The man who mastered time

Azeela was trying to escape from the room, but Dee captured her and pushed her back. George was vigorously congratulating Loto, and Rogers, rising to the occasion, kissed Azeela heartily. * * * * * It was an ominous crisis into which the visitors from a time world twenty-eight thousand years previous had fallen. They discussed it with Fahn and his daughters during the remainder of that morning, and at the light noon meal, served in a shaded corner of the patio formed by the enclosing wings of the house. Banks of vivid flowers surrounded them; the quiet, warm air was redolent with perfume. A small fountain splashed musically. The world was calm, languorous. Fahn had little to add to what they already knew. Toroh and the Noths had not been expected to attack for a month or two at least, and the Anglese scientists were going forward with their own preparations for the war with utmost haste. But now these emissaries Toroh had smuggled to the island injected a new and alarming factor into the situation. They had appeared only in Orleen, but the Bas there were listening to them, and all over the island the news was spreading among the Bas that Toroh was a friend, not an enemy. The Bas might be incited to open revolt. "Morgruud is alarmed," Fahn said to Loto. He explained to the others that Mogruud was one of the most intelligent of the Bas in Anglese City, a leader of his people. Mogruud was not fooled by Toroh's emissaries, but he feared now that he could not prevent an uprising. "And the most terrible part is the Bas are right," Fahn added. "I do not mean in regard to Toroh--he is a scoundrel, of course. But the Bas must have some relief. Their children--ten mothers and infants were ordered exiled yesterday." "Why don't you fix it?" George asked. The Scientist leader shrugged slightly. "I do not make the laws; I obey them. I have remonstrated with the king and the council many times." He paused, then added thoughtfully: "The time may come when we of the League may be forced to act against the laws of our king. He is wrong, and we scientists all know it. But to take the law into our own hands--it is a very drastic thing...." During the meal, George was far more interested in the two sisters than in the men's talk. He had opportunity now to study the girls, compare them. In feature they were much alike; in expression and demeanor, totally different. Azeela was calm, thoughtful--femininely wise and patient. Dee was impulsive, vivacious--alternately demure and devilish. Yet, in spite of the differences in temperament, there seemed a strange bond between the sisters. Their regard for each other, the love between them, was obvious. But it was more than that--a bond of mind and spirit. George puzzled over it. Often when Azeela was about to speak, Dee would impulsively speak for her, as though interpreting her sister's thoughts. The afternoon was one of inactivity. A Toroh emissary appeared in Anglese City, but he was arrested before he had time to harangue the people. "I had thought he was one of Toroh's brothers," Fahn remarked, "but it is not so. I think now they would not dare come back to the island." He went on to explain that Toroh had two younger brothers, banished like himself. "They might come--Toroh himself might come," Loto declared. "He will dare anything that seems worth the risk." "If we take any one of them he will die," Fahn commented. It was at this juncture, in the late afternoon when the whole world was bathed in the glorious colors of a sunset sky, that Azeela returned from a short trip across the city. "The Aran Festival of the Flowers is tonight," she exclaimed excitedly. "It has not been postponed. The Arans say it is clever to hold it now, in spite of the news from Orleen. It will show the Bas how little they care--how secure is the Aran power!" It seemed to presage evil events--the holding of this festival wherein all the wanton luxury of the Arans could be flaunted in the faces of those whom they ruled. And it was with foreboding in their hearts that Fahn, his daughters and their friends, prepared that evening to go and witness it. It was midnight when they started. Dee and Azeela were swathed to the eyes in soft white robes, and the men carried tiny black masks. The city streets, even at midnight, bore a holiday aspect. The moon had risen but, in addition to its light, there were braziers strung above every street crossing and they cast a soft blue light downward. Arans were hurrying along, alone and in groups--the women all shrouded in white; the men, in clothes of gaudy colors, wearing masks, or dangling them in their hands. Little phaetons drawn by dogs rolled by, filled with gay figures in fancy dress; women leaned from them, waving at the pedestrians and tossing out flowers as they swept past. Loto and Azeela, with George and Dee close behind them, led the way swiftly in the direction that every one else was moving. Fahn and Rogers followed behind. It was a fairy tale city of unreality: gaudy men and white robed women hastening forward under the blue street lights; silent white houses flushed with the reddish tinge of the moon; warm, moist air, almost without a breath, heavy with sensuous perfume. And in the shadows of the streets, the brown skinned, half naked figure of a Bas, skulking here and there! Azeela had, for some time, been walking in silence. She looked up at the moon and, with a touch upon Loto's arm, indicated it. "You said the moon was blushing, my Loto--the blush of maiden modesty to look down upon such a city. But I do not see it so...to me it is stained with _blood_." The sweeping gesture of her white arm flashing from under the robe indicated a garden beside them. "_Blood--staining everything!