The Dancers of Noyo (31 page)

             
"I
don't see the relevance of all of this," the Dancer said impatiently. "We've a
lr
eady heard witnesses testify that McGregor
interfered
with tribal justice
...
Somebody light that fire. It's getting dark out here."

             
Nobody moved to obey him, and Franny continued, "If you'll listen, you'll see that this is relevant. Sam's being a medicine man made him want to save me, and the things he gave me out of his medicine bag are important too."

             
"Why?" the Dancer asked.

             
"They just are. This is important. He has
all sorts
of things in his medicine bag."

             
This time there was no possible doubt of the emphasis. It wasn't marked enough to rouse suspicion, but
I
was familiar with Franny's patterns of speech, and she didn't usually talk like that. She was trying to tell me something, something about the things in my medicine bag. Something about Bennet's mouth too, perhaps, but
I
couldn't be sure of that.

             
"Put her gag back on," the Gualala Dancer said abruptly. "She's trying to slow down the trial, that's all." He reached out and flicked her around the waist with his whip. "Dylan, light that fire at once. It's getting dark."

             
This time he was obeyed. The fire blazed up, with a resinous crackling, and my poor girl was gagged again with the same old piece of dirty cloth. Her eyes were bright above the gag and she was looking directly at me, willing me—I felt—to understand.

             
And
I
didn't. I couldn't think what she might have meant. "Mouth" must refer to Bennet's mouth, from which the original tissue culture for the Dancers had come. But what was the connection with the things in my bag? The bag itself was han
g
ing down my back, and
I
could almost touch it with the tips of my fingers. There wasn't any difficulty about that. But what had Franny meant to tell me about it?

             
I enumerated the things in the bag mentally. It held six or eight packets of herbs, a few loose mescal buttons, a rattle, an elderwood whistle, a piece of snakeskin, and a copper disk supposed to be used for scrying.

             
Most of these could be eliminated as useless at once: the rattle, the whistle and the piece of snakeskin were primarily for magical purposes. If I could force the Dancer to ingest a few mescal buttons, it might or might not get intoxicated on them. And if I could make it look into the copper disk, it might dislike seeing its own face.

             
The herbs?
They were curative rather than poisonous.
I
had Ephedra
californica
for colds, mesquite gum for sore eyes, red
penstemon
as a wash for burns,
Asclepias
cryptoceras
for
inflammatory
rheumatism, and so on. Even if I could, impossibly, get one or another of them inside the Gualala Dancer, I didn't think they'd have any especial effect on it.

             
No matter how often I went over the contents of my bag, I couldn't see any help in them. I tried and tried, while the trial went on and a whole troop of Avengers from Mallo Pass testified as to Franny's infraction and my
accessoryship
to it. I couldn't understand what she had meant. Lethargy kept stealing over me. I had a feeling of remote and chilly doom.

             
It got darker. Somebody replenished the fire. Finally the Dancer said, "That's enough. It's time for my verdict." It paused for a moment, I suppose for dramatic effect. "I find both the defendants guilty," it said.

             
I had been expecting this, of course, but it was a shock anyhow. I looked at Franny. Drops of what seemed to be sweat were glistening on her face in the firelight. Her eyes were fixed, but she didn't appear to perceive what she was looking at.

             
There was a murmur from the tribe. It wasn't approving, and it certainly wasn't surprised. "Don't forget to sentence them," the chemical-conscience man prompted.

             
"I shan't," said the Dancer. It cleared its throat. "There is only one sentence possible, under the circumstances," it said. "The sentence is death. Bill, you're to carry it out, of course."

             
"OK," Bill answered. An expression of wolfish anticipation had appeared on his not unhandsome features. His mouth twisted to one side suddenly and his eyes grew bright. "Might as well get started on it," he said.

             
My first thought was that at least I'd find out how the Navarro tribe had died. It was reasonable to assume that Bill would adopt the same method of disposing of Franny and me that had been used on them. At last my curiosity would be satisfied. But death was too high a price to pay for it. The bargain was preposterous, impossible. I didn't want to die myself, and I didn't want Franny to die. I didn't want any part of it.

             
We were ushered toward the edge of the circle, guards on both sides of us. Franny was in front. Our executioner walked along beside us. He had got something out of his pants pocket and was tossing it up in the a
ir
and catching it again expertly. It was a good display of coordination, but I found myself hoping, childishly, that he'd drop whatever he was juggling and have to stoop to pick it up. He was too self-assured.

             
Our guards were not moving us along very fast. As we got near where the Dancer was standing, the light from the fire glinted on the object Bill was juggling, and I saw what it was. It was the Greek coin he had tried to make me accept in the dawn at Point Arena.

