The Farris Channel: Sime~Gen, Book Twelve

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Before nightfall the Fort buzzed with their new name.

  Though they suddenly had a name and a new concept defining themselves, debate raged with ever increasing furor over the management procedures a large group had to have.

  A little more than twenty days after Tuzhel’s funeral, on the first anniversary of the arrival of Fort Butte, they held a celebration in their new, expanded dining hall that could seat almost everyone if the channels worked the ambient fields just right.

  Rimon arrived with Bruce, Lexy and Garen. Lexy was more than six months pregnant and suffering through the nearly perpetual Need of her condition, but Garen was not very high field. Bruce on the other hand was soaring. Rimon had another four days before transfer. After a stint in the Collectorium followed by hours in Dispensary, he was still carrying enough selyn to use Bruce to orchestrate the complex ambient here.

  He caught the attention of several other channels already working the crowd and signalled them with two tentacles. He and Lexy parted and the others scattered as he directed. That prompted the whole crowd to find places.

  In the corner near the kitchen storeroom, Rimon saw Alind, a renSime, huddled close to Xanon who wasn’t working with the other channels, just shielding the two of them. Alind stalked out through the storeroom door leaving boiling fury in his wake. Xanon stared after the renSime, but held the fields steady to shield the crowd, then started to work with the other channels. Xanon’s skills had improved.

  Rimon had heard that Alind blamed Xanon for losing the election. He hadn’t heard Xanon berating Maigrey even once, lately, and no complaints from Maigrey either.

  Moving on around the dining hall, Rimon encountered Shani at the steaming serving table, discussing Lexy’s diet with Garen as only another female channel would. Shani’s husband, Marliss, was with Clire in the underground shelter, so she was without her Companion. Rimon wanted both of them at Clire’s delivery.

  Shani was a medium sized woman with brown hair and eyes, wearing the durable blue smock and trousers the channeling staff worked in, but when she laughed her nager cloaked her in rainbows.

  “Come help me get people sorted out so we can all enjoy the play.”

  Rimon set two channels and Companions on duty near the doors to ease any latecomers into the ambient. Only the guards on watch and those tending the young or ill were missing. There had been much duty shift trading because all the parents and relatives wanted to be there to watch the children put on this much rehearsed play.

  The play depicted the arrival of Fort Butte at Fort Rimon, but it lacked Tuzhel’s and BanSha’s humorous touch.

  Sian opened with the now traditional song written by his wife, then accompanied the children on his shiltpron, supplying sound effects for horses and wagons and even the howling wind that had blown that day.

  Cody, now famous throughout the community for his leadership of the young messengers, played Rimon making a welcoming speech. One of the children from Fort Butte played Xanon, who had been the ranking channel leading their Fort, accepting Cody’s welcome in a shrill soprano voice that carried throughout the large room. “Xanon” then sang a song Sian’s wife had written for the play.

  None of the words of the speeches or songs resembled anything Rimon remembered of that momentous occasion. Nobody cared. It was art.

  After the children finished, Xanon mounted the stage to speak. Rimon had seen him working on the speech with Maigrey in the channels’ recovery room. He expected it would be very short, then they would eat.

  With his stomach not at all interested in food, he thought he’d prefer a longer speech. Rimon watched his crew playing the ambient and indulged in his vision of this whole mob of people together as one family.

  Fort Butte had been the second group to arrive, about two months after Fort Intalace. The Intalace survivors had numbered only five people by the time they arrived. They’d been led by Clire who was now the only survivor.

  Fort Butte had brought in hundreds, and instantly outnumbered the Fort Rimon natives. They had arrived desperate because they’d been led by Xanon, a half-trained channel unaware of his shortcomings, and by a channeling staff consisting of eight channels in First Year and only six more barely old enough to train the younger ones.

  Since the moment he’d arrived, Xanon had been the trial of Rimon’s life. Now, however, Rimon zlinned something different in the channel from Fort Butte.

