Page:Avon Fantasy Reader 05.djvu/108

RV 108 (Rh) Somehow he felt that he could trust Mu Lin anywhere despite the doleful sentence he had pronounced. Tea makes all men brothers. As Mu Lin filled the cups once more, the world narrowed down. They two alone remained. Could this be "The hour of mist-feeding" of which the voice in his sleep had spoken?

Not till long afterward did he realize that neither of them ate anything. Nevertheless, hunger left him. He longed for excitement, a new thrill, the bright face of danger, as though drunk with the wine of living.

As they returned to the library Mu Lin said, "The fact you are a Flying Tiger complicates things."

"Set me free and I'll bother you no more."

Mu Lin ignored the interruption as he continued, "For amber is made of the souls of tigers. When a brave tiger dies, his spirit enters the earth and becomes transmuted into that which is known as hu-p'o or tiger's soul."

"Mere folklore," said Trent. "It is common knowledge that when amber was being formed, none of the present races of mankind existed. Forests of the Tertiary Period were submerged and the resin became petrified. I mean the resin produced by certain kinds of coniferous trees, now extinct, which were embedded in blue clay. In the Ice Age, changes in the earth's surface released much amber from its former bed. Today it is found in various quarters of the earth, but practically none in China proper despite the fact that since long before the Flan Dynasty it has been prized because it is symbolic of courage."

"Courage, yes," agreed Mu Lin, "because it has tiger qualities. As to the rest of your remarks, I fail to agree with them. Alas, you have been reading books again. And reading without knowledge is a dangerous thing. Books have a quality of being wrong. It is believed by your countrymen that Gutenberg printed the first book from movable type. A nice fallacy but given almost universal credence. It is almost as ridiculous as the belief that the Americans invented air-conditioning, when these caves were air-conditioned before I was born, while Ming Huang, the illustrious Emperor who died in 762, had one of his summer palaces air-conditioned. Again you claim that Columbus discovered America. As a matter of fact he rediscovered it, for certain Chinese Buddhist Priests landed on your West Coast in the vicinity of Lower California and called it Fusang, 'The Country of Women,' probably because the Indians wore their hair