The Farris Channel. Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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