The Farris Channel (29 page)

“They won’t split this Fort,” assured Rimon. “We traditionally welcome those determined to disjunct.”

Bruce had cleared them a path to the front row, so now even Tuzhel could zlin the crowd across from them.

“There’s BanSha!” exclaimed Tuzhel. His grimness dissipated with the capriciousness of a First Year renSime.

When Rimon zlinned BanSha joining the other channels smoothing the ambient, he flashed Bruce a grin.

Bruce smirked back. “BanSha hasn’t much talent, but he tackles every exercise with the determination to do it better next time. He’ll be one of our best.”

Rimon’s optimism soared even higher as the gates finally began to swing open. Jhiti had sent his fast riders ahead of him with word of the success of the expedition. The Gens had brought two extra horses laden with a fine pottery clay, an item in very short supply, plus all the leather they had gone after.

Rimon and Bruce had just taken transfer which left Rimon’s nerves sizzling with Postsyndrome, but it didn’t seem that his optimism was just physiological.

This early spring day hinted that the unusual series of pounding winter storms was over. The expedition had enjoyed perfect traveling weather, clear with calm for eighteen days.
Just good luck, as they said.

Oberin however was not pleased with the early break in the weather. Freebanders would be stirring out of Shifron and the Council had not yet authorized her to restore surveillance of the town. As Jhiti led his Sime escort through the gate ahead of the Gens, Oberin advanced on him with a situation report in hand.

Bekka, the bravest and now most famous child in the Fort, was leading one of the horses laden with tanned leather. She came through the gate behind Jhiti, sitting erect, chin high, hair flowing straight and shining, cheeks rosy, grinning for all she was worth. Rimon was delighted to zlin that she was indeed still a child.
It won’t be long, though,
he thought privately, hugging Tuzhel to his side.

Tuzhel wanted to break and run for Bekka. They would be a couple, if Tuzhel didn’t hurry her.

The rest of the party streamed in, dismounting, walking their horses toward the stable, handing them over to the waiting grooms. The families of the returning Gens swooped in to hug, kiss and celebrate their triumph.

When the last horse had cleared the gate, Rimon led the charge across the open space bringing the two lines of greeters together. Outside the closing gates, he saw the rear guard of Jhiti’s scouting unit strung across the valley obliterating the expedition’s backtrail. Jhiti reported he had used the break in the weather to plant the remains of an encampment to support the story told in High Crossing.

Rimon turned Tuzhel over to BanSha with instructions to see him to his confinement room immediately and without contact with Bekka. “BanSha, stay with Tuzhel all night. I’ll clear it with Val and send Rushi and a few others along. You all can have your own party. Tuzhel isn’t stable enough to attend the big party, but it’s not fair that he shouldn’t get to celebrate too.”

“Now?” wailed Tuzhel.

Rimon hugged him again, using his handling tentacles to investigate. On his forearms at the roots of the tentacles, the ronaplin glands were swelling. No wonder he was peevish and grim. “We’re going to see you through this, Tuzhel. It’s very hard. We admire every Sime who’s faced this ordeal. Now go with BanSha and I’ll bet you’ll have quite a few visitors during the party tonight. I’ll see you have plenty of hosting supplies.”

Rimon went to spread word among the more stable disjuncts to visit Tuzhel tonight. Isolation was particularly bad when everyone else was enjoying company, and BanSha was good enough with the fields to protect Tuzhel.

BanSha proudly took his charge off across the churned mud of the yard, Tuzhel brightening with every step.

In the end, Tuzhel’s party lasted longer than the one in the main dining hall. While Bruce and Rimon were there, it even included shiltpron music. Kimra and Kreg and other scouts from Fort Hope brought garlands of pine cones gaily painted to spell out “Congratulations” in large Genlan letters and repeating it in Simelan.

About half the channeling staff filtered through escorting various disjuncted renSimes who owed their status to Aipensha, Lexy or Rimon. They brought dishes of pine nuts, and trin tea laced with pine needles giving it a wintry flavor and additional nutritional value.

As word of Tuzhel’s private party spread, Endra, Frevven and Eric stopped in. Though they had to start work on new boots immediately, they wanted to thank Tuzhel again for his help getting the leather.

