Читать книгу The Farris Channel - Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

FORT RIMON

I’m too late.

Rimon knew it the moment his head cleared the stairwell. Lexy’s nager dominated the long, narrow space lined with stacked cots, filled with the desperately wounded, the smell of wet earth, lamp oil, blood and death.

Aipensha’s nager was nowhere to be zlinned. Lexy was bent over a bloody pulp of a dead body lying half on a cot near the back. He knew the corpse had been Aipensha before he got there.

He grabbed his living daughter away from her sister’s body, held her tight. His only living daughter.

A chasm opened inside him and swallowed him whole.

He clung to Lexy, letting his nager penetrate hers, soaking up her pain, giving her the peace he didn’t have. His gut insisted his life had ended. He couldn’t tell his feelings from Lexy’s, and, for that moment, he didn’t care.

So many. I’ve buried so many. I’ve lived too long.

Gentle hands came, bundled Aipensha’s body in a blanket and cleaned up the puddle of blood. The hands belonged to the new channel whose wondrous skills had saved the Fort. Now he graced the dead with dignity.

Finally, two Gens took Aipensha away. Rimon clung to Lexy with one arm and reached out to stop the blond man. “What’s your name?”

“Solamar. We’re Fort Tanhara. What’s left of it.”

There’s not much left of Fort Rimon either. We’ve lost two Farris channels today. But he couldn’t say that. It wasn’t “two Farris channels” that they’d lost. They’d lost Clire and Aipensha, probably because he’d ignored the oldest of their rules and exposed himself to the battle. His daughters had followed him out, and Clire would not have let herself be left behind despite pregnancy and Need.

No. Right now, it was two channels that were lost. A strategic loss. A scheduling problem.

With that thought the agony of the wounded rushed in at him. They could still be saved.

He stepped clear of his daughter and addressed her as his number two channel. “Lexy, you take this end of the shelter up to number thirty. Solamar, you take the middle up to number sixty. The bunks are numbered on the sides, see? I’ll take the far end. I’ll send a Companion to work with you.” As soon as I find out who’s dead.

Holding himself very stiff and hard inside, Rimon threw himself into organizing the hospital and treating the worst of the wounded.

It was routine work at which he’d had decades of practice. He used his superior sensitivity to pair up channels with Companions and assign them to patients they had the skills to help.

Here, in the press of life and death crises, everyone did what he told them to and looked to him for the next task. There was a rhythm to it that let the work flow through him far beyond the point of deadening exhaustion and into that clear space where nothing existed but the task at hand.

One by one, the wounded were treated and carried off to quieter places to heal. Rimon was relieved when Kahleen arrived.

Kahleen had her masses of auburn hair braided into a crown on the top of her head. She wore a shapeless infirmary smock over thick sweaters that did nothing to hide her comely young figure from any Sime’s senses. Her nager, schooled to the high precision demanded by the Farris channels by years of work with Clire, was tarnished with sorrow but held in steely check. Rimon compared her with Solamar then gestured her toward the blond channel.

“His name’s Solamar. He shouldn’t be working alone.”

Bruce arrived, just as tense as Kahleen and just as disciplined as he slid into his routine Companion’s position by Rimon’s side. Rimon asked, “Dayyel, Iriela, Fengal?”

“They’re all fine. Fengal stayed in the shelter.”

Fengal, Bruce’s son-in-law, was a channel and his renSime daughter, Iriela, was pregnant, due this month. Fort Rimon has a future. We just have to get there.

“That’s a relief. I’m all right, so you should trade places with one of the trainee Companions down there.” He gestured.

“You sure? Hate to leave you with this.”

Rimon nodded, not taking his attention from stopping the bleeding under his hands. “Go. I’ll see you later.”

Bruce went, slicing through the nageric haze as smoothly as when he’d arrived. Bruce had survived uninjured. Bruce would give him transfer when the time came. Rimon brought his attention back to the wound he was healing.

