A very small minority recognized the larger, now diving, object as a dirigible.
Whatever their knowledge, many ran to wake up their mates and friends or to sound a general alarm.
By then some had seen the helicopter, and this caused even more curiosity and apprehension.
Drums began to beat; people, to shout. Everybody was awake by then, and the dwellings were emptied. All looked up and wondered.
The questions and the shouts became one great cry as one of the flying objects burst into flame. They screamed as it plunged, bright orange fire trailing like the glory of a falling angel.
70
Tai-Peng wore only a garment of irontree leaves and vine blossoms. A cup of wine in his left hand, he paced back and forth, extemporizing poems with the ease of water flowing down a hill. A poem would tumble out in the court speech of the Tang dynasty, sounding to non-Chinese like dice clicking in a cup. Then he would translate it into the local Esperanto dialect.
Much of the sublety and reference were lost in the mutation, but enough was retained to move his listeners to laughter and tears.
Tai-Peng's woman, Wen-Chun, softly played on a bamboo flute. Though his voice was usually loud and screeching, it was subdued for the occasion. In Esperanto it was almost as melodious as the flute. He wore only a garment made for the occasion, red-green-striped leaves and red-white-blue-striped blossoms. These fluttered as he walked back and forth like a great cat in a cage.
He was tall for a man of his race and time, the eighth century a.d. , lithe yet broad shouldered and heavily muscled. His long hair shone in the late noon sun; it glittered like a dark jade mirror. His eyes were large and pale green, blazing, a hungry-but wounded- tiger's.
Though he was a descendant of an emperor by a concubine, he was nine generations removed. His immediate family had been thieves and murderers. Some of his grandparents were of the hill tribes, and it was these wild people who had bequeathed him the fierce green eyes.
He and his audience were on a high hill from which the plain, The River, and the land and the mountain wall beyond could be seen. His listeners, even drunker than he, though none had drunk so much, formed a crescent. This left an opening for him to stride into and out of. Tai-Peng did not like barriers of any kind. Walls made him uneasy; prison bars, frenzied.
Though half of the audience was Chinese of the sixteenth century a.d., the others were from here and there, now and then.
Now Tai-Peng stopped composing, and he recited a poem by Chen Tzu-Ang. First, he stated that Chen had died a few years before he, Tai-Peng, was born. Though Chen was wealthy, he had died in a prison at the age of forty-two. A magistrate had put him there so he could cheat him out of his father's inheritance.
"Men of affairs are proud of their cunning and skill, But in the Tao they still have much to learn. They are proud of their exploitations, But they do not know what happens to the body. Why do they not learn from the Master of Dark Truth, Who saw the whole world in a little jade bottle? Whose bright soul was free of Earth and Heaven, For riding on Change he entered into Freedom."
Tai-Peng paused to empty his cup and hold it out for a refill.
One of the group, a black man named Tom Turpin, said, "Ain't no more wine. What about some alky?"
"No more drink of the gods? I don't want your barbarians' juice! It stupifies where wine enlivens!"
He looked around, smiled like a tiger in mating season, and he lifted Wen-Chun and strode off to his hut with her in his arms.
"When the wine stops, it's time to begin with women!"
The brightly colored leaves and blossoms fluttered to the ground as Wen-Chun mock-struggled with him. He looked like a being from ancient myth, a plant man carrying off a human female.
The others laughed, and the group began to break up before Tai-Peng had shut the door of his hut. One of them walked around the hill to his own hut. After entering, he barred the door and drew down bamboo-and-skin blinds over the windows. In the twilight he sat down on a stool. He opened the lid of his grail and sat for a while staring at it.
A man and a woman passed near his door. They were talking of the mysterious event that had taken place less than a month ago down-River. A great noisy monster had flown from over the western mountain at night and had landed on The River. The braver, or more foolish, locals had boated out toward it. But it had sunk into the waters before they could get close to it, and it had not come up again.
Was it a dragon? Some people said there never had been any dragons. These, however, were skeptics from the degenerate nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anybody but a fool knew that dragons did exist. On the other hand, it could have been a flying machine of the beings who had made this world.
It was said that some had seen or thought they'd seen-a manlike figure swimming away from where the dragon had sunk.
The man in the hut smiled.
He thought of Tai-Peng. That was not his true name. Only Tai-Peng and a few others knew what it was. His adopted name meant "The Great Phoenix," a clue to his real name since he had often boasted in Terrestrial life that he was just such.
Tai-Peng had met him long ago, but he did not know this.
The man in the hut spoke a code word. Instantly, the exterior of the grail sprang into light. The light did not shine over the entire surface. Against the grey metal were two large circles, one on each side of the cylinder. Inside each circle, which represented a hemisphere of the planet, were thousands of very thin, glowing, twisted lines. These intersected many tiny flashing circles. All were empty except for one. This enclosed a flashing pentagram, a five-pointed star.
Each circle, except for that holding the star, emitted dots and dashes of light.
The display was a chart not made to scale. The lines were the valleys, and the circles indicated men and women. The pulse group of each was an identity code.
Clemens and Burton, among others, had been told by X that he had chosen only twelve to assist him. There were twelve times twelve symbols on the lines, not counting the circled star. One hundred and forty-four in all.
A number of circles were pulsing the same group. The man sighed, and he spoke a code phrase. Instantly, the symbols emitting dash-dash-dash-dots disappeared.
Another code phrase. Two glowing symbols appeared near the top of the grail.
Only seventy recruits were still alive. Less than half of the chosen.
How many would there be forty years from now?
Of these, how many would quit before then?
However, there were many nonrecruits who now knew about the tower. Some of these even knew about the person whom Clemens called the Mysterious Stranger or X. The secret was out, and some who'd learned it second-hand were as intensely motivated as the recruits.
Given the changed situation, it was inevitable that others would get in on the quest polarward. And it was possible that not one recruit would get to the tower whereas some nonrecruits might.
He spoke another code phrase. The circles were suddenly accompanied by other symbols. Triangles, an uncircled pentagram, and one hexagram, a six-pointed star. The triangles, which pulsed code groups, were the symbols of the second-order Ethicals, the agents.
The hexagram was the Operator's.
He spoke again. A square of light appeared in the center of the hemisphere facing him. Then the display outside the square faded away. Immediately, the square expanded. It was a blow-up of the area in which the three stars and a few circles were located.