The Farris Channel (40 page)

When her Raiders had discovered he had traded out-Territory for leather, Clire had ordered Freebander raids on that one town to plant clues to lead the Gens to Fort Rimon. Clire wanted him to watch, helplessly junct, while Gens destroyed all he treasured. Then, after her child was born, she would watch him die slowly, by Attrition of selyn.

She had defeated herself when she had yanked the belt from around his waist. He had flown free, floated high looking down on his cell, on his supine body, Clire standing over him whipping the belt through the air. He couldn’t feel his impending Turnover, his helpless paralysis.
Am I dead? Am I a ghost?

The out-Territory Gens in his cell had cringed as Clire whipped the belt near their faces. He didn’t feel their alarm or fear that was intended to wake him. That was the last he knew of Shifron before the fog took him elsewhere.

Del Rimon Farris knew he was in trouble, even if he was dead because an old dream swept him into the amphitheater where he stood reading out the story of Rimon Farris founding the House of Zeor.

He knew it was himself reading about himself.

The audience was unbelievably huge. Circular rows were ranked one above the other to an impossible height. A visible mist, and a nageric fog, shrouded the upper ranks. The faces came in every skin tone, and in colors he couldn’t believe were human. The people lacking any perceptible nager were not human, and this didn’t surprise him.

But what did shock him was the sight of his long dead and much beloved wife, Ehren, in the front row center, looking up at him tenderly. She sat with her arm around one of those nagerically null non-human beings. She was young, and looked very different than when they’d been married, but she was beautiful, and most important, happy.

He knew that everyone in that amphitheater, everyone who had ever pledged their lives
Unto Zeor, Forever
, had to be reminded that they might ultimately have failed. They had to understand that they had succeeded because every single time they failed, they had started again and excelled their previous mark. When they had failed again, they had renewed their efforts, doing a little better which had moved the world one step closer to this moment.

Each of them had died and been born anew to live all over again, and again, just a little better each time. Now they sat and listened to the story, hearing how it had seemed to Rimon Farris but remembering it from their own memories, remembering Rimon as they had known him, remembering Fort Rimon in that awful year when the other Forts had failed and returned beaten.

They remembered the founding of the House of Zeor from the ashes of Fort Rimon’s destruction.

From the podium, standing before the members of his Householding as Klairon Farris ambrov Zeor, Rimon looked up at the ranks of seats banked impossibly high in front of him, and soaked up their non-junct, never junct ambient throbbing with the joy of total fulfillment of the dream.

Rimon knew that dream. He had dreamed it thousands of times before he’d changed over. It always began with the beautifully colored, glowing, shining image Slina had woven into his baby quilt. He had learned to walk clutching that quilt. He had slept with it so stubbornly that eventually they had stitched the little quilt into the center of a larger one that he could sleep under until he was full grown.

That beautiful image, the sweeping, graceful abstract outline of Slina’s dagger, became his heart in later dreams, his vriamic node where his two selyn systems joined to make him the powerful channel he was. Crazy dream.

This moment, in a weirdly insane distant future, the dream was real. If he turned he would see Slina’s dagger projecting outward, an image made only of selyn fields. He didn’t want to zlin that image. It was too impossible. Such a thing could not exist. Oddly, though, in reality beyond death, it did.

He knew the way to get to this moment of unification of Sime and Gen was to understand failure and even death as part of a repeating cycle.
Just do a little better this time.
Excellence was all you had to know to get here.

This was the second time he’d been here. So this time he’d take a piece of it with him to remember what it felt like to be here, to remember that excellence was the way to success not perfection.

He made himself turn and confront that looming symbol above him, the image Slina had made for his quilt.

Solamar had said, “Rimon can imagine something, shape and hone it, create it in this other space where people don’t have solid bodies. He can take what he’s imagined and make it real. He healed Sian’s nerves not in Sian’s body itself but in the part of Sian that can move out of his physical body. Then he put Sian’s healed image back into his body and the body did heal.”

So in his mind, Rimon made an image of that huge selyn-rich symbol so vivid he could see it, then gathered up the tone and tenor of the non-junct ambient nager. He packed all that textured emotion into the image, just the way he’d put Sian back into his body.

To keep the vibrantly glowing image safe, he built a small coffer around it, polished so smooth he could see his reflection in it. The top he inlaid with an image of the Starred Cross belt buckle with all its colored gems sparkling.

He worked on every detail until he could open that box, breathe this supreme ambient any time he wished, and remember how to get here.

Finally, he turned around to face the huge crowd of people arrayed in endless ranks above him.

There was nothing but blank gray mist. He whirled about and the huge, selyn-glowing symbol was gone. He was once again nowhere. Tucked under one arm was the small coffer he had made and sealed with the Starred Cross.

If I’m dead, then I’m a ghost. Maybe I can appear to Lexy? No, it would frighten her and now is no time to be frightening her. I could appear to Solamar and give him the box. He can give it to Lexy and they’ll know we’ll all do better next time. Where is Solamar? He always turns up.

