The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Rimon extended handling tentacles and hung both hands on his belt buckle, fingering the jeweled Starred Cross as he watched Solamar helping Lexy climb onto the rock followed by Garen and Kahleen. There is the next generation. They are the ones I’m doing this for.

  Jhiti and Oberin both followed them. Their winter-long regimen of drills, plans, construction of defenses, and more drills had paid off. Only a few had died in this battle. Jhiti was absolutely triumphant.

  Rimon saw the Esren family reach the bottom of the path and motioned them up onto the stone. He had asked Jor Esren to give Tuzhel’s eulogy, Church of the Unity style. That Jor had accepted was heartening.

  The new Council Sian headed was managing the daily tasks of the Fort. As Sian descended from the new Fort gate, Rimon motioned him and some of the Councilors to come up onto the rock. He had spent half the evening with them sketching his plan, and they were already enthusiastic.

  Fort Freedom had been founded by Abel Veritt to harbor juncts who regretted the necessity to Kill but accepted that the Kill didn’t make them Evil. They had embraced Rimon Farris and his gift of transfer.

  Despite all that good, the Fort concept had not been designed to harbor the channel-centered life. The new Council, most of whom had been involved in the mistakes he’d made with Clire, understood what he meant when he said it was time to put aside the concept of the Forts, to create a new way of living.

  Finally, with the sun lowering in the spring sky and the moon not yet risen, he called them to order to lay to rest a young disjunct who had deserved so much more from them than they had been able to give him.

  When Benart had settled with his slates to record everything, Rimon grabbed attention with a nageric pulse. “The Forts have failed. Tuzhel’s death has taught us that.

  “We must recognize and acknowledge our failure.”

  The ambient congealed with shock. The Companions and channels scattered through the crowd worked the fields. Not everyone had been warned of the changes he proposed.

  “When I saw my own grave there on the hill, I saw that the time had come to admit that I have failed my grandfather’s mandate handed to me by my father.

  “When I first saw the gravestone, they were breaking it up to use in a hearth. But I could read the inscription.

  “Refusing to acknowledge failure will never lead to success. And we must succeed. Clire Farris lies junct, unconscious, beyond retrieval because this Fort failed. Tuzhel gave his life and much more, his disjunction, to save my life and this Fort. This last winter, each of you has sacrificed to unify this Fort community, and the result was my gravestone over an empty grave.

  “Tonight, we will fill that grave and mark it with a new stone. Tonight, Tuzhel will lie in that grave, the last martyr to Fort Rimon and the first martyr to a new way of life. For we must succeed in establishing the nonjunct lifestyle, even if it means admitting the Forts are a failure.

  “Tuzhel taught us that. Raised out-Territory, he had never played Zeor, never even heard of it. He came here as an adult, but took to the game as if it were life itself. He understood the principle in a way none of us ever has.

  “I’ve been told how Tuzhel came through disjunction with a whole new view of life, and how that view led him to give himself just to rescue me. He held himself responsible for my capture, even for the fall that nearly took my life. He had missed that toss, but wanted to do better.

  “This time, he held nothing back. This time, to convince Clire he meant to rejoin the Raiders, that he too had rejected the Fort, he Killed again, renouncing his disjunction knowing he could not disjunct again.

  “Some Gen, possibly someone Tuzhel knew, died so that he could rescue me.”

  He let the horror of that sink in, then reached behind him and brought up BanSha and his Companion, Rushi. He stood between them, leaning on them instead of Kahleen and Bruce. He put one hand on each of their shoulders watching the people think over what he was saying while he demanded his legs to keep holding him up.

  “BanSha has told me that when Tuzhel went out to rescue me from Clire, he had decided that he’d Kill if he had to, but not twice. He felt that his disjunction was his moment of birth, and that he’d been granted life out of death, the deaths of others that he had caused and the death he had faced in disjunction.

  “From all reports, this young man was a philosopher, a poet, a spirit buoyed by the highest ideals my father taught me. These are out-Territory ideals as much as they are ours. These are the ideals that bind us together as one people.

  “I’ve been told Tuzhel died shouting, as he had at his disjunction, ‘Out of Death Was I Born, Unto Zeor, Forever.’ He was irrevocably committed to living the principles of this simple child’s game, Zeor. No matter how disastrously he failed, he would do better this time! Even if it cost him everything he had, he would excel his previous score.

  “He understood us better than we ever understood ourselves because of the loving Gen family that raised him to exceed limitations. He understood what we are, how far that is from what we want to be, and that we must not let others define what we can do to get there. He voiced the pledge that will become the foundation of our new way of life. I give you that pledge now, from my own lips, as I too have been born from Tuzhel’s death and the death of those he Killed.”

  Rimon reached down and hefted the painting of Fort Freedom. “Now, this evening, I bury Fort Rimon with the body of Tuzhel, and I pledge to you to do better this time. Out of Death Was I Born, Unto Zeor Forever!”

  Firmly hypoconscious, aware only of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, he summoned augmented strength to steady his legs and stepped down off the boulder relinquishing his spot to Jor Esren.

