The Dancers of Noyo (34 page)

             
"I guess that's the end of the dance as an institution," I said, watching the shuffling Avengers. "I wonder what happened at Navarro, though. Was it a part of the murder ring?"

             
"We can't be sure," Franny said, "but I think their Dancer was getting old and crazy. It was the first Dancer my father ever grew, I think. The viral component of its body was getting larger proportionately as it aged."

             
"Old and crazy," I said. "Yes, but what happened to the Navarro people, Fran?"

             
"I think the Dancer loaded them up with metal chains and had
them
dance out into the water.
All of them, not just the young men.
Its chemical-conscience adviser helped it whip them out."

             
"Didn't they resist?" I asked.

             
"I don't think so. Perhaps it promised them immortality, or resurrection or something like that. I can almost see them going out into the waves—frightened, hopeful, not daring to resist. They'd had a Dancer the longest of anybody, you know.
And when they were well out, the Dancer danced out after them."

             
"What happened to it?" I asked. I didn't see how Franny could be so sure about what had happened, though it sounded reasonable. But after all, she had a considerable degree of ESP. "Did it die?"

             
"Not die, no, I don't think so. I think it lived on in a sort of coma, floating about in the waves. The salt concentration in the water where it was wasn't enough to kill or affect the viral component of its body. I think it died last night, when the other Dancers did." Franny tossed her hair back out of her eyes.

             
I
remembered the lonely beach and the bow
I
had found. "What happened to the chemical adviser, though? Did he go somewhere else after the tribe was drowned?"

             
Franny shut her eyes. "I'm sure about this part, Sam.
I
really can see it happening.

             
"After all the
tribespeople
were out in the water, the Dancer threw a coil of the heavy chain around the chemical-conscience man. It caught him by surprise. The Dancer pulled him down the beach into the shallows, and then hit him over the head with the butt end of its whip. It knocked him unconscious.

             
"The Dancer pulled him on out into deep water, dancing most of the way. Then it let him go, and he sank to the bottom. He was luckier than the
tribespeople
. He died without regaining consciousness."

             
I
considered. Yes, it sounded plausible. But the main thing was that the coast had been cleansed of its burden. The Dancers were all dead, the private armies hopelessly demoralized, and the most vicious of the chemical-conscience people had committed suicide. The land was clean again.

             
For Franny and me, the way was open to a new life. We could go on, not only to Bodega, but to San Francisco, if we liked. I was sure we could get jobs—the Republic was always short-handed—and
have
a comfortable, interesting, stimulating life. The Mendocino coast was beautiful, certainly. I had been born here and loved it. But when I thought of the long cold rainy nights of winter, my heart sank.

             
Yes, we'd certainly be a lot more comfortable in the city. We'd be useful, too. To use an expression of my mother's generation, we wouldn't be copping out. And
yet
...

             
Suddenly I felt that the gap between the generations wasn't so wide after all. Most of the Mandarins hadn't realized what was going on, though the
ir
myopia might have been caused partly by self-interest. Stubborn and foolish, they were yet in many ways an admirable generation. They had had insights and perceptions that none of their
forebearers
had had. They had taught us much. We were more their heirs than they knew.

             
I thought of Jade Dawn, with her earrings of Pomo Gold and her lace-curtain dress, her honesty, her foolishness, and her timid tenderness, and my heart warmed to her. I hoped that she
was
my mother. I felt I would be proud to be her son.

             
The sunbasket vision had changed me, I suppose. I had learned from it what I had already known, that covenants exist between people and the land they live in. The Pomo had named every rock and hill in their territory, almost every spit of sand. They had felt a passionate attachment to the places where they lived. They had felt it was a sacred land.

             
I was a medicine man. Now I saw that I had work to do here. There was a task of
sacrering
and
enhallowment
.

             
Human beings live in a network of love and sacred-ness. My mother's generation had sensed this. If the network fails, people's hearts fail too. The holiness of what is already holy must be constantly affirmed.

             
I tried to tell something of this to Francesca, stammering a little with emotion. She listened with her head bent, while the wind stirred her ha
ir
. At the end she smiled.

             
"Yes, of course, Sam. You and I both learned about the covenants. If you'd wanted to go to the city to live, I don't believe I could have gone with you. I have something to do here too.

             
"Let's get started. We can get more fuel at Point Arena."

             
A few minutes later we were back on the motorbike, on our way to Noyo again.

The End

* * * * * *

             
"It won't be easy to kill them," Fran said as we walked toward the part of the lab where the tanks for growing the Dancers were. "My father made the whole system closed. From the time the clones are put in the tanks and the nutrient solution starts circulating until the time, fourteen months later, when the Dancers are mature, it's never touched. There's no way of getting in to it."

             
"But there must be some way of getting into it to make repairs."

             
"It never needs repairs," Franny said.

             
"Why not?"
I asked.

             
"Because both the lines and the tanks are alive
..."

The

Dancers

of

Noyo

by

Margaret
St
.
Clair

a
ce
books

A
Division of Charter Communications Inc.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

THE DANCER
S OF NOY
O

Copyright
1973 by Margaret St. Clair

An Ace Book.
All Rights Reserved.

First Ace printing: July 1973

Printed in U.S.A.

* * * * * *

Back cover

the

Dancers

of

     Noyo

             
Like so many ot
hers
before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Grail Vision by the Dancers:
androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion—androids
who
held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

             
But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

             
And he could not know whom his search would destroy: the Dancers
... or
himself.