The Gen Companions of the channels needed skill and stamina to assist in managing the selyn fields around their patients, twisting and tilting the field gradients to spur the patient’s own body to heal, supporting the channels as they gave emergency selyn transfers to the most severely injured. One lapse in the Companion Gen’s concentration could spell death for the patient or devastation for the channel’s sensitive nervous system. Bruce was one of the best. His replacement...not yet.

Life on the trail, and even after building Fort Rimon, had given Bruce and the older Fort Rimon channeling staff more than enough practice. Rimon set himself to transmit some of those lessons to this new trainee and keep his mind off Aipensha and Clire.

Through the night, Benart, master scheduler, brought down Companions who had slept, shooed others up to bed. Bruce and Rimon directed the shift changes, improvising pairs creatively to keep the healing work flowing. Aipensha and Clire were not the only casualties on the channeling staff, and though Simes required little sleep, the Gens did.

Sequestered in the underground chamber, Rimon had no direct awareness of the work going on above them in the Fort. He just knew the survivors were collecting the corpses, putting out the fires, salvaging what was left of the wagons, preparing for the cold of the oncoming night, and somehow finding accommodation for the new arrivals in the already far overcrowded buildings.

Just before dawn, it had become very quiet in the underground shelter. Only three patients were left. The others and the staff in charge of them had moved up to the more capacious infirmary building where fire had taken out only part of the roof.

Whenever the hatch into the underground shelter opened, Rimon heard the hammering, the groan of the water wheel, the scrape of logs being dragged as reconstruction began. On one puff of cold air, a hungry Companion accompanied by a crowd of renSimes came down the stair, bodies aching, throats raw with smoke. But the Companion had apparently had some sleep.

“Delri!” she called when she saw him. “Lexy said we’d find you down here. We’re supposed to bring these patients up now because there’s room in the infirmary. Lexy says you have to get ready for the memorial at dawn.”

“Are they going to be ready for a Memorial now?” Suddenly Rimon was acutely aware of his blood crusted clothing and the fact that “room” in the infirmary probably meant as many more deaths as discharged patients. “With the graves that is?” His throat was a little raw too. He was not going to cry for Aipensha now. He swallowed hard.

“Rimon,” said Solamar. “Those two you’ve been working on can go, but this one can’t be moved again. I was just resting a bit before trying to bring him around. I’d appreciate some help if you can spare the time.”

Bruce had rejoined them a few hours previously and now was working with Solamar while Rimon had one of the youngsters from Tanhara by his side. The girl seemed to have been trained by Solamar “What did you say your name is?”

“Uh, well, I don’t think I did say. Rushi.”

That broke her concentration on Rimon’s fields. “Rushi, you go with our two patients here, then get something to eat and take a nap before the Memorial service. We’ll want you fresh and ready to work by noon. We’re going to require someone of your solid skills.”

The renSimes grabbed stretchers while Solamar and Rimon held the selyn fields steady. The two patients were raised out of the shelter and the small crowd departed leaving Bruce and the two channels to consult on the last of the critical patients.

Solamar’s clothing was likewise bloody and well soiled from the hard ride in to the Fort, but his hands and forearms were spotlessly clean as were Rimon’s. Both of them used the last of the clean water to scrub their tentacles while they discussed the patient, a badly wounded Freeband Raider who hadn’t died in the battle.

“I don’t think he’ll make it. He couldn’t have been Raiding very long, Rimon, or should I call you Delri?”

“I’m not the Rimon this Fort is named after. That was my grandfather. I’m Del Rimon. People who’ve known me all my life call me Delri. Most of the newcomers here just call me Rimon and everyone else does that too sometimes.”

Solamar handed him the sliver of soap remaining and continued to scrub lather over his arms. “This young fellow can’t be more than a month past changeover. If we can save him, he might disjunct.”

Thinking of the future. Good psychology, but Rimon wasn’t ready for that. “Any idea what happened to him?”

“Nobody knew when they brought him in a couple hours ago. They found him wedged into a space under a pile of dead horses. I’ve pretty much dealt with the internal bleeding. The concussion is a wait-and-see problem, but it should clear up if we can get a transfer into him. Still he hasn’t come around yet, and that’s a very bad sign.”

