The Farris Channel (11 page)

Rimon twined his lateral tentacles around the two flaccid ones on Sian’s left arm, and the two normal ones on the renSime’s right arm. He felt the contact with Sian’s nervous system open. Then he bent and made the necessary fifth contact, lip to lip, searching the nerve rich skin of the lips for the match that would allow his Sime senses access to the body before him.

Trusting Bruce’s trained attention not to waver from him, Rimon completely let go of his awareness of touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell, then immersed himself in the purely Sime perception of reality, the shifting, surging, billowing fields of energy generated by the incessant motion of selyn through a living nervous system.

He narrowed and refocused, letting his awareness trace the selyn flows twining up and down his patient’s arms. He zlinned the damaged tissue near Sian’s shoulder joint. The swelling he’d zlinned before was nearly gone, but some of the nerve cells controlling the muscles were dying. Some were already dead, the faint glow of selyn extinguished. He narrowed focus again to separate one cell from another, almost impossible with nerve cells.

Delri spent so much of his time in this healing mode state of awareness that it had become a restful norm for him. As he worked, he felt tension dissipate and the surrounding room disappeared from awareness, and suddenly he zlinned how the nerve canal itself was intact, but only some of the nerve cells were recovering. Sian would have to grow new tissue there or lose the use of his arm. Or maybe not.

He switched his attention to the lower spine injury that had left both legs paralyzed. The situation there was worse, but it gave him an idea.

He dismantled the contact, brought himself to awareness of his ordinary senses, thinking furiously, weighing risks he couldn’t begin to assess.

He rose and paced in front of the workbench up to the small hearth where the fire had died to embers. Bruce followed him. Rimon turned and put his back to the faint warmth. He stared at Bruce.

“You,” said Rimon to his Companion, “are still the best Companion in this Fort, the best I have ever found.”

“Why does that sound ominous?”

“Because what I have in mind will work only if you exceed even your highest standard. This will be fine, fine work. Your unwavering concentration will be even more critical than ever. The risk....” He shifted attention to Sian. “The risk is death, Sian. This would be an all-or-nothing experiment.”

The renSime pulled in a deep breath, his skin paling in time with his escalating alarm. “And the reward?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe restoring most of the use of your arm, possibly restoring some sensation to your legs. I really don’t know what will happen. Clire tried this on Garath, and you know what happened.” He watched Sian absorb that while Bruce attempted to stifle his reaction.

Garath had been a renSime from Fort Butte who suffered a full paralysis of his right arm when a building collapsed during construction. He had lost all ability to draw selyn through his right side laterals.

Xanon and the other Fort Butte channels had failed to get a transfer into Garath. Clire, with Rimon’s help, had attempted to induce healing in those nerves using a procedure she had only heard about.

Bruce said, “Delri, Garath died and you barely managed to save Clire, and that almost cost you your life.”

“I remember,” assured Rimon.

“And it took Clire nearly ten days to recover. Aipensha isn’t here to save you this time. Do you want Lexy to watch you die?”

“Lexy isn’t to be involved, no matter what. This is between Sian, me, and unavoidably, you.”

Sian said, “No. We can’t afford to risk you.”

Rimon sat down on the bed again, motioning Bruce to take a chair. “Your injury is much less severe. Clire had never watched the procedure and was caught off guard by a side effect. I zlinned what happened. I think we can use this procedure, not so intensely, and still get some results for you. It’s a judgment call, and not mine to make alone.”

“Definitely not alone,” injected Bruce glumly. “This is not a good idea.”

“Will I be less at risk in four or five days?” asked Rimon, keenly aware of Need creeping up on him as every heartbeat used up selyn while every one of Bruce’s heartbeats left the Gen’s body surging with new selyn his tissues created. Need was what being Sime was all about. Gens were a lot more complicated.

Bruce sighed but didn’t answer aloud.

Rimon asked Sian, “Are you willing to risk your life for the possible, partial, use of your arm, maybe a little improvement in the legs? Think about it for a....”

