them.'
Karyn nodded slowly. 'They want to believe because . . .' Her voice trailed off.
'There's security in believing what a powerful man tells you is truth,' Paul said. 'And there's security in believing what the group believes. Sykes was taking advantage of the group potential.'
'But you said Dorland doesn't speak during his show.'
'That's right. But Dorland can read an audience as a group. He can see the underlying potential and bring it out with lights and music and poses and facial expressions. These are only distractions. They make the audience believe Dorland is powerful, and they want to feel secure in his power. While they're in that mood of persuasion, he uses the patterns of lights and music to make them feel the way he wants them to feel. They follow his lead willingly because that's what they've come for—to grasp a bit of security and hold on tight.'
She was quiet for a long time after he had
finished speaking. He had no way of knowing if she understood any of it.
'How did you meet him?' she asked at last. Paul had never told the full story to anyone but Trisha. Somehow, with the pale moonlight filtering through the high oval ports and the breeze sighing against the tube's metal skin, he felt like talking about it.
'It happened five years ago,' he said. 'I was
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business manager for several storytellers. None of them were big time, but I was getting enough from fees to see me through. I was on a booking trip—'
'Booking trip?'
'I was trying to line up performance engagements for a client who was sinking fast. I had stopped at a little club on a godforsaken planet in the Fringe to talk to the manager about my client. Unfortunately, he already had a top-notch storyteller.'
'Dorland?'
Paul nodded. 'I'd never heard of him. I decided to visit the bar on my way out.'
'To see Dorland?'
Paul grinned wryly. 'To drown my sorrows. Dorland was on stage, and before I knew what was happening, I got wrapped up in his story.' His mind went back to that night as he told Karyn about it, and he wondered suddenly how different his life might have been if he hadn't decided to stop for a drink in that dingy club. The timing was right; he'd just been dropped by a girl who meant a lot to him, and he was at the lowest emotional point he could ever remember. It hadn't been so much that she'd broken off the relationship, but how casually she'd done it. Paul sat alone at a small table downing one drink after another, annoyed that his reflection on misery was being interrupted by the storyteller. He turned his back to the stage and kept drinking. The soft voice of the storyteller droned on behind him. After a while parts of the story began to filter through the haze of self-pity—and Paul realized that the story was about himself.
He turned around then and got his first good look at Dorland Avery—and felt his scalp prickling. Dorland looked directly at him as he told a story of a man who was driving himself down into a deep pit of despair, a man riddled by self-doubts who was sure that he had been bom to fail and was 136 William Greenleaf CLARION 137
doing everything he could to live out that self-ordained destiny. Paul couldn't remember the details of the story, but he had recognized himself clearly enough. As the character in the story began to see his own self-worth and overcame his doubts and insecurities, Paul felt himself gradually accepting some hope that he might be successful after all, both in love and in his work. He had never been quite the same since.
And he had known without a doubt that he had run into something more than a Fringe storyteller in that little club.
Karyn hadn't interrupted him, but she had a puzzled look on her face when he finished. 'You said your back was to the stage when Dorland began the story?'
Paul nodded. She hadn't missed it.
'Then how could Dorland read the visual clues from your face?'
'Good question. I asked him the same thing and I never got a direct answer.'
She leaned back against the curved wall and was silent for a moment. Then her eyes came back to him and she
