The Dancers of Noyo (9 page)

             
The fog had grown quite thick when he heard a muffled splash close at hand. It startled him. Had he, perhaps, slipped into a light trance? He got to his feet, peering eagerly, "his fear for his bones forgotten. Could it be
...
incredibly, that
...
An almost painful thrill ran over his
thighs.

             
The fog deadened sound. Suddenly, quite near him,
a
figure appeared out of the night. It was dark, glistening wetly, with the face a round blank. It held
a
spear in one hand. After an instant Bennet decided it was a scuba diver. Disappointment made him sick.

             
The figure pushed back the faceplate and spoke. "Hello, Mr. Bennet." It was a neighbor of his, Kate Wimbold.

             
"Hello," he replied. "
...
You've been diving at night? When it's so dark? I don't understand how you could see anything."

             
"There's always some light," she answered vaguely. "The
abalone are
dying," she continued after a pause.

             
"Abalone?"
Bennet, torn between disappointment and a hope that, after all, Kate Wimbold might be what he had been waiting for, felt that the conversation was getting out of hand.

             
"Yes, out on the rocks. The water is warm
...
I
found this on the beach." She held something out to him.

             
Bennet accepted it. It was a fat silver disk, bearing on one side a woman's helmeted head, on the other an owl. It was faintly warm to the touch. It must be a coin, a Greek coin.

             
After a moment he gave it back to her. He was oddly eager to get rid of it. The girl stared at him, her face seeming to get bigger and bigger until it filled the whole field of his vision. "Don't you remember the covenants
?"
she said.

-

             
I
came back to myself briefly.
I
had been untied from the redwood log and was lying on some hard surface.
I
had time to wonder whether this were the particular Bennet who was said to be the source of the cells from which all the Dancers had been grown. Then back to being Bennet again.

-

             
The cabin was small, fit by a naked lightbulb, but it looked out over the water. There was a constant
susurrus
of surf.

             
The man in the green whipcord suit turned from the window and said, "Bennet, you've been faking the tests."

             
"I don't deny it," Bennet answered from the plastic swivel chair where he was sitting. "You're O'Hare, I suppose, dressed up like a county health department worker. I wonder I didn't recognize you before. We've spent a lot of time together."

             
"I was careful you shouldn't," O'Hare answered. "And I really
am
a worker in the health department; I've been trying to find you for a long time."

             
"Well, you succeeded," Bennet replied calmly, though anger was growing in him. "I'm sorry, but I must ask you to be on your way. I have nothing for you."

             
"What if I should tell my superiors you've been faking the tests, that you're really a sick, a seriously sick, a dying man?"

             
"By the time you manage to convince them, I'll be dead," Bennet replied, more confidently than he felt.

             
O'Hare raised his eyebrows. "Will you? I have only to drop a hint, and they'll take you into custody. Nobody wants to take any chances on another outbreak of bone-melt. I don't see why you faked the tests. It must have been a lot of trouble. And surely your,
umh
, conscience must bother you slightly."

             
"No, not really.
I mean, it wasn't much trouble and my conscience doesn't bother me particularly. And it's worth it anyhow, for the privilege of dying undisturbed."

             
"You value that so much?"

             
"Yes. I do."

             
"Then I'll make a bargain with you," O'Hare said briskly.
"My silence, complete and absolute, in exchange for a few scrapings of the mucous membrane of your mouth."

             
"No," said Bennet instantly. "I refuse to be the author of a race of androids, no matter how tempting the bargain."

             
"You're really astonishing, Bennet," the other man said. "Doesn't it strike you as irrational to refuse me a few cells from your body, and yet to be willing to be a vector of bone-melt cancer to millions of men? In all the outbreaks, the mortality has been one hundred percent."

             
Bennet shrugged. "A death like mine is no penalty.
I
feel it is the crown of my life. Incidentally, I wonder you dared try to find me. As you're well aware, contact with me is dangerous."

             
It was
O'
Hare's turn to shrug. "A simple, effective prophylaxis for the disease has been worked out since you contracted it. Provided the nasal passages are washed out
promptly
with ephedrine solution, or even buffered saline, there's very little danger. It has to be done in time, of course. Didn't the health department tell you?"

             
"No. And now, O'Hare, I wish you'd get out. I don't understand why you've fixed on me. Surely you must have cell cultures available from some of the several million victims of bone-melt so far."

