The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Bruce’s hold on him was so strong, he felt as if his body and all his Need with it were separated from his work with the fields now. He found the contact points, and met the baby’s Need with a diffuse cloud of selyn, soaking the mucous with the energy of life.

  The mother’s body was consuming selyn voraciously, bleeding selyn and blood, pluming gouts of selyn out with every contraction, burning selyn at augmented rates in the huge muscular contractions.

  Thrashing wildly against the restraints, unconscious of her actions as her body went deep into selyn Attrition, Iriela was drawing selyn out of her own baby as Rimon infused the fetus with the energy of life. It wasn’t enough selyn for her and her draw was burning the fetus’s nervous system. He hadn’t expected her to be able to reverse the normal birthing selyn flow. Sometimes a channel would Kill her unborn child to save herself, but not a renSime.

  As the contraction eased into death, he withdrew his hands and, moved up to grab Iriela’s forearms in a transfer grip, making the fifth contact lip to lip. He drove selyn through the mother’s spasm-locked body and into the baby.

  Iriela’s heart started again, and the final contraction began. The baby’s selyn draw peaked. Rimon felt the baby then, as he often felt his patients, not just as a body madly sucking selyn out of his secondary system, but a whole person wanting to live.

  He fell into a rhythm, feeding first one then the other. He lost touch with the outside world, zlinning only the inward selyn flows.

  * * * * * * *

  He was standing before an odd brick edifice, radiating a powerful heat. He was a large, muscular Gen male in the prime of life. He knew metal was melting inside this huge furnace, and he knew this batch would come out to be the purest steel seen in a thousand years.

  But even more exciting than that, he anticipated his wife’s surge of glee after their next transfer. He was Companion to the most wonderful channel who ever lived, whose determination and unfailing optimism had rebuilt his House and the junct town around them. This new steel he was making would give her an invulnerable feeling and she would make all their dreams come true.

  * * * * * * *

  Delri! Delri, come back.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Delri said to his father while he strained for the memory of steel making. The concept was so powerful, filled with solutions to problems, exquisitely simple and marvelously complex at once.

  You are here and now. It is the child who will be then, long, long from now. You are not the child and you are not to be who the child will become. You are Del Rimon Farris. You are the hope for that future to be, but you must save this child in this now.

  * * * * * * *

  He was standing in a small, comfortably appointed house, gazing out at a lovely, neat row of houses. The area was surrounded with a high wall. It was a Fort, but like no other he had seen. The small houses were surrounded by whitewashed fences and neat rows of whitewashed stones. There were chickens, dogs, children, and a flock of geese. These strange people had lived there longer than he’d been alive, but they had welcomed him.

  In this warm, welcoming living room, he was struggling to demonstrate a channel’s functional to another channel. Delri recognized what he was trying to do, but also that the effort was crude and clumsy, badly executed. The other channel could not follow his field manipulation, no matter how patiently and slowly he repeated it.

  “Rimon,” said an elderly renSime who was watching them, “you can do this. I know you can. It is part of God’s plan for us. You will not let us down.”

  And he knew he was Rimon Farris. He was himself, and he was his own grandfather, all at the same time.

  * * * * * * *

  “Rimon!” It was Solamar Grant, speaking silently in his mind again. “Come back to the present now. Iriela Needs you. Her child is coming. Now, Rimon!

  Rimon fought the nightmare sensation, struggled to detach himself from Grant’s attention and squirmed away, twisting and turning, and coming up in the dimly lit room, a few hours before dawn, safely in Fort Rimon’s birthing chamber, firmly protected by Bruce’s rock steady field.

  As his awareness surfaced, he dismantled his transfer grip on Iriela. Bruce’s grip relaxed in a vast, trembling relief. Quickly, he edged Rushi aside and moved to receive the baby, laving the half-born infant with an abundance of selyn. His mind, though, was somewhere in the distant past. Or was it the future? Nothing made any sense. Bruce encouraged Iriela to push now, push hard, just once more.

