The Farris Channel (6 page)

The Gen explained to Solamar, “Lexy and Aipensha are his daughters. Aipensha was trampled by a horse trying to catch Clire....”

Rimon bolted for the hatch.

No.
Right now, it was two channels that were lost. A strategic loss. A scheduling problem.

With that thought the agony of the wounded rushed in at him. They could still be saved.

He stepped clear of his daughter and addressed her as his number two channel. “Lexy, you take this end of the shelter up to number thirty. Solamar, you take the middle up to number sixty. The bunks are numbered on the sides, see? I’ll take the far end. I’ll send a Companion to work with you.”
As soon as I find out who’s dead.

Holding himself very stiff and hard inside, Rimon threw himself into organizing the hospital and treating the worst of the wounded.

It was routine work at which he’d had decades of practice. He used his superior sensitivity to pair up channels with Companions and assign them to patients they had the skills to help.

Here, in the press of life and death crises, everyone did what he told them to and looked to him for the next task. There was a rhythm to it that let the work flow through him far beyond the point of deadening exhaustion and into that clear space where nothing existed but the task at hand.

One by one, the wounded were treated and carried off to quieter places to heal. Rimon was relieved when Kahleen arrived.

Kahleen had her masses of auburn hair braided into a crown on the top of her head. She wore a shapeless infirmary smock over thick sweaters that did nothing to hide her comely young figure from any Sime’s senses. Her nager, schooled to the high precision demanded by the Farris channels by years of work with Clire, was tarnished with sorrow but held in steely check. Rimon compared her with Solamar then gestured her toward the blond channel.

“His name’s Solamar. He shouldn’t be working alone.”

Bruce arrived, just as tense as Kahleen and just as disciplined as he slid into his routine Companion’s position by Rimon’s side. Rimon asked, “Dayyel, Iriela, Fengal?”

“They’re all fine. Fengal stayed in the shelter.”

Fengal, Bruce’s son-in-law, was a channel and his renSime daughter, Iriela, was pregnant, due this month.
Fort Rimon has a future. We just have to get there.

“That’s a relief. I’m all right, so you should trade places with one of the trainee Companions down there.” He gestured.

“You sure? Hate to leave you with this.”

Rimon nodded, not taking his attention from stopping the bleeding under his hands. “Go. I’ll see you later.”

Bruce went, slicing through the nageric haze as smoothly as when he’d arrived. Bruce had survived uninjured. Bruce would give him transfer when the time came. Rimon brought his attention back to the wound he was healing.

The Gen Companions of the channels needed skill and stamina to assist in managing the selyn fields around their patients, twisting and tilting the field gradients to spur the patient’s own body to heal, supporting the channels as they gave emergency selyn transfers to the most severely injured. One lapse in the Companion Gen’s concentration could spell death for the patient or devastation for the channel’s sensitive nervous system. Bruce was one of the best. His replacement...not yet.

Life on the trail, and even after building Fort Rimon, had given Bruce and the older Fort Rimon channeling staff more than enough practice. Rimon set himself to transmit some of those lessons to this new trainee and keep his mind off Aipensha and Clire.

Through the night, Benart, master scheduler, brought down Companions who had slept, shooed others up to bed. Bruce and Rimon directed the shift changes, improvising pairs creatively to keep the healing work flowing. Aipensha and Clire were not the only casualties on the channeling staff, and though Simes required little sleep, the Gens did.

Sequestered in the underground chamber, Rimon had no direct awareness of the work going on above them in the Fort. He just knew the survivors were collecting the corpses, putting out the fires, salvaging what was left of the wagons, preparing for the cold of the oncoming night, and somehow finding accommodation for the new arrivals in the already far overcrowded buildings.

Just before dawn, it had become very quiet in the underground shelter. Only three patients were left. The others and the staff in charge of them had moved up to the more capacious infirmary building where fire had taken out only part of the roof.

Whenever the hatch into the underground shelter opened, Rimon heard the hammering, the groan of the water wheel, the scrape of logs being dragged as reconstruction began. On one puff of cold air, a hungry Companion accompanied by a crowd of renSimes came down the stair, bodies aching, throats raw with smoke. But the Companion had apparently had some sleep.

“Delri!” she called when she saw him. “Lexy said we’d find you down here. We’re supposed to bring these patients up now because there’s room in the infirmary. Lexy says you have to get ready for the memorial at dawn.”

“Are they going to be ready for a Memorial now?” Suddenly Rimon was acutely aware of his blood crusted clothing and the fact that “room” in the infirmary probably meant as many more deaths as discharged patients. “With the graves that is?” His throat was a little raw too. He was not going to cry for Aipensha now. He swallowed hard.

“Rimon,” said Solamar. “Those two you’ve been working on can go, but this one can’t be moved again. I was just resting a bit before trying to bring him around. I’d appreciate some help if you can spare the time.”

Bruce had rejoined them a few hours previously and now was working with Solamar while Rimon had one of the youngsters from Tanhara by his side. The girl seemed to have been trained by Solamar “What did you say your name is?”

“Uh, well, I don’t think I did say. Rushi.”

