The Link

by Richard Matheson

  As they drive toward the outskirts of Moscow, Porshev tells them that, in his opinion, the idea that all Neanderthals died out or were assimilated is “totally a priori and biologically absurd.”

  The history of authenticated sightings—from classical and historical times up to the present—of “relic hominids” is too consistent to be ignored. In all cases, they have a similar feature—varied shades of brown hair on all parts of their bodies except for the face, hands, knees and feet.

  “It strains credulity,” says Porshev, “to attribute all these sightings to chance or to traditions borrowed from some source or other.”

  He shakes his head, frowning.

  “Darwinism is hopelessly inadequate as an explanation for this host of evolutionary oddities,” he says. “The missing link between ourselves and our ape-like forebears is as far as ever from being discovered.”

  For a moment, Robert, unaccountably again, recalls Professor Konrad saying, to him, of his father: “He said something about a link. I don’t believe he meant the missing link however; he was too sensible for that.”

  Back to the car and Porshev telling them how valuable it would be to be able to examine a live Snowman using Kirlian photography and acupuncture. What a unique opportunity that would provide to study evolution.

  “How I envy Colonel Karapetyan,” he says.

  CUT TO SHOT of COL. VARGEN KARAPETYAN, RET. Of the Red Army Medical Corps. Speaking in Russian. As the CAMERA MOVES IN SLOWLY ON him, the Russian gradually becomes English and we hear him say, “This happened many, many years ago, December, 1941, on the eastern flank of the Caucasus.”

  CUT TO young Lt. Colonel Karapetyan being led to an isolated house in a snow-banked mountain village.

  “We had been in the area a few days, preparing to fight off any penetration of Nazi troops,” he says, “when I received word by field telephone that they wanted me to examine a strange man who had been taken prisoner. They thought he might be a deserter.”

  Inside the house, he tells them to bring in the prisoner.

  “Sorry, Doctor,” he is told. “We cannot bring him here.”

  “Why?” asks Karapetyan.

  “Because when brought into a heated room, he sweats like a hog. He stinks and is covered with lice as well. We have him in a barn nearby.”

  Karapetyan sighs. “Very well,” he says.

  The barn is old and decrepit, standing starkly in the wind and snow which are beginning as Karapetyan is led there. A guard flings open the wooden door and leads the Doctor into the dark interior. A storm lantern is brought in and, in its flickering light, Karapetyan sees—

  —What? Man or beast? He stares at the figure. A soldier raises the lantern. Karapetyan catches his breath.

  Whatever it is is standing erect, legs spread out, arms hanging by its sides, head thrust forward in a stance of strength. Its height is above medium; its body wide-chested, broad-shouldered. In age, it seems to be some kind of man between 45 and 50.

  He is naked, covered from head to toe with dark brown hair. On his back, chest and abdomen it is thick and long; elsewhere it is thinner. The backs of his hands are covered with long hair, his fingers have less, his palms none.

  Cautious in his movements, Karapetyan takes a closer look. It is an eerie scene, the darkness of the barn broken only by the flickering lantern light, the wind howling outside, the grotesque looking man in front of him.

  Or is it a man? In some respects, it looks more like a bear. But it is definitely not ape-like. His hands are very big. There is no beard or mustache on his face. The nose is almost human looking, not broad or squashed. The face is oval shaped, the hair on the head wavy but not long. The face, Karapetyan now sees as he has the lantern brought closer, is covered with a light fluff. Karapetyan lowers his gaze. “The genitals look human,” he says. “I—”

  He breaks off, wincing, drawing back as he sees the lice. The prisoner is literally crawling with them, all over his neck, through his bushy eyebrows, around his mouth. The man pays no attention to them.

  “You could at least have disinfected him before asking for a medical inspection,” Karapetyan says irritably.

  “We didn’t know if he’d survive it,” says an officer.

  “You’re right,” says Karapetyan. “Well—”

  He hesitates. “Let me have a closer look.”