  The squirming, slippery infant lay safe, alive in the cradle of Rimon’s hands and tentacles. With one tentacle, he cleared the newborn’s air passages, and with two others he encouraged him to start breathing.

  He swaddled the baby in the warmed blanket Rushi handed him. He tucked the little body up on the mother’s stomach to await the afterbirth. Iriela had barely caught her breath by the time Rimon finished the well practiced move.

  Then Bruce and his daughter were gasping and laughing. Bruce’s nageric spike of relief and happiness penetrated even the massive shielding of this room, and Maigrey and the whole family crowded in before the afterbirth was cleared.

  Their pure joy vibrated the walls, rumbled through the earth, shook the distant tombstones in the cemetery, stirring Rimon’s ghosts, thrashed through the trees, and Rimon saw the grape arbor spring into full bloom in seconds.

  Bruce looked at him oddly. This was not a moment Rimon could bear to spoil for his Companion. He drew his showfield tight around himself, and gave everyone a warm, happy smile that was perfectly genuine.

  “Rushi, you finish up. No complications evident at all with the afterbirth. Iriela, you and Fengal have a fine, strapping healthy baby boy to raise into a channel this Fort will love. What’s his name to be?”

  “We told you,” said Fengal, doing his best to help Rimon work the fields in the overcrowded room. “He’ll be Wade, after Bruce’s great-grandfather.”

  Rimon couldn’t imagine how he’d forgotten. This was to be the family’s long planned tribute to Bruce’s family’s out-Territory origin. Only it seemed wrong somehow. This boy should have a name starting with an S.

  “Good, I’ll tell Benart to enter him in our Record,” he said, looking at his hands. “After I clean up, that is.”

  Rushi started for another basin of water and soap laid by for this purpose, but Maigrey opened the door for him, and they watched him flee the scene with vast puzzlement. Their bewilderment grew when he sternly gestured Bruce back into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.

  It happened again. And this time he wasn’t seeing ghosts, he was becoming ghosts and returning convinced he was someone other than himself. I have to tell Bruce, but not now. Oh, not now. Let him have this moment.

  He went about his duties for the rest of that morning, trying to drown the memory in more urgent affairs, trying to convince himself he could perform any channel’s functional and not drift off into some insane vision.

  When Bruce tried to join him, Rimon waved him off to attend his family. They would talk soon enough. That awful confession would preempt Bruce’s happiness.

  Rimon worked until noon, then took one of his now habitual breaks to pace the walls and zlin Fremir Pass. First, he spent a few minutes watching the younger children playing in the yard. They were supervised by adults from different Forts; the children were mixed too. The youngest were marching and chanting a vocabulary song, spelling out difficult words. Another group was playing the popular ring-toss game called Zeor. You’d never know they were from different Forts.

  Then he spotted the third pair of guards to arrive. They carried a long report from Lexy. It was only two days before Rimon’s scheduled transfer, and his concentration was not what it should have been. He read the report three times before he understood it.

  Lexy detailed what had happened to Fort Hope, most of which everyone knew from the scouts’ story. After the last of Fort Hope’s Farris channels had died, a series of decisions went wrong and a harvest came in v
ery short. In desperation, they had sent a party to trade with the out-Territory Gens, relatives of Simes who had arrived at Fort Hope after changing over out-Territory. Traditionally, the Forts had always kept ties with Gen towns across the borders near them. This time, that policy had backfired.

  A nearby Sime town had housed a garrison of Licensed Raiders, Sime government sanctioned troops that harvested Gens out-Territory. Licensed Raiders carefully limited their take of Gens to avoid depleting the local supply or triggering a Gen army action against the Territory.

  The Licensed Raiders got word of Fort Hope’s illegally trading in their hunting ground and organized an all out attack on the Fort, razed all the buildings, murdered a third of the Simes and carried off a few dozen Gens. The ones who were not Companions would eventually make Choice Kills to be sold at auction.

