Dark Companion by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre ]
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-7434-9898-4
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises

DREAD COMPANION

ONE

But a few days ago (I shall never trust the divisions of time again and say with any certainty, "This is a day; that is a week; we face a year!") I was shown some very ancient tapes, copied, I was assured, from ones that had been made originally on fabled Terra. And some aspects of the information they stored were so like my own experiences that I could only believe that those who had first recorded them, back in a mist of time so great that I could not count the planet years—any more than one can truly give sum to the number of stars—had followed a trail like that which chance and my own stubbornness set me.

Had I not invincible proof of what had happened to me and several others, I might be judged now to be spinning some comet-hair tale for the astonishment of the credulous. But this much is true, and records prove it. I was born on Chalox in the planet and space-time year of 2405 After Flight. I was between sixteen and seventeen years old, planet age, when I left Chalox to land on Dylan. I am still no more than a year older—yet the year is now 2483!

Time! Sometimes, when I look squarely at those dates and think how those years fled for me, it brings back such fears that I must busy myself feverishly about some task, putting all my strength and thoughts into it, until the surge of panic that chokes me lessens. Were it not for Jorth, whom I can reach out and touch, who shares my burden, I might— But of that I shall not think at all—now or ever!

As I say, I was born on Chalox. My father was Rhyn Halcrow, a Survey scout. He was of Talgrinnian stock, which means Second Wave, Terran outspread. My mother was a Forsmanian, of a trading family. They were human, too, but of the First Wave outspread, and had mutated from what is believed to be the original Terran.

Their marriage was a planet one as is usual for a man in the services, and it lasted three Chalox years. After the ceremonial break-bond, my father was assigned to a new outwave exploratory pattern. He left my mother with the excellent life pension of a planet wife and her freedom to contract another tie if she wished—or if her father wished, for the Forsmanians are strictly family oriented, with the eldest male making the major decisions for the clan.

Within a matter of months, my mother did take another husband, one of her cousins, thus keeping her first grant-for-marriage dowry strictly within the clan, in what her people considered a very practical and equitable arrangement.

As for me, I was already established in the crèche for Service children at Lattmah. The break was complete. I never saw either of my parents again. That I was a girl presented a minor problem, since the majority of such cross-births are male and the offspring trained from childhood for government service.

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