             
At the sight I had a moment of vertigo in which O'Hare's trap at Point Arena, the drunk's soliloquy about the man he's met who wanted parts of human bodies, and the disappearances at Navarro and Russian Gulch, all wh
ir
led in horrifying turbulence through my mind. Then these things added up, and I saw the dreadful pattern emerge.

             
I was frightened, more frightened than I had been when Farnsworth had had me, dance for him. I could smell myself; I stank of fear. Actually, whatever Bill was going to do to us wouldn't be any worse than what Farnsworth would have done to me, but it seemed worse, I suppose because more people were involved. Farnsworth had been a lone wolf. I was terrified at the thought of a ring of murderers.

             
But fear had cleared the remains of the datura fog from my mind. My thoughts were precise and clear, bobbing above the sea of my terror like chips of balsa wood. And abruptly I understood what Francesca had been trying to say.

             
I was as sure of it as if she had shouted it to me. I knew what she wanted me to do, and what the reason for it was. But I didn't see any possible way of being able to do
it.

             
Our cortege was making slow progress through the crowd of tribesmen. Dogs snapped and barked at us, probably because of the way I smelled. Without any preliminary warning, Franny moved away from her guards and proceeded effortlessly in the direction of the Dancer. It was almost as if she were floating.

             
There was a moment of paralysis.
Then, though the men on each side of Franny remained gripping her arms, their mouths open, the other jailers started after her double.

             
It was the fetch, of course. That was what Franny's abstraction, her calmness, the sweat on her face, had meant. She had been calling the fetch to her. It was here
now,
the bringer of an opportunity Francesca had schemed for me to have. I must use it well.

             
The fetch was walking a foot or two in front of its pursuers, evading them with the perfect ease of the immaterial. Everybody was watching it, including my guards. I began working my hands up under my shirt.

             
The ropes cut into my wrists painfully, but I managed to grasp the edge of my medicine bag. One sharp yank-half strangling myself, for the cord around my neck was strong—and the bag was in my hands.

             
I lurched backward toward the fire. My guards were not holding me very firmly, and I got into the pile of burning cones and branches without any serious resistance from them. There, my pants almost ablaze and my wrists scorching, I dropped my medicine bag into the heart of the blaze. None of these maneuvers would have been possible, except that the attention of my guards was divided between trying to hold me and watching the fetch, which was currently floating at an angle a little above the ground, with its head cocked and a silly smile on its face.

             
I jumped out of the fire just as my pants legs began to ignite. The bag remained, leaning a
g
ainst a ruddy ember of pepperwood, and I watched it anxiously.

             
It caught. The leather pouch burned slowly away from its contents, writhing a little. I saw the packets of herbs, the rattle,
the
disk for scrying. A small blue curl of smoke rose from the pouch, and a puff of wind carried it toward the Dancer.

             
The Dancer had been standing with its whip in its hands, watching without any apparent emotion while guards and tribesmen grabbed after the fetch. As the tendril of smoke reached it, it started back and made a noise as if it had stepped on a thorn. Its hand went to its throat. It dropped the whip. Its red skin began to pale. Its eyes bulged.

             
Its knees buckled and it fell forward. For a minute it lay on the ground kicking, its head almost in the fire. Then its legs drew up to its chest in a violent convulsion. It struggled for breath, heaving its chest upward and falling back again. It gave a final gasp and straightened out. Its skin had turned a pinkish white. It was dead.

             
The tribe was in an uproar. My guards had let go of me and were yelling questions at each other. One of the younger men had picked up the Dancer's whip and was swishing it through the air.

             
I stood rubbing my wrists, which hurt like blazes, and congratulating myself. At the cost of a pa
ir
of scorched wrists and a not irreplaceable medicine bag, I had killed a theoretically immortal Dancer. Francesca sent me over her gag a glance that shone with triumph. There would be no menace from the Avengers now. We both knew that we had won.

             
There came a great flash of light. It was so bright that it made the night shake like a curtain, and we seemed to hear it rather than see it. The next minute the Grail Vision—the sunbasket vision—had begun.

-

             
At the top of the tree, beyond the flapping pennants of vision, was darkness. The first great light of the vision had fragmented into light in a thousand beautiful and splendid manifestations—light reflected from water in uncounted sparkles, light glowing down from the sky, piercing through a gorgeous amphitheater of clouds, light daring over mountains—through which I had ascended overjoyed, yet somehow never quite satisfied.

             
The ascent had been quasi-physical, with straining muscles and arms that sometimes trembled; and at times I had tasted and felt the light. Now at the very top, among jade and emerald leaves, darkness waited for me, propounding the question: what did I want?

             
I could stay here, comforted by shreds of the effulgence, until the time for staying was over and no more could happen to me. Or I could climb out into the darkness and go in search of what I wanted. But that meant taking upon me the whole weight and blankn
e
ss of the night.