  The survivors set out for Fort Rimon, expecting to acquire another Farris channel, and re-found their Fort in a safer place. Only Fort Rimon was no longer where it should be. It had moved.

  Following directions the locals gave them, they had to destroy some diseased horses, fight off Freebanders, and survive a tornado. They found another abandoned Fort, but there they lost people to a fever.

  Setting off following yet more vague advice, they encountered some out-Territory Gen merchants who had strayed across the border with four wagons loaded with corn, oats, wheat and beans. Suddenly they found themselves in a pitched battle.

  The Gens, not realizing they were in Sime Territory, not comprehending that Simes could truly intend to help them find their way back to Gen Territory, turned on the Fort Hope people as if they were Raiders and fought to the death. The last three of the Gens raced their horses over a cliff instead of risking being Killed by marauder Simes.

  The battle did so much damage to the Fort’s wagons and horses, that, figuring they had to be very close to their goal, they cached most of their own food supplies as well as all that survived on the Gens’ wagons, in a cave and continued searching for Fort Rimon.

  When the trail petered out, the terrain provided no clue to where a group might settle, and there were no more towns. So they camped and sent scouts in every direction looking for clues to where Fort Rimon might be. Then the early winter storm hit the open camp with devastating force.

  All of that confirmed what the scouts had told everyone, but Lexy had made a new decision.

  Since the Fort was already short of food, and the Fort Hope people had a large number of Gens who would have to be fed through spring, it was imperative to bring in that cached food from the cave before winter closed in. The Fort Hope people were from the southern plains and had no idea what the mountain winter would be like, or how long it would be until a crop could be brought in.

  Lexy was sending the majority of the Fort Hope members, starting with the most injured or disabled, to Fort Rimon along the trail established by Jhiti’s Guard detail. Those who could ride would be mounted, and a few wagons would be used for the injured and the Fort’s possessions.

  The empty wagons would go with Lexy, Garen, Jhiti, his Guard troop, and some Fort Hope renSimes, to where they had cached the food. It might take a couple of weeks, but they’d bring the food that Fort Rimon now had to have.

  Moving wagons over the ice crusted snow would be slow, maybe impossible over the Fremir Pass. Lexy asked Rimon to send help to get the people over the pass even if the wagons had to wait for spring to be brought over.

  This time there was nothing in Lexy’s letter except business, everything from details on patients she was sending him to an inventory of skills and resources that Fort Hope was bringing them. Her plan was a good one. She was doing exactly as he’d have done in her place.

  It never occurred to him to share Lexy’s report with the newly elected Council before showing it to Oberin who took immediate action.

  Hours after Oberin’s guards were dispatched, Xanon, Alind and several others stormed into Rimon’s office bursting with outrage. “You had no right to authorize this scheme of Lexy’s!” roared Alind, head of the new Council.

  But it was Xanon whose outrage filled Rimon’s office. “...and certainly not to withhold her report until we heard about it from that Raider you’re trying to educate.”

  “I didn’t authorize anything, and he’s not a Raider anymore. Tuzhel has chosen disjunction,” corrected Rimon.

  Alind insisted, “You shouldn’t have replied. That was for the Council to do, and we’ve voted against her idiotic scheme. There’s too much risk of getting snowed in way off there. We can’t risk her that way.”

  Everyone’s afraid, Rimon summoned patience. “She wasn’t waiting for authorization. By the time my reply gets to her, Lexy will be on her way back with the wagon loads of food. The guard carrying my reply will take four more days to get back to the camp, then several more days along Hope’s backtrail before she reaches Lexy.”

  They wasted another hour of Rimon’s time berating him for not handing the message over to the Council immediately, then tried to take the report away with them.

  Rimon argued that it contained the details on the patients who would arrive starting possibly as early as tomorrow. He wanted channeling staff to read it.

  After he let them all read the message, even Xanon could see his point. Alind went to order Oberin not to show messages to Rimon anymore, but to bring them directly to the Council.