  Rimon speared Maigrey with a glance. She was seated down the table from him among the Fort Butte leaders next to Xanon’s empty chair. She looked back with a smug little smile twitching her lips.

  Then Xanon’s powerful baritone grabbed Rimon’s attention. “Fort Butte has failed. We must acknowledge that here today, one year after we reached safety at Fort Rimon. Fort Butte exists no more. Fort Butte is dead, and we will no longer celebrate our arrival here as a group.

  “Maigrey, my gracious and generous Companion, has been telling me stories of Fort Freedom and the earliest days of Fort Rimon in Del Rimon’s youth.” He turned to eye the children arrayed behind him. “In fact, she has told me more about Del Rimon’s childhood adventures than you could possibly believe.” After a studied pause, he intimated, “Apparently he took after his father.”

  The children giggled, some of the younger ones pointing at Rimon, whereupon the whole hall full of parents and relatives laughed. The ambient squirmed with embarrassment and even anxiety since everyone knew Xanon’s opinion of Rimon, or thought they did.

  “Some of the more outlandish tales though,” continued Xanon, “I did not believe until Tuzhel’s funeral. Del Rimon stood before you all and declared Fort Rimon, and the Forts in general, a total failure. In that moment, I understood what Maigrey and so many others here had been telling me for the past year.

  “This last winter, we tried to recreate the conditions that led to our failure. Some of you noticed that and resisted by clinging to Fort Rimon’s procedures, which we saw as wrong. And though I now see that you were not wrong, I also see that you were not right. Del Rimon said it. The Forts were created to harbor a junct way of life seeking to Kill without losing touch with the soul that gives life. We can not remain Forts and become a nonjunct community.

  “Since Tuzhel’s funeral, we’ve groped for what we can become. Once again Del Rimon has named us. We must become the House of Zeor, the family of excellence.

  “Some feel that the Forts, designed as small towns filled with separate families each with different values, are the tradition we started with and are honor bound to keep.

  “Yesterday, a delegation asked me to lead a group away to found a new Fort. While explaining why I could not do that, I saw what we must do to make the House of Zeor a reality.

  “Fort Freedom was organized around the spiritual leadership of Abel Veritt. He was trusted, and listened to because he was wise and walked in the ways of his god. Under his guidance, the junct population of his Fort came to live Killing occasionally and then mostly not at all.

  “Abel Veritt populated Fort Freedom with the changeover victims from out-Territory, the very children who would have become Freeband Raiders just as he had. He gave them a vision of a better life.

  “We must find one among us who holds a similar vision, but not a spiritual one, a practical one. We must have a leader who understands how the practice of Zeor will lead us to a world where no one ever Kills. We must have a leader who knows that we will succeed, and who knows what we each of us must do to make it happen.

  “According to junct law, we are a Genfarm, and all our lands, buildings and Gens are owned by the Tuib. Our leader must be the Tuib all our Gens trust to own them.

  “By junct law, of course, that Tuib does not have to be a channel. They don’t know what a channel is! I submit that from now until the time when there are no more juncts, the Tuib of our House must be a channel. And not just any channel, but the very best channel in the House.

  “That is not me. I had to explain my shortcomings to that delegation yesterday.
I am not capable of leading a channeling staff, even where everyone knows what they’re doing. In trying to explain what quality it is that I lack, I discovered what we must have in a leader for this House of Zeor, this nonjunct family.

  “We must choose an individual we all trust who lives by the principle of zeor and who holds our vision of the future. I believe we will always find such an individual to be the one among us who stands at the sec in any room, in any group.”

  Xanon’s gaze went to Rimon, who was at the sec, the point formed by the interference of personal fields to define the shape of the ambient nager.

  Rimon was always at the sec in any room, even when Lexy, Aipensha and Clire had been working fields with him. He was the sec. He defined the sec in any ambient, and that was the reason he could orchestrate the field management of so many channels so easily.

  “Zlin around you,” urged Xanon. “Compare our channels. Is there any question who that is?