  With the painting in his left hand, he shoveled dirt into the grave that had been dug for him but now held Tuzhel. Shorty. Once known as Harve Zamir, according to BanSha.

  He couldn’t bear to listen to Jor Esren’s speech. They had discussed what he would say about his daughter Bekka, and Tuzhel, about hope for the future. Rimon knew that if he listened, he would simply blow the fields to smithereens. Even Lexy wasn’t strong enough to protect people from that, and Bekka herself deserved better of him.

  So Rimon placed the painting in the grave atop the shroud wrapped body and kept shoveling dirt over it. Two women came to help. The three shovels hit a cadenced rhythm. They had barely begun when Xanon came with another shovel and silently joined the effort.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FORTY-NINE DAYS

  It took forty-nine days to create the House of Zeor.

  Rimon was on fire with ideas. As people discussed what the Forts would become, Rimon would overhear a comment and blurt out ideas. People grabbed his ideas and gleefully generated unrecognizable new ones, concepts erupting out of nowhere as people worked together.

  While the stump pulling, tilling, planting and pruning was going on at breakneck pace, the laundry ran at full capacity. The spring trading expedition was mounted, and lambing, calving, and foaling kept pulling the channels out of the Collectorium and Dispensary into large groups where people were working and brainstorming.

  All agreed, the Forts had failed. The reason they had failed though was hotly debated because each Fort had failed for a different reason, and Fort Rimon appeared to be strong and successful now.

  Many, however, saw Rimon’s point, that even Fort Rimon would eventually succumb to the divisiveness that was generated within. They had to become united in such a way that no external issue could divide them.

  Others disagreed, seeing the continual debate as a source of new ideas that would be lost if they were too united. Rimon contended that debate and even disagreement could thrive in a unified community. So what could unify this community? Into what could it be unified?

  So Rimon strove to communicate his vision of what had happened among them over this last winter and why. Benart, Lexy, Bruce, Garen, Kahleen and even BanSha and Rushi spread out to repeat his explanation, which continued to evolve with
the telling. Rimon hardly recognized his own words when they came back to him.

  Oddly silent though was Solamar.

  Near midnight, four days after Tuzhel’s funeral, Rimon finally felt strong enough to climb to the top of the wall to his favorite spot. He paced the guards’ catwalk, mulling over the source of his irrational certainty that the zeor concept was their key. He should remember why.

  With that odd timing Rimon had come to expect, Solamar arrived just when Rimon was so frustrated with the gap in his memory that it had to be obvious in his showfield.

  Solamar leaned beside him and together they zlinned the darkness, noting the animals sleeping, the renSimes working the fields accompanied by Gens who provided a selyn field to zlin by. Inside the Fort, a group of Gens was moving Rimon’s personal possessions into his new house. Next to his house, some renSimes were building Lexy and Solamar a new house to share with their baby while yet another new family moved into Rimon’s old house.

  As had become their custom, they just stood together and watched the Fort working. It made him relax to have this young, strong channel beside him. Sometimes that made him neglect to ask the questions burning holes in his mind. Just not tonight. Tonight was for answers.

  Rimon and Solamar had spent the afternoon forcing selyn into Clire, keeping her and Rimon’s baby alive as her body wasted selyn in the typical Raider burnout syndrome. Nothing odd had happened to Rimon during these now routine sessions, as it had when they’d forced selyn into Tuzhel, no visitations or visions.

  “Solamar, you said Clire isn’t out of her body. But...was I?”

  Rimon zlinned the hitch of alarm that rippled deep inside Solamar’s nager. Besides himself, only Lexy would have been able to zlin the quickly buried reaction.

  “So I was,” concluded Rimon. “And you don’t want to talk about it. So where did I go and what happened that you don’t want to tell me?”

  * * * * * * *

  I knew it would come to this, but not so soon.

  “All right,” said Rimon insightfully, “then why don’t you want to tell me?”

  “Rimon, sometimes it’s better not to remember a nightmare, isn’t it?”

  “I had nightmares? For an entire month?”

  “I was searching for you, trying to bring you back to your body.”

  “I know. Bruce and Lexy told me. They’re convinced you rescued me from some kind of horror, but they won’t even tell me what you told them.”

  “And what I told them wasn’t the whole story.”

  “So what is the whole story?”

  “I don’t know the whole story. I only know that when I connected with you, you were crying, screaming in terror, somewhere beyond sanity. Whatever you experienced, it was more than you could encompass.”

  “Then maybe I don’t want to remember.”

  They were silent for a while. “I have to remember. Solamar, what I’ve been doing here, my grandchild will have to live with.” He rubbed his left forearm.

  “And your new child.”

  “You think Clire’s child is mine?”

  “Certain of it. Why aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want it to be.”

  “That’s a useful insight.”

  “You’re no help.”

  “What can I say, Rimon?”

  “Call me Delri and tell me what I have to know about that missing month in my life.” Rimon recounted some of the odd ideas that he’d blurted out, ideas others had grabbed as if they were wisdom from beyond the stars.

  “Solamar, there’s this absolute certainty inside me, and I don’t even know what I’m certain of, but you know what it is, don’t you?”

