their number to carry a whip, wear a loincloth, and be painted red. It wouldn't have fooled anybody for a moment
who'd
ever seen a real Dancer. It was obviously a tribesman painted up.

             
Franny and I didn't learn this until somewhat later. We'd been out on the dry hillside, wrestling with Franny's fetch, when we'd been captured. I had expected serious trouble, with a message being sent up the coast to the Mallo Pass people saying we'd been taken. Then I realized that the Jenner people were outside what I might call the Dancer network, though their Mandarins were no less bent on having their young people put in the day dancing than my own tribe's had been. (It gave me a sort of homesick feeling to hear the thud of feet and see people my own age stamping around in a circle.). But the Jenner Dancer didn't have a bodyguard of Avengers, and I doubt he'd even heard of the chemical-conscience treatment, let alone of the idea of using chemically restrained murderers as advisors. The tribe at Jenner was a gentle and backward tribe.

             
I couldn't understand at first why we'd been captured. If the tribe wasn't doing the bidding of a red-eyed Android from O'Hare's growing tanks, what would they want with Franny and me? Then I realized it was the fetch they were after. The bowmen who had taken us captive had seen Franny trying to put her incorporeal double through its paces. They had come up quietly, while Franny and I were too preoccupied to notice them, and when the light had glinted on the ectoplasmic cable that linked Fran with the translucent fetch, our capture had been assured. The whole tribe suffered from an unsatisfied hunger for marvels.

             
We were taken before the fake Dancer, our hands tied behind us and the fetch floating loosely in our wake. The Dancer looked at us—he was a pleasant-featured man, middle-aged, with the paint peeling off his skin in big flakes—and pursed his lips. He held a whispered consultation with one of the bowmen. Then he said, "We want the girl to make her double do the things Peace Symbol saw her having it do."

             
Peace Symbol, presumably, was one of the bowmen. "You'd better do what the Dancer says," I told Franny. I felt it was tactful of me to refer to him as "the Dancer" rather than "the man".

             
Franny frowned, but complied. I may say here that, while she had acquired a measure of control over the fetch, it wasn't enough for her to destroy the odious thing or even make it stay away from her permanently. Sometimes it was almost autonomous, sometimes it clung to her closer than a twin sister; and it was always perfectly brainless. She could always get it to go away temporarily, which was fortunate for our sex life. We both detested the idea of having the fetch as a spectator.

             
Anyhow, on this occasion she made the fetch levitate, walk through rocks, float horizontally, pick up leaves, and so on. It was hard work for her; when she stopped she was white-faced and trembling. But the Jenner tribesmen were wide-eyed and mute with pleasure. They had scarcely breathed tire whole time.

             
"What is it?" the fake Dancer asked as Franny sank down exhausted on the ground. "And where'd she get it, anyhow?"

             
"It's called a fetch," I said. "I can't tell you where she got it." I thought of the house in Point Arena, and the web I had seen Franny lying in. Franny was convinced that she had been subjected to some sort of matter-duplicating process while she had been in the web, and I felt she was probably right. But I didn't think it would do any good to try to tell the Jenner pseudo-Dancer about all of that.

             
"Um."
The women of the tribe were staring at Franny curiously. The Dancer rubbed his nose, and a flake of red paint fell off. "We'll let you go," he said after a minute, "if you'll either give us your fetch, or show us how we can get one of our own."

             
Franny and I looked at each other. We could hardly believe he was serious. That anybody could really covet the piece of brainless, self-willed ectoplasm that was the fetch seemed to us impossible. Its behavior was always uncannily upsetting, and its eyes were really horrible. It
wasn't so much that there was "no speculation" in them, as that they were full of glassy, idiotic, haywire curiosity. Its eyes seemed to be holes punched into a demented world. I hated to have it look at me. I used to think that if O'Hare had really succeeded in duplicating his lost Kate Wimbold, he might have been less than pleased with the result.

             
"You don't want it," I said to the Dancer finally.

             
"Why not?"

             
I thought for a moment. "It's semi-parasitic," I said.

             
This was true. The fetch's attachment to Franny, though only occasionally palpable, meant that it was drawing sustenance from her. The drain on her was not very much, but it was continuing. This was one of the reasons why we were so desperately anxious to get rid of the fetch.

             
"Eh?
Semi-parasitic?"

             
I opened my mouth to explain, but the Dancer cut me short. "I want that fetch," he said. "That
one,
or another one. It's up to you to figure out how to get one for me."

             
"What if we can't?" Franny asked warily.

             
"Then we'll keep you shut up until you think of a way of doing it." For a pleasant-faced man, the fake Dancer looked awfully determined as he said it.

             
There was a murmur of approbation from the tribesmen. The tribe might be gentle and backward, but they obviously agreed with what their pseudo-Dancer said.

             
Franny and I looked at each other again. As a punishment, being shut up wasn't especially severe, but the trouble with it was the Avengers, whom we had managed to avoid since Anchor Bay by a series of miracles, were certain to pick up our trail sooner or later. And I didn't think the Jenner tribe would put up much of a resistance to them.

             
"But—but it isn't easy to think of a way to get you a fetch," I said inanely.

             
The Dancer shrugged. I was aware of the roar of the surf coming from behind me, and it brought into my mind a brief speculation -as to what had really happened to the tribe at Navarro.

             
"Peace Symbol, and you, Glorious, and Aum, take them to that room in the hotel that has the lock on the door," the Dancer ordered. And then, to Franny and me, "I'm sorry, but I really want that fetch."

             
We were marched across the highway and up to the hotel, with several small boys following. Peace Symbol and Glorious had bows; Aum had a bow and a spear. Our hands were still tied.

             
The hotel was thoroughly ruinous. The quakes, exceptionally severe at Jenner (they had been so massive they had changed the course of the Russian River), had reduced it to not much more than a heap of rubble. We clambered over heaps of debris, Aum poking me occasionally with his spear, until we came to a room on the second floor that was substantially intact. It wasn't much bigger than a closet. Peace Symbol pushed us into it and shut the door. I heard the click of a lock. "We'll be out in the hall," he said through the wood, "so don't try anything."

             
I went to the window and looked out. The window had been nailed shut, and several bowmen were watching it from the street.