Read The Dancers of Noyo for Free Online Page A

to the beat of the mallet, but in a dazed, drunken way. The rational part of his mind told him he had been—was being—hypnotized. Hyp — hyp — hyp — He stopped moving and stood quite rigid, eyes closed, making a moaning sound. Tremors shook him. At last his knees buckled under him and he fell heavily to the ground.
     
                  His visions were confused but pleasing. He was out for several hours. When he stirred and sat up, moaning and trembling, the sun was well in the west.
     
                  Unsteadily he got to his feet. The dance continued, the drummer still beat the plank with his mallet, the medicine woman was standing before another drummer twirling her feather. But something had happened. Something had changed in him.
     
                  His hand brushed the apparatus in his pocket. He pulled it back quickly. And then, without warning, he was gripped by a trembling, terrible urge to confess.
     
                  Confess? To what? CBW was worthwhile, necessary to national defense, almost a noble enterprise. He'd done nothing wrong in coming here to get samples of these people's blood.
     
                  To no avail he reasoned with himself. The spasm, the necessity, still gripped him. He had to tell them, somebody, anybody . He couldn't keep the words back.
     
                  "Listen," he said, licking his lips and swallowing, "I'm a murderer." His voice rose. The medicine woman was looking at him. "I'm a murderer. I've spent my life trying to kill people. I came here to try to get your blood. I'm a sower of plague, a bree der of pestilence. I'm a murder er.
     
                  Tears were running down his cheeks. They trickled down his neck and ran on to his collar. The medicine woman had looked away again. The dance continued.
     
                  Alvin felt transfixed by futility. He had confessed, but nobody had listened. They hadn't paid any attention to him.
     
    -
     

Chapter IV
     
                  I didn't return to being Sam McGregor with anything like the abruptness with which I had become Alvin Riggs. There was a long period when I sat by the edge of the road, listening to the noise of the waves and trying to get back to being somebody, anybody at all, through preferentially Sam. (Who did the trying? If my identity had been lost, who was the "I" that was trying to recover it? I imagine a philosopher would have found the point of some interest.)
     
                  My training with Pomo Joe had involved a considerable amount of deliberate psychological dislocation: I was used to keeping going when I was not at all sure who "I" was. Finally I stood up and began walking along the highway. I—well, somebody—hoped the bodily movement would help restore me to myself.
     
                  It was a very dark night. The moon was not yet up. I was shivering violently, and so stiff from sitting I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I thought it must be about ten o'clock.
     
                  Had I been sitting in that one spot beside the highway all the time I—Alvin—had been visiting the New Life Commune? How badly I had behaved, really—it was not hyperbole, but merely accuracy, to call myself a mass murderer. I had a heavy burden of guilt to bear. But of cour s e my mistakes of the past would be obliterated once I'd seen the Grail Vision. The sight of the Most Holy Grail makes up for everything.
     
                  Grail Vision? Where had that come from? Confused as I was, I realized that the idea was appropriate neither to Sam McGregor nor to Alvin Riggs. Alvin had known nothing about the Grail, and Sam didn't believe in it. For a moment T wondered if a third personality were emerging. I even wondered what my name would be this time. Then I realized that the idea about the Grail, though inappropriate for Riggs or McGregor, was