The Dancers of Noyo (33 page)

             
"—who had survived an attack of bone-melt and whose tissues, as a result, had unique properties. The mucous membrane of his mouth consisted of cells that had entered into a symbiotic union with the virus that caused bone-melt.
When the prophylaxis against the bone-melt virus, which was an application of ephedrine to the nasal tissues, got to your Dancer, it died.
The smoke from the herb in my bag killed the viral component in its cells."

             
"I can sure tell you're a medicine man," Joel said. "You must have read a lot of books to be able to talk like that
...
Anyhow,
we owe you a lot of thanks. Our Dancer's dead."

             
"Uh-huh," I said. "Well, my theory will do till a better one comes along."

             
Somebody had picked up the whip the deceased Dancer had used and was making its last whistle through the a
ir
. "Maybe we'd better bury it with him," one of the young men said.

             
"Un-unh," Joel said. "We might need it later on." He took the whip from the other youth, and switched it experimentally as we went back to the dance c
ir
cle.

             
But he laid it down rather nervously on the platform where the Dancer had used to stand, when he noticed that one of the Avengers was looking at him. The Avengers—I think he had been one of my guards—made quite a thing of the slow inspection. Then he said, to nobody in particular, "I guess we'll have to get another Dancer." He picked up the whip from where Joel had laid it and made the lash whistle through the air.

             
Joel had turned red. The other young men were looking at each other. Franny and I looked at each other. Joel hadn't winced at the noise of the whip, but I thought he had repressed the movement.

             
Another Dancer?
Well, I supposed they might be able to borrow one from somewhere along the coast. O'Hare's growing tanks were out of commission permanently. In any case, Franny and I had better be on our way toward Bodega. But we hated to leave Gualala without knowing how matters there would turn out.

             
It was only about ten minutes later that a young man came up on a motorbike. Franny gave a gasp. "It's Divine Peace, from Mallo Pass," she said. "I wonder what he wants."

             
Whatever his errand, it seemed one that was agreeable to him. He was beaming. "Guess what," he said in
a
good loud voice. "All the Dancers are dead!"

             
"
Hunh
?"
We all made the same noise,
a
sound of incredulity and hope.

             
"Yeah, that's right," Divine Peace responded. The success of his news pleased him.
"Every last one of them, all up and down the coast.
They just keeled over and died last night, all at about the same time."

             
"What time was that?" Franny asked.

             
He looked at her.
"Oh, hello, Franny.
I heard you'd gone to Bodega
...
They all died about the time it was getting dark."

             
"Dominoes," Francesca said into my ear.

             
"Unh?"
I said questioningly.

             
"Yes; don't you remember I told you my father said the Dancers were like dominoes? He meant a row of dominoes. There must have been some psychic tie between them, and when one of them died it killed the other ones."

             
It hadn't taken Joel long to digest the good news. He was gaining self-assurance by the minute. I thought he actually looked taller than he had yesterday. To the Mandarin who was holding the dead Dancer's whip he said, in a voice full of challenge, "That's the end of the Dancers. There won't be any more of them. You won't be able to use them to keep us down."

             
"Maybe not," the older man answered, trying to sound unconcerned. "But we don't really have to have a Dancer. The dance can go on anyhow."

             
"No, it can't," Joel said between his teeth. "None of us is ever going to dance again. Not another step. If there's any dancing going on at Gualala, you Mandarins will be doing it."

             
"But
—"

             
"Yes, why don't you try it?" one of the girls said. "You might be able to bring your Dancers back to life." She laughed scornfully.

             
"But—" the Mandarin with the whip said again.

             
"The dance has great power," Joel quoted
relishingly
.
" 'It
can heal the sick, raise the dead, make men invulnerable. It brings blessings on the individual and his tribe.' You Mandarins ought to give it a trial."

             
"But—we're too old—nothing would happen—there'd be no point to it!" The Mandarin was backing away from Joel.

             
Joel's hands went out toward the whip. But before he could make an actual snatch at it, there came a shriek in a child's voice, and an instant later a little girl came running from the latrine.

             
"It's Bill! He's cut his throat! He's dead! There's blood everywhere, all over the seat!
Yeeeeeh
!"
She ran to one of the women, who put a protective arm around her.

             
"We'd better get another burial party together," Joel said, "unless you Mandarins want to try to bring him back to life by dancing, that is."

             
He didn't wait for an answer. He went off to the latrine with most of the younger tribesmen. I followed. There was no doubt that Bill was dead, or that he had killed himself. There was enough blood for three suicides.