             
"Oh, I have. But you see, Bennet, you're unique. You're the only person, so far as we know, who's had bone-melt and then had an arrest of the disease. The others were dead within a week of the time the first overt symptoms appeared. It's taken you more than ten years.
I
want a histological sample from
you."

             
"Sorry, you'll have to get along without me," Bennet said. He had been getting steadily angrier, much as he was trying to control himself. "Will you get out, or do
I
have to try to throw you out?"

             
"Oh, I'll get out, I'll get out," O'Hare said
placatingly
. "But I brought you a present, a bottle of a wine you used to like.
Grands-Eschezeaux
.
It's hard to get these days."

             
"Very considerate of you," Bennet said, smiling a little. "Yes, I'm still fond of it. But I warn you, I'm not going to soften up any because of a bottle of good wine."

             
"I don't expect you to. But we used to be friends." O'Hare produced the bottle and a corkscrew. "Let's try it together, and then I'll go. I promise I won't tell the county health department you've hocused their tests. When the chips are down, I don't care much more about human welfare than you do."

             
He pulled the cork from the bottle. Under Bennet's direction, he got a couple of glasses from the cupboard. He
poured,
his back to Bennet. "Here," he said. He handed him one of the
glasses. "...
To your happiness."

             
They drank. "Yes, I am happy," Bennet replied musingly. "I was never
so
happy in my life
as I am now. I didn't feel like this when I had bone-melt before. I had a low fever, and I was badly frightened. But this time I'm happy. It doesn't matter that it's only going to last three days."

             
"You're sure about the timing?" O'Hare asked. "You had an arrest of the disease before."

             
"Yes, I'm sure. There's too much organic damage by now for me to recover. And I don't want to recover, anyhow. I'm too happy this way."

             
"So you're beyond any fear of death," O'Hare said. "Could anything—I don't know quite how to put it
—
break your mood?"

             
"Certainly.
Ugly surroundings.
Any sort of unpleasantness or struggle. Anger above all. Anger would probably cut short
zum
of my precious days
...
This wine's not
zo
good as I remembered it."

             
"Sorry," O'Hare said. "Perhaps it gets better toward the bottom of the bottle. They often do." He poured more wine into Bennet's glass.

             
Bennet drank. O'Hare was watching him steadily. "Why're you looking at me
zo
?" he asked pettishly. "You ought to go 'way."

             
"I will later. Not just now," O'Hare said.

             
"Not
...? I'm getting sleepy."

             
"Of course, of course," O'Hare answered soothingly.

             
"Of course?"
Bennet stared at the other man, fingering his lips. He tried to get up from his chair. "You've fooled me," he said with weak passion. "The wine was doped. You
—"

             
"What else could I do?" O'Hare answered. "I wanted the tissue sample. It won't hurt you any. You'll only be out six or eight hours."

             
"Six or eight hours!
Half a day!
So much of my precious time!"
Bennet was torn between slumber, rage, and weeping. He tried to tell himself that he would waken again, that he would still have two and a half days left of his precious dying.

             
In vain, in vain.
Rage swamped him, and the more he tried to fight it off, the more the crack in his euphoria widened.
Terror
was pouring in, the black terror of the icy waters of death.

             
O'Hare bent over him. With his last strength, Bennet tried to spit in his face.

-

             
My chest felt damp. I tried to raise my hand to blot at it, and couldn't. I was bound too tightly in the funeral cerements. Well, the grave is a chrysalis for the moth of immortal life. No wonder I was held fast.

             
The wetness kept on. I was still Bennet, but I managed to get one eye open. Gift-of-God was bending over me, weeping bitterly. Her wretched little face looked like dried orange peel, but the water of grief was dripping off it. "Don't be dead,
Tham
," she was saying, "
pleathe
,
pleathe
,
Tham
, don't be dead! I can't
thtand
it if you're dead."

             
"
...
Not," I managed. My tongue was dry and thick in my mouth.

             
Her small rough face lit up. "
Ooooh
," she said, "you're really OK?" She smiled uncertainly, sniffled, and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist.

             
I managed an assenting, "Gluck," in the back of my throat.

             
"Then
lithen
,
Tham
.
They'll
be here in a minute to
tetht
you. Pretend to be
thtoned
. Don't jump or let on when they
thtick
you. You
jutht
be
thonzked
. Be
thtoned
."