The Farris Channel (38 page)

“Not yet,” said Lexy to the other channels. They all shifted their attention elsewhere, relieving Tuzhel of the feeling of being transparent to a hostile force. Solamar perched on the edge of the little square table.

Lexy tilted the rocking chair that had been brought in for her, propped her feet up on Tuzhel’s bed and said, “You’re at the hardest part of the process, Tuzhel. No one can do this for you. No one can even help. You have to maintain your resolve on your own. You must convince your body to accept channel’s transfer instead of the Kill. That’s what’s hard about disjunction, Tuzhel, deciding on it all alone. In the end, you will get one chance, one moment, to choose. That choice will rule the rest of your life.”

Stalking in a circle, Tuzhel whirled and pointed at her, “And why should I choose channels! It’s all going to be for nothing! They won’t let me have Bekka. Or anyone! They control things here, not you. Nothing you say counts!”

Solamar said, “We are going to rescue Rimon.”

As if driving a point home to an idiot, Tuzhel bent at the waist and hammered his fist wrapped tentacles at Solamar. “They won’t let you!”

Solamar rose and assumed the same posture and tone. “We won’t let them stop us!”

Tuzhel subsided, rage quenched by the humor of the situation. He paced another circle. His mind understood. His body refused.

Lexy explained, “From what people have been saying, my father’s plan is working. Even some of the Council’s staunchest supporters have had enough of them.”

“What plan?” asked Tuzhel curiously, stopping between the four chairs his vigil monitors occupied.

“He’s letting them prove their inability to manage the Fort. He’s only opposed them where decisions endangered everyone’s health and safety.”

“Like the shoes,” said Tuzhel thoughtfully. “So Bekka and I weren’t important enough to fight about?”

“No, no, you are!” said Lexy. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him after he decided we wouldn’t leave, but I’m sure he was thinking his plan was working perfectly. So many people were furious over what the Esrens and the Council did that I think my father expected that single issue would end it if they stewed long enough.”

Val said, “Rimon is good at predicting how people will react emotionally. He zlins deeper....” She flashed a glance at Solamar.

“No,” answered Lexy, “Farrises can’t read minds.” Nervous laughter greeted that. “He’s just a good judge of character and has a lot to teach me yet. Tuzhel, you know we were ready to leave the Fort and take you and Bekka with us if my father’s plan failed.”

Tuzhel stopped. “And I ruined his plan?”

“Well, no,” allowed Lexy, “a foundering horse ruined the plan. You can’t blame the animal. It gave its all.”

Fengal added, “You could blame me for letting you get away.”

Val nodded, “Or me for assigning Fengal when he was too tired to stay vigilant.”

Merie said, “Or me for going to get something to eat.”

“Or Oberin for not intercepting you at the gate,” added Aislinn looking at Fengal ruefully.

“You see,” said Solamar, “blaming detracts from your own sense of responsibility and thus of personal strength. The Council tries to arrange things so nobody can be blamed for anything. They live in fear of blame. I think that’s what Rimon zlinned in them, but everyone else has to have time to figure that out from the mistakes they make.”

Tuzhel sagged onto the bed. “They think Rimon’s dead so they can do what they want. He’s not, is he?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lexy.

“Neither do I,” offered Solamar.

The others all chimed in with their own conviction. By the time they left, Tuzhel had slumped into the daze that substituted for sleep during this difficult time.

All winter, Solamar had watched as the logging crews had clear cut an area of the valley floor three times the size of the existing fields leaving only a hedge or stand of trees here and there. The lumber had gone to building the new wall and houses and they’d still had to range far and wide up the hills for the right kinds of logs. The clear cutting made the flooding last longer than the usual day or two.

The experienced farmers had taken to the walls, watching the calendar and the weather, measuring the depth of the flood, and muttering incessantly about the growing season and which crops to put where. Finally, on the fifth day, the water had subsided visibly.

