The Farris Channel (5 page)

“Not yet, Jhiti!” answered the older Farris channel. “We still have people out there.” Even as he spoke, more renSime defenders beat off Raiders and retreated through the narrow opening of the door. Two more Raiders followed them in. There were more defenders still out there fighting.

So this is Rimon Farris! No wonder he has such a nager.

Then Losa’s searingly penetrating nager shattered the ambient. The Farris whipped around to gaze down into the stockade’s yard. Unconsciously, Solamar spun in sync with him.

Losa had been cut off from the hatchway leading down into the shelter. Raiders surrounded her. She had given Solamar transfer only five days ago. As brightly attractive as her nager seemed, she didn’t have enough selyn to withstand being attacked by so many renSimes.

Two of the Raiders slashed at her with their long knives, toying with her fear. Blood spurted as she backed up, selyn energy pluming forth from the wound making the Raiders grin. Solamar’s whole body went into healing mode, reaching toward his Companion to staunch the loss of selyn with his own body’s fields, even though he was too far away.

It was what channels did—heal wounds, fight disease, bring Gens and renSimes to peak of health. More than instinct, it had become for Solamar a total way of life as he pushed and pulled the Tanhara refugees toward the legendary Fort Rimon, where they were all going to die.

“Snap out of it!” commanded the Farris.

“They know what she is!” protested Solamar transfixed. “They’ll murder her and try to strip her dead body of selyn.” Below in the yard, the two Raiders stalked Losa, attracted by the pluming selyn they could zlin. It was just one small skirmish in a yard full of fighting, running, chaos and dying.

The Farris glanced from Solamar to Losa. “She’s your Companion.”

“Yes.”

“Help me get the Raiders’ attention!” the older channel commanded grimly and turned to the yard below.

Suddenly the ambient around the Farris was pure Gen—bright, hot, incredibly enticing. Solamar joined the effort to create the illusion of two great Gens hidden visually from below by the guardrail and part of the water tank but nagerically obvious.

“Good, now a little fear for spice, like doing a disjunction lure. Follow me.”

It was remarkably easy, just like dancing with an expert. In counterpoint, they swirled and pulsed with fear, using the channel’s unique control of the body’s nageric projection to seem to be Gen to the senses of the Simes below.

Solamar, tired, aching, terrified and desperate, let himself float on the Farris nager, let that ineffable power sweep through him, using his body as an extension.

One by one all the Freebanders in the yard, and even those still fighting the defenders outside by the wagons turned toward the spot above where two replete and terrified Gens waited to be Killed, to be savagely stripped of all their selyn energy.

The Raiders would see only two heads, one black haired, one blond, and maybe a bit of shoulder, not enough to tell Sime from Gen visually. But every renSime, Raider or not, zlinned those two deliciously terrified Gens and so they knew they were seeing two delicious Gens no matter what their eyes might report.

Now, even the Fort renSimes were responding to that projected Gen fear, only they did have an idea of what was actually going on. Freeband Raiders fed on Gen fear as well as selyn. The Fort Simes never Killed, never craved fear, but got all their selyn through their channels. The Raiders had no clue what a channel could do with selyn fields.

Losa’s attackers ignored her, but she just stood panting, swaying on her feet, dazed from loss of blood, unable to take the moment to run. There were so many people, so many bodies, so much blood, there was no way to run.

Two other channels caught near the entry to the underground shelter also paused, halting their guards from hustling them into safety below, and joined Rimon’s effort. One of them was a Farris, but Solamar couldn’t zlin which one. He just felt another massive, dominating nager emerge into the chaotic ambient.

Suddenly, the courtyard was pulsing with four huge, golden Gen presences. Rimon joined them all as he had joined seamlessly with Solamar, and created a junct’s greatest fantasy.

The renSime defenders looked upward, waiting for a command.

“Now what?” Solamar asked the older channel. “If your renSimes attack, we’ll lose the Raiders’ attention.”

“When I signal, quickly shift your showfield to renSime.”