That broke her concentration on Rimon’s fields. “Rushi, you go with our two patients here, then get something to eat and take a nap before the Memorial service. We’ll want you fresh and ready to work by noon. We’re going to require someone of your solid skills.”

The renSimes grabbed stretchers while Solamar and Rimon held the selyn fields steady. The two patients were raised out of the shelter and the small crowd departed leaving Bruce and the two channels to consult on the last of the critical patients.

Solamar’s clothing was likewise bloody and well soiled from the hard ride in to the Fort, but his hands and forearms were spotlessly clean as were Rimon’s. Both of them used the last of the clean water to scrub their tentacles while they discussed the patient, a badly wounded Freeband Raider who hadn’t died in the battle.

“I don’t think he’ll make it. He couldn’t have been Raiding very long, Rimon, or should I call you Delri?”

“I’m not the Rimon this Fort is named after. That was my grandfather. I’m Del Rimon. People who’ve known me all my life call me Delri. Most of the newcomers here just call me Rimon and everyone else does that too sometimes.”

Solamar handed him the sliver of soap remaining and continued to scrub lather over his arms. “This young fellow can’t be more than a month past changeover. If we can save him, he might disjunct.”

Thinking of the future. Good psychology, but Rimon wasn’t ready for that. “Any idea what happened to him?”

“Nobody knew when they brought him in a couple hours ago. They found him wedged into a space under a pile of dead horses. I’ve pretty much dealt with the internal bleeding. The concussion is a wait-and-see problem, but it should clear up if we can get a transfer into him. Still he hasn’t come around yet, and that’s a very bad sign.”

As he scrubbed, Rimon zlinned the unconscious youth behind him. “Bruce?” Rimon gestured with one wet tentacle and the massive Gen nager moved so Rimon could zlin the whole body. The other channel had indeed dealt with the internal bleeding, and a nice job he’d done too. Cuts and abrasions had been cleaned of infection, small details efficiently handled.

“I’d guess he’s unconscious more from the nageric shocks in the ambient during the battle than from the concussion. Imagine what burns feel like to a Raider in Need!” Rimon studied the youth. “You’re right. If we can get a transfer into him, he just might make it.” The boy was thin, but not skeletal like the older Raiders. His light brown hair was long and filthy, lice infested. “Malnutrition, but not very advanced. Still that’ll make everything harder.”

“Ever saved a Freebander in this condition before?”

“No, but my father did once or twice. He kept me out of it, so I don’t know how he did it. I was too young. The girl died in a Raid right after she disjuncted so I never got the whole story. Of the last two Raiders we’ve treated here, one died and the other ran away and set the barn on fire as a diversion. None like this, though.”

“Tanhara had about the same experience.”

They looked at each other as they toweled dry. Two of the three best channels in the Fort were about to hurl their last remaining strength into a lost cause, strategically a very bad administrative decision. And they both knew it. And they both didn’t care.

Bruce took the towels and as one, the two channels closed on their comatose patient, both well aware that the Companion wouldn’t have it any other way either.

Rimon felt the other channel shifting his secondary system to project a showfield.

The channel’s unique physiology with two selyn circulation systems allowed them to create interference patterns in the selyn fields around their bodies, showing the world a physical condition that wasn’t actually true. Using the secondary selyn system to project a showfield, a channel could seem to be renSime or Gen, as they had done to trick the Freebanders. However, another channel could zlin right through the façade.

Rimon felt how Solamar’s deep weariness was far worse than his own. He wasn’t a Farris, with the ultra swift Farris recovery time after the effort to give or take selyn, but though he lacked Farris sensitivity, he had an exquisitely honed precision to his field work and some other harmonic qualities that just felt good to Rimon’s ravaged systems. He chose not to mention the other’s fatigue and simply added his strength to their joint projection.

Bruce moved into place once the two channels had crafted a working field around the patient. “Am I right?”

Rimon flashed him a grin. “Perfect as always. This will be the last for tonight, then you can get some sleep before the funerals.”

The return grin said it all. They both knew neither of them would get any sleep. “I’ll make the first try,” said Solamar. “That way you can watch to see what goes wrong and maybe we’ll succeed on the second try.”

Rimon wondered if this man’s optimism would get on his nerves eventually, but for the moment it seemed right.
You have to look up to see the stars,
as his father used to say.

Rimon flicked a tentacle in assent, and gripped the fields. Solamar responded by insinuating his own fields through and around Rimon’s, creating an interlaced grip the like of which Rimon had never experienced. Again, it felt right. Comfortable. Secure. He’d never had anything like that with a non-Farris before.

Solamar edged onto the cot beside the frail body, cradled the renSime’s arms in his hands and extended his own handling tentacles, two on the top and two on the bottom of each arm.

The strong handling tentacles curled around the renSime’s arms searching out the youth’s tentacle extensor nodes. Retracted, the tentacles lay sheathed beneath the skin, mere ridges from elbow to wrist.

As Solamar applied precision touch to the extensor nodes, reflex caused the youth’s handling tentacles to extend, but there was no strength in them, no direction, no grip. The lateral tentacles, normally sheathed at each side of the arm barely peeked from their orifices. They were moist with ronaplin, the selyn conducting secretion necessary to make this transfer of selyn work.