As he scrubbed, Rimon zlinned the unconscious youth behind him. “Bruce?” Rimon gestured with one wet tentacle and the massive Gen nager moved so Rimon could zlin the whole body. The other channel had indeed dealt with the internal bleeding, and a nice job he’d done too. Cuts and abrasions had been cleaned of infection, small details efficiently handled.

“I’d guess he’s unconscious more from the nageric shocks in the ambient during the battle than from the concussion. Imagine what burns feel like to a Raider in Need!” Rimon studied the youth. “You’re right. If we can get a transfer into him, he just might make it.” The boy was thin, but not skeletal like the older Raiders. His light brown hair was long and filthy, lice infested. “Malnutrition, but not very advanced. Still that’ll make everything harder.”

“Ever saved a Freebander in this condition before?”

“No, but my father did once or twice. He kept me out of it, so I don’t know how he did it. I was too young. The girl died in a Raid right after she disjuncted so I never got the whole story. Of the last two Raiders we’ve treated here, one died and the other ran away and set the barn on fire as a diversion. None like this, though.”

“Tanhara had about the same experience.”

They looked at each other as they toweled dry. Two of the three best channels in the Fort were about to hurl their last remaining strength into a lost cause, strategically a very bad administrative decision. And they both knew it. And they both didn’t care.

Bruce took the towels and as one, the two channels closed on their comatose patient, both well aware that the Companion wouldn’t have it any other way either.

Rimon felt the other channel shifting his secondary system to project a showfield.

The channel’s unique physiology with two selyn circulation systems allowed them to create interference patterns in the selyn fields around their bodies, showing the world a physical condition that wasn’t actually true. Using the secondary selyn system to project a showfield, a channel could seem to be renSime or Gen, as they had done to trick the Freebanders. However, another channel could zlin right through the façade.

Rimon felt how Solamar’s deep weariness was far worse than his own. He wasn’t a Farris, with the ultra swift Farris recovery time after the effort to give or take selyn, but though he lacked Farris sensitivity, he had an exquisitely honed precision to his field work and some other harmonic qualities that just felt good to Rimon’s ravaged systems. He chose not to mention the other’s fatigue and simply added his strength to their joint projection.

Bruce moved into place once the two channels had crafted a working field around the patient. “Am I right?”

Rimon flashed him a grin. “Perfect as always. This will be the last for tonight, then you can get some sleep before the funerals.”

The return grin said it all. They both knew neither of them would get any sleep. “I’ll make the first try,” said Solamar. “That way you can watch to see what goes wrong and maybe we’ll succeed on the second try.”

Rimon wondered if this man’s optimism would get on his nerves eventually, but for the moment it seemed right. You have to look up to see the stars, as his father used to say.

Rimon flicked a tentacle in assent, and gripped the fields. Solamar responded by insinuating his own fields through and around Rimon’s, creating an interlaced grip the like of which Rimon had never experienced. Again, it felt right. Comfortable. Secure. He’d never had anything like that with a non-Farris before.

Solamar edged onto the cot beside the frail body, cradled the renSime’s arms in his hands and extended his own handling tentacles, two on the top and two on the bottom of each arm.

The strong handling tentacles curled around the renSime’s arms searching out the youth’s tentacle extensor nodes. Retracted, the tentacles lay sheathed beneath the skin, mere ridges from elbow to wrist.

As Solamar applied precision touch to the extensor nodes, reflex caused the youth’s handling tentacles to extend, but there was no strength in them, no direction, no grip. The lateral tentacles, normally sheathed at each side of the arm barely peeked from their orifices. They were moist with ronaplin, the selyn conducting secretion necessary to make this transfer of selyn work.

Rimon braced himself, knowing how the youth would resist what Solamar was about to try and how dangerous that resistance would be for the exhausted channel who already seemed like a friend. Solamar’s whole attention remained on the Raider as he too gathered and braced himself, and Rimon felt that penetration between them deepen. It was almost as if he, himself, were prepared to shove selyn into the Raider’s depleted body.

Now.

