Starblood

flickering light traversing from east to west, then gone.
    He had stood here not too very long ago, watching a flock of birds settling into these trees. He had been using servo-hands then, and he had been a confused, disturbed man who had managed to cope with the world but only by ignoring certain things about it Now he was grown. Taguster had died, and he had avenged his death. And he had grown…
    Several minutes later, he realized that he had not directed Creel to close the house and board the windows. Then he smiled, remembering the man's efficiency. Creel would not have to be told.
    At last, there was no reason to delay any longer. And he was more eager than ever to begin the new life ahead. Memories could be abandoned, or anyway, wrapped and stored. They were the memories of another existence. Tonight he would be reborn. He held down the intangible lump in his throat, the wad of nostalgia that—unreasonably—threatened to rise and plague him.
    He tensed.
    He smelled the pine.
    He teleported…
    In the great main chamber of the alien ship, the cubes of mysterious green smoke hung, still on the metal threads, like the art forms of a primitive man—or of a supermodern one. The feeling of belonging rose in Timothy again, a sense of companionship he had never known anywhere before—not even when he was with Leonard Taguster. This was his home, with these people from another star—if only until his own race evolved into the creatures that time and history meant them to be.
    "
You have settled your affairs
—
the things of which we spoke before
?" the whisper asked.
    "I have," he said. He felt more at peace than ever in his life, and his even, unemotional voice was evidence of that.
    "The cube is ready."
    "I see," he said, his eye circling to the cube that rested at floor level, the smoky green within seeming to curl and move.
    "You are afraid?"
    "Somewhat."
    He realized he had spoken silently, with his telepathic ability. It was the first time he had slipped into this mode of communication as naturally as he had always used speech before.
    "Do not be afraid. Ignorance and darkness are the only things to fear. You are leaving those things behind. You are entering a world of knowledge and light."
    He entered the empty cube which rested at floor level, a circular port open in its side. The portal slid shut behind him, and the cage began to rise on the brass cable, up toward the median point between ceiling and floor where the other inhabited cells waited.
    As it rose, the air within it began to grow thick, roiling about him much like a gas. Soon the stuff filled the cube. In moments, the atmosphere was like water, so thick he could feel it, run hands through it, name a texture for it. Then it was much like syrup…
    He began to lose conscious awareness of his body, though his mind functioned on a higher plane than ever before. It was as if the mind's energy, freed completely from control of the temporal shell, could now be directed solely into conscious thought.
    At last, the inside of the cell was as solid as the walls which formed it, a brick of cloudy emerald in which he was suspended. The cube stopped rising and rested beside the others which contained these men from a distant time and place.
    "
Welcome
," a great many whispering voices said, all the same, cool and smooth like polished ice. They were friendly voices.
    He could not think what he should say, how he should react. He had been born unwanted and unloved, an object rather than a living human being. The king had sent his men to kill the baby Timothy, and he had been rescued at the last moment by others more sympathetic to human need. He had gained fame as a troublemaker while entering the years of his young adulthood. Then he had been persecuted. And now, in a strange way, he had died and been resurrected. Now, after he had left his bodily form behind, he had found a place where he was wanted and in which he might, someday, be loved.
    "
Yes,"
the voices said, cool voices, voices of a limitless people accepting him.
    "
Let's go,"
the most familiar of the whispers said. "
There's nothing more of interest here
."
    "Go? Where?"
    "To the stars. Let your mind follow in the wake of mine. I will show you how."
    Ahead: infinity. Behind: the past…
    … And maybe the future too, when the time came for mankind to know of the starship below the quaint Iowa farm, to know of the creatures who had waited so long within.
    But that was a long time from now—and the