The object emerged into scan, a mote of a ship, coming up fast. In desperate desire Tuclick maneuvered its failing host, opened its receiving bay.

Resistance. Fire damaged systems. Tuclick reacted furiously, rammed forward, felt the damage as it swallowed the resistant mote. Fire hammered at the bay. Tuclick blasted back with its tiny interior defenses, desperate. Silence. Resistance ceased. Tuclick disengaged from its host, momentarily blind and deaf to the outside as it traveled the corridors of its fading host body. It opened the damaged bay, trundled in, scanning the stranger. The hatch opened to its expert probing. It entered, ran the tiny corridors, pausing to engage a tap and absorb power. Activity. A tiny burst of fire crackled on its shell. Tuclick engaged personal defenses. Resistance ceased. A strange rapid movement fled its presence. Tuclick followed, paused as the furtive movement slowed, ceased. The resisting unit lay still. Tuclick rolled forward, scanned. A disturbance rippled through his circuits, activated deeper memories, agitated Tuclick into reckless expenditure. The deck was smeared with a dark fluid that had nothing to do with ship wreckage. Tuclick extended a probe into it, analyzed, memories further disturbed as he scanned the configurations of the resisting unit.

Biosystem. Tuclick's systems were jolted, deeper and deeper memories were surfacing . . . ten thousand years of records . . . it triggered something in its deepest levels. Prime directive.

Contact.

A tape activated. Greetingsit said. Greetings. The biounit did not respond. Long unused scan detected ebbing function, deterioration.

In haste Tuclick extended other apparatus, gathered up the afflicted organism. Panic ran through Tuclick's systems, directives violated at basic levels. It sorted, recalculated—locked into the little ship's systems, searching—found a memory of destination—and other things, higher function memories. Tuclick absorbed, redirected power, overconsuming in the disturbance of its internal systems.

It remembered.

Directives overrode directives. A flurry of panic ran Tuclick's systems, sorted into purpose. Sublight could reach the little ship's origin point in 7.5 years. The injured organism could not be maintained—scan estimated—but a brief time. Tuclick no longer hesitated. In a burst of activity it arranged the shunt of power. The old host—Tuclick understood it now for a mere shell filled with biostuffs—lurched into hyperspace, and out again.

Power waned. The new star was still distant, at sublight. Stubbornly Tuclick kept the environment stable for the biosystem, circulating its fluids, maintaining its heat, surrounding it in atmosphere. The power ebbed steadily, no longer that of the host's, but Tuclick's own reserve, draining systems. Memories faded, the latest first, reaching back and back, until Tuclick reentered the time of his own origin. Tuclick clung to the organism the more desperately, all its purposes satisifed.

Ship.

Hunger assailed Tuclick. Directives overwhelmed hunger. That time was over. The directives that had sustained the probe this long had no power over those now engaged. Tuclick shunted power to signal, losing more memory in the effort.

The ship responded. Tuclick faded further, shunting all power to the maintenance of the organism, to opening the receiving bay, to the signal.

Life. Tuclick recognized this. Greetings, it began the message. Greetings. I have returned to—

Systems deteriorated. Tuclick abandoned the attempt, holding the organism alive until the others disengaged it, buzzing in their concern. Tuclick pulsed once in satisfaction. All power faded. The last memories went. The machinery stopped.

1979

THE DREAMSTONE

Of all possible paths to travel up out of Caerdale, that through the deep forest was the least used by Men. Brigands, outlaws, fugitives who fled mindless from shadows . . . men with dull, dead eyes and hearts which could not truly see the wood, souls so attainted already with the world that they could sense no greater evil nor greater good than their own— theywalked that path; and if by broad morning, so that they had cleared the black heart of Ealdwood by nightfall, then they might perchance make it safe away into the new forest eastward in the hills, there to live and prey on the game and on each other.

But a runner by night, and that one young and wild-eyed and bearing neither sword nor bow, but only a dagger and a gleeman's harp, this was a rare venturer in Ealdwood, and all the deeper shadows chuckled and whispered in startlement.

Eld-born Arafel saw him, and she saw little in this latter age of earth, wrapped as she was in a passage of time different than the suns and moons which blink Men so startling-swift from birth to dying. She heard the bright notes of the harp which jangled on his shoulders, which companied his flight and betrayed him to all with ears to hear, in this world and the other. She saw his flight and walked into the way to meet him, out of the soft green light of her moon and into the colder white of his; and evils which had grown quite bold in the Ealdwood of latter earth suddenly felt the warm breath of spring and drew aside, slinking into dark places where neither moon cast light.

"Boy," she whispered. He startled like a wounded deer, hesitated, searching out the voice. She stepped full into his light and felt the dank wind of Ealdwood on her face. He seemed more solid then, ragged and torn by thorns in his headlong course, although his garments had been of fine linen and the harp at his shoulders had a broidered case.

She had taken little with her out of otherwhere, and yet did take— it was all in the eye which saw. She leaned against the rotting trunk of a dying tree and folded her arms unthreateningly, no hand to the blade she wore, propped one foot against a projecting root and smiled. He looked on her with no less apprehension for that, seeing, perhaps, a ragged vagabond of a woman in outlaws' habit—or perhaps seeing more, for he did not look to be as blind as some. His hand touched a talisman at his breast and she, smiling still, touched that which hung at her own throat, which had power to answer his.

"Now where would you be going," she asked, "so recklessly through the Ealdwood? To some misdeed? Some mischief?"

"Misfortune," he said, breathless. He yet stared at her as if he thought her no more than moonbeams, and she grinned at that. Then suddenly and far away came a baying of hounds; he would have fled at once, and sprang to do so.

"Stay!" she cried, and stepped into his path a second time, curious what other venturers would come, and on the heels of such as he. "I do doubt they'll come this far. What name do you give, who come disturbing the peace of Eald?"

He was wary, surely knowing the power of names; and perhaps he would not have given his true one and perhaps he would not have stayed at all, but that she fixed him sternly with her eyes and he stammered out: "Fionn."

"Fionn." It was apt, for fair he was, tangled hair and first down of beard. She spoke it softly, like a charm. "Fionn. Come walk with me. I'd see this intrusion before others do. Come, come, have no dread of me; I've no harm in mind."

He did come, carefully, and much loath, heeded and walked after her, held by nothing but her wish. She took the Ealdwood's own slow time, not walking the quicker ways, for there was the taint of iron about him, and she could not take him there.

The thicket which degenerated from the dark heart of the Eald was an unlovely place . . . for the Ealdwood had once been better than it was, and there was yet a ruined fairness there; but these young trees had never been other than what they were. They twisted and tangled their roots among the bones of the crumbling hills, making deceiving and thorny barriers. Unlikely it was that Men could see the ways she found; but she was amazed by the changes the years had wrought—saw the slow work of root and branch and ice and sun, labored hard-breathing and scratched with thorns, but gloried in it, alive to the world. She turned from time to time when she sensed faltering behind her: he caught that look of hers and came on, pallid and fearful, past clinging thickets and over stones, as if he had lost all will or hope of doing otherwise. The baying of hounds echoed out of Caerdale, from the deep valley at the very bounds of the forest. She sat down on a rock atop that last slope, where was prospect of all the great vale of the Caerbourne, a dark tree-filled void beneath the moon. A towered heap of stones had risen far across the vale on the hill called Caer Wiell, and it was the work of men: so much did the years do with the world.