The Farris Channel. Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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.