The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Losa’s attackers ignored her, but she just stood panting, swaying on her feet, dazed from loss of blood, unable to take the moment to run. There were so many people, so many bodies, so much blood, there was no way to run.

  Two other channels caught near the entry to the underground shelter also paused, halting their guards from hustling them into safety below, and joined Rimon’s effort. One of them was a Farris, but Solamar couldn’t zlin which one. He just felt another massive, dominating nager emerge into the chaotic ambient.

  Suddenly, the courtyard was pulsing with four huge, golden Gen presences. Rimon joined them all as he had joined seamlessly with Solamar, and created a junct’s greatest fantasy.

  The renSime defenders looked upward, waiting for a command.

  “Now what?” Solamar asked the older channel. “If your renSimes attack, we’ll lose the Raiders’ attention.”

  “When I signal, quickly shift your showfield to renSime.”

  Solamar zlinned the Fort Rimon renSimes outside, creeping toward the Fort wall, trying hard not to disturb the Freebanders’ fascination with the “Gens” above. In the yard, the defenders shifted to clear a path between the Raiders and the still open door beside the main gate. Then Solamar understood what the older channel planned and real fear spiked into his showfield.

  That galvanized the Raiders, and suddenly five of those outside armed with long, ugly bullwhips, hurled themselves at the palisade wall. One whipmaster, standing on another Raider’s shoulders, lashed his whip around a spike at the top of the wall, and suddenly two Raiders swarmed over the whipmaster and started over the wall at the “Gens.”

  All along the catwalk, Fort renSimes closed in from both sides to protect the channels.

  “Now!” shouted Rimon Farris.

  Rimon’s order seized the four of them in a nageric pulse and wrenched their showfields from Gen to renSime.

  To all the Simes within zlinning range the “Gens” had disappeared.

  The two Raiders climbing the wall paused, shocked to find no Gens awaiting them atop the wall, shocked to find two Simes standing where two Gens had been, shocked to be attacked from both sides by renSimes they hadn’t been able to zlin through the massive “Gen” fields.

  Jhiti tackled one of the Raiders, and at that second, the other leapt for Rimon, a dagger in one hand, screaming, “Wer-Gen!” sure he had zlinned a Sime turn into a Gen then turn back into a Sime.

  Solamar stepped into the hurtling body, grabbed, turned and flipped the renSime, aiming to fold him over the top of the wall and leave him hanging there. But the Raider was hardly more than an animated skeleton. The body arced high over the top of the wall, and the Raider tumbled screaming, “Wer-Gen!” and was abruptly silent.

  The ambient was so roiled with deathshock, Solamar wasn’t sure that he’d even felt the man die.

  In the yard below, a shout went up, “Wer-Gen!” And suddenly all the Raiders inside and outside the Fort were screaming, “Wer-Gen!”

  The circle of attackers around Losa closed on her once more as they broke and ran for the gate followed by all the other Raiders in the yard.

  Jhiti bellowed, “Don’t let any of them escape!”

  Defenders leapt to obey, spreading the order as they ran, blocking all avenues of escape for the animated scarecrow figures.

  The Raiders, driven into a small clump, retreated into the center of the yard, toward the entry to the underground refuge. Losa stumbled toward that beckoning safety, caught up with the crowd of Gens, children and Fort Rimon non-combatants dodging rearing, screaming fire-crazed horses and knots of Raiders on the hunt, formations of disciplined renSime defenders of the Fort and piles of dead bodies.

  One of the Raiders, at the point of death by selyn Attrition and desperate for selyn hurled herself at Losa’s back. A Sime woman, a Farris, broke out of the knot of those cramming through the hatch to the underground refuge and peeled the Raider off Losa offering the Raider a selyn transfer.

  Even at that distance, across the choppy sea of warring nageric fields, Solamar zlinned that Farris channel working to drive selyn into the Raider’s wasted system. Raiders could not accept selyn in the peaceful, collimated flow a channel offered. Raiders needed to burn a Gen to death by taking their selyn.

  The Raider died trying to Kill that Farris channel woman. The other Raiders converged on the Farris and she went down under the heap of scrawny bodies. The other defenders were unaccountably slow coming to her aid, and when they’d yanked and tossed the skeletal bodies off of her, she rose, staggering. Her nager was so pale Solamar could barely zlin her presence.

  Losa, still bleeding blood and selyn, yanked herself free of the renSimes who were trying to help her into the shelter and plunged toward the Farris woman, stepping on the piles of bodies, staggering as dead flesh shifted under her boots. Off balance, she gave one last lunge toward the Farris, offering all her selyn in a Companion’s instinctive response to a channel’s Need.

  The Farris turned. Solamar saw it all in slow motion, flash-burned into his eyes, his memory forever. His own Companion whose selyn was meant only for him, his source of life on earth, offered it all to a Farris channel, with no frisson of fear or even caution. No Farris would Kill. Everyone knew that.

  The Farris handling tentacles, four on each arm, twined themselves around Losa’s Gen forearms. The Gen arms were so inviting without tentacles but rich with swirling selyn fields.

  Time had stopped for Solamar as his thighs bunched as if to propel him off the wall in a mad flying leap toward his Companion.

  The Farris woman’s lateral tentacles emerged at the sides of her arms, two slender pink-gray organs with no real strength, rich in nerves that could draw selyn from the Gen body, drawing a month’s life into the void of a Sime’s Need.

