The Forerunner Factor by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781451638080
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2012-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

THE END

FORERUNNER:

THE SECOND VENTURE

1

This was scraped land, laid bare to heat-roasted rock, lacking a single lift of withered leaf or stem to break the unending stretch of gray-blue stone seamed with darker cracks. Still a cloak-covered body crouched above a winding fissure, one that ran from horizon to horizon across the desert world. Only in that fissure itself was there movement, a thick, ever-forward lapping—not of liquid, but rather heaving sand, swirling slowly along.

There was no sun to beat and blast this wasteland, nothing but open sky overhead. Open until the eyes reached above far enough to mark that screen of haze lidding this simmering pot of a planet.

The cloak shifted a fraction. Within the cave made of its folds there was small movement. The soft touch of tight curled antennae, the sharp prick of a claw against pillar of arm.

“Think you I have been a fool, my Zass?” The voice was not a whisper or a murmur, rather came as a croak from dried lips, the words hard shaped by a mouth as moistureless as the land. “Ah, Zass—there is folly, and there is choice—against that which is worse.”

The mound of cloak heaved as the wearer it completely covered straightened, lifted her head to peer through the opening between two folds at that sliding of what was not water yet still passed walls of naked stone.

“Folly . . .” There was a bitter tinge to that single word. Even as she admitted to so much, another emotion arose, stark as the land, clear as the rock of any trace of life. Fear had moved her, brought her into this furnace of death, a greater fear than she had known before.

Again the cloak rippled. Simsa closed fingers tightly about that possession which, living, she would never discard. It was not a staff, not long enough for that—rather more a rod of office such as headmen of river towns in the world she had known might carry on occasions of state. Even under the folds of the cloak it shone—the disc at its head, the two curved horns on guard at the sides. Sun and two moons, she had once been told.

“Thorn!” Her tone made a spat oath of that name. The sound seemed to please her, for she said it once again with more force, a further unleashing of fury. “Thorn!” She did not call. Could any voice reach from world to world, lift upward through sky to the emptiness of space—wing from world to ship, ship to world, and bring it to the right ears?

It was Thorn who had introduced her to them—those cool-voiced, veiled-eyed men to whom he had shown respect, whom she had suspicioned from first meeting. She who was—

Again her shoulders shifted. Paws patted lightly against her firmly planted forearm, a small, sharp-snouted face turned up to hers. Those other thoughts, so alien and yet meant to please, to reassure, nibbled at the edge of her mind.

“I am Simsa . . .” She said that slowly with a space of a breath before each word.

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