The Farris Channel (30 page)

Solamar looked around, zlinned the hallway, and said to Lexy, “I don’t believe it. We’ve got him alone.”

She grinned. “We came to discuss Tuzhel’s disjunction but since we’ve trapped you alone....”

Solamar said, “I’ve been trying to tell you for a couple of months that I think I’m in love with your daughter.”

Rimon sat up straighter. “You only think?” Her unconditional love for this man was obvious, but only Aipensha could have made Lexy see herself clearly.

Lexy said, “Well, since I’m not sure, how could he be? I just thought I ought to warn you. It wouldn’t do to shock an old man to death, would it?”

“Shock?” He played into their mood. “Like this?” He produced a showfield riddled with horrified amazement, dimming into a faint, then stared at them eyes wide, one brow raised, innocent and attentive.

They both laughed. Their voices harmonized perfectly, and Rimon didn’t miss the two handling tentacles twined between their bodies, or how closely they stood.

“Well, you let me know when you’re sure, all right?”

“All right,” they chorused then laughed at themselves.

“So what about Tuzhel’s disjunction?”

Solamar said, “From what he says, he’s about seven months old now and Killed several times in his first month. Day after tomorrow will be his sixth disjunction transfer. I might expect disjunction crisis at his eighth disjunction transfer, but it could happen this time, or next.”

“I’d guess sooner rather than later,” Lexy shrugged. “As we’ve discovered, you really can’t ever tell.”

“I’d guess sooner rather than later, too,” agreed Rimon. It was what he’d been thinking since Bekka’s Establishment party. They could only guess. “I’ve noted he’s stressed, vacillating between eager acceptance of a place here and morose rejection of all our rules. He’s made some friends though. That may be the deciding factor.”

“According to the Council,” said Lexy, “we should keep him locked away from his friends until he disjuncts.”

Solamar added, “The Council will not accept that a disjunct Freeband Raider can earn a place in a Fort, and they’re not sure about the other disjuncts we already have. It’s just that Tuzhel was a Freebander for a very short while.”

Rimon said, “The most crucial short while of any Sime’s life.”

“Exactly, and now his upbringing is asserting itself.”

Rimon wondered why they were repeating what they all knew so well. “Tuzhel must have had a loving family,” agreed Rimon and repeated his prescription. “Let him roam within the limits we’ve set before Turnover, but be sure he’s always boxed in by channels because you can’t predict when he’ll spike intil or hit a premature Turnover. Don’t let him zlin the surveillance.”

Solamar took the game to a new level. “Disjunction crisis is like First Need. We’ve all seen it. Soaring, spiking intil, that ravenous, desperate and terrified Need, driven, instinctive. Only death by Attrition comes any worse than that. At least in Disjunction there’s some cognitive ability left and that’s the crucial element because there has to be a deliberate choice to accept satisfaction from a channel....”

“...forever leaving the Kill behind,” finished Rimon, nodding. What were they trying to say that they couldn’t just say? “Without that conscious choice, the decision doesn’t have the strength to withstand future temptations.”

Solamar said, “The sooner Tuzhel makes his choice the better chance he has of choosing channel’s transfer, setting a new pattern for the rest of his life. I want to be that channel for him.”

Surprised, Rimon buried his reaction behind a tranquil showfield. Lexy wasn’t buying it though Solamar deduced Rimon’s real reaction from Lexy’s skepticism.

Solamar, guilt politely buried behind a bland showfield he knew was transparent to both Lexy and Rimon, confessed, “I told her why you’re wearing that belt, Rimon. I had to because everyone who’s been on your side has been pressuring her to get you to put that belt away again. The opposition keeps pointing to it as clear evidence that you think you’re above the Council’s authority. Lexy was upset over it because she started to believe it too.”

She discussed this with you but not me?
That explained the roundabout approach to claiming Tuzhel’s disjunction transfer, which Rimon had planned to handle.

Solamar added, “Besides, I wanted to make sure she hadn’t been hiding any similar experiences. I know you hadn’t zlinned anything amiss with her, but I can’t zlin an inch into her showfield most of the time.”

Lexy countered, “More like two or three inches. He’s too modest.”

“So the belt buckle has become a major issue tangled into this whole disaster of a Council,” said Solamar. “Lexy had to know what was really going on. So I told her.”

“Executive decision,” sympathized Rimon. “A hard call, but not at all a bad one.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” explained Lexy. “That belt was your father’s. With Aipensha gone, and no time for any of us to grieve properly, I thought it was just your way of being close to Grandfather, and I couldn’t bring myself to suggest you should give that up when so many of us are depending on you. I knew you had to have a good reason to ignore what people were saying. You should have told me.”

“I should have,” agreed Rimon. He zlinned his daughter, four months pregnant and still carrying it lightly. Gen or renSime for sure. Still, family lore said Farris women tended to die in childbirth.

At least she hadn’t been affected by whatever he and Solamar had done on the wall during the battle. He and Clire were the only ones wandering around outside their bodies. “So” he prompted Solamar, “you judged it was less stress for her if she knew than if she didn’t?”

“I should have talked to you first, asked you to tell her, but....” Solamar shrugged with an eloquent ripple of handling tentacles.

Rimon had been studiously avoiding Solamar, and when he couldn’t, he’d refused to talk about curing his sliding out of his body by sliding out of his body on purpose. Besides, the problem was gone.

Rimon took his right ventral handling tentacles away from clutching the belt buckle and unfolded the hands that lay over the innocuous bit of artwork, a symbol of Unity. He placed his hands on the desk and sat up.

Lexy continued, “So since the origin of this problem is either the stunt you two pulled on the walls during the battle or that First Transfer you forced into Tuzhel, I don’t recommend you doing his disjunction.”

