The Farris Channel

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “Seven,” interjected Solamar.

  “What?”

  Projecting his voice to the crowd, Solamar said, “...these seven Forts united. I am the last survivor of Fort Faraway. I arrived at Tanhara just after their last battle.”

  “What happened to Fort Faraway?” asked Rimon loudly enough for everyone to hear while he masked his renewed grief. Faraway gone too!

  “Forest Fire. Just before harvest, a huge firestorm swept down the canyons driven by fall winds. We rode ahead of the fire and then made for Tanhara. We survived junct towns, Freebanders, wild animals, even a Gen army patrol, and then plague destroyed us last spring. I made it to Fort Tanhara with two children and my Companion, but they died within a few days.”

  Rimon zlinned that there had to be a lot more to that story than Solamar was telling.

  “Seven Forts United,” proclaimed Rimon. “We will be as one, solid, strong, and vital. Our walls will not be broken, our hearts will not weaken.”

  The shoveling fell silent, the diggers standing to attention beside the fresh graves. With dense clouds rolling over the surrounding mountains, Rimon signalled the musicians for the final tribute so people could file past the graves, winding through the graveyard to visit each of the fresh piles of earth, murmuring their farewells then starting back, each walking alone in the dark, heading up to the small door in the wall on this side of the Fort.

  The Simes lingered to help the Gens who didn’t have the Sime ability to zlin through darkness. The Gens gravitated to the Simes who could use the invisible selyn-glow of the Gen bodies to discern the path back to the Fort. They didn’t separate themselves by their Fort of origin.

  * * * * * * *

  Solamar was exhausted. After the funeral, he had done a stint in the Dispensary giving transfers of selyn to fatigued renSimes in Need because they had been augmenting, using up extra selyn during the battle or its aftermath so they could work faster and stronger. It was nearly midnight and this was the first moment he’d had to breathe since they’d first spotted Fort Rimon with the Freeband Raiders chasing them.

  He’d sent Kahleen, a truly remarkable woman, an exemplary Companion, to get some sleep and knew he had to rest a bit before letting himself grieve for Losa.

  He pushed open a wide door in the side of the Dispensary building, a long, flat fieldstone building with a slate roof. It let him out into a space next to the wall. The patrollers atop the wall noticed him immediately and saluted nagerically. He crunched on through the ankle high snowdrifts, hands tucked inside the cloak someone had loaned him.

  The Fort was so crowded, it seemed there would be no place for even a moment’s solitude to just let his nager expand without fear of hurting someone. But with the snow and cold wind, he thought perhaps the cemetery would be deserted, so he walked along the wall to the small door. The cemetery would be a good place for dark thoughts.

  He heard the donkeys trudging around the well, though it was out of sight across the compound. He’d seen two wagons filled with kegs of river water parked by the stables earlier, and some of that hammering in the distance was the repair crew working on the well outside the walls. How long will the water last with all these people?

  He heard a second pair of animals being led out to the well. He walked past the building that housed Rimon’s office, the infirmary, and sleeping quarters for the channels. Someone was emptying chamber pots into the privy pit behind the infirmary. Sanitation. Feed for the animals. It was going to be a very hard, very busy winter and he was already too exhausted to think.

  Near the door out to the cemetery was recent construction, rows of family housing right across from the wing of the infirmary. Piles of dirt, split logs for the walls, and detritus surrounded the new buildings. Tonight, each one was accommodating three times the number it was designed for. People were tending crying children, nursing headaches, avoiding nightmares, trying to grieve silently.

  He waved a tentacle in greeting to an old man sitting on the steps of a new house whittling what looked like a toy.

  The small door in the Fort’s wall was barred with three hardwood planks and guarded by two young renSimes.

  “Tuib, the order is that nobody is to go out until dawn after the scouts return. All the gates are shut.”

  Of course. “Yes, that’s good. Thank you,” he said as he passed by without breaking stride. A little further on he came to a stair and mounted to the top of the wall where guards paced, zlinning the distance.