“I don’t have to think about that. I’d risk anything. My family might have other ideas, but I wouldn’t want you to tell them until it was over. They’d worry, and it would be wasted if it turns out all right. Everyone knows I’ve not much chance of surviving this.”

“Oh, but you do, Sian, you do.” Sian had four children to think about. “You could live for years in this condition, with maybe a little improvement with time.”

In great stillness, Sian confronted that vision. Utterly still for more than a minute, he did think, hard. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s not life. If you think this will work, it’s worth it to me. But it’s not worth any risk to you, Delri. I’m just not worth that.”

Rimon held the ambient nager firm and steady and just returned the renSime’s gaze, waiting silently.

Eventually, Sian took a deep breath and threw his head back to moan at the ceiling. “All right. I see your point. It’s up to me to evaluate the risk for myself, what my life would be like if I say no. I can’t say how it would be for you. Delri, what would you lose that’s so valuable you’d rather not live without it?”

“Self respect. The knowledge that I’ve done my best, used all my strength to make the world a better place. Clire...no matter if we recover her and try to save her child, Clire is dead to us. This procedure is her legacy, the legacy of her Fort. It shouldn’t die with her. It should be here for her child.”

“Then,” said Bruce, “you must bring Lexy in to monitor. Nobody else would have any chance of zlinning what you’re doing.”

Trapped by his own logic, Rimon sighed. He turned a smile to Bruce. “Agreed.”
Gens!

Sian laughed. Bruce looked bewildered then shrugged, and asked Sian, “Should I go get her?”

Sian looked at Delri. Sian had grown up under Delri’s leadership of Fort Rimon and was now in his prime, master of the weaving craft, respected among the Fort Rimon natives. In the weaving shed, his word was law as was his wife’s among the dyes. Almost half the Fort’s buying power came from selling their linen and wool blends in their special bright colors. Livestock and food didn’t bring in nearly as much.

“Yes, Bruce, go get her,” agreed Sian. His nager rang with confidence and even joy. “Delri is going to cure me.”

Delri,
thought Rimon,
is not going to live without trying.
That was as far as he could go.

They spent the wait discussing the cloth supplies that would be required for their increased population, and how much would be left over for sale to buy the items they couldn’t make for themselves. They ignored the difficulty that permanent loss of Shifron might cause. If the juncts didn’t rebuild their town, the Fort would just have to go bartering down at Turen Gap.

The discussion was getting interesting when a veritable crowd arrived. Lexy came in first followed by her Companion, Garen, whom Rimon was not happy to see. Garen was Garath’s brother and really shouldn’t be involved in a repeat of the procedure that had failed for his brother. Yet here he was at Lexy’s side, and obviously committed.

Behind them came Xanon and Maigrey making it six people and their patient crowded into a room just barely big enough for three.

“Xanon, out,” ordered Rimon with the flick of a tentacle. “If you’ve nothing to do, go rest. Bruce! Garen, watch your fields.”

Rimon grabbed Bruce’s hand, turned around and edged back into his place beside Sian, dragging his Companion along, forcing Xanon and Maigrey out of the room. Maigrey gave a sheepish shrug as she herded her protesting channel out. Finally, the door closed, leaving Lexy, Garen, Bruce and himself with the patient.

As carefully as everyone had tried to protect the renSime from the massive shifts in the fields when so many channels were crammed together, they all felt Sian’s relief as the ambient around him firmed up again under Rimon’s attention. Rimon was acutely aware of how his fields dominated any environment, even with Lexy present, and did his best to soften the effect.

Rimon noted Xanon and Maigrey lingering outside the door. He traded knowing glances with Lexy. She said, “He’s not going to leave. He heard Bruce say you’re going to try Clire’s Stitch.”

“Not exactly.”

“He’s sure nothing can be done. But I think he came to watch you die trying.”

“I won’t,” Delri told his daughter, his heir. He explained what he wanted to do, and then she had to examine Sian again.