             
Bill was buried more expeditiously than the Dancer had been. On the way back, Joel and the others held a low-voiced conference. They didn't invite me to join them, but this didn't bother me. Every tribe must handle its own business.

             
When we got back to the dance circle, two of the younger tribesmen went to each of the Avengers, grabbed him, twisted his arm behind his back and took his bow away from him. The Avengers didn't offer much resistance. I suppose they were still somewhat dazed by the sunbasket vision. But power had indubitably changed hands.

             
The messenger from Mallo Pass had watched the passage with interest. Now he said—addressing me, I suppose because I was with Franny—"Was the man who killed himself your Dancer's chemical-con man?
His adviser?"

             
"Uh-huh, but it wasn't my Dancer. I'm from Noyo," I said. "Why?"

             
"Because another of them killed himself last night.
It was at Russian Gulch, up in your part of the country. He left a note admitting that he'd been mixed up in some pretty raw stuff
...
I guess he just couldn't stand the way it was after he climbed up out of the tree."

             
This was the only direct reference to the sunbasket vision I ever heard a tribesman make. We'd all had the vision, of course. But it was too sensitive to be talked about.

             
Joel and several other young tribesmen were coming toward us. They all had bows slung over their backs, and Joel was carrying the dead Dancer's whip in his hand. They looked pleased with life. The welts along their ribs had the air of medals.

             
"We thought we heard you say something about another suicide," Joel said to the man from Mallo Pass. "Where was it?"

             
"At Russian Gulch."
Franny's fellow tribesman repeated his story. When he had finished, Joel said, "What do you mean by 'pretty raw stuff'
'
?"

             
"Well, it seems there was a sort of murder ring up and down the coast, with a good many members, though I don't suppose they all knew what was going on.

             
"According to the note the suicide at Russian Gulch left, the Dancers started it because they wanted to be independent of O'Hare's growing tanks for the production of new Dancers. The Dancers were all sterile males, and of course there never were any female Dancers. The man at Russian Gulch promised the local Dancer that if he'd get him a good supply of parts of human bodies, he'd be able to make new Dancers from them."

             
"Did he do it?" the youngest of the lads with Joel wanted to know.

             
"
Naw
, of course not.
How could he? He didn't even try. What the murder ring did was to get rid of troublesome youngsters, anybody who hadn't been made tame enough by dancing and the Grail Journey. The Avengers furnished the muscle the ring needed. I don't suppose we'll ever know
all
the details. But some pretty raw stuff went on."

             
"What did they do with the parts of the bodies that they got?" one of the younger women asked.

             
Divine Peace spat in the dust of the dance circle. "I don't know. I don't want to know. I don't want to think about it."

             
There was a silence. It was pretty much the theory I had come up with when I had seen Bill tossing up the Greek coin. It didn't explain why Bill had tried to lure Franny and me into O'Hare's matter duplicator, his "trap for love", at Point Arena. But I suppose a sadist doesn't need any particular reason for wanting a supply of helpless, docile flesh at his command.

             
Everybody was looking at the Gualala Avengers. Finally a g
ir
l—I think it was the girl who had said the Mandarins might try dancing—said in a clear, indignant voice, "We knew you Mandarins didn't like us very well. We knew you wanted to keep us frightened and whipped. But we didn't know you were
murderers."

             
"We're not!" the Avenger called Dylan replied quickly. "Most of us had no idea what was going on!"

             
"Didn't you?" the girl said scornfully. "You must have been awfully good at fooling yourselves."

             
"Maybe we were," Dylan admitted. He was rubbing his mouth nervously, and from the way he talked his tongue was swollen and thick. "But we really didn't know. Now that it's explained, we see it, of course. But we didn't know it at the time.

             
"We really believed that the dance was good for you young people. We thought it was the way to sp
ir
itual insight, health, long life—all sorts of goods. We thought we were doing the right thing in making the young people dance." He gulped in passionate sincerity.

             
"Did you?" Joel said. "Then you'd better start dancing yourselves. We wouldn't want you to miss out on all those benefits."

             
The Avengers—including those from Mallo Pass who had presented testimony at our trial—were rounded up and made to put on the dance shirts the younger men had been wearing. The
n
they were pushed out on the dance floor. "Get going," Joel said. "If you dance well enough, we may let you off a good deal of lashing."

             
The Avengers began to stamp around in a circle. From the former Dancer's platform Joel reached out and flicked them more or less lightly from time to time with the dead android's whip. The other young men of the tribe were lined up eagerly behind him, waiting their turn to ply the whip. The Avengers were going to have some sore backs before they were through.