The Farris Channel (47 page)

“You weren’t dead. You imagined that.”

“But I believed it and it didn’t come true.”

“Well, there you see? Any future you foresee can be like that, just inspiration, aspiration, wishes, dreams and fantasies, all without substance. No matter how certain you are that something should happen, it might not.”

Rimon leaned his back against the outer railing and surveyed the interior of the Fort. “Or it might happen, in a way very different than you expect.”

“That’s true.”

“If it’s going to happen at all, it has to be the product of the efforts of many different people each with unique hopes, ambitions, dreams and fantasies.”

“That’s also true.”

“I know I’m right about what’s destroying the Forts. We have to organize around a unifying principle or our way of life is doomed.”

“People have come to believe you about that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Because you saw it in the coffer?”

“No. I couldn’t touch it. It’s not for me. It’s for Lexy.”

“So. Then how do I give it to Lexy?”

“You can’t. She has to go get it for herself.”

“Is it real? Is there really such a thing hidden somewhere around here?”

“No. She has to go out of her body to find it.”

“She’s never done that.”

“Anyone can do it. Doesn’t take any special talent. In fact most people do when they dream at night. They just don’t remember. Rimon, your ability to bring what you imagine into reality, is a talent.”

“Does Lexy have that talent?”

“I don’t know.”

Rimon zlinned him again. “Would it be dangerous for the baby?”

“No, even pregnant women dream. Finding what you left for her might be stressful, but the child is not draining her alarmingly. She has enough strength.”

“And if she finds it, she’ll come back able to see what I’m seeing here, what has to be done if we’re to survive?”

“I’d doubt that. I think you left her an understanding of what you saw in the future, but what you see is your interpretation. She will take only what she’s able to comprehend and she’ll interpret it her own way.”

“The way everyone around here is interpreting the things I say in their own ways?”

“Pretty much.”

“I have to think about all this. Have you seen Bruce? I don’t zlin him.”

“In the underground shelter with Clire. He was training BanSha, trying to keep him from dwelling on Tuzhel.”

“Val must have changed the schedule.”

“Speaking of which, I should go check the board. Let me know what you decide about Lexy. Don’t try anything by yourself.”

“I will. I won’t.”

* * * * * * *

With that single image of the little box he had made for Lexy came the peace that Rimon had been seeking. He still didn’t remember anything after handing Tuzhel off to Jokim, but the maddening itch to remember abated.

Every time he thought of the sparkling coffer, the irrational certainty returned no matter how dismayed he felt. People presented many opportunities for dismay.

A consensus crystallized that instead of being a Fort defending itself in a hostile land, they had to define themselves as a family with relatives scattered everywhere.

Rimon heard BanSha articulate it when he stopped in the barn to check on BanSha’s first solo supervision of a calving. Between calling instructions to the Gen guiding the calf out of the birth canal, BanSha told Rushi, “In Fort Rimon, we’ve always been a family of people who have chosen each other, like when two people marry. They aren’t related, but they become one person by pledge. This new thing we’re becoming has to be like a marriage, binding hearts, minds and souls to build a better life for our children. Each generation will have to choose to bind themselves to this lineage, this House.”

Rimon moved into the birthing stall, grinning. “BanSha, that’s it! I just never could put it into words myself! We have to become the House of Zeor.”

Everyone in that end of the barn stopped what they were doing and gathered around Rimon, babbling. Rushi announced, “Rimon has named us. We will become the House of Zeor!”

Before nightfall the Fort buzzed with their new name.

Though they suddenly had a name and a new concept defining themselves, debate raged with ever increasing furor over the management procedures a large group had to have.

A little more than twenty days after Tuzhel’s funeral, on the first anniversary of the arrival of Fort Butte, they held a celebration in their new, expanded dining hall that could seat almost everyone if the channels worked the ambient fields just right.

Rimon arrived with Bruce, Lexy and Garen. Lexy was more than six months pregnant and suffering through the nearly perpetual Need of her condition, but Garen was not very high field. Bruce on the other hand was soaring. Rimon had another four days before transfer. After a stint in the Collectorium followed by hours in Dispensary, he was still carrying enough selyn to use Bruce to orchestrate the complex ambient here.

He caught the attention of several other channels already working the crowd and signalled them with two tentacles. He and Lexy parted and the others scattered as he directed. That prompted the whole crowd to find places.

In the corner near the kitchen storeroom, Rimon saw Alind, a renSime, huddled close to Xanon who wasn’t working with the other channels, just shielding the two of them. Alind stalked out through the storeroom door leaving boiling fury in his wake. Xanon stared after the renSime, but held the fields steady to shield the crowd, then started to work with the other channels. Xanon’s skills had improved.

Rimon had heard that Alind blamed Xanon for losing the election. He hadn’t heard Xanon berating Maigrey even once, lately, and no complaints from Maigrey either.

Moving on around the dining hall, Rimon encountered Shani at the steaming serving table, discussing Lexy’s diet with Garen as only another female channel would. Shani’s husband, Marliss, was with Clire in the underground shelter, so she was without her Companion. Rimon wanted both of them at Clire’s delivery.

Shani was a medium sized woman with brown hair and eyes, wearing the durable blue smock and trousers the channeling staff worked in, but when she laughed her nager cloaked her in rainbows.

“Come help me get people sorted out so we can all enjoy the play.”

Rimon set two channels and Companions on duty near the doors to ease any latecomers into the ambient. Only the guards on watch and those tending the young or ill were missing. There had been much duty shift trading because all the parents and relatives wanted to be there to watch the children put on this much rehearsed play.

