"All Vallonians are innoculated against it." * * * * * Foster turned back to the Journal. "I ruled many peoples under many names," he said. "I travelled in many lands, seeking for skilled metal-workers, glass-blowers, wise men. But always I returned to the landing-ring." "It must have been tough," I said, "exiled on a strange world, living out your life in a wilderness, century after century...." "My life was not without interest," Foster said. "I watched my savage people put aside their animal hides and learn the ways of civilization. I built a great city, and I tried--foolishly--to teach their noble caste the code of chivalry of the two Worlds. But although they sat at a round table like the great Ringboard at Okk-Hamiloth, they never really understood. And then they grew too wise, and wondered at their king who never aged. I left them, and tried again to build a long-signaller. The Hunters sensed it, and swarmed to me. I drove them off with fires, and then I grew curious, and followed them back to their nest--" "I know," I said. "'And it was a place you knew of old; no hive but a Pit built by men'." "They overwhelmed me; I barely escaped with my life. Starvation had made the Hunters vicious. They would have drained my body of its life-energy." "And if you'd known the transmitter was there--but you didn't. So you put an ocean between you and them." "They found me even there. Each time I destroyed many of them, and fled. But always a few lived to breed and seek me out again." "Didn't your signaller work?" "No. It was a hopeless attempt. Only a highly developed technology could supply the raw materials. I could only teach what I knew, encourage the development of the sciences, and wait. And then I began to forget." "Why?" "A mind grows weary," Foster said. "It is the price of longevity. It must renew itself. Shock and privation hasten the change. I had held it off for many centuries. Now I felt it coming on me. "At home, on Vallon, a man would record his memory at such a time, store it electronically in a recording device, and, after the Change, use the memory-trace to restore, in his renewed body, his old recollections in toto. But, marooned as I was, my memories, once lost, were gone forever. "I did what I could: I prepared a safe place, and wrote messages that I would find when I awoke--" "When you woke up in the hotel," I said, "you were young again, overnight. How could it happen?" "When the mind renews itself, erasing the scars of the years, the body, too, regenerates." * * * * * "When I first met you," I said, "you told me about waking up back in 1918, with no memory." "Yours is a harsh world, Legion. I must have forgotten, many times. Somewhere, sometime, I lost the vital link, forgot my quest; when the Hunters came again, I fled, not understanding." There was a silence, then Foster spoke in a faraway voice.