The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I’m not cut out to stand in your shoes.”

  He felt Lexy assessing him. “Don’t be too sure of that, Solamar. It’s amazing how fast some people learn.”

  Her attention slid over his shoulder. Solamar zlinned a ripe Gen field speeding toward them and turned to find Rushi, cloak covered by snow and ice, tracking slush down the hall. “Melina’s fine. They’ve named the baby Mhairin! Isn’t that a beautiful name for a little girl? Fengal says she had practically no selyn draw at birth.”

  Rimon said, “I wish we knew if that meant anything!”

  Nobody could know if a child was going to become Sime or Gen at maturity, but about a third of the children of two Gens changed over into Simes and about a third of the children of two Simes established as Gens. In the Forts though, Simes and Gens married and all bets were off. Only the severe and deadly selyn draw of the channel gave any clue. And that was not always a reliable indicator.

  “Dad,” said Lexy, “I’ll go talk to Val about Maigrey. You should brief Rushi and stay with Bruce to manage Tuzhel. Solamar, why don’t you come with me. If you’re not sleeping, Kahleen is likely waiting for you to show up in the dining hall and I should eat.”

  Rushi shot Solamar an inquiring look. He had been working to blend Tanhara’s authority structure into Fort Rimon’s so he just said, “Rushi, congratulations on getting a First Transfer assignment. You’ll enjoy it. Rimon has a lot to tell you before you go in.”

  Lexy hooked an elbow around Solamar’s biceps and scooped him down the hall toward Val’s office. Solamar looked back at Rimon. There would be plenty of time to talk him into doing exercises after BanSha’s changeover.

  Rimon turned to Rushi.

  Solamar marched off at Lexy’s side, matching her long stride, conscious of how much taller she was, how very pregnant she was, and how Post he himself was. Still it felt good to move beside this formidable woman, nagers twined.

  * * * * * * *

  Rimon sat at the head table in the dining hall with most of the channeling staff. The place was jammed as everyone associated with Melina and her new baby crammed in with everyone who had known BanSha all his life.

  On the stage, Sian played shiltpron, one long tone at a time in a simple tune for BanSha who sat on the edge of the stage and zlinned the chiaroscuro of fields rippled by shiltpron modulation, oblivious to the party behind him.

  Gradually, Sian moved into playing a new song. They had heard parts of it during the last few celebrations, but this was the first time Sian had played the whole thing.

  “My wife wrote this song so we can remember our dead and include them all in our times of joy.”

  It started as a beautiful, slow dirge that lightened verse after verse until it became a paean of joy blunted by gentle sadness. She had written it as a tribute to all who had died this last, terrible year as Fort after Fort had failed and sought refuge here. Sian called it Pasts and Futures.

  Rimon had been told the song had already become the new traditional opening for all the Fort’s festivities.

  Tentacles playing over his belt buckle, Rimon watched Lexy dancing with Solamar to the simple melody. As they whirled across the floor, they volleyed the field management between them, keeping the room’s ambient steady even as they moved. Their fields dance.

  Rimon noted they had re-phased their transfers so that they would be in Postsyndrome simultaneously. That wouldn’t last with Lexy pregnant. Visually they made a stunning couple exploring each other with tender but unspoken questions. Now when ever did all this happen?

  Rimon resolved to pay more attention to what was going on around him. The party had barely started when Oberin announced, “Storm’s over! First crews head on out!”

  That day, Rimon hit Turnover but was too busy to notice. Then it seemed no time at all passed before his transfer was upon him. Just measuring by Bruce’s field, it really had been two weeks since his Turnover.

  Now the shortest day of the year was approaching, the most brutal part of the winter ahead with the season of infectious illness. As Rimon reduced Lexy’s working shifts and increased his own, his days consisted of Collectorium, Dispensary and patients with barely time to clear his desk of assorted skirmishes with the Council.

