The Farris Channel Read online

  Xanon edged forward. “It’s still about Clire. I mean again. This has to be settled, now, Rimon.”

  Del Rimon did not let the habitual “Call me Delri; I am not my grandfather,” escape his lips. It was a lost cause.

  Instead, he enunciated slowly, so all those used to different accents would understand. “Aipensha has had her say, and Lexy and I agree with her. Clire should take an early transfer now, and that decision should be based solely on her current medical condition not put to a vote of the channeling staff. As a pregnant Farris, Clire should not be placed under this kind of stress, especially not when the Fort is expecting an attack soon. We’ll be working the whole channeling staff to exhaustion after the battle. I don’t want Clire in Need at that time.”

  The crowd pushed back to let Xanon stalk toward Del Rimon’s desk. Xanon was a short man, a channel who had arrived with the Fort Butte refugees, but though he had a fair talent for the channeling arts, he had little trained skill, a fact which escaped him.

  Xanon waited while the ambient nager settled to a tense but calm flow of invisible energies. Then his strong baritone rang through the room. “It doesn’t matter that her name is Farris. She has violated a primary regulation of Fort Rimon and must accept the punishment any other channel would be subjected to.”

  He turned to face the group. “The Farrises all agree that this Farris woman should not be disciplined for undermining Kolenan’s conditioning ultimately causing two deaths. Isn’t it odd that the only people who happen to think she’s too delicate to take a little transfer deprivation because she might be two weeks pregnant are her relatives?”

  Suddenly everyone was talking at once again, Aipensha, Lexy and Clire hitting a perfect soprano chord as they protested, “...is pregnant!”

  Clire’s not related to me. Not closely anyway, thought Rimon. Clire might be a descendent of his grandfather, or maybe great-grandfather, but even she didn’t think so. Rimon wasn’t sure if Clire’s baby was actually Garen’s. Practically no chance it’s my child. But the timing was right for it to be his own.

  Through the noise, it became clear about a third of the people in the office accepted the Farris judgment that Clire was indeed pregnant, and the other two thirds were mortally offended by the automatic deference accorded Farrises by those born and raised in Fort Rimon.

  The Fort Rimon natives were outnumbered by the refugees who had arrived from the failed Forts this last year.

  As Rimon drew breath to shout for silence again, his Companion, Bruce, stayed him with a gesture and bellowed, “Silence!” His powerful Gen nager undulated into nauseating waves of invisible energy fields that grabbed every Sime’s attention. Then he stepped out from behind Del Rimon’s desk, dampening the waves and glaring at the assembly as silence fell.

  Tall, lanky for a Gen, with a craggy tanned face, he was the senior Gen of Fort Rimon with a medical expertise that had gone unquestioned even by the new arrivals, probably because his last name wasn’t Farris.

  He had to look down to meet Xanon’s eyes. “Farris channels really can zlin in sharper detail than other channels. I’ve seen them call a pregnancy within hours of conception! I’m not exaggerating. Some of you could zlin a pregnancy within two weeks too, but not in a Farris channel. Aipensha and Lexy are Delri’s daughters, but not related to Clire. Clire arrived with the first refugees from Fort Intalace, and now she’s the sole survivor of that whole Fort!”

  “What difference does that make?” shouted someone in the back.

  “She’d be ranking channel in Intalace, if anyone had survived. Her baby is heir to Fort Intalace,” argued Bruce.

  A woman’s voice rose. “If that baby actually exists! Xanon’s right. Two people died because of Clire’s much vaunted Farris judgment. Any of the channels in this Fort, pregnant or not, would be subject to justice. It’s not much of a penalty considering what she did.”

  Xanon took that as his cue to pace back to Rimon’s desk and lean across it. “Clire deserves to be executed, but your Fort Council called it an accident and imposed only a four day transfer deferment and only for two months running. I intend to see that she gets it and learns her lesson. Farrises are not above the law.”

  The nageric buzz of agreement filled two thirds of the room while Rimon’s own people, huddled at one side around Clire, became very still, waiting for his decision.

