Beastchild

Chapter Eighteen

At first the blackness had seemed like the plunge into sleep. But it was very much different, for he became aware of the blackness and was able to speculate on it. In sleep, such speculation would have been impossible for the naoli mind. In time, the blackness began to phase into gray, then soft blue. In the azure expanse that stretched to all sides, there was a gentle white radiance directly before him, pulsating much as the heart does within the chest

Death: Hello, Hulann.

Spirit: What is this place?

Death: This is The Changeover. You have been here before, of course. You do not remember, because memory is not the way of Changeover.

Spirit: Where do I go from here?

Death: A brood hole. Back into your own family.

Spirit: Which I have disgraced.

Death: Which you have honored. You will be raised, in your new husk, to revere the memory of Hulann.

Spirit: But I left life a failure. I did not achieve the whole purpose.

Death: The humans who shot you were from Haven. They thought you molested the boy, though they soon learned their error. They took you to their fortress for surgery. But they knew little of naoli anatomy. They failed to keep you alive. But they will find a means for bringing the truth to the occupying naoli. The war will end soon, before the human race is destroyed.

Spirit: That's very good news. (He ponders the specter of Death a moment, somehow little interested in the past life now that he has been told the result of his role in it.) You are death?

Death: I am.

Spirit: And I am to be born again?

Death: You are.

Spirit: Then you are not permanent.

Death: No. Your race long ago programmed me not to be. I operate on the proper laws, recalling your souls at their departure from your temporal husks and remaking you within a new husk. I have all the facilities for that sort of thing.

Spirit: You are a machine!

Death: Yes.

Spirit: The humans…?

Death: I know not of their Death; they are of a wholly different cloth. Though I believe they have not thought of the concept of "abstract mechanism." Sadly, I believe their deaths are permanent. But if you thought the war against men a little justified learning that death was not permanent, you are wrong. Your race has forgotten its abstract mechanisms, forgotten my creation as a restorer of souls. And so it was meant to be-to keep the race at least a little humble. And to help purify the race morally. To that end, we must get on with your reincarnation. By practice, as programmed, I am to ask you what single thing or lesson you wish to remember from your previous life, what Truth.

Spirit: (Hesitating.) The Hunter. Docanil. Whatever would a naoli like that want to remember? What would he have to save from his previous life?

Death: Surely you jest. A Hunter has no soul.

Spirit: (Pondering for a time.) Then that is what I will remember. I wish to carry into my new life the knowledge that a naoli Hunter has no soul.

Death: It is an unusual request.

Spirit: It is all I will accept; it is the only thing worth remembering.

Death: So be it!

There was an explosion of life into rebirth

The white-haired man stood in the nook of rock overlooking the blue-green sea that ruffled in toward him, far below and like a liquid dream. He watched the boy named Leo and several of the men from the Haven as they buried the alien body in a grave dug in the beach above the high tideline where the eroding waters could not reach it. In the gloominess, with the rain obscuring details, their electric headlamps looked startlingly like flickering votive candles. As the boy bent over the deep hole and threw the first sand onto the stiffened alien shell, he could have been a wizened little priest in some ancient European cemetery, administering the final rites at the graveside of a good parishioner.

The rain spattered his face, but he did not wipe it off.

The wind howled in the nook, cancelling out whatever was being said below.

He thought that, perhaps, he should have gone with them after all, added his office's prestige to the funeral of one who-apparently-had done so much. But he had not been able to bring himself to that. That was a naoli, one of those who had killed his race, or very nearly had done. He had been trained, almost since birth, to loathe those creatures. He knew now what the situation was. Men had always allowed foreigners to judge the common men of their nation by the personalities and activities of their soldiers and diplomats. That, of course, was a mistake, for soldiers and diplomats were not representative of the common citizens, did not much share his goals, his ideals, or his beliefs. This same age-old error had been made and amplified on a cosmic scale with the spacers. And, at last, it had proved disastrous.

The sand filled the grave quickly.

Grain after grain… Each obscuring more of the dead alien.

The huddled mourners worked swiftly as the rain drove harder upon their shoulders.

The white-haired man thought about going back into the Haven to the pile of work now awaiting him. There was so much to do, so many tiring, tedious things ahead of them-and so much danger. But he would have to wait until he was able to settle his emotions. A leader of men should not be seen in tears

Elsewhere at that time:

David laid in healing bandages, swathed like a mummy, basking in the warm rays of the speed-heal lamp, attended constantly by machines and men (for a human life was a terribly precious thing now). He could neither move nor speak-but his mind was active. Another book was in his mind now, the first he had thought about writing in longer than he cared to admit. It would be about Hulann, about the boy Leo, about the war. He thought he might even have to write himself into the end of the story. He had always thought a writer should be detached from his work-but now he thought he was going to be able to write better than ever by playing on his own emotional involvement. He would begin the book in Hulann's room in the occupation tower, with Hulann asleep, tucked into the nether-world pocket, his overmind detached and blank.

Leo stopped walking away from the beach and looked back one last time at the almost invisible grave where Hulann laid beneath the suffocating sand. He felt much as he had when he had first seen the shattered form of his father beneath the grenade launcher. He wondered how Hulann felt about him, how he regarded him. He remembered the naoli putting a protective arm around his shoulders when Docanil had them up against the overturned locomotive. They had postured like father and son. Yet, only a week ago, Hulann would have thought of him as a Beastchild, a primitive. At last, the rain was running down his neck, making him shiver quite badly in his thin and somewhat raggedy suit of clothes. He turned and left the beach, the evening, the rain. Hulann had lived for centuries; he had told Leo so himself. The boy would only have another hundred years or so. He would have to try very hard to make those decades as full as possible, as sort of a monument.

The Spirit entered the flesh of a woman, sank deep into her pouch, settled into the egg as it was fertilized. It had no personality at such an age. It had no thoughts, save one: A Hunter has no soul.