The Farris Channel (31 page)

That stopped the junct in his tracks. “You’ve never, ever, referred to Bruce as your Gen!”

“Not to his face, no,” said Rimon giving Tuzhel a Sime-to-Sime nageric twinkle.

Bruce let his own comment on that seep into the ambient, then sat down in the only chair and disappeared back into the furniture. Tuzhel blinked at him.

“If I didn’t feel so bad, I’d be laughing my head off.”

“Bruce does have a sense of humor, for a Gen.”

Prepared for Rimon’s ploy this time, Bruce didn’t react, at least not where Rimon could zlin it.
No doubt I’ll pay for this later.

“Gens don’t have a sense of humor?”

“Not where their selyn is concerned, anyway.”

Tuzhel circled the seated Gen who never let a quiver disturb his attention even as Tuzhel deliberately went into hunting mode as a Raider approaching a Kill, then struggled to suppress it again, horrified when Rimon had to help him.

“I guess they really are unKillable. What’s it like to have a Gen of your own to supply your selyn.”

“He serves my Need as I serve yours. I pass my experience with him on to you. Right now he’s working to me. It’s a little rude to try to disturb his concentration.”

Rimon shifted his attention to Bruce, then slowly dropped his showfield, letting Tuzhel zlin his primary field, letting the creeping tension of approaching Turnover fill the room. Bruce’s body adjusted to the shift in the fields. The insulated room filled with the incessant thrum of the Gen selyn production pacing Rimon’s selyn consumption. “Zlin that, Tuzhel? If he weren’t working to me, he wouldn’t adjust so smoothly. Then you and I would be tripping all over each other unless I managed the fields with my secondary system. So it’s rude to him and to me to disrupt his concentration.” Bruce didn’t react.

“Rude? You should have heard what Solamar said when I was teasing Kahleen while he was trying to zlin me for disjunction crisis.”

“Solamar’s a little hard on the discipline, huh?”

“Only when I’m...what’s that word?”

“Incorrigible?”

“I think that’s the one he used.”

“I’ll just bet he did.” Rimon had heard him use that word to describe BanSha, usually while laughing.

Then suddenly Rimon drew a long, deep breath and put his hand out to stop Tuzhel in mid-stride. The junct turned, attention pulled away from his own internal misery as the bottom fell out of Rimon’s stomach.

When caught in public by Turnover, Rimon masked this plummet into the Need half of his cycle with his showfield. For him, the shift was a longer, scarier fall than for most Simes, even channels. But he let Tuzhel ride this out with him, making no effort to protect the renSime from his spiking intil.

As they had planned, Bruce let him fall free, plunging past that halfway point in his Need cycle, all security gone, suddenly ignored by his Companion. Every Sime cell in his body yearned to reach out to the Gen and clutch at the selyn he had to have to survive. He didn’t. He just let Tuzhel zlin a channel at Turnover, reduced to being just an ordinary Sime without any of the comforts a Companion provided.

Rimon’s internal time sense clocked about five seconds before his brain made the adjustment from relative security to the thrumming beat of ever increasing Need. The shock passed, but Tuzhel reflected it back as an echo, junct Need shrieking into the ambient.

Rimon reconstructed his showfield, and signalled Bruce to go back to work as he gathered the renSime in a transfer grip. “Now you see. A channel is just a Sime. We all share that experience, Tuzhel. That was easy for me this month. I had a great transfer last month, and I expect another great one in a couple weeks. Bruce is right here for me as I am here for you.”

“Now? Do it now!”

“A few moments. Remember you can always come to the channels for your Turnovers, though eventually you’ll gain confidence, knowing Turnover is a much longer way from death by Attrition than it seems now. We all feel that panic at Turnover, and we all feel Need and routinely survive them both.”

Tuzhel begged, “Is that enough lesson now?”

Rimon closed the contact and poured selyn into the renSime, letting Tuzhel draw as much as a junct renSime could. He portrayed the Gen terror he had so studiously learned, infused with his fresh memory of Turnover and its savage impulse to rip selyn from any nearby Gen.

Right in the middle of Tuzhel’s frantic selyn draw, suddenly the ambient in the room shifted and Clire stood behind him, wrapped around him like a cold vapor, oozing over his hands on Tuzhel’s arms.

“Watch what your baby is learning to do before he’s even born!” She paused at his shock. “Oh, yes, Del Rimon Farris, I’m carrying your son!” With a laugh of cold hatred, she whipped her lateral tentacles over Rimon’s and around Tuzhel’s, surrounding the junct’s laterals with insubstantial shadows fraught with twisted, distorted streams of selyn.

Gen pain, terror, and insane despairing surrender to death exploded between them.

Tuzhel came alive with the unfettered release of the junct fulfillment, Killbliss, then relaxed into the aftermath, basking in unutterable relief. And Clire was gone, had never been there, couldn’t possibly have been there.

Rimon wrapped himself in his most impenetrable shell, and focused on his patient. “Yes, Tuzhel, that’s enough lesson for now,” said Rimon dismantling his grip.