  “It is Del Rimon Farris, and when she’s not pregnant, Lexy Farris is barely distinguishable from Rimon. He has given us this vision of a new way of life. We have all seen, in our day-to-day work, how Rimon takes his failures and does a little better the next time he faces that problem.

  “Though Maigrey has had to spell it out for me, I have also seen Rimon do the same with his successes. He never stops. He keeps striving to excel his mark, no matter what.

  “At first, I misunderstood what that meant about him. But Maigrey kept explaining Rimon to me until I saw what this man really is. It’s hard to see because almost everyone who grew up in Fort Rimon is like that.

  “I know, I’m the last person in this Fort you’d expect to hear saying this, but Rimon Farris has become the one person I really trust. I believe he knows what it would be like to live in a completely nonjunct world. I believe he knows what to do to make that world exist.

  “Today, I bury Fort Butte as Rimon has buried Fort Rimon. I recognize Rimon Farris as Sectuib of the House of Zeor, and I pledge to you all that I will do better this time as a member of the House of Zeor. Out of Death Was I Born, Unto Zeor, Forever!”

  The room erupted into a wall of noise. Rimon and the channeling crew worked so hard with the fields over the next two hours that Bruce let him get away with not eating.

  Over the next few days, Xanon’s naming Rimon Sectuib widened the schisms. Three factions emerged.

  There were still those, led by Alind and supported by most of the Church of the Unity members, who were wholly dedicated to the Fort concept.

  There were those led by some channels who felt that the House concept was the key to success, but could not see building their unity around a children’s game.

  There was also a large, exuberant faction developing a new way to govern themselves based on a Sectuib with ultimate authority over everything except his or her Companion.

  Rimon’s dismay grew as more and more authority and responsibility was heaped on this mythical Sectuib. The Sectuib would select who would be in charge of what areas of the House. The Sectuib would choose the Council to advise him, and they couldn’t do anything without his approval. Not only that, but the Sectuib had to approve all marriages and even officiate! The Sectuib would decide everything, and run the channeling staff, too. Impossible!

  He fled to the top of the wall for some much needed pacing. It was after midnight with the full moon low in the west casting eerie shadows.

  The wall sentries had been reduced now that Shifron was inhabited by working folk. These juncts had a growing investment in the land and a well stocked Pen where they could take legal Kills. The two remaining lookouts huddled in the guard kiosk over the main gate while Rimon took his usual place opposite them, overlooking the cemetery.

  That afternoon, there had been one last snow squall, the final signal to the farmers to plant. The stumps had been cleared, the fields tilled, beehives prepared, and the pruning completed. In the orchards, a few light green buds were threatening to become leaves.

  Tonight, everything was spackled with white, dripping loudly. He paced and worried. He’d touched off this firestorm by declaring Fort Rimon dead. Now what?

  By the time Solamar arrived, Rimon was ready to pack up and leave with Alind and the Church of the Unity. If he could beg a place among them, he’d go right this minute.

  “What have I done!” shouted Rimon at Solamar. Pacing and gesticulating, Rimon raged, “This is never going to work! It can’t work! No one person can do all of that! It’s not possible!”

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Rimon stopped. “We didn’t have an appointment.”

  “Obviously I missed the first half of the discussion.”

  Rimon laughed. He couldn’t help it. He roared with laughter until he had to gesture an all clear to the two guards over the front gate. Then he filled Solamar in on how the concept, Sectuib, had been developing. “It gets worse! This evening, in the laundry, they were discussing inventing some honorifics to set the channels and the Sectuib apart. You know anything they discuss in the laundry really happens! I want to run away and hide!”

  “You aren’t doing a very good job of hiding.”

  Rimon drew his showfield down and set himself to keep his histrionics private. “I’m scared, Solamar. What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to become the first Sectuib in the House of Zeor. The job will include what you say it includes, and nothing more.”

  “You’ve seen that in the future?”

  “I can’t see the future! I just know your finer traits.”