Abruptly, Solamar waxed high field Gen and rammed adrenalin pumping fear into the fields.

The youth arched back in shock, body bowed nearly in half, and his tentacles whipped around Solamar’s arms. The laterals extended, moist pink-gray tiny by comparison to his handling tentacles and found their place between the interlaced tentacle grip. As the contact seated, the Raider lunged forward. Still unconscious, he sought the necessary fifth contact point with his lips, and Solamar obliged, bending low to touch his lips to the boy’s.

Rimon zlinned the flash of the first spark of selyn drawn from Solamar’s body and then the fields went wild as the Raider’s Kill conditioned system rebelled against the channel’s freely offered selyn.

The Raider needed to rip selyn from a resisting Gen, forcing that Gen to give up life, taking not accepting the gift of another month of life.

Rimon moved closer flicking aside Bruce’s apprehension. Bruce moved with him, steadying down into full concentration, holding the fields steady for Rimon, so Rimon could watch every detail of the abort as if his own body were channeling selyn to the Raider.

The selyn that had begun flowing from Solamar’s secondary system to the Raider did not cut off abruptly. It was more like a piece of woven fabric tearing, one thread at a time, and with each thread’s snap, selyn whipped back into Solamar. The backlash produced a rapid-fire burning sizzle that crackled through Solamar’s nerves and induced the same painful burning sensation throughout Rimon’s body.

One second, he was watching, and the next he was into the transfer abort, taking it all into himself. His Sime perceptions flared blazing white, then suddenly he was standing in his father’s treatment room, the log walls hung with heavy rugs to cut the drafts. Each colorful hanging held a poignant memory, a scent of home and love.

His father was bent over a scrawny Freeband Raider who was bleeding onto one of the treatment couches. The girl looked as lice infested and malnourished as the Raider boy.

“Delri!” snapped Zeth Farris. “Pay attention now. Zlin this carefully. You won’t get a second chance.” His father bent to create the fifth contact point, lip to lip, initiating selyn flow into the Raider’s debilitated system.

Delri zlinned, each ebb and whiplash reversal of the selyn flow his father commanded, the dodge and weave against the Raider’s abort reflex, the interlacing with fear like a delicate spice, the slow bleed of selyn into those raw nerves conditioned to accept nothing but a Kill.

He zlinned it all. He understood it all, and even believed it while knowing that Raider had arrived long before his changeover into an adult with the ability to zlin.

* * * * * * *

Solamar felt the searing agony of the abort backlash, the reflexive spasm of every muscle in his body. His heart squeezed shut and wouldn’t move. His lungs emptied and wouldn’t fill. His hands clenched, his throat closed. The effect was all too familiar to him, but he was only peripherally aware of his body.

His mind awoke in a cozy room filled with neat counters over cabinets closed with curtains, open cupboards and several beds on high pedestals. There was a fire in the hearth, colorful wall hangings and matching rugs, several fat candles. He’d never seen the place before, but it sang of home, love, security.

A Farris man bent over a scrawny, filthy renSime girl, driving a transfer into her behind a shimmering haze of the impenetrable Farris nageric wall.

On the other side of the bed, just barely zlinnable through the working channel’s nager stood Del Rimon, transfixed by the scene before him.

Solamar blinked.

He lunged to a sitting position on the cold packed dirt floor of the underground shelter, head and gut screaming that he was falling, falling forever and landing would hurt.

Bruce knelt beside Rimon who was prone on the floor, and all Bruce’s formidable attention centered on his channel. It was almost as if there were no Gen in the shelter at all.

Finally, Solamar’s diaphragm unlocked and he dragged in one long, sobbing breath while his eyes began to blink again, and his heart thud-thuttered into motion. A thought formed among the ice crystals clogging his mind. “What have I done?”

He was unaware he’d said it out loud until Bruce whipped around, the searchlight of Companion’s attention sweeping across Solamar, assessing his condition, then flicking back to Rimon. “Solamar, help me!”

Solamar found he could indeed move. Their patient was still comatose, apparently not much worse for the aborted attempt at getting selyn into him.