She agreed there had been good progress over the last few hours. “It could work. But I ought to be the one to try it.”

Oh, no!
“I watched Clire do it, so I know what went wrong. Bruce wanted you here to watch it go right, to learn how to do it.” He pointed out how this was Clire’s only legacy to the Fort unless they could save her baby, which was less likely with every passing day they didn’t get her back. And that did it.

“All right. Show me how it’s done.”

“Sian? Ready?”

“Just do it. Lexy, don’t let anything happen to him.”

“Lexy,” countered Rimon. “Zlin me. Lock hard.” He felt the rhythmic life pulse of her body fall into sync with his own. “Good, but whatever happens stay clear. Bruce. Hold steady and don’t let the fields around me shift.”

Rimon took his place on the side of the bed and in one, swift, continuous move he made the five contact points and sank back into that state of non-awareness of his physical surroundings. Leaning against Bruce’s control of the ambient, he focused down into the renSime’s cells, found the nerve canals, went deeper and found the individual cells trailing tiny connectors that almost touched.

He zlinned how the cells traded energy pulses, the dimmer, dying cells blocking more than they transmitted. Clire had shown him how to use selyn to stitch those nerve cells together, bridging the gaps left by dead cells, leaving behind an invigorated cell ready to divide again. The trick, she had explained, was to make sure the cell only divided once or twice, replacing the dead nerves and no more.

Delicately, concentrating wholly on what he was doing, Rimon imagined tiny threads of selyn energy, and allowed selyn to flow into the renSime to form those imagined filaments.

At first he knew he was just imagining how the selyn he was feeding into the renSime’s system stitched the broken nerve connections together. Then he was zlinning a duplicate image of the renSime body, a hazy outline true in every detail superimposed on the physical body.

He focused on the duplicate, noting the severe gapping in the lower spine and the dim area near the left shoulder. He knew how it should zlin. He could zlin it as it should be. It was more than just imagination. It was as if he were creating a virtual image etched in selyn.

A frisson of startlement crackled behind him. In the pearly haze floated a glowing image of Solamar. “Rimon, what are you doing...oh, I...oh, Rimon!”

“You’re not here. You’re asleep,” accused Rimon.

“Pay attention!” Two tentacles gestured and Rimon’s attention snapped back to his patient.

The hazy image of the renSime’s nerves outlining his body had shimmered into mist, but as soon as Rimon’s attention focused, the image sharpened again, now brighter. A movement drew Rimon’s attention to his right. Aipensha!

A swirling sense of unreality, then confusion and doubt, followed by fear shattered Rimon’s concentration on his patient. His deceased daughter stood over his patient with him, but he knew that in reality his living daughter was holding the patient’s fields steady. His body felt her strength, and felt nothing of Aipensha.

“Concentrate!” commanded Aipensha.

“Focus!” warned Solamar sharply.

Dizzy, Rimon brought his whole attention back to the interlaced lines of throbbing energy that composed a second body for his patient. He knew what he had to accomplish. He knew how the weaver’s body should zlin. As he anticipated that result, it formed in the hazy latticework hovering over the weaver’s body.

Exhaustion threatened his grip on the fields, but Solamar stepped up behind him and urged Rimon’s tentacles to spread out, somehow lengthening to encompass the entire hazy image of the weaver’s selyn circulation. “Down now, press down, rejoin the perfect image to the body.”

With the last of his strength, Rimon kneaded the two images into a single whole. Everything wavered, but he kept pushing, and then something let go and he was falling.

He fell forever, too terrified to scream.

* * * * * * *

Solamar Grant jackknifed upright in Rimon’s bed with a gasp and sat amid his blankets dragging air into his lungs, feeling the chill dry the sweat from his brow.

The fire was banked, the room lit only by bright Gen nager. Kahleen was curled up in a blanket on the settee near the hearth, sound asleep. Gens had to sleep more than Simes, and usually slept more soundly. Grant let himself pant for a while, assembling the memory of the dream.