The Dancers of Noyo (22 page)

             
"I
suppose the things in the tanks would die. But it would probably take quite a while."

             
I found it hard to believe that Franny really knew what she was talking about when she said the tanks and lines were alive. On the other hand, O'Hare had certainly done some remarkable things. It was probably true that the tanks would be hard to get into. I hoped the nutrient lines might be more vulnerable.

             
I had brought along a steel knife from a drawer in the laboratory kitchen. I eyed the nutrient lines speculatively—they looked like translucent plastic, about an inch and a half in diameter
—
and decided that up close to the tank would be a good place to begin. I knelt and began sawing at the line with the
knife
.

             
Nothing happened. The line didn't give at all. My knife made no impression on it. The line was rubbery and felt faintly warm to my hand. I sawed again.

             
"I
t won't do any good," Franny said.

             
The comment annoyed me. I stabbed at the line with the point of my knife, and it seemed to me that it penetrated fractionally. Encouraged, I turned and ground with the point of the knife. After a moment, a drop of liquid came out.

             
There was a cry from Franny. I raised my head and saw that the things in the tank had turned toward each other and were lying in a sort of embrace.

             
While I watched, they rolled back into their original position side by side. Still, I felt something had been gained. I had affected them, isolated and closed off though they were. I stabbed and ground with the knife point with all the energy I possessed, but there was no further result. I couldn't squeeze out any more liquid. Indeed, the surface of the line seemed to have toughened up considerably. It was like a muscle being flexed. It made me wonder if Franny weren't right in saying that the whole system was alive.

             
I set my foot against the line and pulled. The line seemed to elongate very slightly, but that was all. It was like pulling on a coil of the world serpent.

             
I looked up at Francesca.
"How about heat?"
I asked.
"Fire?
If it's alive, fire ought to have some effect on it."

             
"Uh-
hunh
.
Well, you can try. I doubt you can get it hot enough to accomplish much."

             
I wished she wouldn't be so negative. After all, her father had fabricated the pestilential thing. I fumbled for my fire-making equipment, and then decided it would be a lot easier with matches. I sent Franny to the lab kitchen for some, while I sat on my heels and stared at the tanks and their contents.; I
occured
to me that when the embryos had lain intertwined, a few minutes ago, their pink color had given them a curious resemblance to some baroque cupids I had seen once in an art book.

             
Franny came back with matches, paper, and the box the cookies had been in. I constructed a neat little pyre with them just under one of the lines. I struck a match and lit it.

             
The paper and box burned brightly for a while and then went out. There was a chemical smell, not at all like the smell of burned tissue, from the line. Its surface was smudged with soot from the papers, but that was the only effect I had had on it.

             
"I
thought you said the lines were alive," I said to Francesca. "This one just acts like a plastic tube."

             
"Oh, it's alive all right. The outside is a sort of network of big complicated molecules of plastic, with the holes in the net filled by macromolecules of protein. On the inside of the tube, there's almost nothing but live molecules. I don't see what difference it makes, anyhow. You can't get it hot enough to bother it."

             
I wished she weren't always right. I hammered on the top of the tank with the handle of my knife for a few minutes, feeling like an ineffectual fool, and then sat down on the floor with my head leaning against the tank. The exhilaration of the coca leaf had worn off long ago, and I was sleepy and tired. I couldn't think what to try next.

             
Franny settled herself beside me. There was a series of bumps and
thumps coming from the kitchen where, I supposed, Binns was
trying to free himself. I didn't think he could get loose, but I'd probably better go and reinforce his bonds.

             
Franny said, "What a lot of noise he's making. It's too bad we can't give him a tranquilizing shot. I can't keep hitting him over the head with teapots."

             
A shot
...
Franny's words had given me an idea. I said, "Fran, would your father have had a hypodermic needle anywhere around? You said he took drugs."

             
"Um.
Yes, he took all sorts of things. But it was usually by mouth. Still, there might be a needle in the storeroom next door. Why!"

             
If I could get a big strong needle with a sharp point, I might be able to jab through the outer covering of the nutrient lines. It's worth trying, anyhow."

             
"OK, I'll go look. I think I know where a needle would be." She got to her feet. I saw that she moved as if she were tired. Well, no wonder. She'd been through a lot in the last few days.

             
While she was looking in the storeroom, I went back to the kitchen and tightened up on
Binns's
bonds. He had worked himself under one of the chairs and was humping himself like some industrious inchworm. "If you'll be quiet," I told
him, though without much hope that he would cooperate, "we'll untie you after we finish with the Dancers." He was too tightly bound to shrug.

