The Farris Channel (21 page)

“Yes, but nothing happened.”

Solamar grinned. “Exactly what I’d hoped for. Here, now take the belt off and we’ll test it this way.”

Rimon slipped the belt off, set it on the bed, then repeated the functional. This time, as Rimon got deeply into the functional, his form separated from his physical body and started to move. Solamar stopped soaking up the excess selyn, and grabbed Rimon before he could fall sideways.

Bruce’s alarm abated when Rimon’s eyes opened and focused on his Companion. Rimon gasped, “That was just like this morning, only you stopped it.”

“Now put the belt on and we’ll do it again.”

Predictably, Rimon wasn’t able to leave his body through the charged barrier of the patterned gemstones.

With only a very few repetitions, Rimon gained confidence and Solamar prayed he had done the right thing. Surely, the mere presence of that belt in Rimon’s drawer was enough of a hint for anyone with a brain.

By the time Solamar had finished explaining, Rimon had edged back from the conviction that he was losing his mind and regained confidence in his ability to work.

Then they split up, Solamar to meet Kahleen and work as senior channel on duty for the rest of the night. Rimon and Bruce would try for what rest they could get.

No doubt,
thought Solamar,
they’ll talk all night, and Rimon will grill me on issues I don’t want to discuss.

Sure enough, just before sunrise Rimon showed up, wearing the belt. Bruce followed struggling to stay awake.

Before Rimon could send Solamar and Kahleen to rest, Oberin stuck her head in the door, holding it against a frigid morning wind and yelled, “Solamar! Fort Hope! The first of them almost here. Delri! Get ready.”

The first Fort Hope refugees to arrive were the most seriously injured, then came the ill and an assortment of transfer related problems caused by the inadequate channeling staff. Rimon worked tirelessly right up to his scheduled transfer with Bruce.

Then the two of them spent a few hours secluded in one of the best insulated rooms in the infirmary building.

Solamar’s only clue that the transfer had gone well, but the Postsyndrome had been devastating was when he saw Rimon in the dining hall afterwards. The Farris’s fields were a glory to behold, but his face looked ten years older. Though he’d just had a great transfer, he was shoving his food around on his plate without interest, barely containing the pall of his bereavement.

As more Fort Hope people arrived, Solamar worked the shift opposite Rimon’s, crossing paths with him just long enough to brief him on patients. At every opportunity, he asked, “Is the belt still working?”

Rimon always brushed him off with, “Seems to be. Haven’t had a problem yet.”

“We have to talk,” Solamar would insist. “I have more to teach you.” And Rimon would shrug that off.

Then Solamar’s transfer drew near and Solamar’s attention inexorably focused on his own Need and on the unfamiliar Gen who would serve that Need this month.

Kahleen stuck to his side day and night. As he had come to know her better, he trusted her more and more, leaned on her steady field during channeling functions, and came to see the world through her eyes.

Her personality was not like Bruce’s. She couldn’t play at being a piece of the furniture. She would interject a comment, lose focus on the fields, grin fetchingly and resume. Her field work rarely drifted far enough to affect the job. She was just always interacting with everyone.

She had the same enormous selyn production and deft, sensitive field interaction that Bruce had. When she meshed fields with Solamar, he felt laved in soothing balm. Bruce’s touch never did that to him. Kahleen had been Clire’s Companion since Clire had arrived from Fort Intalace. Before that she’d been trained by the Farris sisters.

Though Kahleen hadn’t known Clire all her life, they had become friends. More, Kahleen had always believed no Farris could ever go junct. Then she’d witnessed Clire’s Kill and the death of Aipensha.

Kahleen had been as busy as Solamar, working beyond exhaustion, and even when they had a short respite before Fort Hope had arrived, Kahleen had kept her attention away from her own grief. Solamar knew they both had to face it.

As their first transfer together approached, Solamar began talking to Kahleen about Losa.

He’d known Losa only since he’d arrived in Fort Tanhara, bereft and alone, and more than a little desperate. She had saved his life. She’d had a great husband, three children, and two dogs and a cat. They had welcomed Solamar into their family.

He warned Kahleen, “I’ll be inconsolable after transfer.”

“Me too. There’s no future, only the present.”

He nodded. “That’s about how I’m looking at things. It’s just that I know that’s not true. My Companion in Tanhara had two children who have survived. They’ve been adopted by a Tanhara neighbor. I visited them briefly yesterday. They had children from five Forts crammed into their tiny half room of one small house, playing
Zeor
, a ring toss game someone had carved for them. I relearned a valuable lesson.

“Every time one of them missed a toss, the others would chant, ‘Do it again. You’ll do better this time.’

“Kahleen, I’ve been searching for the future for quite a while and missing my target just like.”

He plastered a grin onto his face. “Let’s ‘do it again’ and ‘do better this time.’ Let’s find the future together.”

She answered with a smile that lit her nager like a beacon. “I’d like that. Clire isn’t coming back. This transfer will prove that to me. Then there’ll be a future.”

“You’re such a young, beautiful woman. I’ve zlinned the hopeful interest of so many of Fort Rimon’s men, but I don’t know if you have a steady Postsyndrome partner.”

“I doubt I’ll be in the mood for sex this time, no matter how good a transfer you take from me.”

“I don’t have the draw speed or capacity of a Farris.”

“I know, and I’m used to the Farrises. Even Clire couldn’t Kill me in her current state, if she’s even still alive. I’ll have more than enough selyn for you.”