The play depicted the arrival of Fort Butte at Fort Rimon, but it lacked Tuzhel’s and BanSha’s humorous touch.

Sian opened with the now traditional song written by his wife, then accompanied the children on his shiltpron, supplying sound effects for horses and wagons and even the howling wind that had blown that day.

Cody, now famous throughout the community for his leadership of the young messengers, played Rimon making a welcoming speech. One of the children from Fort Butte played Xanon, who had been the ranking channel leading their Fort, accepting Cody’s welcome in a shrill soprano voice that carried throughout the large room. “Xanon” then sang a song Sian’s wife had written for the play.

None of the words of the speeches or songs resembled anything Rimon remembered of that momentous occasion. Nobody cared. It was art.

After the children finished, Xanon mounted the stage to speak. Rimon had seen him working on the speech with Maigrey in the channels’ recovery room. He expected it would be very short, then they would eat.

With his stomach not at all interested in food, he thought he’d prefer a longer speech. Rimon watched his crew playing the ambient and indulged in his vision of this whole mob of people together as one family.

Fort Butte had been the second group to arrive, about two months after Fort Intalace. The Intalace survivors had numbered only five people by the time they arrived. They’d been led by Clire who was now the only survivor.

Fort Butte had brought in hundreds, and instantly outnumbered the Fort Rimon natives. They had arrived desperate because they’d been led by Xanon, a half-trained channel unaware of his shortcomings, and by a channeling staff consisting of eight channels in First Year and only six more barely old enough to train the younger ones.

Since the moment he’d arrived, Xanon had been the trial of Rimon’s life. Now, however, Rimon zlinned something different in the channel from Fort Butte.

Rimon speared Maigrey with a glance. She was seated down the table from him among the Fort Butte leaders next to Xanon’s empty chair. She looked back with a smug little smile twitching her lips.

Then Xanon’s powerful baritone grabbed Rimon’s attention. “Fort Butte has failed. We must acknowledge that here today, one year after we reached safety at Fort Rimon. Fort Butte exists no more. Fort Butte is dead, and we will no longer celebrate our arrival here as a group.

“Maigrey, my gracious and generous Companion, has been telling me stories of Fort Freedom and the earliest days of Fort Rimon in Del Rimon’s youth.” He turned to eye the children arrayed behind him. “In fact, she has told me more about Del Rimon’s childhood adventures than you could possibly believe.” After a studied pause, he intimated, “Apparently he took after his father.”

The children giggled, some of the younger ones pointing at Rimon, whereupon the whole hall full of parents and relatives laughed. The ambient squirmed with embarrassment and even anxiety since everyone knew Xanon’s opinion of Rimon, or thought they did.

“Some of the more outlandish tales though,” continued Xanon, “I did not believe until Tuzhel’s funeral. Del Rimon stood before you all and declared Fort Rimon, and the Forts in general, a total failure. In that moment, I understood what Maigrey and so many others here had been telling me for the past year.

“This last winter, we tried to recreate the conditions that led to our failure. Some of you noticed that and resisted by clinging to Fort Rimon’s procedures, which we saw as wrong. And though I now see that you were not wrong, I also see that you were not right. Del Rimon said it. The Forts were created to harbor a junct way of life seeking to Kill without losing touch with the soul that gives life. We can not remain Forts and become a nonjunct community.

“Since Tuzhel’s funeral, we’ve groped for what we can become. Once again Del Rimon has named us. We must become the House of Zeor, the family of excellence.

“Some feel that the Forts, designed as small towns filled with separate families each with different values, are the tradition we started with and are honor bound to keep.

“Yesterday, a delegation asked me to lead a group away to found a new Fort. While explaining why I could not do that, I saw what we must do to make the House of Zeor a reality.

“Fort Freedom was organized around the spiritual leadership of Abel Veritt. He was trusted, and listened to because he was wise and walked in the ways of his god. Under his guidance, the junct population of his Fort came to live Killing occasionally and then mostly not at all.

“Abel Veritt populated Fort Freedom with the changeover victims from out-Territory, the very children who would have become Freeband Raiders just as he had. He gave them a vision of a better life.

“We must find one among us who holds a similar vision, but not a spiritual one, a practical one. We must have a leader who understands how the practice of
Zeor
will lead us to a world where no one ever Kills. We must have a leader who knows that we will succeed, and who knows what we each of us must do to make it happen.

“According to junct law, we are a Genfarm, and all our lands, buildings and Gens are owned by the Tuib. Our leader must be the Tuib all our Gens trust to own them.

“By junct law, of course, that Tuib does not have to be a channel. They don’t know what a channel is! I submit that from now until the time when there are no more juncts, the Tuib of our House must be a channel. And not just any channel, but the very best channel in the House.

“That is not me. I had to explain my shortcomings to that delegation yesterday. I am not capable of leading a channeling staff, even where everyone knows what they’re doing. In trying to explain what quality it is that I lack, I discovered what we must have in a leader for this House of Zeor, this nonjunct family.

“We must choose an individual we all trust who lives by the principle of
zeor
and who holds our vision of the future. I believe we will always find such an individual to be the one among us who stands at the sec in any room, in any group.”

Xanon’s gaze went to Rimon, who was at the sec, the point formed by the interference of personal fields to define the shape of the ambient nager.

Rimon was always at the sec in any room, even when Lexy, Aipensha and Clire had been working fields with him. He was the sec. He defined the sec in any ambient, and that was the reason he could orchestrate the field management of so many channels so easily.