  He came up to the first one who stood with his hands tucked up in his sleeves and asked, “Mind if I walk the wall for a while?”

  “You’re that new channel from Tanhara,” the renSime identified. “I’m Filo. Sure, go ahead as long as there’s no Raiders out there. How far can you zlin?”

  Channels could zlin much farther than renSimes, but some channels were more sensitive than others.

  “There’s nobody this side of that ridge.” Solamar indicated the low hill between the Fort and Shifron.

  “Then it’s all right for you to be up here.”

  “Good,” he told the guard. “I just wanted to breathe fresh air, move a little.” Outside the Fort walls, horses were tethered to a line, and a large herd of sheep was watched by four dogs and two renSimes. He’d heard people talking about the main herd of sheep being wintered in a nearby canyon at the edge of the valley. Some loose cows had snuggled up to the lea of the wall. Tanhara’s stray chickens roosted under the bushes around the Fort’s hen house.

  “You just want to zlin the distance instead of the wall in front of your nose?”

  “That’s the idea.” Solamar didn’t mention how easily he could zlin through the Fort’s walls.

  “Guard duty has its good points!” agreed the man. “Just mind that ice where Jokim spilled his tea. Kick the snow down where you find a drift. Someone will be up to shovel it soon no doubt. Everyone’s sleeping in shifts because there’s no room, so plenty are working even now.”

  “They’re talking about new buildings already.”

  “Been building for months. Now with Tanhara added, we’re hauling river water from the irrigation canal for tonight and we won’t be able to do that all winter. They’re going to start a new line of privies tomorrow morning and another new well.”

  “Tanhara is very grateful for your hospitality and sorry for the losses our arrival has cost.”

  The guard gathered himself, nager shaded with grief. “We’ll get through this. Rimon will see us through it. I have to get on about this patrol. Just let us know if you zlin anything out there, then get down fast. We dare not lose any more channels.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  The guard headed off toward the woman patrolling the next section of wall, and Solamar turned in the other direction. He circled back, walking over the arch of the gate leading out to the cemetery

  Just short of the privies, halfway to the next guard’s beat, he stopped and leaned against the outer rail to stare out into the night throwing his attention into the lonely silence out there.

  The ambient behind him felt crowded. At least nobody was actively paying attention to him now that the guards had zlinned his presence.

  A crack in the clouds let moonlight through, sparkling off the snowflakes drifting on a light breeze. He let himself go hyperconscious, shutting out awareness of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste and focusing on the selyn fields interacting to form the ambient nager. He scanned the wilderness seeking peace among the trees beyond the cemetery where he had seen the dead walking, summoned by Rimon Farris’s grief and guilt.

  He had intended to meditate then grieve for Losa before considering that development. What have I done?

  Clearly, Rimon had not experienced anything like that vision before. Solamar knew that the kind of deep nageric interaction they had shared twice that day might have sensitized Rimon to planes of existence beyond the scope of most people’s awareness, if Rimon had the talent.

  Sudden expansion of a channel’s awaren
ess could be deranging or even deadly for one as sensitive as Rimon.

  Why did I ask him who they were? The words had just flown out of his mouth, in simple curiosity, not to validate Rimon’s perception. Still, it had been a dreadful error.

  Behind him, a Farris channel nager slid out of the infirmary door, instantly spotted Solamar and headed for the stair next to the privy. Solamar greeted Rimon nagerically, but kept his attention on the landscape. Moments later, Rimon joined him at the high rail, breath puffing in clouds visible in a narrow shaft of moonlight.

  They stood side by side, zlinning distant nothing, not thinking, just breathing quietly, letting awareness slide away. Solamar let the strong, steady Farris presence wrap him in quiet. It was almost as good as solitude.

  Ever so slowly, they both surfaced to full awareness of their surroundings, with no shock of a new sudden emergency. Solamar thought Rimon would just let it stay that way, a restful interlude. But no.

