The Farris Channel (10 page)

“Things weren’t good here before we arrived?”

Snow spackled them while Solamar listened intently to Rimon’s summary of events leading up to Clire’s Killing Losa. “That explains a lot. Clire was a Farris. Losa was a good Companion for me, but not up to what a pregnant Farris would need.”

“So you see, Solamar, we must hold new elections for a Fort Council to include Tanhara.”

“I hope Tanhara can help unify these groups.”

“We must become not seven Forts, but just Fort Rimon, one united community.”

“Rushing to hold elections won’t create that unity. We should hold elections when we’ve finished digging privies, wells, and post holes before the hard freeze. Right now, no one from Tanhara would know who to vote for, and the rest don’t know who from Tanhara to vote for.”

“That’s what I thought when there were just three Forts here. It didn’t work, and things have become worse.”

Solamar took a chance. “Seven is a better number for this than three, more idealistic.”

“A number can’t be idealistic!”

“No?” He conceded with a shrug. “Perhaps not.”

Rimon zlinned him, and Solamar dropped his showfield and opened himself to the Farris perceptions.

Then Solamar zlinned the Farris back, and was treated to a view of the depths of that formidable channel’s soul.

Rimon laughed as he disengaged their fields. “Well, perhaps a number can be idealistic. Stranger things have happened today!” He turned to go back down the stair, then paused. “My father, Zeth Farris, saw ghosts too. They say it drove him to his death.”

Solamar felt the apprehension in the man. He stepped forward and gripped the bony Farris shoulders. “You are forgiven by your ghosts. You are not imagining that. You couldn’t have done anything else with Clire under the circumstances. We have to prevent such a circumstance from developing again. What began in Fort Freedom with your grandfather, is vitally important to the world. We will not fail.” That is my mission, thought Solamar.

“You believe in ghosts,” Rimon accused.

“Yes. Only...I’d rather that weren’t generally known. No one in Tanhara knows.” He’d been sworn to secrecy about what he knew, what he could do, before he’d been trained, and until now he’d never broken that oath.

“You believe in life after death?” asked Rimon.

“...uuuhhh...yes.”

“It really is real,” he half asked, half begged.

“Yes. We were not hallucinating. They came because you were hurting so very much and they love you. They had to tell you that they know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes. And they did that. So they won’t come again.”

“Probably not.”

“Only probably?

“I can’t foretell the future.”

“That would be a handy skill.”

“Probably not.”

Rimon laughed, a short, harsh, bark. “Good point. I don’t want to know how I’m going to die, or when.”

“It will be at the right time. That much we know.”

“Do we?”

“Yes.”

“You’re positive.”

“Yes.”

Rimon scrutinized him in every way. “I believe you. I don’t know why. But I do.”

“Good. You won’t discuss it with anyone else?”

“No. No, I won’t.”

It had the weight of a solemn oath. “I’ll sleep better knowing that.”

Rimon nodded slowly, still studying Solamar. “Take your turn in the room first. I’ll catch a few hours right after dawn. I left Bruce tending a renSime who may be permanently crippled from his injuries. He’s one of our best weavers. And I have to see to that Freebander we saved.”

Rimon picked his way down the snow covered stairs, kicking the treads free as he went. Solamar followed.

Zeth Farris had died seeing ghosts.
Who would have thought!
Now he’d introduced Rimon to the idea ghosts were real.
I’ve made a grave mistake here already.
But dissembling to a Farris would only make things worse.

There was no one else in the room, though from the remains of a solid meal scattered across the sideboard, it seemed there had been staff here recently. This was where the Companions brought the channels to recover after a difficult functional, so there was usually food for the Gens who had to wait while their channels shook with fatigue.

Rimon met Maigrey’s eyes and offered silent apology that he’d asked one of Fort Rimon’s most diligent Companions to work with Xanon, a channel with too much ego and almost no skill.

Rimon ignored Xanon, flung his cloak onto a hook and stomped his boots free of snow. “Good. I talked to Solamar. He’s that Tanhara channel who helped me on the wall. He’ll take over here when I leave later.”

Xanon’s opinion of that was likewise clear before he said, “I can take that shift.”

Rimon had always responded to Xanon’s remarks with detailed reasons, but he now knew that no explanation would convince Xanon that he wasn’t half as good a channel as Solamar, nor that Rimon could know that about Solamar after so brief acquaintance.

“Thank you, but Val has recorded the shift schedule and has sent Kahleen to get Solamar to eat. Maigrey, is Bruce still with Tuzhel?” Rimon zlinned Bruce’s towering Gen presence near the end of the long hall, but no details. The Gen was concentrating deeply on his work.

“No, he finished doing what he could with Tuzhel’s sores and went to sit with Sian who’s right across the hall.”

“Good. I’ll see to Sian first, then I’ll have a long talk with Tuzhel.”

“There’s no point, Rimon!” said Xanon. “He’s a Raider! He must be from Gen Territory. He barely speaks Simelan, and wanted to Kill Bruce. We had to tie him to his bed! He’s nothing but a wild animal.”

Maigrey nodded. “He is from Gen Territory. His parents were Gen. That’s why he speaks Genlan! His Simelan isn’t all that bad. It’s just accented.”

