The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Gen pain, terror, and insane despairing surrender to death exploded between them.

  Tuzhel came alive with the unfettered release of the junct fulfillment, Killbliss, then relaxed into the aftermath, basking in unutterable relief. And Clire was gone, had never been there, couldn’t possibly have been there.

  Rimon wrapped himself in his most impenetrable shell, and focused on his patient. “Yes, Tuzhel, that’s enough lesson for now,” said Rimon dismantling his grip.

  “I’m glad I did your lesson! That was amazing,” said Tuzhel, hypoconscious, gazing about the room that he sensed only with the ordinary five senses. “There’s no dead Gen here. Even Bruce is still alive. You made me imagine that, and it worked! It was so real!” He spun about in a little dance step. “I feel incredible! I’m disjunct, aren’t I?”

  “No,” answered Rimon. “No I’m sorry Tuzhel, but that’s not it yet.” It might have set him back too many months to let him disjunct before he was too old.

  Bruce had come to his side at some point, and Rimon hadn’t even noticed. The Gen was worried.

  “Tuzhel, you’re free to go now. See Val to pick up your escort and whatever assignment she has for you. You did sign up for the work crews, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. They’re planning to dig a big ditch and wanted a lot of hands. I think Val said I’d haul firewood to soften the ground, but I was in such Need when she came by I don’t remember.”

  “Go check that out then, and don’t leave the building without an escort.”

  As Tuzhel gathered his things and opened the door, BanSha, Rushi and Bekka were waiting in the hall. “Oh, you zlin fabulous!” exclaimed BanSha, dragging Tuzhel toward Val’s office.

  Tuzhel resisted BanSha’s guidance and stopped to zlin Bekka. “They told me you’d Established, but you’re absolutely beautiful.”

  Young love was such a delight to behold.

  Bekka, though, as an untrained Gen, shouldn’t have been in this part of the building. BanSha was not certified to protect an Establishing Gen from a disjuncting renSime, even right after his transfer.

  BanSha and Tuzhel sensed Rimon studying them, though Bekka was oblivious.

  “Tuzhel, step back in here a moment. I’d like a word with you. BanSha you and Bekka wait a moment.”

  When the door closed behind Tuzhel, he said, “You’re locking me up again?”

  “No, I just wanted to remind you, privately, that Bekka Established barely ten days ago, and you’re at least six months past changeover. She’s way too young to be interested in what you’re interested in.” While he spoke, he brought Tuzhel to duoconsciousness, to mute the shout of his ordinary senses so he could think straight.

  “I’m Post? I thought that wouldn’t happen until after disjunction.”

  “Oh, you’ll notice a difference after disjunction,” assured Rimon. “Remember this. If you ever want a real chance to get close to Bekka, you have to stand back for at least another four months, maybe five or six. Let her grow up naturally, or she could end up hating you forever.”

  Rimon knew that along with all the rest of the lessons the channeling staff had put this youngster through had come the basics of sex education, Fort style. “You’ve been warned you would begin to feel this way.

  Tuzhel took a deep breath and nodded. Clearly he was disappointed and Rimon could see why. After a great transfer which he’d been told would be a disastrous ordeal because he was nearing disjunction crisis, he was feeling wonderful but not allowed to pursue that feeling any more than he’d been allowed to assuage his Need at impulse.

  “I think you and Bekka would make a fine couple, if she’s willing. Right now, concentrate on being her friend.”

  “I got that part of the lesson. She just seems so....”

  “Oh, yes, she does definitely just seem ‘so.’”

  “Do you think she could become a Companion?”

  “She hasn’t asked. It’s hard, hard work. It has to be her choice. That’s something else we’ll just have to wait for. She hasn’t even given her first donation yet. Tuzhel, let her grow up, then let her decide what she wants.”

  “But could she if she wanted to? Become a Companion?”

  “We’ll know that after she’s done a few donations.”

  “Wait-wait-wait! Is that all life is ever going to be?”