  “So,” Rimon said at last, “you saw them too.”

  Solamar considered denying that, claiming ignorance, but a Farris would zlin right through any deception. “I thought I saw, well, they’d be ghosts, if they were your father and your daughter.”

  A frisson of anguish flickered around Rimon at the word ghosts. “Did you hear them speak?”

  “Maybe. Maybe I just have a vivid imagination.”

  Rimon turned and inspected him visually as well as nagerically. “You do. You didn’t imagine hearing what I clearly heard, seeing what I saw but couldn’t zlin. Nobody else saw what you saw. Why?”

  “I wish I knew. I don’t generally go around seeing ghosts.” Solamar shivered, and not from the cold.

  “That’s what it was? Ghosts.”

  “You said you recognized Aipensha. But she’s dead. So what you saw was her ghost.”

  “You didn’t see Losa’s ghost, did you?”

  “No.”

  “But...?” prompted Rimon.

  “I wasn’t feeling guilty about her death, just appalled, horrified, shocked, all the usual when someone you know and like, someone who’s a part of your life, dies.”

  “I was feeling guilty.”

  “I know. I could zlin that much.”

  “You could?”

  “Well, I don’t get much from you,” admitted Solamar, “your showfield zlins like solid stone most of the time, unless you’re projecting. I can’t zlin your primary fields. Still, when you were so upset, I picked up on some of it. I’m sorry. They were after all your ghosts, not mine.”

  Rimon grinned into a gust of snowflakes.

  “Now why would that make you happy?”

  “I have a theory that the people from the other Forts who’ve ended up here don’t trust Lexy and me, don’t trust our judgment because they can’t zlin us clearly. Maybe you won’t distrust us just because we’re Farrises. Maybe they’ll listen to you. Maybe things will get better here.”

  “Things weren’t good here before we arrived?”

  Snow spackled them while Solamar listened intently to Rimon’s summary of events leading up to Clire’s Killing Losa. “That explains a lot. Clire was a Farris. Losa was a good Companion for me, but not up to what a pregnant Farris would need.”

  “So you see, Solamar, we must hold new elections for a Fort Council to include Tanhara.”

  “I hope Tanhara can help unify these groups.”

  “We must become not seven Forts, but just Fort Rimon, one united community.”

  “Rushing to hold elections won’t create that unity. We should hold elections when we’ve finished digging privies, wells, and post holes before the hard freeze. Right now, no one from Tanhara would know who to vote for, and the rest don’t know who from Tanhara to vote for.”

  “That’s what I thought when there were just three Forts here. It didn’t work, and things have become worse.”

  Solamar took a chance. “Seven is a better number for this than three, more idealistic.”

  “A number can’t be idealistic!”

  “No?” He conceded with a shrug. “Perhaps not.”

  Rimon zlinned him, and Solamar dropped his showfield and opened himself to the Farris perceptions.

  Then Solamar zlinned the Farris back, and was treated to a view of the depths of that formidable channel’s soul.

  Rimon laughed as he disengaged their fields. “Well, perhaps a number can be idealistic. Stranger things have happened today!” He turned to go back down the stair, then paused. “My father, Zeth Farris, saw ghosts too. They say it drove him to his death.”

  Solamar felt the apprehension in the man. He stepped forward and gripped the bony Farris shoulders. “You are forgiven by your ghosts. You are not imagining that. You couldn’t have done anything else with Clire under the circumstances. We have to prevent such a circumstance from developing again. What began in Fort Freedom with your grandfather, is vitally important to the world. We will not fail.” That is my mission, thought Solamar.

  “You believe in ghosts,” Rimon accused.

  “Yes. Only...I’d rather that weren’t generally known. No one in Tanhara knows.” He’d been sworn to secrecy about what he knew, what he could do, before he’d been trained, and until now he’d never broken that oath.

  “You believe in life after death?” asked Rimon.

  “...uuuhhh...yes.”

  “It really is real,” he half asked, half begged.