             
Franny was standing beside the tank with a fine large needle in her hands. It was the sort of thing you could use to give a horse an injection. "What are you going to try to inject into the line?" she asked. "There's quite an assortment of chemicals in the storeroom."

             
I considered. "Are the bottles labeled in English?" I asked.

             
"No, but I know some chemical formulae. Tell me what you want. I may be able to find it."

             
I rubbed my nose. "Well, I suppose almost anything would disrupt the balance of the tank-embryo system.
Salt, or sugar, or even just air in the line.
But I was wondering whether some waste product wouldn't be quicker and better. Is urea what I mean?"

             
"That's a good idea. I'll get the bottle and make up a solution."

             
I followed her into the storeroom. She looked on several shelves before she found a bottle
labeled
OC
{
NH2
/
NH2
. She made up a solution with water from the faucet of the sink and filled the hypodermic with it. She handed it to me.

             
"There," she said. "I made it strong. Use all the muscle you have, Sam. I don't know what will happen, but it ought to be spectacular. Nobody has ever killed a Dancer, even an embryonic one, before."

             
"Are the tanks interconnected?" I asked.

             
"Oh, yes. Didn't you see how all four embryos moved when you squeezed out the nutrient solution? An injury to one is an injury to the other."

             
It seemed to me the best place to try to get into the system would be a spot where I hadn't made a previous attempt. I found a virgin spot on the tubing of the farther tank. If this failed, I didn't know what I could do.
I'd have to try to set fire to the lab, and it seemed improbable I'd be successful. There was little that would burn.

             
For five or six seconds I breathed as Pomo Joe had taught me,
Then
I tensed my arm and jabbed.

             
For
a
moment the tubing resisted. I thought the needle was going to break. Then
it went in deeply. I pressed th
e plunger down. I got the needle emptied and out before the action began.

             
A lump the size of a veal heart formed at the spot where I had made the injection. It moved at a moderate speed along the line toward the tank. It was corrugated and pitted, almost muscular.

             
When it got to the tank's clear material bulged out around it. The clear swelling grew to the size of a grapefruit, and then collapsed suddenly.

             
The rectangular sides of the tank contracted in a glassy spasm. Wrinkles formed and deepened in it. Its shape was changing. It was growing orbicular.

             
The other tank was
beginning
to be affected too. The area of both of them diminished as they sucked in on themselves. They were quite a lot smaller than they had been.

             
The embryos had begun to move. They made struggling motions with then arms. Whether they were swimming or boxing I didn't know. Then both tanks split along what had formerly been their longitudinal axis. Nutrient fluid gushed out. It smelled like blood.

             
The embryos began to writhe convulsively. They bounced and bounded. They made furious motions with their legs, like maniacs pedaling bicycles. Their inflated pink skin withered like old, dried-out apples. They humped and
twined,
tangles of big pink worms.

             
Franny and I were watching absorbed, delighted, and horrified. With
a
final furious spasm,
a
Catharine-wheel
of energy, they collapsed. There was a nasty smell of excrement in the air.

             
Franny looked at the crumpled tanks. Nutrient solution was slopping around our feet. "Nobody will ever grow Dancers in those tanks again," she said.

-

             
We were back on Highway One. We had traded for a motorbike at Boonville, with me contributing some herbal advice to the storekeeper as part payment, and we had a bag of provisions slung under the seat of the motorbike.

             
Things seemed relatively rosy. We had disposed of the bodies of the slaughtered Dancers without sentiment—it was impossible to think of the embryos as anything more than so much dead tissue—and had parted from Binns on relatively friendly terms. Our plan was to get through to Bodega, make contact with the fugitives there, and from that vantage see what could be done toward ridding the tribes of their Dancers. But at Point Arena something happened.

             
Point Arena—there were only about a hundred people living there then—was said to be a square, tribe-hating, self-righteous sort of place. We tribesmen stayed away from it as much as we could. Unfortunately, we needed fuel for the bike, which was turning out to be an extravagant fuel-burner, and there was a rudimentary service station at P
.
A.

             
I
left Franny with the bike on a side street, and went on foot to the station, carrying the fuel can.
I
thought
there would be less risk of an unpleasant incident if I went in by myself. When I came back with the fuel, the bike was still there, but Franny was gone.

             
My first thought was that she had gone into the store, which next door to the service station. I could have missed her on the street. I waited. The minutes passed. After about half an hour I began to get alarmed. I went to the store and the service station asking after her. Nobody had seen her. I went back to the bike and waited some more. When a whole hour had passed, I realized I was seriously afraid.