The Dancers of Noyo (3 page)

             
"I know," I told him. "Be patient for a while."

             
"Unh ... I hear you and the Dancer had a dust-up about whether you should join in the dancing."

             
"That's right."

             
"What did you decide?"

             
"I
don't know yet. Listen, why don't you go catch yourself a tide or something? It's too early in the morning for me to answer a lot of questions."

             
"OK," he said, still lingering. "Keep up the good work, Sam," he said at last. "We're glad somebody finally had guts enough to stand up to the Dancer." He went out.

             
Yeah,
I thought,
they're glad, hut nobody's offered to hack me in a sho
wdown
.
I went back to bed, and this time managed to get to sleep. I woke about eight with the sun in my eyes.

             
I cadged a late breakfast of acorn mush from Joan. She didn't ask me anything about the Dancer, for which I was grateful. I was scraping the last of the mush out of the bowl when Jade Dawn, the woman who thought she was my mother, came up. (The reason for the confusion in both our minds on this topic was that the tribe had had a communal nursery in my young days and on
more than one occasion had got the scions mixed up. I rather liked Jade Dawn, and would as soon be her son as that of any other woman her age in the tribe.)

             
She was a plain, earnest middle-aged woman with her gray hair loose on her shoulders. She was wearing a fitted purple velveteen jacket, an ankle-length skirt of something that looked like a white lace curtain, and lots and lots of beads. Her earrings were rat
her pretty, though—beads of "Pom
o gold", which is
magnesite
that has been ground down, perforated, heated, and polished. They were a handsome salmon-buff, with darker streaks.

             
"I hear the Dancer has given you until noon to decide whether you want to go on the Grail Journey or join in the dancing," she began without preamble.

             
"Yes."

             
"Don't go on the journey," she said, looking at me and then looking away again.

             
"Why not?"

             
"People who come back from it don't seem very
...
well."

             
"Like Julian?"

             
"Yes
...
I've seen others, from other tribes, and they're all the same. Nobody ever seems to have the Grail Vision
—
I mean the sunbasket vision—but they don't know who they are, or where they belong, for a long time. They act like they're stoned out of their heads and aren't enjoying it. Some of them never do get over it.

             
"Join in the dancing, Bright Moon. Dancing's good for you. It's one of the roads to spiritual enlightenment."

             
"Even if I elect to dance now, I'll have to make the Grail Journey eventually," I said.

             
"Yes, but something might happen before then. Your Neptune's afflicted just now. Later on would be better for you to make the journey."

             
"Would any of the Man—I mean, the older generation—help me if I simply told the Dancer I refused both the alternatives?"

             
"No," Jade Dawn answered promptly, "they'd help the Dancer. We've been waiting to get a Dancer for years. It's only that you're my son—I mean, I think you are."

             
She got up from where she had been sitting beside me. The thin fabric of her skirt caught on a piece of driftwood that was waiting to be put on the fire, and tore in a long slit-like rent. "Motherfucking wood!" she said irritably and then, smiling at me, "Love and peace, Bright Moon."

             
"The same to you," I said.

             
After she left I got up and wandered among the huts disconsolately. Maybe she was right. If I elected to dance now, I'd be buying time, time to organize an opposition to the Dancer—if I had any energy left for organization, after stamping about in the circle most of the day. I felt painfully at a loss. The Dancer might be merely trying to intimidate me, of course. But he had sounded awfully self-assured.

             
Time wore on. I still hadn't made up my mind what to do. I noticed that one or two Avengers were always in my vicinity. About eleven I saw Pomo Joe walking toward me.

             
"Joe! I was afraid you wouldn't be back for days. I've been wishing you'd come back."

             
"Had a fight with Maria," he explained. He looked rather cross. "Why, what's with you, Sam? You're not usually so glad to see me."

             
I told him. He listened, making small faces. When I was done, he said, "Make the Grail Journey."

             
This wasn't what I had expected. "But Julian—the journey was pretty hard on him."

             
"It may not be like that with you," Joe answered. "You've had special training. You're better able to cope with loss of identity, or confusion about it, than most people are."

             
"I guess so," I answered. We were both talking in low voices. "But what's to be gained from making the Grail Journey? I'd still be submitting to the Dancer. And that's just what started the trouble in the first place."

             
We had walked out through the huts and were now standing among the redwoods. "Make the journey anyway," Joe said. "Something may turn up. I have a hunch that it will. For one thing, you'll be meeting people from a lot of different tribes."

