In a short while he was gazing on all around him with glittering eyes and a beaming, if hazy disposition.
A troupe of actors took the improvised stage as the dishes were cleared away. Spence watched the incomprehensible drama-which seemed to him to center on the discovery of ants in one of the character's items of clothing-and slipped into melancholy. Perhaps it was a reaction to the strong drink or to the events of the past several days. At any rate he felt himself sliding deeper and deeper into a bleak and cheerless frame of mind, heightened by the noise and gaiety surging all around him.
Adjani noticed his friend's pensive demeanor and regarded him carefully. He was not surprised when-during a parade of floats in honor of Brasputi-Spence rudely got up from his chair and walked out onto the lawn without saying a word to anyone.
The other guests at the long table were already mingling among the celebrants once more, so no one noticed Spence's odd behavior. He moved into the throng dancing around a gigantic effigy of the green-skinned, six-armed Brasputi and was swept away in the flood of torch-bearing dancers.
He was not actually aware of his depressed emotional out look. To him it merely seemed that he lost interest in the revel around him and sought a quiet corner to himself. He brushed past leering papier-mache statues wearing garlands and grinning with lusty smirks on their green faces, and shook flower petals out of his hair as he moved through the jostling crowd.
He took no notice of these things, or of any of the other thousand sights before him. His eyes were turned inward, for he had begun to brood upon the object of his affection: Ari. She had not been entirely out of his mind for more than a minute at any time since they had parted company at the asylum near Boston. In all that had happened to him since, his uppermost thought had been of her.
That something very wrong was happening to her he felt in his heart. It seemed to come in waves, striking at odd moments -like the time on the road-as if he were being summoned. The feeling had come strong upon him as he sat over his dinner. He felt it like he felt an ache in his soul. She was in trouble and needed his help.
Now, as he moved across the lawn in blind retreat from the raucous festivities, he felt the pangs stronger than ever. He knew he was close to her-somewhere in these green hills she waited. He could feel her closeness as if she were beckoning to him across the distance in a silent call only his soul could hear.
He began to run, blindly, recklessly. He jogged across the lawn and found an open gate in the wall and ran out into the swarming streets of Darjeeling.
In his mind he heard a voice urging him on. Run, find her! She needs you! Hurry! Every second counts! Run!
And he obeyed.
The streets of the city were alive with the festival crowds moving their floats toward the Raj Bhavan. Later the images would be taken to the lake nearby and set ablaze and pushed out into the lake on their small barges while fireworks lit the night sky, symbolizing the victory of Naag Brasputi over his enemies. But now the parade was in full procession and the dancing, chanting townspeople vied for the favor of the governor in presenting the biggest or most richly adorned effigy.
Like a salmon running against the stream he fought the current of people moving toward the palace. One thought, and one thought only, drummed in his brain: Find Ari. Find her before it's too late.
He dodged here and there among the mobs and at last came upon a dark and quiet side street. He stood for a moment looking down its steep decline. Go, the voice said. Hurry. He went.
When he reached the bottom of the street he found himself on another level of the city, this one somewhat poorer and less well kept than the government section. The streets were narrower and the houses thrust up against one another and towered overhead. They were, for the most part, vacant, their inhabitants having joined the main celebration elsewhere in the city.
Spence listened to the sound of his own footsteps as he ran along, pausing only at intervals to find some new path. Without his knowing he was quickly moving out of Darjeeling proper toward Chaurastha, the city's ancient nucleus.
He did not notice that he crossed several bridges, nor did he hear the swift splash of the icy water below. These bridges marked the boundaries of Darjeeling. When he crossed them he moved into old Chaurastha-City of Dreams.
The streets fell away steeply in terraced flights, and steps flashed darkly beneath his feet; but he continued, driven by the urging he heard within him. He seemed directed toward a place he did not know but believed he would recognize when he found it. He let his legs carry him where they would.
The moon gleamed full overhead. In the city above he could hear the merrymaking of the multitudes, but here in the old city silence remained undisturbed. He could see the orange glow of thousands of torches in the sky, but here it was dark. He stopped to look around him and heard the rasp of his own breathing echoing among the dark walls and passages of the sacred city and the occasional bark of a dog.
He went more slowly, walking among the odd-shaped houses and shops in the deserted town, and came to a narrow old foot. bridge. He crossed it and found himself before a temple. The wide wooden gate was open, so he went in.
He moved like a shadow across the temple yard toward the small stupa in the center. The stupa was hive-shaped like all the others he had seen, but different. He entered the shrine and felt the cool breath of the evening on his face and neck as he slipped into the darkness.
The shrine was lit for the most part by moonlight falling through the hole in the center of the dome, but two torches burned before the deity's stone altar. Spence moved toward the altar.
It was a plain stone slab with words carved in it which he could not read. He stood gazing at it for some time, blinking in the flickering torchlight.
The feeling of having been directed to this place ran strong in him. He looked around and shook his head as one coming out of a dream in which he finds that his dream has come true.
How had he come to he here? Where were Adjani and Gita? Why had he come?
Spence passed a hand before his eves. Had he blacked out again? No, he did remember certain things: running down darkened streets, pushing through crowds, garish idols grinning at him. It was all there, and yet it must have happened to someone else.
Along with the feeling of waking from a dream, overlaying all other sensations, was the unaccountable certainty that he had been here before; he would have sworn his life on it.
The shape of the stupa, its interior, the design of the altar, and the words carved upon it-they all seemed very familiar, and yet very strange. If he had been here before, he told himself, it must have been in another life, or on some other planet.
It had been on another planet: Mars! All at once it came flooding back on him, and Spence staggered under the weight of the memory. The stupa was an exact replica of the krassil he had visited in Tso, the ancient city of the vanished Martians.
He moved toward the idol standing in its niche behind the altar and raised his eyes. The stone gleamed with the oil libations that had been poured out upon it by the priests. But there was no mistaking the figure of the deity: Naag Brasputi, with his oddly elongated limbs and narrow body and huge, staring, all-seeing eyes was the very image of Kyr.
He let his eyes travel down the long arms to the wrist and the folded hands and saw what he knew he would see. Naag Brasputi had but three fingers.
Spence stumbled backwards and fell against something soft that clutched at him. He whirled around to see two eyes in a face floating in the darkness behind him. Spence cringed back and a voice spoke to him.