Fengal, Maigrey, Lexy, Iriela, Dayyel, Melina and her new baby, Kahleen, Eskalie, Solamar, Oberin and Jhiti made an even bigger point of congratulating Tuzhel on helping the expedition succeed.

Sian, however, made a different point. He brought a white, bleached linen yawal, and presented it with a flourish. “You should have this at hand for the moment you disjunct. It’ll be the day of your real Changeover, the start of a whole new life. Wear it for your transfers until then.”

Tuzhel clutched the simple tunic to his chest, winding all his tentacles through it and flung himself into BanSha’s arms. “It’s just like the one you wore at changeover!”

Rimon was gratified by the quick adjustments BanSha and Rushi made to the fields, protecting Tuzhel perfectly.

As the night progressed, the rest of Rimon’s friends paraded through Tuzhel’s isolation room, dropping off presents to ease his confinement, offering encouragement, reporting on the official party in the dining hall with hilarious parodies of Xanon’s officious speeches.

They included Tuzhel in adult conversation about the wonderful sex he could expect once he disjuncted and could experience a real Postsyndrome for the first time.

Talk drifted toward the Fort’s current prospects, now considerably improved thanks to Tuzhel, and his opinions were sought on a number of issues. It wasn’t flattery. They wanted his perspective on what the Raiders might do next.

Rimon used the opportunity to drill BanSha and Rushi in managing the ambient in tight quarters to teach BanSha to monitor for Turnover despite nageric noise around him.

The room brimmed with absolute confidence and joyful anticipation for Tuzhel’s disjunction.

When Tuzhel hit Turnover, the party broke up amid predictions it would be legendary before morning.

Though his control was shaky, Tuzhel’s body was adjusting to a disjunct’s transfer intervals. Still, he’d have to spend the two weeks before his sixth channel’s transfer locked into the isolation room, visited only by those who could keep the fields from stimulating a Raider’s hair-trigger Kill reflex.

The next day, a monumental ice storm hit the valley. Rimon treated a number of Gens for injuries from falls despite the lines rigged between buildings, and the renSimes didn’t fare much better largely due to inadequate footgear.

Jhiti retired his wall guards for the duration. Even Freebanders in hard Need couldn’t mount an attack.

During the storm, most worked on equipment for the spring tilling, but the Council spent the time talking, and fomenting trouble. Later, Rimon heard that Tuzhel’s party was viewed as Rimon’s deliberate affront to their authority.

Rimon was certain they would not be elected again, maybe not even serving out their year. They were just not doing the project management work of a Fort’s Council. When they did attempt something, it never came out well because they hadn’t consulted the channeling staff.

This Council’s failures would be more evident if the seniors who would normally be on the Council weren’t doing the management work, ignoring the Council’s advice.

So, in spite of the Council, new boots began to appear on the hardest working renSimes and Gens, and the mood in the Fort brightened. New dishes and bowls appeared in the dining hall made from the fine clay that was the bonus negotiated by their Gens. Then work gloves appeared neatly stitched by the Fort Unity craftsmen.

After the paralyzing ice storm, the world turned to mud again, and Tuzhel plunged so deep into the miseries of disjunction he was not allowed visitors. BanSha dashed up to Rimon and Bruce in the dining hall and whispered in Rimon’s ear, “I think Bekka Established selyn production.”

“Where is she?” asked Bruce rising.

“Mucking the stables. I’m supposed to be learning to zlin pregnant animals. It’s hard. They haven’t got any selyn. Bekka does, I think.”

Rimon swallowed the last of his pine needle laced trin tea and motioned BanSha on. “Show us.”

BanSha had called it correctly. Rimon was inordinately pleased with his student channel.

That evening, Bekka was accepted into the ranks of the adult Gens with a celebration in the dining hall. It took a new Gen a month to produce enough selyn for a renSime’s transfer, and about four months to reach real maturity. It was usually a smooth development, barely perceptible to the Gen, not at all like the wrenching shifts in the physical body that a Sime underwent at changeover. Still the changes in a Gen were emphatic and marked the onset of adulthood.

