"I haven't seen him in a long time. I'm sure he wouldn't listen."

"I'm sorry," said Michael, staring down into his coffee. "I was way out of order, suggesting something like that. Forget it, huh?"

"You working on the Blanchen thing?"

"Only peripherally."

"I see. I'm sorry."

There was a long silence, and then Michael gulped his coffee and stood.

"Well, I've got to be getting back to work," he said. "I'll see you in eleven days, my place. Sunrise. Right?"

"Right."

"Thanks for the coffee."

Morwin nodded and raised his hand in a half-salute. Michael closed the door behind him.

For a long while, Morwin stared at the boy's frozen dream. Then his gaze fell upon his coffee cup. He watched it until it rose into the air and dashed itself against the wail.

Heidel von Hymack stared down at the girl and returned her faint smile. About nine years old, he guessed.

"... And this is a Claanite," he explained, adding a stone to tile row beside her on the counterpane. "I picked it up a little while back on the world called Claana. I've polished it a lot since then, but I didn't do any grinding. That's its natural shape."

"What is Claana like?" she asked him.

"Mostly water," he said. "It's got a big blue sun in a sort of pinkish sky and eleven small moons that are always doing something interesting. There are no continents, just thousands of islands all over the place. Its people are batrachians, and they spend most of their lives in the water. They do not have any real cities that anybody knows of. They are migrants and traders of sorts. They trade things they find in the oceans for knives and duralines and things like that. This stone comes from their seas. I found it on a beach. It gets its shape from all that grinding against sand and other stones while it is being washed ashore. The trees there spread out for great distances--and they push extra roots out over the ground to reach the water.