The Link | Page 4

that."
The girl rose from her seat. "Nor have I. Never, not once." She turned
to Lord Nehmon. "Have you?"
"Never." The old man's voice was harsh.
"Has anyone ever seen a Hunter?"

Ravdin's hand trembled. "I--I don't know. None of us living now, no.
It's been too long since they last actually found us. I've read--oh, I can't
remember. I think my grandfather saw them, or my great-grandfather,
somewhere back there. It's been thousands of years."
"Yet we've been tearing ourselves up by the roots, fleeing from planet
to planet, running and dying and still running. But suppose we don't
need to run anymore?"
He stared at her. "They keep coming. They keep searching for us. What
more proof do you need?"
Dana's face glowed with excitement, alive with new vitality, new hope.
"Ravdin, can't you see? They might have changed. They might not be
the same. Things can happen. Look at us, how we've grown since the
wars with the Hunters. Think how our philosophy and culture have
matured! Oh, Ravdin, you were to be master at a concert next month.
Think how the concerts have changed! Even my grandmother can
remember when the concerts were just a few performers playing, and
everyone else just sitting and listening! Can you imagine anything more
silly? They hadn't even thought of transference then, they never
dreamed what a real concert could be! Why, those people had never
begun to understand music until they themselves became a part of it.
Even we can see these changes, why couldn't the Hunters have grown
and changed just as we have?"
Nehmon's voice broke in, almost harshly, as he faced the excited pair.
"The Hunters don't have concerts," he said grimly. "You're deluding
yourself, Dana. They laugh at our music, they scoff at our arts and twist
them into obscene mockeries. They have no concept of beauty in their
language. The Hunters are incapable of change."
"And you can be certain of that when nobody has seen them for
thousands of years?"
Nehmon met her steady eyes, read the strength and determination there.
He knew, despairingly, what she was thinking--that he was old, that he
couldn't understand, that his mind was channeled now beyond the

approach of wisdom. "You mustn't think what you're thinking," he said
weakly. "You'd be blind. You wouldn't know, you couldn't have any
idea what you would find. If you tried to contact them, you could be
lost completely, tortured, killed. If they haven't changed, you wouldn't
stand a chance. You'd never come back, Dana."
"But she's right all the same," Ravdin said softly. "You're wrong, my
lord. We can't continue this way if we're to survive. Sometime our
people must contact them, find the link that was once between us, and
forge it strong again. We could do it, Dana and I."
"I could forbid you to go."
Dana looked at her husband, and her eyes were proud. "You could
forbid us," she said, facing the old man. "But you could never stop us."
* * * * *
At the edge of the Jungle-land a great beast stood with green-gleaming
eyes, licking his fanged jaws as he watched the glowing city, sensing
somehow that the mystifying circle of light and motion was soon to
become his Jungle-land again. In the city the turmoil bubbled over, as
wave after wave of the people made the short safari across the
intervening jungle to the circles of their ships. Husbands, wives, fathers,
mothers--all carried their small, frail remembrances out to the ships.
There was music among them still, but it was a different sort of music,
now, an eerie, hopeless music that drifted out of the city in the wind. It
caused all but the bravest of the beasts, their hair prickling on their
backs, to run in panic through the jungle darkness. It was a melancholy
music, carried from thought to thought, from voice to voice as the
people of the city wearily prepared themselves once again for the long
journey.
To run away. In the darkness of secrecy, to be gone, without a trace,
without symbol or vestige of their presence, leaving only the scorched
circle of land for the jungle to reclaim, so that no eyes, not even the
sharpest, would ever know how long they had stayed, nor where they
might have gone.

In the rounded room of his house, Lord Nehmon dispatched the last of
his belongings, a few remembrances, nothing more, because the space
on the ships must take people, not remembrances, and he knew that the
remembrances would bring only pain. All day Nehmon had supervised
the loading, the intricate preparation, following plans laid down
millennia before. He saw the libraries and records transported, mile
upon endless mile of microfilm, carted to the ships prepared to carry