Bekka’s party was attended by all her closest friends and relatives along with almost all Fort Rimon natives who came to congratulate her parents. She gave a lovely speech about the values of Fort Rimon and declared her intention to become a master leatherworker.

“Tuzhel told me that out-Territory women aren’t allowed to learn such trades. Here, Simes get nervous around Gens handling sharp instruments. So if we can find out how tanning’s done, maybe that’s what I’ll do.”

Her parents, Shaddyr and Jor Esren stepped up beside Rimon and Bekka to accept the congratulations of the Church of the Unity community that looked to them for spiritual leadership. The Esrens were descended from the old Fort Freedom Young family with Bron family ties.

Rimon kept the medical histories of all the families of the Fort, but had yet to start with all the new people. He was wary of too much intermarriage among the small a group surrounding the Esrens and wondered who they might accept for Bekka from among the refugees if Tuzhel’s attraction didn’t work out.

His father had said his grandfather insisted they had to learn to predict how a renSime would respond to different channeling techniques, and how to teach it to channels. The clue must be in heritage and medical histories.

Most of what Rimon did, he could not teach. He just zlinned, did something and it worked even if he didn’t know what he’d done. Lexy had picked up a lot from him, as had Aipensha, and Clire, but nobody else had, not even Solamar.

If their lifestyle was to spread through the junct communities, it had to be made teachable. That meant keeping clean records so someone in the future could look back over generations and find the rules that governed channeling and healing.

Bekka’s father Jor spoke of his great grandfather’s day in Fort Freedom, when a child who Established as a Gen would be escorted to the border, given a horse and valuables and sent to a new life in the nearest Gen town, a life among other Gens who had come out of Fort Freedom.

He recounted how that very fact had saved Fort Freedom in Zeth Farris’s day, and had actually saved Zeth Farris’s life during his changeover. “My daughter Bekka has continued the finest tradition of this family in concluding an equitable trade with our own Gen neighbors. We expect to make a splendid match for her with the son of one of the best scholars of the Church.”

This, Rimon noted, was bad news to Bekka who knew who they meant. Her parents could not zlin Bekka’s objection in her barely perceptible nager.

Finally, Rimon gave his traditional speech, thanked Bekka for bringing fine leathers, completed his social duties and went in search of Bruce.

The good weather lasted only three days, and then a blizzard was followed by a series of heavy snowstorms.

Jhiti was glad Oberin hadn’t sent scouting parties north toward Shifron and south toward the Gen border. Instead the scouts had helped build two new wings on the stable and clear the courtyard of picketed horses.

Four days after one blizzard, Rimon was in his office with Jhiti, peering at Jhiti’s plan for expanding the underground shelter for the Companions and channels’ combat infirmary. Lexy and Solamar came in as Rimon asked, “Jhiti, how deep you intend to dig this?”

“Not deep. We can layer sod and stone over the top, make it look like a natural hump.”

“I’d rather build it off this way, digging it deeper and running under these three houses. It’ll be easier get from the shelter into the infirmary building. We could also put another entry into the channels’ on-duty sleeping rooms.”

“My main concern is the huge channeling staff we have to hide during the next attack. Our wall is so much better now, we may not have as many casualties.”

Lexy said, “Dad, you’ve been discussing that for days. Set the teams to work on it. We may not have much time.”

Jhiti said, “We’ll surely be attacked before the thaw.”

“That’s why you didn’t plan to dig it as deep?”

“Partly, yes, but I like the idea of another door.”

Rimon asked Solamar and Lexy. “Is it worth it?”

Lexy said, “If it can be done in time. Solamar?”

Solamar nodded. “Can you do it Rimon’s way in time?”

“I don’t know. I’ll go talk to Benart.”

“Whatever you do,” said Rimon, “don’t talk to the Council about it or we’ll still be debating years from now.”

“If anyone survives!” said Jhiti rolling up the sheepskin the plan had been inked into. “I’ll see you later.”

Rimon settled into his chair wondering where Bruce was. “Is there a problem?” Lexy zlinned healthy. Though she was taking extra selyn for the baby, it was definitely not a channel’s heavy demand, and she insisted she could work longer hours than he was allowing. She probably could, but Rimon saw no reason she should.