  “Well, if you start waiting soon enough and wait for enough things all at once, something you’re waiting for happens almost every day. It’s just a question of having enough things developing.”

  Tuzhel frowned at him, then burst out laughing. “I don’t believe you said that.”

  Rimon listened to what he’d just said again in his mind. “Neither do I. It may have some merit, though.”

  “So now I’m waiting for Turnover, waiting for disjunction, and waiting for Bekka. I have to add more things to wait for so things will always be happening?”

  “Try it and let me know if it works.”

  “May I go now?” asked Tuzhel with impeccable grammar and a very clean accent.

  “Yes, as long as you go directly to Val or whoever’s on duty now and get your assignments straightened. And tell her I said you should be eating a solid meal before going to work. You still have a little growing to do.”

  “I’m not a child anymore.”

  “Your body is still developing. The better you eat, the longer you’ll live.”

  “That’s what Rushi keeps saying to BanSha.”

  Rimon opened the door, glancing at Bruce as the Gen let him know exactly how hungry he was at that moment.

  Rimon dismissed them with a wave of two tentacles. “BanSha, you and Rushi stick with Tuzhel until Val assigns someone else. Take Tuzhel right to Val’s office, and that’s an order. Good job, Rushi. Bekka, don’t forget you have lessons and Tuzhel has work.”

  They swarmed off down the hall, chattering about some new project of BanSha’s. Tuzhel stuck to Bekka’s side as he grinned back at Rimon exuding a sense of being accepted that was another brick in the foundation of his disjunction. Rimon sent back his approval on the ambient.

  BanSha started to intercept, protecting Tuzhel, but then relaxed his showfield and let Tuzhel zlin Rimon. Tuzhel’s joy lit up the corridor to Sime senses, but though Rushi grinned too, Bekka did not. Not yet, Rimon thought hopefully. She’s oblivious, still in a child’s world.

  Bruce closed the door and leaned against the handle as if sealing Rimon in and skewered him with one of those soul chilling Companion’s looks with eyes and nager together.

  “What happened during that transfer?” Bruce’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t let his alarm show in his nager. Or he tried not to. Rimon’s nerves were raw enough that he couldn’t help recognizing that his Gen had indeed felt something. Who says Gens can’t zlin? Some of them, you can’t keep a secret from to save your life.

  “I’m not sure, Bruce. Maybe Solamar will know. He apparently knows things he hasn’t told me yet.”

  “He’s been trying to.”

  “I know,” answered Rimon, grim beyond what a Turnover day called for. I should never have taken that belt off. I have to get my lessons done, just like the children.

  Rimon and Solamar were still sleeping in shifts, sharing the on-duty sleeping room that had always been Rimon’s temporary quarters. During the Need half of their cycles, their Companions bunked in the room with them, making it very crowded. Rimon had given priority to building the underground shelter, rather than new houses for the channels, so he had nobody to blame but himself.

  Solamar opened the door just as Rimon was about to reach for the handle. Solamar, aching with Need, ushered them into the room.

  “It happened again. Clire. You weren’t there this time. This was different.”

  “He wasn’t where?” asked Kahleen, wrapping a blanket around her. “What was different?” The fire had burned to embers and the room was chilly. Solamar lit a brace of candles so Bruce and Kahleen could see.

  “You haven’t told her
?”

  “No.”

  “Told me what?” asked Kahleen grabbing a heavy leather glove off the mantle to shove wood into the fire.

  Bruce explained, “Solamar has been working on some fancy nageric tricks with Rimon, but they don’t have a good handle on controlling it yet, so odd things keep happening.”

  “Oh. Solamar told me something about that.”

  Rimon ran tentacles around the nape of his neck. He was barely at Turnover and Solamar was due for transfer in less than a day. It wasn’t fair to burden the man with his miseries. He rearranged the fields, and Solamar helped. In a few moments, the strain in the room had leveled out.

  “Bruce, fetch yourself and Kahleen something to eat, and some trin tea for us,” suggested Rimon. “We’ll fill Kahleen in on the details. After all that time as Clire’s Companion, Kahleen might be able to supply some insights. Solamar, I think Clire’s still alive.”

