The Dancers of Noyo (18 page)

             
"I
don't see anybody—"

             
"Look hard."

             
I looked. Eventually I made out a dot, far ahead, moving slowly away from us. After a moment I realized it was a man on a push bike, looking from side to side as he pedaled. "Who is it?" I asked.

             
"It's Bill, one of my tribesmen. He's looking for us."

             
"Is he an Avenger?" I asked.

             
"
Hunh
-unh."

             
I squinted. The man on the bike seemed unarmed, and for a moment I considered overtaking him, menacing him, and leaving him tied up beside the road. But it
would take time, I might be interrupted, and I really didn't have anything suitable to tie him with.

             
"Let's go to Boonville," Franny said, as if she read my mind. "Bill's a good sort, relatively. You don't want trouble with him."

             
She was probably right. "OK," I said rather ungraciously. "Boonville it is."

             
The road was hilly and winding, and in only fair repair, though a small truck could have got through. I couldn't help thinking, as we slid along, that while Francesca might be the ally Pomo Joe had foreseen for me, having her sitting behind me on the motorbike had complicated my life considerably. I liked her, and found her attractive. But I wished I could leave her in some safe place and get back on the coastal highway.

             
We had been riding for about half an hour when Franny said in my ear, "Some people are coming. We'd better hide."

             
"Coming where?" I asked. "Up ahead?"

             
"No, behind us.
We've got to hide."

             
I turned around, but I couldn't see anything. She was so positive, though, that she compelled credence. We were going down into one of the tortuous dips, among tall evergreens, that we had already gone through so many of. I turned the bike off to one side, helped Franny dismount, and hid the bike under a drift of brownish needles and branches. Fran had gone on down into the hollow, and was lying
stretched
out behind a fallen rough-barked pine. I joined her. The good smell of pine and spruce was in my nose, but I wasn't enjoying it. I hoped no glint of metal from the bike would be visible from the road.

             
We waited. In about five minutes there was a faint rushing noise from the road's upper slope. I looked through a bushy tuft of needles. Four men, all on motorbikes, were riding by. They all had bows slung over their shoulders; and they turned their stolid faces inqu
ir
ingly from side to side as they slid along.

             
"Who are they?" I said softly to Franny when they were well by.

             
"Two of them are Avengers from my tribe. Mike is one of them. I don't know who the other ones are.
I
never saw them before."

             
"Where'd they get all those motorbikes?"

             
"I haven't any idea."

             
We waited a little longer. Then I got our own bike out from under the pine needles. "Say, how'd you know somebody was coming?" I questioned as we were getting back on. "You couldn't possibly have heard them."

             
"Unh-unh, I didn't hear them ... I don't know how I knew. I just did. My hunches are always good, Sam. But I don't always have them when it would be convenient or desirable. When the Mallo Pass Avengers tied me up, the first thing I knew about it was when one of them clapped his hand over my face."

             
I felt better as we started up. It wasn't likely that the men on the bikes would turn back before they got to
Ikiah
, and they would probably go on to Santa Rosa. We were so far behind that I thought we were pretty safe, at least for a while.

             
We got to Boonville about three in the afternoon, with still a little fuel left in the tank. Boonville is, of course, smaller than it was before the plagues, but Franny said there was a little store where we could probably buy fuel for the bike. We left it leaning up against the worn paint of the storefront, and went in.

             
"Three liters of denatured alcohol," I said to the storekeeper. He was a small, sandy-haired man with an inquiring face.

             
"Three liters of
deenal
?" he said. He handed me the jugs from under the counter. "
That'll be
forbes
each."

             
"Four bits," Franny translated. "People at Boonville have a special way of talking. It's called
Boontling
."

             
I paid the man. "You folks fixing to pike over to
Uke
and down 101?" he asked, "If you are, you're dished. There's a roadblock ahead, with a lot of cocked
darlies
and high heelers holding it."

             
I glanced at Fran. "
Uke
" was easy enough—Ukiah, where we were headed. And "pike" probably meant to travel. But I didn't understand the other words.

             
She was looking upset.
" 'High
heelers' are cops, and 'cocked
darlies
' are men with guns," she said. And then, to the storekeeper, "What's the roadblock about?
How long has it been there
?"
'

             
"There's a smallpox epidemic in
Uke
," he said. "They won't let anybody through who hasn't got a vaccination certificate or a recent vaccination scar. The block's been there since yesterday."