  Lexy’s pregnancy was going very well, too well. He had begun to suspect this child would be Gen or maybe the rarest of the rare, a Farris renSime. The ferocious prenatal draw of the Farris channel just hadn’t materialized.

  Only one incident stood out in his memory of the days leading up to the shortest day of the year. The building crews had roofed and sealed the last of the new houses and were finally finishing the wall’s catwalk and defenses. What had been a couple of crude boards laid across sparsely placed supports was now a solid walk wide enough for two men to pass on sentry duty. The inner railing was almost finished, complete with handy racks for storing weapons.

  On the night of the full moon, Jhiti and Oberin found him in Bruce’s office discussing BanSha’s lessons. The young channel had made considerable if chaotic progress with all the willing tutors he’d enlisted.

  Jhiti said, “Rimon, you’ve got to come settle this now before they start digging.”

  “Settle what? Digging what?”

  “The latrine pit. Where to put it.”

  “I thought that was settled.”

  “Just get your cloak. Everyone’s standing around in the cold wind waiting for you.”

  Rimon said to Bruce, “Stay here and finish up. We have to restrain BanSha’s enthusiasm and focus his learning pattern starting tomorrow with his second transfer.”

  Jhiti and Oberin both laughed. Bruce commented archly, “I’m sure it wouldn’t be so funny if it was your job!” The guard captains laughed harder. They’d both known BanSha all his life, and his father Garen too. After a moment, Bruce joined them. “He’ll never grow up.”

  Rimon led the way out of the building, tromping carefully along the icy walk. “I always knew BanSha’s First Year would be a trial. The problem is that he’s decided to learn everything brought in by the channels from other Forts, and all within the next three weeks!”

  “I can well imagine,” said Oberin. “Garen was saying something similar last night. There, zlin that crowd? That’s where they want to dig.”

  “But that’s not where....” As they drew closer, the full moon high in a clear sky, Rimon zlinned this was Xanon’s Council, led by Alind.

  Jhiti said, “So you see the problem. We can’t have an outhouse there. If we have to defend this section against a concerted attack, it would make it impossible to maneuver.”

  Rimon ploughed into the group’s nageric chaos and sorted the fields into a reasonable order. That quieted all the Simes and the Gens finally noticed him.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Rimon. He remembered discussions when they’d first chosen this hill for Fort Rimon. The new houses had been placed according to their original expansion plans for a reason.

  “This is where we planned to put latrines,” said Alind. “The Council decided before those houses went up.”

  Rimon zlinned the now completed houses with their shutters tight against the weather, chimneys smoking, and many people asleep inside. It was a convenient spot for a latrine. But the symmetric spot on the other side of this row of houses was where it had to go. Had he missed something?

  One hand on his belt buckle, he zlinned the ground beneath their feet. “Stand back, please,” he said motioning the crowd away from the target area. Nobody could zlin through solid ground, especially when there was no Gen on the other side of the packed earth. When ground was not solid, it didn’t zlin evenly.

  The hill they had built the Fort on had been built upon before. Underground, there was an occasional collapsed pile of old rotting logs and other detritus. He found traces of what might be such a pile here, and far beneath that, barely perceptible, was a not quite solid area. Water. It just wasn’t enough water for a well. Seepage. They couldn’t build
here. There could be a collapse.

  He stood back and surveyed the position again and remembered the discussion in his office a few days ago. Some of the Fort Hope builders had brought in plans for new wells. Benart had pulled their original survey of the hill. “If we put a latrine here,” said Rimon “it will pollute the groundwater. It runs from here into the river, then on downriver to Shifron. We can’t put a latrine here.”

  A voice exclaimed, “He can’t zlin that!”

  Someone argued, “Maybe not, but it’s what the builder calculated just from the slant of the land.”

  Another Councilor objected, “Ground water under this hill is not going to be polluted. It’s way too far down to matter or we’d put a well here. We discussed all that when we voted to put the latrine here, and it took three days to negotiate that compromise.”