And finally, someone told Solamar that Fort Rimon had long ago dug out an exit channel for the river at the end of the valley. The project, undertaken when they’d first arrived, had brought them much unwanted attention from the junct town of Shifron.

Solamar’s transfer clients were happy to fill in the background for him and he listened avidly because each tidbit was ammunition for calming Tuzhel. Shifron had always lost a couple of buildings to the annual flood before Fort Rimon arrived, and the first year the Fort people had cleared the valley floor, Shifron lost their Pen building.

After the Fort’s diggers went to work, and Shifron’s streets remained high and dry a couple of springs in a row, the juncts grudgingly forgot their weird neighbors personal habits. “Not that they’d ever help dig every year,” finished Zedros, “even though now the river can be forded even before the mud dries.”

Ha! Before the mud dries!

The young renSime had requested Solamar for his transfer because the channel didn’t scold him for the chapping of his tentacles by all the laundry soap he made and handled. In return, Zedros was a bottomless source of Fort gossip.

Everyone went to the laundry to drop off and pick up clothing, and most worked there a few hours a month. Everyone talked. Zedros knew everything. He felt opinion in the Fort was now balanced on a knife-edge.

Late on the sixth day, the first mud began to appear. It would be a week before they could begin working the ground. The scouts didn’t expect to ride out for at least three more days, but only two days later, a single rider leading two remounts pounded across the muck toward the main gate at suicidal speed.

Jhiti’s guards sounded the alarm and his teams took to the walls, manned their positions in the stables, saddled horses, escorted the channels and Companions. As drilled, Solamar and Lexy escorted Tuzhel into the underground shelter, now capacious enough for everyone. The rest of the Gens were inside buildings with slate roofs. Jhiti’s Guard assembled sortie parties by all the gates.

Solamar heard later that the drill had gone perfectly, but the rider was all alone. His horse went down in the muck and he leaped aside and then just left the horse with a broken leg, mounted one of his other horses, galloped up to the gate. He hurled a single object up onto the trail leading to the gate, turned and galloped away toward the river ford leading his last remount.

He was beyond a renSime’s zlinning range before Jhiti let the channels come up to survey the situation.

Solamar and Lexy took Tuzhel, protesting vigorously, back to his room, and waited until his vigil duty channels arrived with their Companions. As they were turning to go, one of Jhiti’s runners came with a summons for both of them to the wall.

Solamar called over his shoulder, “We’ll be back and let you know what happened.”

At the top of the wall, Lexy declared, “There’s nothing out there. They didn’t deliver my father’s body!” She had taken longer than usual to climb the ladder even with Solamar’s help, worrying aloud all the way. She was almost five months pregnant now, and slowing down physically though the baby’s selyn drain was within her abilities to handle.

Solamar walked around the catwalk to the larger platform over the main gates zlinning the package. The smaller door beside the gate was open and Kaires had gone out to pick it up.

She was understandably cautious. She wore heavy gloves and arm protectors and a mask, circled, kicked the package to roll it over, peered and zlinned before picking it up and scraping mud off the wrapping.

Solamar watched her, unable to think of a motive for Raiders to send the Fort a package of infectious material, certainly not in such a dramatic delivery. All he could zlin from a distance was some kind of cloth around something dense and it just didn’t make sense.

Raiders wanted to Kill the Gens, not murder them with disease. So far the spring respiratory infections had been mild in the Fort. Though the work kept the channeling staff busy, nobody had yet died of lung fever. It was possible Clire had more fever than she could cope with among the malnourished Raiders but why send infection to the Fort? No, this was something else. Had to be.

When Kaires turned with the package in her hands, her renSime nager was behind the package. Solamar zlinned the contents clearly and hid his shock and horror.

It was Rimon’s belt, curled around the buckle, facing inward, stones glowing to his senses. It was packaged in Rimon’s shirt, wrapped in several layers of oiled cloth, exactly the way he’d found it when he was out of his body.