  He walks up to the man and stretches out his hand for a handshake. The man’s arms do not move.

  “Attention!” cries Karapetyan, testing him.

  The man does not respond. He doesn’t even blink.

  “Is he deaf, do you think?” the officer asks.

  “No way of knowing at the moment,” Karapetyan says. “How long has he been here?”

  “Two days,” says the officer. “He was brought in by our patrol.”

  “Has he eaten?”

  “Nothing,” says the officer.

  Karapetyan nods; swallows. He isn’t sure what to do.

  Deciding, he takes a medical tweezer out of his bag and approaches the prisoner. Guardedly, he pulls some hair from its body. The creature flinches but makes no sound. Karapetyan touches the man’s skin. “Taut and fleshy like our own,” he comments to no one in particular.

  He steps back. He is starting to feel sorry for the man now. It is obvious that he is no deserter. “Come over here,” he says.

  The man does not move. Karapetyan beckons with his hand. Still no movement. Two of the guards push the man. He raises one leg and makes a single step toward Karapetyan, his movement half-man, half-bear. One of the guards pushes him again. The man groans softly as though in protest, the sound coming from deep in his throat.

  Karapetyan scowls at what is happening. “This is nothing but a harmless creature,” he says. “A man who has chosen to live in the wilderness. I would let him go if I were you.”

  CAMERA MOVES to THE EYES OF THE CREATURE. They are sentient and aware.

  “I heard later that the prisoner was executed,” Karapetyan’s voice says.

  DISSOLVE TO Karapetyan’s face; he is smiling grimly. “In accordance with the laws of war applying to deserters.” He makes a scornful noise. “Deserters,” he says. “That poor creature?”

  CUT TO later. They are walking on the estate grounds of the retired Colonel. It is nearly sunset.

  Karapetyan tells them that, when the incident occurred, no one had yet thought up the name of Abominable Snowman. “So, of course, I never thought of the man in such terms.”

  Porshev speaks again of the problems of fitting such a creature into the evolutionary scheme of things.

  “The problem is,” he says, “no one knows where man was cradled. Nor how and why our brains took the qualitative leap that has made us unique among creatures on earth. Brains large, out of all proportion to our apparent needs. Growing to their present size in a series of explosive, inexplicable, quantum leaps. How? And why?”

  They have reached the edge of a hill that looks across the countryside. They stand gazing at the sunset.

  “What happened when that all took place?” says Porshev. “What, by all that is holy, happened?”

  CLOSE ON Robert’s face illuminated by the sunset glow, CAMERA HOLDING, HOLDING.

  CUT TO suitcases being set down in the limousine trunk. PULL BACK. They are leaving, being taken to the airport.

  Adamenko escorts them, promising to thank Ludmilla and Saransky for them; Peter will write thank-you letters to everyone else for whom he has addresses.

  As they drive through Moscow toward the airport, Adamenko tells them that he hopes they will forgive “the circumstances” if, at any time during their visit, they felt a sense of “repression”.

  “There is this element in our society,” he says. “I am sorry it is so. Consider this however. During World War Two, thirty million lives were lost in Soviet Russia. Not just military casualties. Civilians. Can you conceive of such a number? Thirty—million.”

  He looks at Robert. “What would the attitudes of yo
ur government and your people be if thirty million American lives had been lost in that war?”

  Robert nods. “I understand,” he says.

  Adamenko squeezes his arm, then changes the subject.

  “Something you might be interested in,” he says, particularly to Robert.

  “As you doubtless know, there are innumerable places in this world where people’s lives have been run according to an ancient sensitivity to magnetic forces. An ability to sense a natural energy that made them site their sacred buildings in specific places in order to conform to this energy.”

  Robert stares at him. It is as though Adamenko is saying, in another way, what the man at the Dowsercon said about a “vital life stream” connecting mankind and a cosmic force. What Bellenger said about early man possessing abilities to discover and harness certain earth forces.

  Then Adamenko says something that makes Robert’s face a mask of blank astonishment.

