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blue. In the azure expanse that stretched to all sides, there was a gentle
white radiance directly be-fore 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 spec-ter 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 previ-ous 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
knowl-edge 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 over-looking 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 mis-take, 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. An-other 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 re-membered the naoli putting a protective arm around
his shoulders when Docanil had them up against the over-turned 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.
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