I wandered into this future moment the same way Rimon wandered far away in time.

He’d hardly absorbed that idea when Xanon grabbed the belt and shirt out of Kaires’ tentacles. Before the small gate had closed, Alind had snatched the items from Xanon who was left holding a piece of paper. Solamar shelved his worry about what effect working fields with Rimon had had on his control and worried about Xanon and the Council.

Jhiti was busy sending Gens to put the horse out of its misery and salvage what they could from the carcass. Then he dismissed everyone, demanding they stand down in an orderly fashion, clean and stow their weapons, and not all crowd around to find out what was in the package.

Oberin’s Guard detail released the Gens from confinement, and they gathered to see what was in the package. Looking down on the crowd, Solamar saw Bruce at the back of the press, Lexy and Garen beside him and Kahleen moving toward them looking up at Solamar.

Xanon read the message to Alind who immediately moved back toward the dining hall, shouting as he went. Obviously an emergency session had been called.

It seemed that Alind deliberately chose a path that would keep Lexy from catching up with him. Many of his supporters were between him and Rimon’s daughter.

Solamar headed down the stairs and plunged into the crowd, working the fields with the other nearby channels but heading directly for Lexy.

He caught up to her outside the hall. It was full, but even more curious people massed outside the doors. As he approached, people with children in tow gave up and went home. The rest stood outside, hearing only garbled word passed back by the throng.

Solamar felt a channel zlin him. He and Lexy turned to find Val glaring meaningfully. True they weren’t deep enough into the crowd to manage the fields, and they weren’t hearing anything useful, and they were not working.

“I’m not leaving,” growled Bruce. “I have to know what that was!”

“My father’s Starred Cross belt,” said Lexy. “And I think it was his shirt.”

“I saw it from above,” said Solamar. “It was the shirt he was wearing that day.”

“There was a note!” Bruce’s concentration was scattered, his fields bursting with frustration that he was spraying across the yard. Rimon would now be close to Turnover. Bruce’s field was dominating the area.

Lexy frowned at him. He reined in his reaction. “I’m going in there, Lexy. Don’t try to stop me.”

Lexy looked forlornly at Garen and Val. “I’m going with you.”

Solamar exchanged silent messages with Val who shrugged, waved a tentacle, and stalked off to round up some other channels to do the work.

Solamar took point, not wanting renSimes exposed to a raging Bruce. Kahleen and Garen flanked him leaving Bruce to take care of Lexy. Solamar waded into the press, flicking his showfield in a polite request for passage.

Most people made way willingly but others flashed resentment until they realized Lexy was the passenger in this flying wedge. If she reached the Council, things would get even more interesting.

The interior of the dining hall was lit more by the last rays of the sun slanting through the partially open shutters than by the candles. Smoke from the hearths and candles and several oil lamps billowed in the sunlight overhead.

People, this time, were not here to agree with the Council but to monitor them. Xanon had taken a stance behind Alind at the middle of the table, but the ambient was so skewed, he was in the wrong position and didn’t know it.

Solamar and Lexy worked with other channels scattered through the crowd, but without Rimon’s sure touch, they weren’t balancing it.

Rinda, the Fort Hope representative, stood and shouted, pointing at Bruce, “There’s his Companion! I say it’s for Bruce to decide if he’ll go!” She grabbed Rimon’s belt from the table in front of Alind and tossed it to Bruce. “Is that really Rimon’s belt?”

Solamar intercepted the weighty object and handed it to the Gen. Bruce’s hands closed over the buckle as if it were Rimon himself. “Yes,” he told them.

Lexy demanded, “What was in that note?”

Rinda read it to them before Alind could say anything. “‘I’m still alive but I won’t be long unless you send Bruce. If Clire zlins anyone but Bruce coming, she’ll take the Fort apart one log at a time. Send him now!’ Just signed with his initials. Xanon says it’s Rimon’s writing, and it looks like it to me, but I don’t think it sounds like him.”