  “Alive!” said Kahleen. “How could you know...?”

  “Bruce?”

  “Save the Clire’s alive part until I get back.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Solamar pulling Kahleen down to sit on the bed next to him. They wrapped the blanket around the two of them. “This is a long story, so take your time.”

  By the time Bruce returned followed by two kitchen staffers with trays, they had Kahleen well briefed on why Rimon had been wearing the jeweled Starred Cross belt.

  Rimon cleared the small table and the dresser top by heaping all the personal items on the bed. The repast was laid out and the kitchen staff left. Bruce had brought enough for six Gens, probably hoping Rimon would eat something, and maybe Solamar would nibble.

  As they ate, Rimon cradled a glass of tea in his icy cold hands and tentacles. He gave them every detail of what had just happened during Tuzhel’s transfer, finishing, “So Clire’s still alive. Or I hallucinated. Or maybe she’s dead and haunting me.”

  Kahleen was having trouble taking all this in at once. “Delri, am I understanding this right? All the other times you wandered out of your body, Solamar was drawn into it too, if he was asleep at the time?”

  “Yes, just about.”

  “You were asleep this time. And weren’t drawn in?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t asleep just then. All I can manage this close to transfer is a short nap here and there.”

  “No nightmares, though?” asked Kahleen.

  “You do good work, Kahleen. I’ve been able to sleep without unpleasantness. It could be significant that I wasn’t drawn into it this time. Rimon, if she’s alive and was affected by what we did during the battle as you were, then maybe she was out of her body and came to you.”

  “You know how to just go outside your body at will?” Kahleen asked Solamar.

  Solamar, seated beside her on the bed nibbling off her plate, nodded silently. He pulled back to watch her as if he expected her to run screaming from the room leaving him without a Companion to give him transfer.

  Kahleen hitched a little closer to Solamar, blending her ripening Gen nager into his dimming center. “Relax, Solamar. I’m not going anywhere. I shouldn’t have asked about what you weren’t telling me.”

  Bruce said, “No, he should’ve told you a long time ago. You have to know these things to do your job. I’m used to it. Delri’s spent his adult life coming up with new things he doesn’t tell me about until I mess him up by not knowing. Maybe this one’s not what we think it is. After what he did for Sian, though, I do halfway believe it .”

  Solamar said, “Think of it this way. Rimon can imagine something, shape and hone it, create it in this other space where people don’t have solid bodies. He can take what he’s imagined and make it real. He healed Sian’s nerves not in Sian’s body itself but in the part of Sian that can move out of his physical body. And then he put Sian’s healed image back into his body and the body did heal.”

  Is that what I did?

  “Maybe,” continued Solamar, “he imagined Clire as a way to give Tuzhel the kind of transfer he Needed. And that became real to Tuzhel.”

  “There’s more,” said Rimon heavily. He told them what Clire had said about the baby she carried, his baby, learning to give selyn in a scream of death and hatred.

  Kahleen said, “Delri, that’s just insane. It’s the kind of nightmarish thing you’d expect when you’re in Need, and you gave that transfer right after your Turnover. I still can’t believe you let Tuzhel ride your Turnover with you! Clire would never have done anything that generous.”

  Solamar said, “He’s still guilty over what happened to Clire.”

  “Me, too. I was her Companion. I was supposed to get her down into the shelter! My conscience never lets up yammering about that. Your conscience is tormenting you, too. As Solamar said, you gave Tuzhel a great transfer using just your imagination.”

  Bruce nodded, “You can’t control what you imagine?”

  Rimon asked Kahleen, “Could Clire really hate me?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think she could possibly be alive.”

  She was lying and Solamar zlinned that too.

  “Rimon,” said Solamar, putting his arm around his Companion’s shoulders and holding her tight to his body. “Even if Clire’s alive, it isn’t the Clire you knew. Having the Council turn on her when she was guilty of nothing worse than an error in judgment, then feeling that you had betrayed her and your own child, she broke. Pregnant and in Need, I can’t imagine how I’d feel.”