  “Drawing from the combined experiences of history, engineering and electronics,” he says, “it has been suggested that a matrix of cosmic energy existed in the structure of the earth at the time it was formed. That the earth, in fact, began its life as a crystal.”

  He takes out a piece of paper and unfolds it, shows it to them. On it is a Mercator projection map of the world.

  Lying across it is a dodecahedron—twelve pentagonal slabs covering the surface of the globe, overlaid with twenty equilateral triangles.

  “This geometric structure, it is claimed, still exists on the surface of the world,” says Adamenko. “And, at every intersection of the grid or along its lines there lie earth faults, points of maximum solar radiation, centers of cyclones or anti-cyclones, volcanic activity, areas of violent magnetic and climatic disturbances, bird and animal migration points, sites of ancient civilizations.”

  Robert cannot speak. Literally, he cannot speak.

  “Yes,” says Adamenko, speaking for him. “How could you have dreamed of this before you even knew about it?”

  EIGHT

  Robert’s face in CLOSE UP, camera withdrawing WITH INFINITE SLOWNESS.

  “When you met me,” he says, “I was living in a make-believe world. A world of pretense; of ‘no opinion’. A world of what I told myself was strict objectivity but was actually one of denial.

  “Denial of my past, my family, my heritage. Denial of it even in my own child when I could see it right in front of my eyes—challenging me, daring me to ignore it.

  “And ignore it I did—made myself believe it had no meaning in my life. My father told me that my work betrayed a constant tendency to ‘backslide into my mother’s illogical world’. He was wrong.

  “I was fighting that world with every means at my disposal.

  “That’s why I responded so well to Cathy’s attitude toward psi. It was an attitude I wanted for myself—’science in, superstition out.’

  “That’s why I backed off so abruptly when it was suggested that I had anything to do with the success of that distance perception test in Central Park. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear.

  “That’s why it disturbed me so when my sister was asked to speak at that healing seminar. I didn’t want anyone to know that I came from a family that believed such things. Especially anyone like Westheimer.

  “Resistance, always resistance. Making me turn on Cathy that day and attack psi in its entirety rather than confront my probable place in it. Making me reject whatever Teddie said about me being psychic.

  “Actually making me fake what I saw in that second distance perception test; try to force away the inevitable.

  “I never told you but when Teddie was seeing that deserted missile base, I was seeing it too; how, I don’t know. Either I was traveling with him or—more likely—picking it up from his mind. But I saw everything he did. And he knew it. When I tried to deny it, all he said, in his uniquely acidulous way was, “Get off it”.

  “I think the first real crack in my resistance came when I foresaw Cathy in danger from that truck. When the incident actually occurred—almost occurred, I mean, thank God—I couldn’t fight my battle any longer. I tried but my mind just wasn’t in it.

  “After that, things started happening faster. Sensing the menace of that man on New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. Having an out-of-the-body experience the same night. Starting to pick up things at that house in Tahoe. Allowing myself to draw out my daughter and face what she was experiencing, what she was saying.

  “That she was like me and I was like my mother.

  “Then Harrowgate. All the things I started to perceive. The out-of-the-body experiences continuing. My healing of Cathy’s headache. The feeling, after Krivorotov helped my arm, that something in me had become un-blocked. All of the sudden, the next morning, my ability at telekinesis.

  “I admit now what’s happened. I admit my past; I accept it. I don’t know if that dream I keep having has anything to do with it but I do know my struggle against it is over.

  “I accept my heritage.

  “The problem is: I don’t know why it’s appeared in my life at this time—after all those years of my resisting it.

  “Worse, I don’t know where it’s leading me. I have a definite—irresistible—conviction that it’s leading me somewhere. But where that somewhere is, I haven’t the remotest idea.

  “Except that it seems to have something to do with the past. Not my past. Mankind’s—the world’s.

  “I keep thinking of what that man said at the Dowsercon. About a vital life stream creating a connection between mankind and some kind of cosmic force.