* * * * * * *

“They’re all just sitting out there watching each other,” complained BanSha.

Tuzhel, Solamar, and BanSha were on the wall watching developments in the valley around them. Solamar was teaching BanSha how to hold their fields neutral and transparent to any watching renSimes while interpreting faintly zlinned information.

Tuzhel was supposed to be learning to stand a guard watch but was fascinated by BanSha manipulating fields. Solamar sighed and used Tuzhel as BanSha’s study subject.

Solamar was in hard Need just a day and a half from transfer, zlinning keenly. Being away from Kahleen set his nerves on edge, but he couldn’t let the newly disjuncted Tuzhel zlin it. BanSha on the other hand was all too aware of it because he checked the channel’s duty board often.

Solamar compared the nageric haze of juncts camped in the hills between the Fort and Shifron with the bright blaze of selyn from the massed Gen militia that had moved in from the border. So far, the Freebanders hadn’t stirred from Shifron. “I’d say the Patrol is making the town juncts wait because they’re professional militia and figure the Gens are professionals too. They’re not Raiders. They’re not going to gallop into battle, each one for himself, just for the fun of it. The town juncts want Shifron back not a war with the local Gen militia or us.”

BanSha complained, “They’ve been sitting there looking at each other for a whole day.”

“The juncts are wondering when the Freebanders will attack them,” said Tuzhel astutely. “If the Patrol and the town juncts attack the Gens, the Freebanders will attack the juncts from behind. But if the juncts attack the town, then the Gens will attack the juncts from behind. Who knows what they’re thinking we’ll be doing during all this.”

Solamar noted that
we’ll be doing.
He said, “They’re both doing what we’re doing; trying to figure out what everyone else is going to do.”

“We have to rescue Rimon, now!” said Tuzhel. “The juncts will take Shifron. The Raiders will escape, run south into the Gens, snatch a supply to Kill later, and head for the pass taking Rimon with them into Gen Territory. Maybe they’ll raid High Crossing while all the Crossing Gens are here, then they’ll ride around back across Molland Pass into Sime Territory and we’ll never get Rimon back.”

As Tuzhel spoke, Jhiti had come to lean on the railing beside them. “A very astute analysis, accurately repeated from Oberin’s lecture. Tuzhel, hanging out with the channels won’t teach you much about being a guard.”

“I thought you were in favor of rescuing Rimon!” accused Tuzhel.

“I am. I will. I just know that Rimon would throw me out of the Fort if I led our people out there now.”

“I’d go,” offered Tuzhel. “So would Bruce. It’s my fault Rimon got captured. I don’t understand what I was thinking! This is all my fault for being such a complete...oh, it doesn’t translate!...horse’s ass!”

Solamar noted to Jhiti, “Well, he’s old enough to know what sex is all about!”

“Sex?” asked Tuzhel.

“‘Ass’—what the stallion looks at when checking out a mare,” offered BanSha wisely. The young channel’s maturity was coming along nicely, observed Solamar.

“Don’t zlin me like that,” complained BanSha, hardening his showfield and forgetting to project the right appearance to the juncts. Solamar picked up the fields. BanSha put his mind back on his training.

Dizzy, Jhiti went hypoconscious. “Solamar, is Lexy up to attending another planning meeting tonight if we can’t move out until then?”

Their last planning session had ended at noon. “She’s in Need too, you know, and Garen’s being a tyrant. I’ll come and then report to her. There’s time. It zlins as if a storm might be gathering off to the west there.”

“I don’t...oh,” said Jhiti. The western rim of the valley had started to boil with black clouds. “Tuzhel go alert the duty scouts. A dark, rainy night is a good chance to scout the Gen camp. They can’t zlin.”

Stubborn Lexy dragged Garen, Kahleen and Bruce to Jhiti’s planning session.

The new Council had intended to meet in their usual space near Sian’s big looms, but with the juncts gathered on their perimeter, all the Gens had to stay behind insulation. So they met in the underground shelter. Gens who had to move outside had to be escorted by a channel muting the fields to mask their presence.

The big question Sian put to them tonight was, “Can we assume those juncts are from Shifron come to take their homes back and not the Patrol bringing other juncts to take the town? If they’re our old neighbors, maybe some would talk to us?”

Jhiti said, “From what my scouts report, the juncts are mostly uniformed Border Patrol, mixed with civilians. I’ve sent three teams out tonight each with someone who’s done business in Shifron to see if they can recognize anyone.”

Oberin asked, “If they find Shifron folk who know us, what do we do? Offer an alliance against the Raiders?”

The Councilors who were from Forts that had been overrun shattered the ambient with alarm, horror, and real fear. Lexy cut into the miasma nagerically and Solamar helped her. She said, “True, an alliance with the juncts could easily lead to our own destruction. We don’t want them to learn to fear us because we fight more effectively than they do.”

Solamar watched BanSha think that over. Of all the channels, this youth was the most gregarious. He’d heard every detail of how each Fort had failed.