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

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 creche 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.

Unfortunately, I inherited my mother's sex but my father's spirit and
interests. I would have been supremely happy as a scout, a seeker-out of
far places and strange sights. My favored reading among the tapes were the
accounts of exploration, trading on primitive planets, and the like.


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Perhaps I might have fitted in with the free traders. But among them women
are so few and those so guarded and cherished that I might have been even
more straitly prisoned on one of their spaceports, seeing my mate only at
long intervals, bound by their law to remarry again if his ship was
reported missing for more than a stated time.

As it was, I did what I could to prepare myself for a possible escape from
Chalox. I became a keeper of records, adept in several techniques,
including that of implanted recall. And I had my name down - Kilda c' Rhyn
- on every possible off-planet listing as soon as the authorities allowed
me to register.

That no opportunity presented itself began to worry me. I was less than a
year from the time when I could no longer stay at the creche but would
arbitrarily be fitted into any niche those in charge might select. They
might even return me to my mother's clan, and such was not for me. So, in
desperation, I appealed, at last, to the one among my teachers whom I
thought the most sympathetic.

Lazk Volk was a mutant crossbreed. The mixing of races in his case had
resulted in certain deformities of body that even the most advanced
plasta-surgery could not correct. But his mind showed such a potential for
learning and teaching that he had never left the creche. Through his vast
tape library and the visits of scouts and other far travelers to his
quarters, he had gained knowledge far outstripping any local memory bank
except the government one.

Because in some small ways we were alike, each yearning for what was denied
us, Lazk Volk and I became friends. I had served for four years as recorder
and librarian for him when I voiced my fear of being without a future, save