             
"You think that'll help?
"

             
"
Yes. You might find an ally."

             
There was a little silence. "What can the Dancer do, after all, if I don't go?" I said at last. I was feeling resentful at being advised to set out on a fool's errand. I had thought Joe would be able to tell me how to deal with the Dancer immediately and effectively, and I was disappointed in him. "I don't believe all that guff about the Dancer's being immortal, I think he's bluffing. I don't believe he'd dare kill me or have me killed."

             
I had raised my voice somewhat. Before Joe could answer me, an arrow came whizzing between us and landed with a solid
thunk
!
in
the bark of a redwood behind us, pinning a lock of Joe's long black hair against the wood.

             
An instant later one of the Avengers came shambling up with his bow in hand. "Excuse me," he said, grinning. "I was shooting at a rabbit behind you, and I missed. A rabbit's a small target, compared to a man. Could I have my arrow, please?"

             
With no particular expression on his face, Joe pulled the arrow from the wood and handed it to him. A few severed hairs fluttered to the ground.

             
"Thank you
so
much," the Avenger said, turning away.

             
"You see? They're serious," Joe said when he had gone.

             
"I still don't see how they could make my death look like suicide. I've never used drugs, even pot, except under your supervision. And hypnotism can't be used to make somebody do something he has a real objection to doing."

             
"Yes," Joe answered, "but illusion can. Suppose you thought the Noyo Inn was on fire. You'd jump out of the window."

             
"My
room's
only on the second floor," I said. "I might break my leg jumping, but I wouldn't be killed."

             
"You wouldn't be jumping from your room," Joe said with a touch of impatience. "The Dancer would make you have the illusion on the edge of a sea cliff.

             
"That's only an example, of course," he went on. "But you'd better go. Don't forget your medicine bag."

             
His dark eyes were steady and serious. I began to waver.
"But how about you?"
I said. "If there's any real trouble with the Dancer, I wouldn't be here to back you up."

             
Joe
smiled,
a small, almost pitying smile. "I can take care of myself. Don't argue any more. The Dancer's over there." He pointed with his chin. "Go tell him what you've decided."

             
"I
... all right."

             
A few moments later I was standing in front of the Dancer. "I've decided to make the Grail Journey," I said. "Please get my passes ready." I thought its pink eyes seemed rather surprised.

-

             
The Grail Journey has to be made on foot. I missed my bike badly; I felt like a fool, putting one moccasin in front of the other beside the pavement of Highway One. But the rule was strict; and the Avengers had impounded my motorbike.

             
I was oddly tired. This may have been partly caused by resentment at my plodding pace; it certainly wasn't to be attributed to the weight of the load I was carrying. Bow and quiver, a bag of acorn meal and a slab of something like pemmican, water, medicine bag slung around my neck, passes, fire-making equipment—the whole thing wouldn't have come to more than a couple of pounds. I planned to sleep on the beach when I couldn't take shelter with one of the tribes.

             
There was almost no traffic. This wasn't because the road was in bad shape; the Republic tries to keep One always passable, and there are no rockslides in summer anyhow. I suppose most motorists prefer straighter roads.

             
When a car did finally pass me, it seemed to be going very fast indeed, and this increased my sensation of toiling through an unchanging landscape. I had been puzzled to understand how Julian could have taken six
weeks for a foot trip to and from Elk. It's only about eighty miles round trip. Now I felt I'd be lucky to make two miles a day. I didn't wonder why this was, particularly. I merely accepted it.

             
The morning mists had cleared away and the sun had come out. The sea beside the highway had changed from slate-gray to blue. The brightening in the water cheered me, despite my plodding pace, but a little while after the sun came out I began to have the sensation of being followed. Every few steps I felt impelled to turn and survey the road behind me. There was never anything there.

             
Time passed. The feeling that something was following me abated. I was plodding along dully, listening to the slap of my moccasins against the pavement, when I heard a sliding roar just behind me. I looked around, startled. It was a
rockfall
, a sizable
rockfall
, with a lot of large rocks. I began to run. It was a good thing I did, for a really big rock came bounding down, gathering
momentum,
and crashed on the spot where I had been a moment before.

             
Had it been an accident? I didn't think so. It was the wrong time of year for a
rockfall
, especially one of such size. I crossed over to the seaward side of the road and began to watch the skyline as I walked along. After a while I was rewarded by seeing Brotherly, on my motorbike, making a slow detour around the hole the
rockfall
had left in the height above me. I suppose the reason I hadn't seen him before was that I'd been too close to the cliff.