Solamar got his knees under him and crawled across to Rimon, setting aside the blossoming headache. Unconscious, the Farris was much more readable. “Not as bad as it looks,” he told Bruce as he dusted off his hands and wiped them on his shirt. “Give me some space here.”

Bruce widened the disciplined cone of his concentration and Solamar moved in to cradle Rimon’s forearms in his hands, extending his own laterals to make a brief contact. As he’d suspected, the problem wasn’t physical. Rimon had leapt out of his body and was still standing in his father’s treatment room in another time.

Solamar took a deep, steadying breath, then another, extending his consciousness, reaching for that long gone room and its vibrant occupants. “Rimon—Del Rimon Farris, you must come back now.”

Three times he called, and the third time he heard a forlorn, “Father....”

Rimon fell back into his body, terrified beyond measure by the falling sensation.

Solamar gathered the jerking, twisting Farris up, turning him over and folding him into a bracing hug. “You’re all right. We’re all unharmed. Nothing here to be afraid of.” He kept murmuring reassurance until he felt Rimon’s awareness center downward and finally make contact with Bruce’s reaching nager.

Those two are perfectly suited. He wormed himself out of the way to let Bruce work on his channel with that neatly meshed precision one could only admire.

“You all right?” asked Bruce over his shoulder, his attention never wavering from Rimon.

“Sure. Nothing much more than I expected except Rimon caught the edge of it at just the wrong angle and it really knocked him over.”

“He doesn’t do that often,” muttered Bruce and went to work supporting Rimon’s effort to breathe normally and get his internal selyn flows collimated again.

In Solamar’s experience, Farrises could be incredibly tough, soak up the most improbable abuse to a channel’s dual selyn system, and shrug it all off, then fall down unconscious at the most minor fritz in the fields. Bruce was no doubt used to the routine. However, the Gen didn’t know what had really ripped through this Farris.

Solamar retreated against the cot with their unconscious patient. Sitting on the dirt, he lowered his pounding head to his knees and wrestled his own fields back into order, very carefully avoiding any thought of Losa and how she would have smoothed the process for him.

Kahleen is as good. Better even. I’ll be all right here. He repeated it until he almost believed it and resolved to think about what he’d done to Rimon later. It won’t happen again. He’ll be all right too.

Barely two minutes later, Rimon struggled to his feet, giving Bruce a hand up and apologizing profusely for fainting. He paused to zlin Solamar, and waited while Solamar relaxed his showfield, inviting scrutiny.

The Farris attention swept through him like a warm light, then Rimon offered him a hand up. “You almost had it there. I think I can do it on the next try.” Seeing Solamar’s worry, he added as he turned to the Raider, “I’m fine. Bruce is miraculously good at this. We practice a lot, though not on Raiders.”

Solamar met Bruce’s gaze, but the Gen’s attention stayed wholly focused on his channel. Kahleen will be that good, too.

Rimon edged onto the cot and took the Raider in transfer position in one smooth motion. A bare moment later, it was over and the youth’s body was seething with rich selyn and starting to heal itself.

Rimon stood and said to Bruce, “This kid has a long way to go, particularly with the concussion, but he should regain consciousness in an hour or two. Stay here with him and I’ll send someone down to relieve you before he wakes.”

Bruce nodded. “I could use some rest. You gave me a good scare there. I’m glad Solamar could help.”

With a vast grin, Rimon turned to Solamar, gathering him up with a gesture. Together they moved toward the far end of the shelter. Rimon spoke to both of them as he sidled down the narrow aisle. “So am I. One second I was watching the Raider abort, and the next Solamar was shoving my fields back into order. I would have expected a crashing headache, but I’m fine.”

Solamar found himself facing the wall of cabinets at the far end of the shelter. “Where are we going?”

“Upstairs.” Rimon shoved a lever up and dragged the rack of cabinets forward exposing a stairway. “Channeling staff is housed right over this shelter, just in case of emergency. We have to get cleaned up, find out what’s going on, and get ready for the funerals.”