  Solamar felt strong Farris hands clamp rigidly onto his shoulders, pulling him back from the suicidal leap.

  The Farris woman’s lips sought the necessary fifth contact point as her four laterals seated themselves against Gen flesh. Losa turned her face toward the woman in Need, offering her lips, the best, most nerve-rich contact point that gave the channel the best possible control of the speed of selyn draw.

  And it was over.

  Losa dropped dead at the Farris woman’s feet.

  Solamar was only dimly aware of his body drawn back hard against the trembling Farris channel behind him. Shock held him rigid. The noise of battle receded. The boiling chaos of the ambient nager, riven by his Companion’s deathshock slammed into his nerves, his mind, his emotions, his innermost self.

  Outside, the retreating Raiders, scrabbled over the wagons to flee the only thing they feared more than death by selyn Attrition, the supernatural wer-Gen and forced transfer from a channel.

  Behind them, Jhiti pinned a Raider to the planking and broke his neck. Solamar remembered he had intended to take that Raider down himself, had planned the move in fact, and forgotten all about it in an instant. That death was near enough for Solamar to feel it against the general background of death and dying, but it barely registered under Losa’s searing, shattering deathshock.

  Jhiti looked up to find Rimon still alive, holding Solamar back from the edge of the wall. Jhiti straddled the corpse and yelled, “Rimon, what are you thinking? You two shouldn’t have done that! You shouldn’t be up here at all.”

  Guilt suffused the ambient, quickly damped under the channel’s control. “Yes, Jhiti, I know. We’ll discuss it later. See what can be salvaged from the wagons and round up the rest of the stock these people brought before the Raiders get them. We’ve got a winter to face soon.” To Solamar, he said, “This way. We have work to do.”

  “Work....” repeated Solamar in a whisper.

  “She’s dead. I’m sorry. I’ve lost a Companion to Raiders too. We’ve lost a top channel in this. Maybe you and I can still save some lives.”

  “Save lives....” Solamar heard himself repeat those words, but his mind couldn’t understand them.

&n
bsp; In the yard below, the hatch to the underground shelter opened, and people swarmed over the refugees, separating the animals from the people, sending riders out into the gathering dusk to collect the animals that had been cut loose, and other squads out to chase the retreating Raiders and to hunt for survivors.

  As he followed Rimon down the ladder into the yard, the fire brigade dragged two donkeys into the yard and hitched them to the well’s wheel. Before long water was flowing. Solamar heard some renSimes and Gens banging pot bottoms and calling all cooks to the cookhouse. If nothing else, the Gens and children had to be fed.

  The Fort Rimon channeling staff swung into practiced motion, separating the injuries into type and severity, and rushing them off to treatment. The Tanhara channeling staff was swept into the organization as if they’d lived in Rimon all their lives.

  As Rimon Farris ploughed through the courtyard, one arm around Solamar’s shoulders, order was left in his wake. The Fort Rimon organization made this major disaster look like a routine drill until Rimon got to the hatchway to the underground shelter where the channels had set up their main hospital.

  The Farris channel cast about among the bodies, the seated wounded, the milling and the dazed. Finally he snagged a Gen man who was clearing bodies. “Where’s Clire?”

  The man stopped, emitting grief laced with fear. “She’s gone.”

  “She didn’t die. I’d have....”

  “No. The Raiders got her. A squad followed them to rescue her, but they haven’t come back. I’ve been here the whole time. I’d know if she’d been brought in. She’s not down there.” He gestured to the hospital. “Lexy is though. She’s working on Aipensha...she was alive last I heard.”

  It was Solamar’s turn to support Rimon’s weight as shock took all the strength out of his knees.

  Solamar sought his internal time sense, so reliable in any Sime. It had ticked off the seconds while his mind had stopped and now it told him nearly an hour had passed while they worked across the yard from emergency to emergency.

  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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FORT RIMON

  I’m too late.

  Rimon knew it the moment his head cleared the stairwell. Lexy’s nager dominated the long, narrow space lined with stacked cots, filled with the desperately wounded, the smell of wet earth, lamp oil, blood and death.

  Aipensha’s nager was nowhere to be zlinned. Lexy was bent over a bloody pulp of a dead body lying half on a cot near the back. He knew the corpse had been Aipensha before he got there.

  He grabbed his living daughter away from her sister’s body, held her tight. His only living daughter.

  A chasm opened inside him and swallowed him whole.

  He clung to Lexy, letting his nager penetrate hers, soaking up her pain, giving her the peace he didn’t have. His gut insisted his life had ended. He couldn’t tell his feelings from Lexy’s, and, for that moment, he didn’t care.

  So many. I’ve buried so many. I’ve lived too long.

  Gentle hands came, bundled Aipensha’s body in a blanket and cleaned up the puddle of blood. The hands belonged to the new channel whose wondrous skills had saved the Fort. Now he graced the dead with dignity.

  Finally, two Gens took Aipensha away. Rimon clung to Lexy with one arm and reached out to stop the blond man. “What’s your name?”

  “Solamar. We’re Fort Tanhara. What’s left of it.”

  There’s not much left of Fort Rimon either. We’ve lost two Farris channels today. But he couldn’t say that. It wasn’t “two Farris channels” that they’d lost. They’d lost Clire and Aipensha, probably because he’d ignored the oldest of their rules and exposed himself to the battle. His daughters had followed him out, and Clire would not have let herself be left behind despite pregnancy and Need.

  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.”