  “Lexy is furious with me for igniting this conflagration.”

  “You think that’s news to me? I sleep with her these days and she’s finally decided she wants to marry me.”

  “She figured that out? I knew she’d get it straight in her head eventually.”

  “So you approve?”

  “She’ll be the next Sectuib of this House we’re building since it seems everyone’s decided Xanon’s right and it has to have a Sectuib. Are you sure you want to marry her? The Sectuib job is going to be a nightmare!” Rimon realized he’d have to officiate at the wedding.

  “Of course I want to marry her! I came up here because she was ranting so much about your conflagration even Garen couldn’t get her to sleep. She’s on duty again before dawn and even pregnant she’s wearing Garen out every day.”

  “The baby will be Gen. A Farris Gen. Whoever heard of such a thing?”

  “You’re sure? Well, I still want to marry her. Now she’s heard people saying we won’t have individual marriages inside the House, that everyone will be married to everyone already.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “It’s time you told them so, don’t you think?”

  “You mean...just...decide and say, this is how it’s going to be done?”

  “Seems that’s what they expect of a Sectuib.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Look, Rimon...Delri. Listen. Zlin me on this. It’s your idea that we are to become a family, choosing each other to be one family, a unit connected by mutual obligations, responsibilities and privileges. We are going to become your family, gathered around you by choice, just as I’m joining your family by marrying your daughter. So you have to tell us what your family is, just as you’ve let me know exactly what you expect of a husband for your daughter. You have to lay down the rules, define this family. That’ll stop this creative orgy.”

  Creative orgy. Rimon swallowed hard, trying to find his voice. “So how would I know any better than they do?”

  Solamar shrugged. “Do you have to? Whatever you start with, it’ll evolve from there. Zeor is the principle, isn’t it? Just start anywhere you’re comfortable and improve on that.

  “That’s the lesson of Zeor, isn’t it? Don’t be afraid to fail. Just start. Do it. Study what happened, then do it again a little better. That way you un-define success and with that you un-define failure, and leave only excellence, the process that is the core of life.”<
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  Rimon had to agree. He’d played the game obsessively for years when he was young. That was exactly the lesson it taught. Don’t be afraid you’re going to fail. Don’t be afraid you have failed. Don’t get too full of yourself when you succeed. You can always do better. He’d forgotten that lesson, pushing Fort Rimon on through a nightmarish winter even though The Fort concept had died when Fort Tanhara had arrived pursued by Freeband Raiders. “So I have to go tell them what my House is and dare them to join me in it.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Well, I’m not going to make all the decisions.”

  “Good. I’ll help.”

  They laughed together, arms around each other’s shoulders, and they headed for the stairs. “Just remember,” cautioned Rimon. “No titles. Sectuib is bad enough.”

  In the gathering whirlwind activity surrounding the departure of Alind and his group, there was no time for Rimon to gather everyone and dictate what this House would be. The truth was, he, himself, was almost clueless.

  Alind’s followers had labored hard building, tilling and fighting for Fort Rimon. They had earned more wealth than the Fort possessed. So everyone who was not leaving turned out to build wagons and tools for them. Weavers and shoemakers worked round the clock to clothe them. Some of the best horses were chosen, tack made, and trail provisions were packed. More seed than they could spare went with them, and as had become a custom among the Forts, skilled workers would go to help, and return the following spring.

  Those who went to help the new Fort came mostly from among those who were not sure about the House of Zeor concept, but felt the Fort concept was unworkable.

  The vociferous and creative ones already dedicated to Zeor would not think of leaving at such a critical time. They were already planning a pledge ceremony, a formal occasion that got larger and more elaborate every time someone mentioned it to him.

  However two groups had been left out. The spring trading mission had long since left, and would not return until after the fun was all over. And a large number of people who were not going with Alind were also not joining this new House yet. Still there were some five hundred adults who were fervently intent on creating this ceremony to mark the founding of the House of Zeor, and nothing, especially not their Sectuib, was going to stop them.