  He met Clire’s eyes, but spoke to Xanon. “A four day deferment would probably kill her child, and if that happens, very likely I wouldn’t be able to save Clire.”

  Xanon kept his back to Clire. “Of course you’d say that to protect another Farris. Or could this possibly be your child, a double-Farris child?”

  The nageric silence turned ugly.

  He admitted she’s pregnant!

  Clire’s nager was wrapped in an icy wall about herself. Kahleen, Clire’s Companion, used her Gen body’s field strength to make a protective wall around Clire.

  Clire’s eyes held a bitter warning. She was a proud woman, a mostly self-trained channel, with no inherent loyalty to Fort Rimon. “What could the identity of the father have to do with whether the child and I will be allowed to live?”

  Chaos erupted again, and Rimon sighed, exchanged glances with Bruce and settled to wait it out again.

  Del Rimon wanted to use all the authority of his hereditary position in the Fort to rule in Clire’s favor. However, to the majority of Fort Rimon’s current residents, that would prove that Farrises made decisions by personal whim and favoritism.

  We can’t survive the coming battle with this ripping my channeling staff apart.

  Before he opened his mouth, Clire knew his decision.

  Her eyes declared him enemy while her nager turned to stone. He had promised to protect her and he was about to break that promise. I won’t break that promise, not really. I’ll save her somehow.

  Cramming his emotions down inside where none of the non-Farris channels in the room could zlin them, Rimon said, “Then let’s put it to a vote as Xanon has asked.”

  They had just about the entire channeling staff in the office. They could settle it right now.

  He stood up and addressed the room. “Here is what we will vote on. The Fort Council has levied a non-lethal penalty against Clire Farris. However, the Farris channels agree that penalty might result in the death of her and her unborn child. The Farris channels agree the penalty should be deferred until her child is born and weaned. Meanwhile, she should start taking early transfers now to protect the development of her child.

  “The question: does the consensus of the Farris channels overrule the decree of the Fort Council in channeling matters as has always been the custom in Fort Rimon?

  “Benart, call the roll and record the vote. I will then take the result to the Fort Council for a final decision.”

  Benart reached down for a clean slate from the pile by his foot, and started the roll call.

  As Del Rimon expected, all the Fort Rimon natives voted to abide by the Farris perceptions. He saw the newcomers counting as each vote was announced, not trusting Benart.

  To Rimon’s surprise two of the newcomers abstained. Benart announced the result. The resentment against Rimon had produced a death sentence for Clire and her child. He knew that the newly elected Fort Council, composed mostly of refugees from Forts with no Farrises, would not overrule the channeling staff vote against the Farrises.

  How will they feel when we bury Clire and her child? I won’t let this happen. When it became obvious Clire was indeed pregnant, they’d say she became pregnant after the Fort Council’s decree in order to duck the penalty, knowing the other Farrises would protect her.

  He gathered himself up to accept the regrets of his people before they went back to work side by side with the guests who had taken over Fort Rimon and made it their home. “Clire, I will not let this happen. Know that. Believe it. Kahleen and I will not allow this.”

  “I need transfer now, Rimon. Don’t do this to me. I’ve already wai
ted too long.”

  “You have a few hours yet. I’m calling an emergency meeting of the....”

  Raid alarm drums thundered and outside cries of “Wagons approaching!” rose as the ambient stirred into a practiced defense drill.

  Wagons? Freeband Raiders don’t attack with wagons!

  CHAPTER TWO

  FORT TANHARA

  Solamar Grant was first to spot the riders coming toward their wagons from the Fort gate. The Fort ahead of them was so close he could zlin its ambient nager. It had to be Fort Rimon, it just had to, and the Fort had sent riders to help them.

  Grant was riding beside the lead horses of Fort Tanhara’s lead wagon, filled with their sick and injured. He was alternately zlinning the fraying harness of the right lead mare in the four-up, and dropping back to help herd the two cows and eight sheep that had survived the five months of travel from the remains of Fort Tanhara.

  He kept flicking his attention toward the Freeband Raiders who were gaining on them.