  It was almost midnight by the time Rimon had finished briefing and mobilizing the channeling staff to receive patients. Oberin reported that the advance party of Fort Hope had topped the pass on foot. Fort Rimon wagons were waiting for their sick and wounded at the bottom of the trail down from the pass with people there to help.

  Benart had the redeployment of resources well in hand, though they were desperately short of blankets and winter clothing. Rimon had contributed the blankets from his bed and taken down the old quilt from the wall over the bed. It was as warm as three blankets and would do until they could make more. All over the Fort, other people were taking down treasured old quilts and loaning out blankets. They would all manage.

  Once again, Rimon found himself pacing the catwalk around the walls, noting the progress of the incoming refugees. Having memorized Lexy’s message, he was distantly aware he was obsessing on Lexy because he missed Aipensha. Because I’m afraid.

  He knew after his next transfer with Bruce, he’d have to cope with a surge of grief such as he hadn’t experienced since his wife had died. He could feel that welling bubble of agonizing, lonely grief lurking deep inside him, but walled away by the insistent pounding of growing Need.

  At my age, he thought morosely, I should be used to Need walling me away from my feelings. Only I’m not. The moment his transfer was over, all that deferred emotion would sweep through him. He knew it would happen, and he also knew he’d be utterly surprised by it. He always was, and this time would probably be the worst of a lifetime. Postsyndrome, he thought, isn’t always filled with grief. So why are the grievings the ones I remember so clearly?

  He faced the grim truth. He was old. He’d lived a full life, loved a fine woman passionately, shared fabulous Postsyndrome times with her, had wonderful children who fulfilled all his wildest expectations, avoided terrible disasters, saved many, many lives, worked with one of the greatest Companions who ever lived, and enjoyed grand good health...until now.

  But he was old. Too old to be leading the rescue Lexy was leading. Too old to fight every day and all night too. He wanted rest, security, grandchildren like Bruce’s. He wanted to sit back and enjoy the Fort he’d built, and rebuilt so many times. And what was he getting? His mind was deteriorating like his father’s had. There was a good reason people didn’t trust him with their lives anymore.

  Intellectually, he knew that was just Need talking. Need left any Sime depressed, anxious, short tempered, a walking gloom factory haunted by nightmares and without appetite for anything except selyn.

  Need aside, he also knew he was losing his mind. He had to tell
Bruce. Soon. Lexy had to take over. She knew it already. She was out there doing his job.

  Aipensha!

  The surge of grief had none of the piercing, shattering stridency he knew would come after transfer. That it could reach him now showed just how bad this was going to be. He had to talk to Bruce and he only had two days to do it. He’d put it off now for eleven days and he was out of time.

  That was made abundantly clear by the incident this morning at Wade’s birth. He didn’t want to think about what had happened. I have to tell Bruce. I have to.

  At this very moment, his Companion, nagerically the brightest Gen in the Fort, was clearly zlinnable in the dining hall with his wife, children, cousins, in-laws, celebrating the birth while Rimon paced the wall. Bruce hadn’t had much good time with his family since Clire arrived with the Fort Intalace survivors and Fort Butte right behind them. The Gen deserved his celebration.

  He could zlin Bruce so clearly from where he was that he really didn’t feel abandoned by his Companion. Their selyn fields were locked in step. His subconscious felt secure. He had no personal or professional reason to interrupt the festivities.

  Bruce’s family didn’t deserve to have this time spoiled by his self-pitying gloom and he just didn’t have the necessary will to go in there and pretend to the joy he knew he would feel...one day soon.

  Everyone in this Fort has a grief riding them, he told himself. I delivered Bruce’s grandchild this morning. I should be happy.

  Disgusted with himself, Rimon turned away from zlinning Fremir pass and deliberately walked around the wall to stand facing the cemetery, rubbing his own nose in how many other people had losses to mourn.

  In the cloudy, cold, moonless dark, the cemetery was black on black shadow. The livestock had all been rounded up and fenced into shelters, the hen house enlarged.