  “Not exactly.” He sighed. “You almost lost touch with your body because you got lost in time. I think you may have glimpsed the future. Or maybe just a future.”

  “The future!” whispered Rimon. That explains so much! “So you’re saying I’m coming up with ideas from the future? I’m certain they will work, because they have worked. Solamar, that’s not possible. That’s insane.”

  “Well, there’s no reason to believe that you understood what you witnessed. By the time I found you, you were hysterical. You could have imagined anything. When out of the body there’s nothing but imagination. Nothing is real there except what you believe is real, what you make real.”

  “This is not helping.”

  “It was you who wanted to discuss it, not me.”

  Solamar felt Rimon zlin him. He dropped his showfield invitingly. After a moment, the Farris scrutiny abated. Rimon kept rubbing his left forearm.

  “All right, I guess I deserved that,” allowed Rimon. “What can you tell me that would be helpful?”

  “When I found you, there was one task you were attempting to accomplish. Do you remember what it was?”

  “No. I told you, I was handing Tuzhel off to Jokim, then Bruce was giving me transfer.”

  “You had made something you wanted to give to Lexy. Do you remember what that was?”

  The swirled granite showfield vanished in a burst of wonder. Solamar zlinned the Farris beneath glowing with relief and joy. A few renSimes below turned to zlin them. Rimon waved at them and reorganized his showfield.

  “What do you remember?”

  “A box. A beautiful jeweled box with a curved lid. More like a coffer for storing loose coins, only gleaming, carved with inscriptions, as if the value was the box itself and not what was inside it. I made it for Lexy.” He turned to peer at Solamar and added, “I made it because I thought I was dead and would never see Lexy again.” He nodded. “Yes, out of death was I born.”

  “You weren’t dead. You imagined that.”

  “But I believed it and it didn’t come true.”

  “Well, there you see? Any future you foresee can be like that, just inspiration, aspiration, wishes, dreams and fantasies, all without substance. No matter how certain you are that something should happen, it might not.”

  Rimon leaned his back against the outer railing and surveyed the interior of the Fort. “Or it might happen, in a way very different than you expect.”

  “That’s true.”

  “If it’s going to happen at all, it has to be the product of the efforts of many different people each with unique hopes, ambitions, dreams and fantasies.”

  “That’s also true.”

  “I know I’m right about what’s destroying the Forts. We have to organize around a unifying principle or our way of life is doomed.”

  “People have come to believe you about that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “Because you saw it in the coffer?”

  “No. I couldn’t touch it. It’s not for me. It’s for Lexy.”

  “So. Then how do I give it to Lexy?”

  “You can’t. She has to go get it for herself.”

  “Is it real? Is there really such a thing hidden somewhere around here?”

  “No. She has to go out of her body to find it.”

  “She’s never done that.”

  “Anyone can do it. Doesn’t take any special talent. In fact most people do when they dream at night. They just don’t remember. Rimon, your ability to bring what you imagine into reality, is a talent.”

  “Does Lexy have that talent?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rimon zlinned him again. “Would it be dangerous for the baby?”

  “No, even pregnant women dream. Finding what you left for her might be stressful, but the child is not draining her alarmingly. She has enough strength.”

  “And if she finds it, she’ll come back able to see what I’m seeing here, what has to be done if we’re to survive?”

  “I’d doubt that. I think you left her an understanding of what you saw in the future, but what you see is your interpretation. She will take only what she’s able to comprehend and she’ll interpret it her own way.”

  “The way everyone around here is interpreting the things I say in their o
wn ways?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I have to think about all this. Have you seen Bruce? I don’t zlin him.”

  “In the underground shelter with Clire. He was training BanSha, trying to keep him from dwelling on Tuzhel.”

  “Val must have changed the schedule.”

  “Speaking of which, I should go check the board. Let me know what you decide about Lexy. Don’t try anything by yourself.”

  “I will. I won’t.”

  * * * * * * *

  With that single image of the little box he had made for Lexy came the peace that Rimon had been seeking. He still didn’t remember anything after handing Tuzhel off to Jokim, but the maddening itch to remember abated.

  Every time he thought of the sparkling coffer, the irrational certainty returned no matter how dismayed he felt. People presented many opportunities for dismay.

  A consensus crystallized that instead of being a Fort defending itself in a hostile land, they had to define themselves as a family with relatives scattered everywhere.

  Rimon heard BanSha articulate it when he stopped in the barn to check on BanSha’s first solo supervision of a calving. Between calling instructions to the Gen guiding the calf out of the birth canal, BanSha told Rushi, “In Fort Rimon, we’ve always been a family of people who have chosen each other, like when two people marry. They aren’t related, but they become one person by pledge. This new thing we’re becoming has to be like a marriage, binding hearts, minds and souls to build a better life for our children. Each generation will have to choose to bind themselves to this lineage, this House.”

  Rimon moved into the birthing stall, grinning. “BanSha, that’s it! I just never could put it into words myself! We have to become the House of Zeor.”

  Everyone in that end of the barn stopped what they were doing and gathered around Rimon, babbling. Rushi announced, “Rimon has named us. We will become the House of Zeor!”