Forerunner Foray

Time was a very malleable dimension for the late author, Andre Norton. In "Forerunner Foray" (1973) her heroine, Ziantha twists and turns through multiple chambers of time as though crawling deeper and deeper into the curling interior of a nautilus shell. When she reaches time's claustrophobic center, Ziantha dies, is reborn, dies, and is reborn, all the while struggling to return to the only world she has known. As a child on the luxury world of Korwar, Ziantha was rescued from an intergalactic refugee-camp-turned-slum called the Dipple. A member of the all-powerful Guild (Norton's version of the Mafia) discovered that the girl had supernormal talent, including the ability to 'read' objects, and he trains her up as a thief. As the book opens, Ziantha has broken into the apartment of High Lord Jucundus, loaded to the gills with high-tech equipment and, of course, her own esper abilities. She psychometrizes (reads) the microrecordings that she was sent to find and is about to leave the apartment, when she is almost felled by a psychic demand for her attention. It is a dusty lump of clay on Lord Jucundus's knick-knack table. Ziantha resists the urge to steal it, but the next morning she returns to a park next to the apartment building and apports (psychically transports) the ugly little object into her possession. Her Guild masters discover Ziantha's extra-curricular thievery, and after their initial anger they become intrigued by the strange object which has psychically bonded itself to their errant apprentice. Buried within the clay is a Forerunner artifact called a focus-stone. The alien artifact has an agenda of its own. It wishes to be reunited with its 'twin' and leads Ziantha and her masters to a burned-off planet, then hurtles the psychic back through time, into the body of a war slave who has been chained into her captor's tomb! As she struggles to breathe, Ziantha-now-Vintra realizes that the corpse beside her is moving. Another psychic has been dragged through time by the focus-stone and dumped into the body of the deceased enemy general. Ris Lantee, son of Shan Lantee of "Storm over Warlock" and "Ordeal in Otherwhere" fame is the valiant hero of "Forerunner Foray." He suffers an even worse fate than Ziantha in that he is transferred into the body of the dead warrior and ruler, Turan and must spent a large part of the novel keeping the corpse reanimated while he and Ziantha quest for the second focus-stone. Ris-now-Turan is finally in such bad shape that Ziantha must make a solo quest further back into the burned-out planet's history in order to recover the second focus stone. Now her ordeal truly begins. This SF novel is fairly standard Norton except for her heroine's powerful to-the-death struggle in an ancient storm-wracked seahold. Ziantha tries to recover the alien artifact that will return her to her own time while her new alter-ego, D'Eyree attempts to save a whole world. I think Norton realized what a pow

Ziantha, another of Andre Norton's outsider characters with a wild talent, was working for Lady Yasa, a Salariki Veep in the Guild, when she was compelled to aport a Forerunner artifact. If the sentence above means anything to you then settle back, you are going to love Forerunner Foray. If it sounds like so much gobbilty gook then you are in a for a bigger treat-- welcome to the far future world of Andre Norton. Humanity has spread out to the stars like fluff blown from a dandelion head. Terrans have met alien races, been exposed to alien suns, and mutated until it is hard to say what the original stock was. Ziantha, the heroine of Forerunner Foray, is Terran to the eye, but she has a wild talent that makes her both feared and valued. She has psychic abilities that first draw her to a chance seen artifact in a room where she is engaged in some highly illegal activity. Unable to forget the item, she later aports it from the apartment with the aid of an alien "pet", kept by Ziantha's employer, much as Ziantha herself is kept. This release of power is noted by a prowling sensitive. This event is noted by Lady Yasa's superiors and she is warned to disappear for a while. This fits in very well with the Salariki's own plans for Ziantha. This book gives a closer look at the underworld of the future, including the mysterious Waystar, an outlaw hideout. There is also an interesting adventure story as Ziantha and her puruser are drawn into the past of the source of the Forerunner artifact. There are some darker themes played out in this story but it's also good space opera and better than average Norton, which is very good indeed.

Don't confuse this book with _Forerunner_ (public libraries sometimes mix them up). They're not part of the same series, in that they don't deal with the same characters or even the same planets, just the same universe. _Forerunner Foray_ is actually 3rd in the Shan Lantee series (see _Storm Over Warlock_, _Ordeal in Otherwhere_), although it won't be apparent until you're well along in the book."Forerunner" is a term used to refer to long-dead civilizations, where 'long' is measured in millions of years rather than millenia. Forerunner artifacts are sometimes of immense value, particularly examples of technology that outstrip that of the current galactic civilization. In this universe, archeologists have to compete not only with legitimate government agencies over custody of their finds, but with the Guild, that shadowy, loose organization of the Galaxy's criminals.The evening our story begins, Ziantha, a Guild Esper, ventures into the office of one of the many power-brokers who reside on the pleasure-planet Korwar. She's not there even to touch any of the valuable artwork - just to use her talent to identify specific computer memory cubes in his safe, and to copy their contents into her own memory without touching them, or leaving any trace. But while her defenses are down for the transfer, she is drawn to one of the artifacts - the ugly lump of rock on the coffee table, which is more than it seems.Ziantha's superior, the Lady Yasa, organizes an expedition to trace the artifact back to its origins, during which Ziantha is drawn into its past.This book provides a different view of life on Korwar (the starting point for several of Norton's science fiction novels), more Forerunner civilization(s), and a closer look at the Guild.Some background information, for flavor: Korwar's capital city, during the Council/Confederation war mentioned in other books (e.g. _Dark Piper_) was the site of a refugee camp. After the war, those whose worlds had been destroyed (or traded away over the peace table), were trapped there, so it became the Dipple, a huge slum blighting the otherwise serene face of Korwar. Troy Horan (_Catseye_) and Niall Renfro (_Judgement on Janus_) were of the first generation, brought there as refugee children; Ziantha is of the next generation, born there.Ziantha's superior, Lady Yasa, is an example of the interesting supporting cast. She identified Ziantha, then a street child on begging detail, as a potential sensitive, and rescued her from the Dipple. One of the few high-ranking females in the Guild, she operates behind a respectable (and quite real) cover as the operator of a powerful Salariki trading firm. (Did I mention that Yasa is a feline Salarika rather than a human? :) Aliens have crooks too. Equal opportunity organization, the Guild.)If you like this sidelight on the Guild, you might want to try _The Zero Stone_, whose protagonist is the son of a respected Guild fence and appraiser.