  The Freebander riders chasing them had come across a low hill that masked something big burning, a town maybe. Now they were gaining steadily, gaining much too fast. Must have stolen the town’s horses. Freeband Raiders’ horses were always in bad condition, except right after they’d been stolen. RenSimes who had turned Raider stole what they wanted, used it and discarded it, never giving a thought to upkeep.

  The wagons couldn’t go any faster. They weren’t on a trail or even a beaten path across this mountain valley. Every rock, hole, and hummock twisted and strained the tack, the wagon wheels, the wagon chassis. The drivers were zlinning the ground ahead to pick the best course for the wagons. They couldn’t go one bit faster, and it was too slow.

  If we don’t make it, everything I’ve worked for is lost. All these people will die. Maybe Fort Rimon will die too. Mentally, he told the harness to hold, the horses not to founder, the Gens in the wagons not to panic. We have to make it. We have to or the world may be lost.

  His father would have scoffed at him for being melodramatic. His father had never grasped the scope of the Farris channel issue the way his grandfather had. He repeated it out loud. “We have to or the world may be lost.”

  One of the young Gen women rode up beside him and shouted over the din of rattling wagons and pounding hooves, “Sol, can you zlin them yet? Is that Fort Rimon up ahead? Are those riders coming at us juncts?”

  “Can’t tell for sure yet!”

  “But you’re our best channel!”

  I’m no kind of channel, were the words that leaped to his mind and pushed at his lips but he swallowed them back. He knew she meant he was the most sensitive Sime with the Tanhara refugees, which was true. With luck, they’ll never have to know more than that about me.

  He focused and zlinned again now the riders ahead were closer. “Those riders are renSime, nonjunct, so that has to be Fort Rimon.” It just absolutely has to be!

  “Get the Gens mounted and ride for the Fort—that’ll lighten the wagons. Get all our Gens behind that line of Fort riders and don’t look back. Don’t do anything to distract those Fort renSimes. They’re here to deal with the Raiders for us.”

  He felt her protest ignite her nager. She was no Companion, but when her attention alighted on him, he felt it. With two tentacles, he gestured her to caution.

  In response, she put her attention on the horizon beyond the Fort. Then, like the Fort Gen she was, she obediently pulled her horse up and dropped to the rear wagons, calling for their remounts which were already saddled and strung behind the wagons.

  Soon everyone was shouting for the Gens in the wagons to mount up. In small groups, they began to ride for their lives, and for the life of the Fort. Both Forts.

  Solamar did the one thing that might betray him to the Forters as an outsider. Without consulting anyone, without even telling anyone what he was about to do, he rode out ahead to meet the riders from the Fort—Fort Rimon, it has to be. A real channel would stay behind, well defended and safe. A real channel was a non-combatant. A real channel didn’t take stupid risks.

  But to Solamar’s Sime senses, it no longer seemed like a risk. What he zlinned now matched what his even more reliable intuition told him. Fort Rimon’s crack combat team was riding out to defend Tanhara’s refugees from the Freebanders chasing them.

  The Fort’s stockade lay at one end of a fertile valley, far from the junct village behind the hill at the other end. It was far enough from the steep sides of the valley that attackers couldn’t shoot down into the Fort, and it was on a slight rise that provided both protection from mountain floods and a tactical advantage in defending their walls.

  Surrounded by tilled fields, almost completely harvested now, and by terraces on the hillside—orchards, trin tea plants, and, yes, grape arbors, the Fort appeared secure and prosperous.

  It looked exactly as it had been described to him when he’d taken on this mission. It zlinned right, too except there were way too many people in that Fort.

  As he balanced his weight forward, urging his horse on, he let go of his ordinary senses, letting himself drift into hyperconsciousness, the Sime’s hunting mode. Gen nager flamed bright enough to sense from miles away, if you were sensitive enough and knew how to zlin for greatest distance.

  Closer now, the Fort ahead leapt into stark relief to his Sime senses, a towering vortex of powerful selyn fields. Even as he approached the line of riders coming toward him, the vortex over the Fort collapsed in on itself, turning quiet, intense, focused.

