"Andre Norton - Dread Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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Dread Companion

Copyright ┬й, 1970, by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc.

1

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 contact
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.