Solamar followed Rimon up and directly into his office. It was a spacious room with a high ceiling. The hearth was ablaze, and the window let in dull gray sunlight. Someone was rummaging through a file cabinet, and someone else was stacking slates on the large desk.

Rimon strode in asking questions: who was assigning quarters to the arriving channels, was the damage report ready, who was arranging the funerals, where was the casualty list, and was there a selyn ration assessment yet. The answers flooded in as more people rushed into the office supplying information punctuated with more questions: where is this person, where is that person. All too often the answer was “dead.” The name Clire peppered the answers.

After a few minutes Solamar found himself escorted to a room in a wing jutting out behind the office. Nageric silence descended as they entered the short hallway. The split log construction of the main part of the building here gave way to fitted stone walls, opaque to most selyn fields.

His escort, a young child, chattered tensely, “This is where all the channels sleep most of the time. Most of the Companions live right over there with the channels’ families. We’re still really crowded. We’re going to build a whole lot more buildings in the spring, well even more than that because now there are all these Tanhara people.”

“Where are the Tanhara channels housed?”

“Oh, here and there. Benart is making a list. You’re supposed to sleep here this morning until we find you a place. This is Rimon’s room,” he said opening a door. “I just brought in a bucket of warm water, and I’ll be getting another as soon as it’s hot, so go ahead and bathe. Rimon said you should find something of his to change into. Just chuck your clothes out here and I’ll see they’re burned.”

Solamar gazed down at what he was wearing. Blood caked and crusted sleeves and thighs. Rips sliced this way and that, often joining two or more wear holes he’d grown used to on the trail. A few cuts, bruises, and some scrapes adorned his exposed skin. His hair felt like greasy spikes.

A little stunned at the efficiency and hospitality of it all, Solamar nodded. It had been months since he’d stood inside a building, and then it had been hardly more than a ruin. “Thank you very much. I’ll get cleaned up.”

“Benart said to send Kahleen in to you as soon as she wakes. Is that all right?”

“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.”

The boy cocked his head to one side. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a channel. Would you teach me?”

Taken aback, Solamar could only smile. “Well, if the Farrises want me to, I will do all I can.”

“You think you should do what a Farris says?”

“Well, usually, but certainly where training a channel is concerned.”

Suddenly the child grinned more brightly than ever. “Welcome to Fort Rimon. I’m BanSha. We’re going to be great friends.”

He scampered away laughing.

Solamar gazed after him, feeling his own smile fade slowly as he puzzled over that odd conversation. Then he went into the comfortably appointed room.

Though he understood this was not Rimon’s home, but only the room where he slept when he had to be close to the infirmary, it felt like a home. There was a magnificent quilt hung on the wall over the head of the bed, an ingenious thing created from what appeared to be a baby’s quilt in the center, surrounded by tightly woven ultra fine silky black angora fabric. By touch, it seemed the quilt had been stuffed with wool fibers and stitched to a backing just as fine as the front.

The only image on the quilt was a long triangle topped with the arc of the moon’s horns with an odd third peak in the middle. It was made of a single piece of bright blue cloth on a field of what had probably been white at some time. The baby’s quilt was worn, scuffed and much mended while the rest of the quilt was newer. The material was top quality, the stitching perfect and the thing had to be worth a fortune beyond its sentimental value. Just touching the corner infused him with a sense of awe.

Aware of the passing of time, he went to rummage through Rimon Farris’s closet and drawers and make himself presentable, feeling decidedly awkward about invading the privacy of his generous host. It was as if the symbol on that quilt was a ward, guarding the man’s privacy.

He became very sure he shouldn’t be here at all when he found a gorgeous jeweled belt of familiar expert workmanship tucked into Rimon’s sock drawer. He trusts strangers so easily. He ran the supple leather through his fingers and examined the stitching. It could easily have been made by Solamar’s grandfather. His father would have been able to say for certain. Solamar’s own skills at reading objects had never equaled his father’s. He returned the belt and took some heavy wool socks.

He changed into the awkwardly fitting clothes. He’d have to find the Tanhara people and discover who was left alive, find the Dispensary and get to work, find—well, Kahleen probably knew all the answers.