  Rimon said, “Where to put a latrine can’t be negotiated to a compromise. You can’t vote the water flow out of existence. If we put it here we risk making the folks living in Shifron sick.”

  “Raiders! They won’t be there long. That town will be dead by spring. Juncts won’t return to a ruin.”

  “Some juncts may come back,” insisted Rimon.

  “If they get sick, they’ll leave.”

  “If they get sick,” countered Rimon, “the illness may spread to us. We’re not putting a latrine where it can pollute water anyone might someday want to use.”

  “But....” started Alind.

  “The channeling staff is in charge of the health of this Fort, and we won’t permit a latrine to be dug here.”

  Rimon turned to the work crew where they stood leaning on their shovels. They were mostly Fort Rimon natives. “You know where we originally decided this latrine had to go. If you have it dug out by morning, the carpenters may get the outhouse built before the next storm. People will appreciate that.” It was indeed a long walk to the closest working outhouse.

  The diggers walked off pulling the sledge piled with firewood for softening the ground. The ambient nager around them was decidedly mixed. Not all of them thought Rimon was right. The onlookers dispersed, most emitting a satisfied air, and the Council was left to talk to themselves.

  Some people who had voted for these Councilors just to get the Council working again were now not so interested in their opinions. Rimon knew he had created more trouble in the last ten minutes than he could deal with in the next ten months. He turned to trudge back to the offices. Where do people get these ideas? Imagine voting on where to put an outhouse! Next thing you know, they’ll want to vote on where to dig a well!

  He had thought the Council was still debating the matter of disjuncts. The Fort Hope representative on the Council had told Rimon there was a proposal to send all the disjuncts off to form their own Fort and the majority felt that an ex-Raider would be even more untrustworthy than the other disjuncts. Maybe Tuzhel won’t hear about that until it’s defeated, thought Rimon. He’d seen Bekka and BanSha taking Tuzhel into Church of the Unity meetings several times now and it seemed to be helping Tuzhel come to terms with changeover. But with no Church of the Unity members on the Council, who would defend the disjuncts?

  At the celebration of the shortest day of the year, the Council usually handed out achievement awards to the children before the report on the year’s progress and plans for next year. This year, however, the Council set aside Fort Rimon’s customs and substituted with a communal sing.

  Not knowing any of the songs that were chosen, Rimon found himself in the back of the crowd watching and talking to Lexy as they managed the ambient nager for the crowd. Those who knew the songs were having a good time.

  “You and Solamar are getting along pretty well.”

  “I like working with him. And...well, we want to step our transfers so we can spend Postsyndrome together.”

  “Let me know if I can help that project out.”

  She almost dropped the fields. “I thought you didn’t like him, you’ve been avoiding him so much lately.”

  “I like him a lot, Lexy. He’s a great channel and a fine man. He could make a good father for your baby.” She was already almost three months along and hadn’t chosen a man to help raise this child. As far as Rimon could zlin, it seemed Solamar had chosen himself.

  “Let’s not get too far ahead of things, like BanSha always does.”

  Rimon laughed. He was a day past Turnover, but BanSha’s antics could make him laugh even when he was in hard Need. “All right, just be sure to let me know when you’ve chosen the lucky man.”

  “The way things are going lately, I’ll bet the Council will expect to be the first to know!”

  There was more bitterness behind that remark than Rimon thought there should be though she didn’t let it show in her field work. “What have they done now?”

  “Oh, nothing. Well, I really don’t know. I think those people govern by rumor and sly hints.”

  Privately, Rimon doubted they governed at all.

  “Dad, it’s probably nothing, but it seems the main dividing line is how people think about you and me.”

  “That started while you were away rescuing Fort Hope. They think I’m a tyrant dictating by whim.”

  “I think they think that about me, too.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I heard some people from Fort Rimon and Fort Hope, people who’ve never said anything against us, saying you took out that old jeweled belt to wear just after Alind put you in your place. They said it was a conspicuous display of wealth designed to remind everyone that Fort Rimon is the direct heir of Fort Freedom, and filled with ancient wisdom and authority regardless of how incompetent or dishonest the current holders of that authority are.