  “Yes. We were not hallucinating. They came because you were hurting so very much and they love you. They had to tell you that they know it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes. And they did that. So they won’t come again.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Only probably?

  “I can’t foretell the future.”

  “That would be a handy skill.”

  “Probably not.”

  Rimon laughed, a short, harsh, bark. “Good point. I don’t want to know how I’m going to die, or when.”

  “It will be at the right time. That much we know.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re positive.”

  “Yes.”

  Rimon scrutinized him in every way. “I believe you. I don’t know why. But I do.”

  “Good. You won’t discuss it with anyone else?”

  “No. No, I won’t.”

  It had the weight of a solemn oath. “I’ll sleep better knowing that.”

  Rimon nodded slowly, still studying Solamar. “Take your turn in the room first. I’ll catch a few hours right after dawn. I left Bruce tending a renSime who may be permanently crippled from his injuries. He’s one of our best weavers. And I have to see to that Freebander we saved.”

  Rimon picked his way down the snow covered stairs, kicking the treads free as he went. Solamar followed.

  Zeth Farris had died seeing ghosts. Who would have thought! Now he’d introduced Rimon to the idea ghosts were real. I’ve made a grave mistake here already. But dissembling to a Farris would only make things worse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE

  “Great timing, Delri!” greeted Maigrey with Gen cheerfulness. Rimon entered the channels’ recovery room at the infirmary and closed the door behind him. Xanon’s Companion continued as if Rimon had asked for a report, “Tuzhel just woke up and we eased him through his disorientation.”

  “Good! How bad was it?” He’d been very worried the Raider would succumb when the shock of disorientation hit. Any Sime had a strong awareness of where and when he was in the universe. When physically moved during unconsciousness, as Tuzhel had been, the Sime’s awakening was fraught with the horror of knowing he was in one place while his senses told him he was in another. The fright could tax an injured system beyond recovery.

  Nageric field manipulation by an experienced Gen or channel could realign the senses, but Raiders would rarely cooperate with the process.

  “It was pretty bad, but I’ve seen worse,” said Maigrey. “He let me help becaus
e he thought I was his mother. The confusion lasted long enough that I was able to get his mental feet on the ground.”

  “Good work. I was depending on you.” Rimon said unnecessarily because Xanon listened exuding disapproval of all Freebanders, captive or not.

  “After that,” continued Maigrey, “we got him shaved and scrubbed down from all the infestations before we put him in the clean bed. End of the hall, left side. His old bedding’s been burned. He’s still a Freebander, but he doesn’t look like it now, except he’s too skinny.”

  Xanon’s disapproval of Maigrey’s admiration for Rimon filled the small space as pervasively as the smell of wet wool from Rimon’s thawing, dripping cloak.

  There was no one else in the room, though from the remains of a solid meal scattered across the sideboard, it seemed there had been staff here recently. This was where the Companions brought the channels to recover after a difficult functional, so there was usually food for the Gens who had to wait while their channels shook with fatigue.

  Rimon met Maigrey’s eyes and offered silent apology that he’d asked one of Fort Rimon’s most diligent Companions to work with Xanon, a channel with too much ego and almost no skill.

  Rimon ignored Xanon, flung his cloak onto a hook and stomped his boots free of snow. “Good. I talked to Solamar. He’s that Tanhara channel who helped me on the wall. He’ll take over here when I leave later.”

  Xanon’s opinion of that was likewise clear before he said, “I can take that shift.”

  Rimon had always responded to Xanon’s remarks with detailed reasons, but he now knew that no explanation would convince Xanon that he wasn’t half as good a channel as Solamar, nor that Rimon could know that about Solamar after so brief acquaintance.

  “Thank you, but Val has recorded the shift schedule and has sent Kahleen to get Solamar to eat. Maigrey, is Bruce still with Tuzhel?” Rimon zlinned Bruce’s towering Gen presence near the end of the long hall, but no details. The Gen was concentrating deeply on his work.