_" The street topped a rise of ground, ahead, down another short slope, lay the sea. And even there the silver path upon the water was tinged with red. CHAPTER NINE A cordon of police stopped Fahn and his party at the edge of a grove of palms near the beach. A moment more and they were inside. It was dim under the palms; the white sand a lace pattern of shadow and moonlight. Gay figures were moving about, all the men masked now. The grove covered perhaps a quarter of a mile. To the right lay the gleaming white beach with the surf rolling up upon it. A tremendous pile of scarlet and white blossoms stood near by under the palm trees. Figures rushed to it, gathered up armfuls and darted away, shouting and laughing. "We must keep together," Fahn warned. "Come this way." Half a dozen men had whirled up, pelting Azeela and Dee with flower blossoms, and, under cover of the laughing attack, tried to separate the girls from their escorts and carry them off. They moved slowly forward, George gripping Dee's arm tightly. They passed a huge, rectangular swimming pool, deserted as yet--glassy, moonlit water a foot or two below the surface of the ground, reflecting the dark outlines of the date palms that curved above it. The whirling crowd constantly became thicker. There must have been several thousand people within the grove: the white shrouded figure of a woman flinging flowers against the attack of a man; a woman retreating, her ammunition exhausted, to the flower pile to replenish, and being caught in a smothering embrace before she could reach it; a group of laughing girls, their robes torn from them in the fray, pelting a defenseless man, flinging him finally into a huge pile of flower petals, burying him until some other quarry distracted their attention, or a stronger force of men separated them, sometimes carrying them off bodily. And in nooks behind the hedges of flowers, couples stole silent embraces, alone until marauding bands of men or girls found them out and drove them from their seclusion. The white sand was thick with trampled flowers. Music came drifting through the warm night air; music near at hand, but blurred by the shouts of the whirling throng. The rich contralto voice of a woman singing--a snatch cut off by laughter. A large white pavilion lay ahead, brilliant with flashing colored lights--a kaleidoscope of shifting color. It seemed crowded with people, and Fahn now led his little party toward it. They did not enter the pavilion, but stood in a group on its steps. The music came from within, music that welled and throbbed, unfamiliar in character, but with the age-old appeal to the senses--music sensuous, barbaric. And yet was it barbaric? Rogers voiced the question in a whisper to Loto, who stood beside him. Was it not rather supermodern, with the centuries of decadence that had put into it that fire of the soul abandoned to the body? The throng on the floor was battling with flowers, drinking wine from carved bowls of coconut shell, and dancing indiscriminately. The masked men were robed in black and women shrouded in white, but the swinging lights of vivid color stained everything, made the scene shift and blur into fantasy. At one end of the room a huge circular table was loaded with food and drink, fruits and confections. The table was slowly revolving; half of its circumference was behind a partition--a kitchen where it was constantly being replenished with other dainties. The visitors found it difficult to keep their place on the pavilion steps. Masked men attacked the two girls with flowers; a black robed figure in mock politeness and humility begged one or the other of them to dance. A trio of girls tore George away, and then, at his resistance, left him abruptly. "The king," whispered Loto, with a gesture. At one end of the pavilion, on a small raised platform, the king sat smiling down upon the scene. He was robed in paneled cloth of rich, gaudy colors--a man of middle age whose long, dark hair was shot through with gray. The scene, with its confusion of shifting incidents, held too much for the visitors to see or to understand. Half an hour went by, with the merrymaking steadily increasing. Abruptly, the music stopped. The throng stopped in its tracks, waiting expectantly. The swinging colored lights died out; others took their place--pure blue-white, and motionless. A solemn bell tolled out over the silence; with almost one motion the masks and the robes were discarded. A woman's laugh rang out, carrying in it the very essence of abandonment. Then the music began again and the throng sprang back into motion. The riotous color had been supplied by the lights; now with the lights a blue-white, steady glare, it was the riotous color of the costumes themselves. Was it the Baghdad of the Ancients--manikins, with turbaned headdresses, and flowing, vivid draperies with the gleaming white of limbs beneath them? Or were these slave girls, with their wares displayed for the bidders in the market? Or these others, were they desert women, dancing with a pagan lust? Watching with the others, George's impressions were confused. Yet the thought came to him that this was modern beyond his time--decadence, not barbarism. Again Rogers murmured something, but his words were lost. A score of figures came leaping from the pavilion, scattering the small group of onlookers on its steps. Rogers recovered himself, turning to follow them with his gaze; white nymphs with flowing hair, and draperies of gauze that bellowed behind them as they ran for the moonlit beach and the surf. Loto, pulling at his father's arm, brought his attention back to the pavilion. Through it, the palm grove on the other side was visible. The bathing pool was now a turmoil of splashing figures--slim white shapes dove into it from the palm-lined banks.