  The source of that invisible brightness more intense than the sun was to the naked eye had to be the Fort’s Companions, trained to work with the channels. The Companions’ brightness dominated the glow of the higher-field Gens, but as he watched, it all diminished. No doubt the Gens had withdrawn underground, leaving the renSime defenders on the walls. Oddly though, it seemed a number of low-field Gens were still outside the shelters.

  No, it wasn’t just a few low-field Gens. It was a lot of low-field Gens plus a few channels who where managing the nageric fields. They had used the Gen nageric power to shape a silent, invisible message to the Sime attackers who could read those fields.

  It was a message of supreme confidence, and a total absence of a sense of being threatened.

  Solamar had expected that when the last Companion was underground, the channels would follow them into the shelters, joining the children and most of the ordinary Gen donors.

  But they hadn’t.

  It was drilled into every denizen of the Forts that renSimes are expendable. The Gens, the Companions and the channels are the life of the Fort, just like the children.

  That drill was the only reason that Fort Tanhara had any refugees alive to flee the collapse of their defenses. Because the channels and Companions had been safe, they had healed the wounded. Freeband Raiders were only renSime, with maybe a few captive Gens.

  Solamar had joined Tanhara only four days after that last devastating battle. Lending his talents to the healing effort, he had been accepted as a channel without question, and he had let them believe he was a refugee from Fort Faraway which had been completely wiped out.

  As far as he knew, he was indeed the last survivor of the Fort Faraway refugees who had been heading for Fort Rimon. He wasn’t about to watch Tanhara and Rimon go down too, not after leading these people all the way here.

  As one of Fort Tanhara’s channels, Solamar knew he had no business riding ahead like this. But none of the renSimes was mounted on a horse that could make it.

  Nearing the oncoming riders, he drew up and let his chestnut mare breathe while they approached. He manipulated the ambient nager to identify himself as a channel and turned his horse to face the Tanhara wagons.

  When the lead riders came abreast of him, Solamar leaned forward and whispered into the horse’s flickering ears, “All right, Trilli, time to run again.” His weary mount took heart and, still blowing hard, fell into the pace of the Fort Rimon defenders.

  Solamar we
nt duoconscious, so he could see the renSimes around him as well as zlin for their leader. He found the one with the most disciplined and confident nager, a woman mounted on a fine black stallion—good thing Trilli isn’t in season!

  Moving in close, he shouted an explanation of the pack of Gen riders now approaching from the lumbering wagons of Fort Tanhara. The renSime gestured her understanding with three tentacles of her left arm and signaled her riders to spread out, leaving a gap in the middle of their line to allow the Fort Tanhara Gens through.

  Solamar noted how quickly the gap between Tanhara’s rear wagon and the lead Freeband Raiders pursuing them had narrowed.

  Freebanders had no allegiance to any junct town or government, no law governing their actions. All they wanted was to capture plenty of Gens. All they ever did with Gens was Kill them, savagely stripping the Gen of selyn until the Gen died of the shock.

  Freebanders craved nothing in life but the massive, fear-magnified deathshock of Gens. They didn’t Kill to live like the town juncts; they lived to Kill.

  The Fort Rimon formation split in a very crisp, disciplined drill. The leader yelled at Solamar gesturing, “We’ll delay the Raiders. You circle your wagons around our gate. Our people will cover you from the walls. Get your people inside. Sacrifice the wagons. Got that?”

  Solamar gestured his understanding with two tentacles, grazing her nager with an affirmative flick of his field.

  The renSime tossed him a ferocious grin that sizzled through his nerves igniting something wondrously warm deep in his belly.

  She shouted, “I do love ordering a channel around! Go!”

  With a hearty laugh, Solamar went, wafted on a nageric zephyr breeze of acceptance, admiration, and delighted interest. Every cell of his body returned that interest. He cast his eyes to the heavens. A renSime? Isn’t my life complicated enough already?

  The first of the Tanhara Gen riders, some with children mounted in front of them, several carrying infants, and one with a newborn, pounded through the gap in the renSime line. His own Companion, Losa, rode in the middle of the group carrying a baby in the crook of her arm, controlling the horse with her knees. His life might well depend on Losa’s survival.