I felt hands touch me and the cool smoothness of metal against my temples. I wanted to say something, tell Foster that I had found the answer, the one that had always eluded me before. I wanted to tell him that all lives are the same length when viewed from the foreshortened perspective of death, and that life, like music, requires no meaning but only a certain symmetry. But it was too hard. I tried to cling to the thought, to carry it with me into the cold void toward which I moved, but it slipped away and there was only my self-awareness, alone in emptiness, and the winds that swept through eternity blew away the last shred of ego and I was one with darkness.... EPILOGUE I awoke to a light like that of a morning when the world was young. Gossamer curtains fluttered at tall windows, through which I saw a squadron of trim white clouds riding in a high blue sky. I turned my head, and Foster stood beside me, dressed in a short white tunic. "That's a crazy set of threads, Foster," I said, "but on your build it looks good. But you've aged; you look twenty-five if you look a day." Foster smiled. "Welcome to Vallon, my friend," he said in English. I noticed that he faltered a bit over the words, as if he hadn't used them for a long time. "Vallon," I said. "Then it wasn't all a dream?" "Regard it as a dream, Legion. Your life begins today." "There was something," I said, "something I had to do. But it doesn't seem to matter. I feel relaxed inside...." Someone came forward from behind Foster. "Gope," I said. Then I hesitated. "You are Gope, aren't you?" I said in Vallonian. He laughed. "I was known by that name once," he said, "but my true name is Gwanne." My eyes fell on my legs. I saw that I was wearing a tunic like Foster's except that mine was pale blue. "Who put the dress on me?" I asked. "And where's my pants?" "This garment suits you better," said Gope. "Come. Look in the glass." I got to my feet, stepped to a long mirror, glanced at the reflection. "It's not the real me, boys," I started----Then I stared, open-mouthed. A Hercules, black-haired and clean-limbed, stared back. I shut my mouth ... and his mouth shut. I moved an arm and he did likewise. I whirled on Foster. "What ... how ... who...?" "The mortal body that was Legion died of its wounds," he said, "but the mind that was the man was recorded. We have waited many years to give that mind life again." I turned back to the mirror, gaped. The young giant gaped back. "I remember," I said. "I remember ... a knife in my guts ... and a redheaded man ... and the Great Owner, and...." "For his crimes," told Gope, "he went to a place of exile until the Change should come on him. Long have we waited."