             
"Have you ever been vaccinated, Sam?" Francesca asked.
"Because I haven't."

             
"Me neither," I said.

             
The storekeeper was listening sympathetically. 'It's a
tuffer
," he said. "You can't get onto 101 from
Cloverdal
, either. At least that's what I heard. I guess you two wanted to get down to
Santa
Fosa
and then over to the Briny at Bodega. Quite a few bribers have been doing it these last
few
sunnies
."

             
I didn't pay much attention to this. I was thinking that Franny's expression of concern was well-warranted. If the four men on motorbikes hadn't been able to get through the roadblock, they were either still in town
—
they hadn't gone back over the Boonville road, or we'd have seen them—or they had gone off on one of the minor roads, which seemed unlikely. What were we to do? Simply turn around and head back for the coast? If they followed we were sure to be overtaken, since my bike would be carrying two.

             
"You might try to get to Philo," said the storekeeper.
"If you don't want to go back the same way, that is.
And then back up 128 and over to the
Briney
Highway." I thought it was a rotten suggestion—it would put us back on Highway One a little below Albion, on ground I'd already covered and had no desire to cover again.

             
"The road's poor," he went on, "but I wouldn't tell anybody which way you'd gone." He gave Franny and me a small smile.

             
"Father lived at Philo," the girl said, "but I don't want to go there."

             
I looked around the shelves of the little store for inspiration. Canned food, dried milk, a bolt or two of yard goods—nothing gave me any ideas. Perhaps it would be best to head for Philo; if we stayed in Boonville, we were pretty sure to be spotted by one of our four pursuers.

             
I was just opening my mouth to say so when there
came
a shout from outside. "There's my bike! They must be inside!"

             
"Where's the back way?" I asked the storekeeper.

             
He pointed silently, his eyes big. Francesca and I dived through a door, past a storage area, and out into the sunshine. An instant later four men came pelting around the side of the store and were running after us.

             
We ran. The sunshine was hot on my back. Franny kept bearing to the right. She ran up a grassy knoll, into a hollow and up the other side. Once she motioned to me to follow her.

             
An arrow came whizzing past my ears. I wondered how it would feel to have it go thudding into my back between my
shoulderblades
. I wanted to tell Franny to keep more in the open, to try to get back on the street, where the Avengers might be relatively shy about shooting at us. I lacked the breath. We ran.

             
Was Franny running into a
cul
de sac? Why? It looked as if she were heading deliberately for some particular spot. I didn't think she was the kind of girl to lose her head.

             
Low hills began to close in on us. She was running slower now, stumbling a little. The Avengers had gained on us a few feet.

             
We had got into a cleft with steep sides. Franny grabbed my hand—she was panting furiously—and made a complicated motion with the other hand. I seemed to hang suspended. Then there was a soft
click!
in
my ears. To our pursuers, it must have seemed that we had vanished into thin air. Actually, we had dropped into the earth.

             
We landed with a bump. The change from the hot sunshine to cool darkness was startling. There was an odd smell that I later came to know was formaldehyde. I heard a glugging of pipes not far away.

             
We were standing in a large, dim concrete-sided room, like an empty swimming pool. It was not utterly dark; mottled shadows moved on the floors and across the walls. From a corridor ahead there came a pale blue light.

             
"Where are we?" I asked. "What happened?
"

             
"
Shhhsh
!
We're in my father's laboratory. Don't talk so loud."

             
"Your father's laboratory?
I thought he lived at Philo."

             
"He did. He moved the laboratory last year. It even got on
his
nerves finally. This is a nasty place.

             
"Don't move. Don't touch anything. It's all right if we're careful. And we're safe from the Avengers, anyhow."

             
I looked around me in silence. The glugging of pipes
was accompanied by a distant dripping noise. Franny was probably right, and we were safe from the Avengers. But I wondered whether we hadn't, after all, exchanged the frying pan for the fire.

-

             
The smell of formaldehyde was strong in my nose. As far as I know, I'd never smelled it before, but it brought the thought of the cadaver Alice, lying flaccid on her brightly lighted bed in the dissecting theater, into my mind. It was a smell that made one think of cadavers
—
the smell of a
preservative
, but an unwholesome one.