“Did he say how old he is?” asked Rimon.

“No, but he says he’s Killed three times. He’s a little vague on elapsed time.”

“You see?” said Xanon. “We shouldn’t waste precious resources on this one.”

“Xanon,” instructed Rimon, “Tuzhel is a person, not an animal. If we can save him, we will. Policy.”

“He’ll betray us to the Raiders first chance he gets.”

“He might. Though, if we don’t give him every chance, we’ll have betrayed ourselves. The Church of the Unity may not be a dominant force in this Fort as it was in Fort Freedom, but it represents our origins and its founder began adult life as a Freeband Raider. Then he helped my grandfather discover how to channel.”

Rimon remembered the moment when Solamar had looked at him in the underground shelter as they prepared to attempt a transfer for this Raider. Never for one instant had Solamar considered
not
trying to help Tuzhel. It was not that the Tanhara channel was resisting the temptation to let the Raider die, but that he felt no such temptation. Maigrey and Bruce felt the same way and none of them were adherents to the Church of the Unity.

“Xanon, go check with Val for your schedule. I’m going to look in on Sian before talking to Tuzhel.”

“Sian will never recover use of his left arm, or his legs either,” declared Xanon. He wasn’t glad about it, but it was as if an injury like that somehow diminished the value of the man. “Maigrey, let’s see what Val has decided now.”

Rimon tossed Maigrey a sorrowful look at having assigned her to Xanon. When the door closed, he took an apple from the sideboard and poured himself some tea, waiting for his nerves to settle after exposure to Xanon’s abrasive selyn fields. He couldn’t identify why the Fort Butte channel set his teeth on edge, but clearly it was mutual.
A lot of the Fort Butte people are like that!
Maybe it was that the Church of the Unity hadn’t survived in Fort Butte. That made him wonder about Fort Tanhara.

Carrying his tea and munching his apple, Rimon walked down the corridor of the infirmary’s second floor, zlinning patients in the rooms on either side, watching the various channels, some of whom he hardly knew, work with the selyn fields around the wounded, spurring their healing.

Usually, most of the first floor was offices, but now they were using all but his own office for patients. Val had commandeered his office for her big schedule board and they were running supply logistics out of there too.

He found Bruce in Sian’s room at the end of the second floor hall.

The infirmary rooms were barely big enough for a narrow bed, a couple of chairs for the channel-Companion pairs working on the patient, a counter with a pitcher and basin, and normally well stocked cabinets. Tonight, the medicinal supplies were dangerously low, and the counters littered with used bandages. Soiled bedding was piled in the corridor, and the trash bin held scraps of ripening food, and bits of bloody refuse. A candle basket overflowed with candle stubs to be melted down for reuse.

“Sian,” greeted Rimon.

“Delri, I was hoping you’d come by. That’s why I kept Bruce here. Bait.”

“You know I can find him from the other end of the flax fields.”

“If he was mine, he’d never get that far away!”

“Great,” observed Bruce. “Now I’ve got Simes fighting over me! I must be very skilled at sowing strife.” Bruce tried for a glum nageric effect. It didn’t work.

The two Simes shared a chuckle. Then Sian said, “No kidding Delri. You’re in Need.”

“Not much,” Bruce answered for him. “Only about two days. He hit Turnover the morning of the attack.”

Turnover was the point, halfway through the month, when a Sime had used up half the selyn taken in that month’s transfer. It was often accompanied by an alarming, sinking sensation, and always followed by the increasing awareness of life trickling away, of death approaching, of the Need for more selyn.

Rimon moved to where Bruce sat in one of the polished hardwood chairs. “Sian, we’re going to make a long, slow, deep examination of your injuries and see if we can relieve some of that paralysis.”

“Just give me my arm back. We can build me a loom that doesn’t require feet.”

Weaving was his art, his pride, and other than his children, his greatest joy. He was married to the master dyer of the Fort, a woman who had borne him four children. For him, life and weaving were all of one piece.

Rimon leaned on Bruce’s fields. The Gen felt the nageric shift and brought his attention to focus on Rimon as Rimon focused on Sian. Rimon smoothly supplied the nageric support for Sian as Bruce withdrew. For a moment the renSime didn’t even notice. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I never believe it when you two do that.”

Grinning back and nagerically accepting the compliment, Rimon moved to the bedside and hitched one hip onto the edge of the bed, reaching for Sian’s arms. “Let’s see how much progress you’ve made.”

“Not much. You got one transfer into me, but I don’t think it’ll work again.”

“It wasn’t fun, I know,” Rimon finished the thought as he slid his hand under the flaccid arm, cradling the elbow. “Oddly enough your laterals aren’t much affected by this injury.”

A Sime took in selyn through the lateral tentacles that normally lay sheathed along the sides of the arms. Those tentacles were almost all nerve with little muscle. They were protected during a transfer grip by the strong, dextrous handling tentacles.

Rimon extended his handling tentacles to secure the grip, and pressed just so on the reflex node, forcing the renSime’s laterals out of their sheaths. That wouldn’t have worked if the paralysis were total. “Just relax and let me zlin your tissues.”