“You already do,” agreed Solamar, wanting that selyn with a proprietary greed. “I understand that in Fort Rimon, transfer partners don’t usually form sexual liaisons.”

“Oh, but it does happen.” She considered him critically. “You’re asking me, aren’t you?”

“I’m asking if you’d consider it.”

“It seemed to me you were becoming more interested in Lexy before she left.”

“I had noticed her. She hadn’t noticed me.”

“She noticed you. Told me so flat out. She’ll be back before our next transfer, but you two aren’t in phase for your transfers. She wouldn’t be interested when you are.”

“Is it....” He just didn’t know enough of the customs in this Fort. “Would she find it um, awkward if you and I spent a few days together?”

“Oh, I doubt that. And neither would I.” She laughed at his relief. “I take it where you come from, people consider sex a matter for exclusivity?”

“Usually,” he agreed with some relief, though that had not been the custom in Fort Faraway nor Fort Tanhara.

Her delight with him surfaced. “So let’s spend this Postsyndrome together, even if we only cry on each others’ shoulders and talk about the lovers we’ve buried. Maybe next time you can be with Lexy. She’ll give you a chance, I’m pretty sure. If not, well, I just might be available next month too.” The sadness in that was palpable.

The transfer was better than Solamar had thought it could be. Because she was used to serving channels with such exaggerated speed and sensitivity, he knew he couldn’t hurt her, so he just relaxed and let his body do what it would, and was astonished at the increase in his own speed and capacity.

Kahleen was left with a warm glow of satisfaction just as solid as his own. With time, they could become a match.

He knew that come Turnover, he would begin to fear something would happen to snatch this gorgeous new future away from him, but during the first few days post transfer, he was just happy to have found such a Gen. They spent the time together, talking and crying for all those lost.

Solamar had to restrain himself from telling her the whole truth about himself. One day he might, even if she were the only one in Fort Rimon to know it all.

“Yes. Taller than you. He had a sister who was a Companion. I want this baby so much.”

By this time Garen had dismounted and taken up position as Lexy’s Companion, watching Rimon absorb this news. Garen noted the growing crowd. “Where’s Bruce?”

“In his office trying to catch up. We expect BanSha’s changeover soon, though he’s showing no signs I can zlin. Bruce is helping Val and Benart make sure all the possible Companions for him have the necessary training.”

To Lexy he added, “The Fort Hope people are grand.” He gestured at the walls, “They have carpenters, artisans, and foresters, and metal tools we’ve sorely lacked. Four new houses have already been started. Bekka, Tuzhel and BanSha have organized a
Zeor
tournament among the younger children and it’s introduced the Hope families to everyone very quickly. You were right how short they were of channels. We’re managing, but we’d looked forward to adding you to the schedule.”

“I should have sent a message about the baby, but I just couldn’t. It might not...I know the odds, but I loved him and I’m not sorry I’m having his child.”

Rimon met Garen’s eyes again. “We’ll manage that too. Meanwhile, your mission was a great success. The kiln has been working overtime since your message. We should have enough vermin proof jugs for the grain. The Fort Hope people are still camped in tents, but in a few days we’ll have more sleeping space. They even have stonemasons. Their craftspeople have survived, and they’re doing things we didn’t have the skilled people for. We’re going to be all right, Lexy, and so is my grandchild.”

In that first greeting, he didn’t mention the internal strife that had been tearing Fort Rimon to shreds, nor any of the bad news coming back from the scouts watching Shifron.

Lexy’s triumph was well celebrated by all of Fort Hope and Fort Rimon’s original people plus most of Fort Unity and Fort Veritt. There were enough people at the party that evening that Rimon could reasonably hope Lexy wouldn’t notice it was only “most” not “all.”

The party had been planned to celebrate hanging the gates, but now it was also in Lexy’s honor, both for her bringing in the food and for the hope of her pregnancy.

A large troop of young Church of the Unity children under the direction of Bekka, BanSha and Tuzhel, put on a play depicting the cooperative effort to deconstruct the old wall, move it, and reconstruct it around the larger circumference. Someone had taken detailed notes about every mistake that had been made during the procedure and the children were merciless in recounting every painfully embarrassing moment the adults had suffered.

The older children played the workers while Tuzhel, just four days past his transfer, was in fine form. As the oldest among them, he played Benart, standing to one side with a tablet and calculating how many logs would be required for the larger circumference, conspicuously counting on his fingers and tentacles, schooling his nager to resemble Benart’s ponderous solemnity.

The younger children standing together at one side of the stage, shouted at his mistakes, chanted the mathematical formulae, and criticized him for counting on his tentacles because Benart was Gen and didn’t have any tentacles. The chorus was taken from the game,
Zeor
. “Do it again. You’ll do better this time.” The children twirled the tossing rings from the game around their fingers while they sang.

Everyone who had ever played
Zeor
broke up laughing, those not in Need howling hysterically. Rimon found out later that BanSha had written the script and Bekka had done the mathematics under Benart’s tutelage.

The celebration was marred for the Fort Hope people by the news of the death of the father of Lexy’s child, but she was welcomed among them like family, receiving tributes to his heroism and hopes for her child.

Sian brought the shiltpron he had been playing obsessively to rehabilitate his left arm for work at his loom. His grim determination to regain full use of that arm and leg had worked, for his playing tonight was flawless and inspired. As he played, his wife sang dirges, remembrances, and uplifting tributes followed by rollicking advice to Lexy on how to care for an infant and still put in a day’s work.