  “They said wearing the belt is your statement that you don’t have to listen to the Council. I only heard one person argue for you, Shaddyr Esren. She says since you gave up our house to the new families and are sharing your room with a stranger, you have no place to keep such a valuable object, so you have to wear it. Her husband made a big speech to his Church of the Unity people about how you’re just like your grandfather, guided by God’s Will.”

  “It’s just a Starred Cross. Lots of people in the Forts wear them.” He could zlin several dozen here without even trying. None were jeweled though. “Lexy, I inherited it from my father. He got it from a gypsy, and nobody has a clue where the gypsy got it. It’s just a belt.”

  His daughter was too busy holding the fields in the room steady as people sang a particularly nostalgic song to zlin his utterly truthful misdirection.

  But about two weeks later, after Rimon’s transfer, he remembered her remark and set the belt back in its drawer when he went to visit with Eskalie for a little sex and relaxation. To his delight, he slept afterwards with no visitations from Clire.

  Upon waking though, he decided that meant Clire was dead, beyond even being a ghost now. He knew if she were a ghost, she’d be doing her best to haunt him.

  On the other hand, it might also mean that whatever was sending him out of his body might have finally ceased. Maybe he’d healed. Solamar was the first to admit he didn’t know everything about such phenomena.

  So Rimon left the belt off when he went to work that day. For most of the day, he had no trouble at all staying in his body during his channeling functions. Then, late in his shift when he was beginning to tire, it happened again.

  He was healing a strained tendon and torn muscle in a renSime logger’s leg. The injury had been caused by a boot heel that came off, taking the whole boot sole with it while the woman had been climbing a tree to saw the top off. She had lost purchase, throwing her weight against a safety belt, which broke, and she had fallen.

  Both boots had thinning leather uppers with a few cracks. Rimon had noticed an increasing number of people in worn footgear lately. There were at least four master cobblers in the Fort now so this shouldn’t be happening. He made a mental note to inquire after the problem then fell to the job of healing the renSime’s
injury.

  For the first time since he healed Sian’s paralysis he saw his patient’s second body hazily floating outside her physical body.

  Without even thinking about it, he seized the image of the ruined tendon and muscle, molded it into healthy tissue and put it back into the woman’s leg hastily before Solamar could turn up in the vision world.

  He fell back into his body with a jarring, frightening jolt, but managed to mask his terror until he’d caught his breath. Even Bruce didn’t notice.

  Rimon excused himself to go to the latrine while Bruce finished wrapping a pressure bandage around the renSime’s ankle. He raced to his room where he slung the belt around his hips as fast as he could and sobbed with relief when the buckle was in place.

  Except for swelling and tenderness, the leg returned to normal in a matter of hours instead of the week or two Rimon would have expected. No one was amazed because Rimon was the only channel who knew the extent of the injury and everyone expected his Healings to work faster.

  Later, he considered asking Solamar for that training. As Lexy had said, people would notice how he was avoiding Solamar, and people were already noticing the belt.

  Rimon thought about how much more effective he could become at Healing and how vital that skill might be come spring when the Raiders attacked again, or the Gens did. Either way, they’d have to defend this Fort again.

  Yet everything in him shied away from that offered training. I’m getting too old and weak to face the rigors of learning something like this.

  Watching BanSha race through the sequence of skills that had become the traditional fare for second and third month old channels convinced Rimon he was right about himself. The vitality of youth was long gone. He had tried to shed the belt too soon. Older people took longer to heal.

  If they were going to defend this Fort again, people must have solid footgear. He saw Sian coming in for his transfer and brought him into his office. Sian was wearing shoes with holes over his little toes. The cobblers worked next to the looms and Sian talked to them every day but he had no idea why shoes were in short supply. “Find out what’s going on,” finished Rimon seriously.