Solamar zlinned the Fort Rimon renSimes outside, creeping toward the Fort wall, trying hard not to disturb the Freebanders’ fascination with the “Gens” above. In the yard, the defenders shifted to clear a path between the Raiders and the still open door beside the main gate. Then Solamar understood what the older channel planned and real fear spiked into his showfield.

That galvanized the Raiders, and suddenly five of those outside armed with long, ugly bullwhips, hurled themselves at the palisade wall. One whipmaster, standing on another Raider’s shoulders, lashed his whip around a spike at the top of the wall, and suddenly two Raiders swarmed over the whipmaster and started over the wall at the “Gens.”

All along the catwalk, Fort renSimes closed in from both sides to protect the channels.

“Now!” shouted Rimon Farris.

Rimon’s order seized the four of them in a nageric pulse and wrenched their showfields from Gen to renSime.

To all the Simes within zlinning range the “Gens” had disappeared.

The two Raiders climbing the wall paused, shocked to find no Gens awaiting them atop the wall, shocked to find two Simes standing where two Gens had been, shocked to be attacked from both sides by renSimes they hadn’t been able to zlin through the massive “Gen” fields.

Jhiti tackled one of the Raiders, and at that second, the other leapt for Rimon, a dagger in one hand, screaming, “Wer-Gen!” sure he had zlinned a Sime turn into a Gen then turn back into a Sime.

Solamar stepped into the hurtling body, grabbed, turned and flipped the renSime, aiming to fold him over the top of the wall and leave him hanging there. But the Raider was hardly more than an animated skeleton. The body arced high over the top of the wall, and the Raider tumbled screaming, “Wer-Gen!” and was abruptly silent.

The ambient was so roiled with deathshock, Solamar wasn’t sure that he’d even felt the man die.

In the yard below, a shout went up, “Wer-Gen!” And suddenly all the Raiders inside and outside the Fort were screaming, “Wer-Gen!”

The circle of attackers around Losa closed on her once more as they broke and ran for the gate followed by all the other Raiders in the yard.

Jhiti bellowed, “Don’t let any of them escape!”

Defenders leapt to obey, spreading the order as they ran, blocking all avenues of escape for the animated scarecrow figures.

The Raiders, driven into a small clump, retreated into the center of the yard, toward the entry to the underground refuge. Losa stumbled toward that beckoning safety, caught up with the crowd of Gens, children and Fort Rimon non-combatants dodging rearing, screaming fire-crazed horses and knots of Raiders on the hunt, formations of disciplined renSime defenders of the Fort and piles of dead bodies.

One of the Raiders, at the point of death by selyn Attrition and desperate for selyn hurled herself at Losa’s back. A Sime woman, a Farris, broke out of the knot of those cramming through the hatch to the underground refuge and peeled the Raider off Losa offering the Raider a selyn transfer.

Even at that distance, across the choppy sea of warring nageric fields, Solamar zlinned that Farris channel working to drive selyn into the Raider’s wasted system. Raiders could not accept selyn in the peaceful, collimated flow a channel offered. Raiders needed to burn a Gen to death by taking their selyn.

The Raider died trying to Kill that Farris channel woman. The other Raiders converged on the Farris and she went down under the heap of scrawny bodies. The other defenders were unaccountably slow coming to her aid, and when they’d yanked and tossed the skeletal bodies off of her, she rose, staggering. Her nager was so pale Solamar could barely zlin her presence.

Losa, still bleeding blood and selyn, yanked herself free of the renSimes who were trying to help her into the shelter and plunged toward the Farris woman, stepping on the piles of bodies, staggering as dead flesh shifted under her boots. Off balance, she gave one last lunge toward the Farris, offering all her selyn in a Companion’s instinctive response to a channel’s Need.

The Farris turned. Solamar saw it all in slow motion, flash-burned into his eyes, his memory forever. His own Companion whose selyn was meant only for him, his source of life on earth, offered it all to a Farris channel, with no frisson of fear or even caution. No Farris would Kill. Everyone knew that.

The Farris handling tentacles, four on each arm, twined themselves around Losa’s Gen forearms. The Gen arms were so inviting without tentacles but rich with swirling selyn fields.