  “I think of what I saw in my mind when he said it—shafts of light coming down through clouds, meeting shafts of energy coming up from earth. And, as they met, a spectacle of light.

  “I keep thinking of what Dr. Bellenger said about evidence that what he called ‘unknown realities’ existed in the past as they do in the present. That early man possessed abilities to discover and harness certain earth forces.

  “I keep thinking of what Adamenko said – that a matrix of cosmic energy exists in the earth—existed when it was formed. I keep thinking that I saw that matrix in a dream—or what appeared to be a dream—before I even knew about it.

  “I keep thinking—of all things—of a symbol on the sign of a London disco called The Primary Force. A four-bladed scythe turning clockwise.”

  His upper body is on screen now. He holds up the crystal.

  “I keep looking at this crystal and wondering what it really is. Wondering why Adamenko saying that the human mechanism is a giant crystal in a state of unsteadiness struck me so hard. Why Borgeyev saying that the living organism is nothing but a giant, liquid crystal struck me again and made me think about that energy matrix on the earth.

  “Why it struck me so hard when Adamenko mentioned the suggestion that the earth itself had begun its life as a crystal.

  “And I keep thinking, endlessly, of Borgeyev pointing his ‘time machine’ scanner at the piece of crystal and me seeing, in the air in front of me—as clearly as though they were really there—two sculpted bronze hands…”

  He holds his hands up as he remembers the bronze hands being held.

  “… in between them—suspended in mid-air—a perfect crystal globe.”

  He sighs. “What does it mean?”

  CUT TO TWO SHOT. He is sitting next to Peter on the airplane taking them back to the United States.

  “Whatever you’re on to, Robert,” Peter says, “it certainly is nothing light-weight. I can only repeat what I said when Ivanova saw something in your future. Like her, I’m jealous.”

  Robert smiles and gestures haplessly. “I don’t know if there’s anything to be jealous of,” he says. “I may just be going insane.”

  Peter chuckles. “That I doubt,” he says.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Cathy,” Robert confides.

  “Why Cathy?”

  “Well, she wants me to be tested at ESPA,”
Robert answers. “She’s really excited about the prospect. And, after breaking up her marriage and dragging her to a new country to marry someone going through what I’m going through—I hate to disappoint her.”

  “But ESPA doesn’t appeal to you now,” Peter says. “Cathy’s approach to psi doesn’t appeal to you now.”

  “I feel the need for something more,” Robert replies, nodding.

  “You’re not alone,” Peter confesses. The need for “something more” exists in him as well. Cathy’s approach to psi is losing its appeal to him too. More and more, he is conscious of the need for some kind of “connective tissue” between the various phenomena of psi.

  “Some kind of link,” he says.

  Peter is not a happy man. Carol has almost not returned to the United States with him, insisting that she cannot leave her family or her native country; that Peter, if he loved her, would terminate his assignment at ESPA and remain in England.

  Peter refused. He has to complete his time at ESPA. At the end of June, they will return to England. With angry reluctance, Carol submitted and is on the plane, sitting with Cathy. She has a bad head cold.

  Robert hesitates before broaching the subject, then feels compelled to mention it: Peter’s health.

  To his distressed surprise, Peter tells him that he’s quite aware of the state of his health. He didn’t need the dim illumination of the bulb on Adamenko’s Tobiscope to remind him of his hypertension, his being overweight, his problems with his kidneys and his prostate.

  Robert feels terrible about his friend. “I wish I could heal you,” he says impulsively. “Maybe I should try.”

  “Let’s keep that as our trump card, shall we?” Peter says.

  “Why didn’t you say something when we were with the Krivorotovs?” Robert asks.

  Peter gestures vaguely. “Didn’t occur to me,” he says.

  New York. A car waiting for them. Robert and Cathy are dropped off at his house, then Peter and Carol say goodbye and move on.

  Robert insists on carrying Cathy over the threshold of their new home. As he does, he cries out as a sudden pain shoots through his right groin and he almost drops her.