  “You’d hate me?”

  “No.”

  And that, strangely enough, was the whole truth. Here was a man who couldn’t hate if he tried. It just wasn’t in him. Rimon knew he himself wasn’t made so fine as that. He’d made worse mistakes than Clire had, and things had worked out well but only by sheer luck.

  “Rimon, put the belt on again and keep it on. After my transfer, I’ll show you some of those exercises I keep promising you. Lexy’s on shift all by herself. You’d better get back out there before she tries something she shouldn’t.”

  Since the boot problem had been solved, and most of the building had been completed, the channeling staff had been dealing with far fewer cases of frostbite and injuries. That reduced the workload to where they had a surplus capacity again, with the majority of a duty shift spent collecting and dispensing selyn. But there were always problem births, unexpected changeovers, and now in the depths of winter with the first harbingers of spring, illness.

  Rimon got to his feet, piled the detritus from the meal back onto the trays. “You’re right, I want her to take it easy. She’s tiring quickly already.”

  Rimon rummaged in the back of his drawer for the belt and put it on. “Let’s go see what Lexy’s up to and make sure Tuzhel talked to Dakin about his schedule.”

  * * * * * * *

  “Delri! Come quickly! The Council is hammering on Tuzhel and he’s about to break to pieces!” It was BanSha’s voice outside the door, the young channel’s nager identifiable through the insulation.

  Rimon released Bruce’s arms from his transfer grip. The vast abundance of radiant selyn coursing through his whole body, warming his soul and bringing a wondrous peace, had barely had a minute to work its way into him. The anxiety and gloom that had gripped him during Need had just started to dissipate and already some dire emergency hammered at the door of the transfer room.

  “I’ll get it,” said Bruce.

  They both had had other plans for the next few hours.

  Bruce opened the door and BanSha raced into the room, finally zlinned the state of the ambient. “Oh, sorry!”

  Rimon began to protest but Bruce forestalled him. “No use telling a First Year channel not to overreact.”

  “I overreacted?”

  “Not by much.” Rimon injected approval into the ambient. “I was preoccupied. So what’s the problem?”

  “Does preoccupied mean transfer?”

  “No. Just not paying attention,” translated Bruce.

  Enlightened, BanSha pulled wisdo
m over him like a cloak. “Oh. It’s Tuzhel! The Council! He’s almost at Turnover and they won’t listen to me. You have to come now! I’m supposed to be his escort until Solamar’s on duty, but I had to leave him with Rushi and Xanon is there. Maigrey is in despair over Xanon. He’s backing everything Alind gets the Council to say. You have to come.”

  “The Council has Tuzhel? Why?” Rimon hauled his body into gear, gathering his warm vest and cloak. He was wearing the belt. Tuzhel is near Turnover! Surely Xanon is not that irresponsible? “Where are they?”

  Once, after he’d objected to them trying to reclaim the old Council room from two families caring for orphans, he’d heard they stopped the looms to meet in the weaving area.

  “I left when they started to move the meeting from the school to the dining hall because the crowd got too big.”

  Of course. They couldn’t seem to do anything without an audience. “Let’s go,” said Rimon.

  The dining hall was full. There were still a number of people trying to eat and get back to their work, ignoring the crowd filling three quarters of the space. The Councilors, with Alind in the middle, sat behind a row of tables facing their audience which included an inordinate number of Church of the Unity members.

  At one end of the Council sat Xanon, attempting to manage the fields from that awkward location. His skills hadn’t progressed much beyond what Rimon had taught him while managing that meeting planning the election.

  In a nagerically awkward array in front of the Council stood Tuzhel, with Maigrey behind Tuzhel on one end of the table, Bekka Esren and her parents, Jor and Shaddyr, in the middle, and a cluster of Church of the Unity members at the far end. Tuzhel was indeed too near Turnover to be here.

  A few off-duty channels who were supposed to be eating had drifted over to manage the fields for the group but they were too few for the size of the disturbed crowd.