Time had stopped for Solamar as his thighs bunched as if to propel him off the wall in a mad flying leap toward his Companion.

The Farris woman’s lateral tentacles emerged at the sides of her arms, two slender pink-gray organs with no real strength, rich in nerves that could draw selyn from the Gen body, drawing a month’s life into the void of a Sime’s Need.

Solamar felt strong Farris hands clamp rigidly onto his shoulders, pulling him back from the suicidal leap.

The Farris woman’s lips sought the necessary fifth contact point as her four laterals seated themselves against Gen flesh. Losa turned her face toward the woman in Need, offering her lips, the best, most nerve-rich contact point that gave the channel the best possible control of the speed of selyn draw.

And it was over.

Losa dropped dead at the Farris woman’s feet.

Solamar was only dimly aware of his body drawn back hard against the trembling Farris channel behind him. Shock held him rigid. The noise of battle receded. The boiling chaos of the ambient nager, riven by his Companion’s deathshock slammed into his nerves, his mind, his emotions, his innermost self.

Outside, the retreating Raiders, scrabbled over the wagons to flee the only thing they feared more than death by selyn Attrition, the supernatural wer-Gen and forced transfer from a channel.

Behind them, Jhiti pinned a Raider to the planking and broke his neck. Solamar remembered he had intended to take that Raider down himself, had planned the move in fact, and forgotten all about it in an instant. That death was near enough for Solamar to feel it against the general background of death and dying, but it barely registered under Losa’s searing, shattering deathshock.

Jhiti looked up to find Rimon still alive, holding Solamar back from the edge of the wall. Jhiti straddled the corpse and yelled, “Rimon, what are you thinking? You two shouldn’t have done that! You shouldn’t be up here at all.”

Guilt suffused the ambient, quickly damped under the channel’s control. “Yes, Jhiti, I know. We’ll discuss it later. See what can be salvaged from the wagons and round up the rest of the stock these people brought before the Raiders get them. We’ve got a winter to face soon.” To Solamar, he said, “This way. We have work to do.”

“Work....” repeated Solamar in a whisper.

“She’s dead. I’m sorry. I’ve lost a Companion to Raiders too. We’ve lost a top channel in this. Maybe you and I can still save some lives.”

“Save lives....” Solamar heard himself repeat those words, but his mind couldn’t understand them.

In the yard below, the hatch to the underground shelter opened, and people swarmed over the refugees, separating the animals from the people, sending riders out into the gathering dusk to collect the animals that had been cut loose, and other squads out to chase the retreating Raiders and to hunt for survivors.

As he followed Rimon down the ladder into the yard, the fire brigade dragged two donkeys into the yard and hitched them to the well’s wheel. Before long water was flowing. Solamar heard some renSimes and Gens banging pot bottoms and calling all cooks to the cookhouse. If nothing else, the Gens and children had to be fed.

The Fort Rimon channeling staff swung into practiced motion, separating the injuries into type and severity, and rushing them off to treatment. The Tanhara channeling staff was swept into the organization as if they’d lived in Rimon all their lives.

As Rimon Farris ploughed through the courtyard, one arm around Solamar’s shoulders, order was left in his wake. The Fort Rimon organization made this major disaster look like a routine drill until Rimon got to the hatchway to the underground shelter where the channels had set up their main hospital.

The Farris channel cast about among the bodies, the seated wounded, the milling and the dazed. Finally he snagged a Gen man who was clearing bodies. “Where’s Clire?”

The man stopped, emitting grief laced with fear. “She’s gone.”

“She didn’t die. I’d have....”

“No. The Raiders got her. A squad followed them to rescue her, but they haven’t come back. I’ve been here the whole time. I’d know if she’d been brought in. She’s not down there.” He gestured to the hospital. “Lexy is though. She’s working on Aipensha...she was alive last I heard.”

It was Solamar’s turn to support Rimon’s weight as shock took all the strength out of his knees.

Solamar sought his internal time sense, so reliable in any Sime. It had ticked off the seconds while his mind had stopped and now it told him nearly an hour had passed while they worked across the yard from emergency to emergency.