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there've always been Wanderers,” Doctor Meade agreed, puffing on his cigar. “But it's perfectly natural. What's so strange about that?”

Five
    The morning was warm and sunny. The dew hadn't been baked off the weeds yet. The sky was a mild, hazy blue, not yet heated up to blazing incandescence. That would come later, as the sun climbed toward its zenith. A faint breeze stirred the cedars that grew in a line along the slope behind the immense stone building. The cedars cast pools of shade; they were responsible for the name Shady House.
    Shady House overlooked the town proper. A single road twisted up the rise to the flat surface where the building stretched out. The grounds were carefully tended. Flowers and trees, and a long wood fence that formed a protecting square. Patients could be seen lounging around, sitting on benches, chairs, even stretched out on the warm ground, resting. There was an air of peace and quietude about the hospital. Some place in its depths Doctor Meade was working. Probably down in his littered office, with his microscope and slides and x-rays and chemicals.
    Mary crouched in a concealed hollow, just beyond the line of towering cedars. The hard soil had been scooped out by shovels when Shady House was built. Where she sat she couldn't be seen by anyone at the House. The cedars and the wall of rock and earth cut the view off sharply. Spread out beneath her, and around her on three sides, was the valley. And beyond that, the eternal ring of mountains, blue and green, tipped with faint hazy white. Silent and unmoving.
    “Go on,” Mary said. She shifted a little, tucked her slim legs under her, and made herself more comfortable. She was listening intently, trying not to miss a single word.
    “It was pure chance,” the bee continued. Its voice was thin and faint, almost lost in the stirring early-morning breeze that rustled through the cedars. It was perched on the leaf of a flower, close to the girl's ear. “We happened to be scouting in that area. No one saw him go in. All at once he came out, and we dived on him. I wish there had been more of us; he doesn't often come so far this way. He was actually over the line.”
    Mary was deep in thought. The sunlight glinted on her black hair, shiny and heavy around her neck. Her dark eyes sparkled as she asked. “Have you been able to tell what he's doing in there?”
    “Not very well. He's set up some kind of interference around the whole place. We can't get close. Have to depend on secondary information. Unreliable, as you know.”
    “You think he's assembling defensive units? Or—”
    “Or worse. He may be nearing some kind of overt stage. He's built a lot of containers. Of various sizes. There's a certain irony in this. The scouts we've sent in have died in the interference zone. He's collected their corpses every day and used them for feed. This amuses him.”
    Automatically, Mary reached out her small shoe and crushed a black grass-spider that was hurrying by. “I know,” she said slowly. “After I left the game yesterday, he golemed the clay I was using. That's a bad sign. He must feel he's gaining or he wouldn't try it on my clay. He knows the risk. Clay gathered by others is unstable. And I must have left some kind of imprint.”
    “It's probably true that he has a minor advantage,” the bee answered. “He's a tireless worker. Nevertheless, he displayed overt fear when we attacked him. He's still vulnerable. And he knows it.”
    Mary pulled a blade of grass loose and thoughtfully chewed it between her white teeth. “Both his figures attempted to escape. One came very close. It ran directly toward me, in the station wagon. But I didn't dare stop.”
    “Who is this man?” the bee asked. “This person from outside. It's unique, someone coming through the barrier. You think he might be imitation? Something projected out, then brought in to appear as an external factor? So far, he doesn't really seem to have made any