Solamar added, “She wanted to do it, but I figured it’d be better if I did.”

“And I figured,” countered Lexy, “it would be far better for Tuzhel if I did. I’m in much better shape than you give me credit for, and I’d be glad of the work.”

“So we decided,” ended Solamar, “to ask you to decide before we talk to Dakin or Val about the schedule.”

Having delivered themselves of all these guilty burdens, they both pulled chairs up before Rimon’s desk and sat down. They behaved as if they’d been married for ten years already.

Which, Rimon felt deep inside, was a very good thing. Despite pestering about the out of body thing, Solamar was an ethical, reliable, skilled channel with a generous heart and steady, kind disposition who was totally besotted with Lexy. He couldn’t imagine a better son-in-law. Rimon just hoped he didn’t get Lexy pregnant. Such a child would be a channel with a truly deadly pre-natal selyn draw.

He made a mental note to make family record updating a top priority. He might be able to find a father for Lexy’s next child among the new people who would not be so likely to produce death rather than an heir.

“So?” asked Lexy.

“Quiet,” admonished Solamar. “He’s thinking and I want him to get the right answer.”

The only answer Rimon had right then was that Kahleen would make a much better candidate for mother of Solamar’s children than Lexy would. From all signs, he thought Kahleen might well agree.

“Oh!” Rimon thought, “I’ll do Tuzhel’s transfer this time, and then I think I’ll be doing his disjunction.”

“You’re sure that’s wise?” asked Solamar. “He might be a major source of your problem.”

“I’ve been doing his transfers without incident, and in fact haven’t had any incident in a long while now. I think what’s best for Tuzhel is the more crucial consideration.”

Tuzhel favored Rimon but would have gladly accepted Lexy or Solamar. If he had a free choice though, he’d have chosen BanSha, and Rimon was not about to allow that.

Lexy said, “That’s your decision?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”
I’m old enough it doesn’t really matter what happens to me, only I do so want to live to see this grandchild grow up.

She sighed. “I’ll go tell Val, Dakin’s on duty in scheduling. Then Ill find Garen and get some sleep.”

They rose in unison, in totally unconscious coordination. “I’m on duty,” said Solamar. “I told Kahleen to meet me...there she is now.”

They all turned as Kahleen and Bruce entered with Garen trailing behind calling, “Wondered where you three had gotten to. Imagine hiding in Delri’s office! I’d never have thought to look here if Jhiti hadn’t suggested it,”

Solamar enjoyed the way Garen molded Lexy’s fields. Rimon thought it zlinned comforting, too.

Rimon dropped the fields and watched the two channels and their Companions weave complex patterns as they bade Rimon both hello and goodbye and whirled out of his office. Bruce edged behind Rimon’s chair and put both hands on his shoulders. Warm selyn fields shafted down into Rimon’s tense muscles. “Benart says you’ll get your underground shelter just the way you want it.”

“Good. Once that’s built, we’ll be asking the families in the houses nearest the entries to the new shelter to switch with any channel or Companion families we have scattered about. We’ll want to arrange things so that during an alert, the channeling staff won’t have to move into the on-duty building just because it’s the only entry into the shelter.”

“Jhiti will be ecstatic.”

“Oberin will dance for joy.”

“That might be fun to see.”

“What? Are you still Post? My Turnover’s in two days!” He relaxed into his Companion’s therapy.

“Two whole days to Turnover, so I wouldn’t have expected this much tension. What’s going on, Delri?” He paused, feeling Rimon cooperating. “That’s much better.”

“Let me enjoy what you’re doing, then I’ll tell you.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I ever got involved being your Companion. Don’t you realize how hard it is? There are so many new channels here now, maybe I can....”

“All right,” surrendered Rimon, as if unaware the Gen was teasing. “I’ll tell you now. Then you’ll owe me a good hour of this.”

“Deal.”

Rimon told him everything, saving his speculation on who should father Lexy’s children and who should bear Solamar’s for last. He knew Bruce would have a number of opinions on that, some of them very good, too.

“No, there’s no danger to you. It’s just difficult.”

Tuzhel paced again. “I can’t zlin you all the way through. How do I know you’re telling me the truth! Why would you want me to live?”

This was the problem all the new people from other Forts had with Rimon. They hadn’t known him all their lives. They had no reason to trust him, and the one way they had of determining trustworthiness didn’t work. Even when he dropped his showfield, they couldn’t tell if he really had dropped it or just altered it to make it seem so.

Rimon’s hands strayed to his waist where he’d been accustomed to resting them on his belt buckle. It wasn’t there. Yesterday, since it had become so important to people, he’d put it in its drawer, sure he didn’t require it.

Solamar had been horrified, Bruce worried, and Lexy didn’t know yet. Others were beginning to notice. So far nothing had happened, even when he was working, except he no longer knew what to do with his hands.

“Tuzhel,” said Bruce as Rimon’s hands searched, “we want you to live because too many people died in the battle that brought you to us. You survived against all odds. So you have become the symbol of our hope for the future.”

“And more than a symbol,” added Rimon. “Already you’ve saved us by helping with the leather trade. You’ve worked in the stables when you could, and helped with that play the children put on. You’ve earned your place here.”

Bruce’s flat, honest sincerity impressed Tuzhel. Bruce was capable of lying to a renSime, but Tuzhel believed him.

“All right, I’ll wait and watch your Turnover. Just don’t blame me if I die on you. Or worse, take your Gen.” He zlinned Bruce and slid hyperconscious, zlinning without being able to see, hunting mode.

Rimon flashed Bruce a smile and went to Tuzhel, pulling him back to duoconsciousness. “Don’t worry, I won’t blame you,” answered Rimon. “And I’m not worried about my Gen. He can take care of himself.”