“I’m glad I did your lesson! That was amazing,” said Tuzhel, hypoconscious, gazing about the room that he sensed only with the ordinary five senses. “There’s no dead Gen here. Even Bruce is still alive. You made me imagine that, and it worked! It was so real!” He spun about in a little dance step. “I feel incredible! I’m disjunct, aren’t I?”

“No,” answered Rimon. “No I’m sorry Tuzhel, but that’s not it yet.” It might have set him back too many months to let him disjunct before he was too old.

Bruce had come to his side at some point, and Rimon hadn’t even noticed. The Gen was worried.

“Tuzhel, you’re free to go now. See Val to pick up your escort and whatever assignment she has for you. You did sign up for the work crews, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. They’re planning to dig a big ditch and wanted a lot of hands. I think Val said I’d haul firewood to soften the ground, but I was in such Need when she came by I don’t remember.”

“Go check that out then, and don’t leave the building without an escort.”

As Tuzhel gathered his things and opened the door, BanSha, Rushi and Bekka were waiting in the hall. “Oh, you zlin fabulous!” exclaimed BanSha, dragging Tuzhel toward Val’s office.

Tuzhel resisted BanSha’s guidance and stopped to zlin Bekka. “They told me you’d Established, but you’re absolutely beautiful.”

Young love was such a delight to behold.

Bekka, though, as an untrained Gen, shouldn’t have been in this part of the building. BanSha was not certified to protect an Establishing Gen from a disjuncting renSime, even right after his transfer.

BanSha and Tuzhel sensed Rimon studying them, though Bekka was oblivious.

“Tuzhel, step back in here a moment. I’d like a word with you. BanSha you and Bekka wait a moment.”

When the door closed behind Tuzhel, he said, “You’re locking me up again?”

“No, I just wanted to remind you, privately, that Bekka Established barely ten days ago, and you’re at least six months past changeover. She’s way too young to be interested in what you’re interested in.” While he spoke, he brought Tuzhel to duoconsciousness, to mute the shout of his ordinary senses so he could think straight.

“I’m Post? I thought that wouldn’t happen until after disjunction.”

“Oh, you’ll notice a difference after disjunction,” assured Rimon. “Remember this. If you ever want a real chance to get close to Bekka, you have to stand back for at least another four months, maybe five or six. Let her grow up naturally, or she could end up hating you forever.”

Rimon knew that along with all the rest of the lessons the channeling staff had put this youngster through had come the basics of sex education, Fort style. “You’ve been warned you would begin to feel this way.

Tuzhel took a deep breath and nodded. Clearly he was disappointed and Rimon could see why. After a great transfer which he’d been told would be a disastrous ordeal because he was nearing disjunction crisis, he was feeling wonderful but not allowed to pursue that feeling any more than he’d been allowed to assuage his Need at impulse.

“I think you and Bekka would make a fine couple, if she’s willing. Right now, concentrate on being her friend.”

“I got that part of the lesson. She just seems so....”

“Oh, yes, she does definitely just seem ‘so.’”

“Do you think she could become a Companion?”

“She hasn’t asked. It’s hard, hard work. It has to be her choice. That’s something else we’ll just have to wait for. She hasn’t even given her first donation yet. Tuzhel, let her grow up, then let her decide what she wants.”

“But could she if she wanted to? Become a Companion?”

“We’ll know that after she’s done a few donations.”

“Wait-wait-wait! Is that all life is ever going to be?”

“Well, if you start waiting soon enough and wait for enough things all at once, something you’re waiting for happens almost every day. It’s just a question of having enough things developing.”

Tuzhel frowned at him, then burst out laughing. “I don’t believe you said that.”

Rimon listened to what he’d just said again in his mind. “Neither do I. It may have some merit, though.”

“So now I’m waiting for Turnover, waiting for disjunction, and waiting for Bekka. I have to add more things to wait for so things will always be happening?”

“Try it and let me know if it works.”

“May I go now?” asked Tuzhel with impeccable grammar and a very clean accent.

“Yes, as long as you go directly to Val or whoever’s on duty now and get your assignments straightened. And tell her I said you should be eating a solid meal before going to work. You still have a little growing to do.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“Your body is still developing. The better you eat, the longer you’ll live.”

“That’s what Rushi keeps saying to BanSha.”

Rimon opened the door, glancing at Bruce as the Gen let him know exactly how hungry he was at that moment.

Rimon dismissed them with a wave of two tentacles. “BanSha, you and Rushi stick with Tuzhel until Val assigns someone else. Take Tuzhel right to Val’s office, and that’s an order. Good job, Rushi. Bekka, don’t forget you have lessons and Tuzhel has work.”

They swarmed off down the hall, chattering about some new project of BanSha’s. Tuzhel stuck to Bekka’s side as he grinned back at Rimon exuding a sense of being accepted that was another brick in the foundation of his disjunction. Rimon sent back his approval on the ambient.

BanSha started to intercept, protecting Tuzhel, but then relaxed his showfield and let Tuzhel zlin Rimon. Tuzhel’s joy lit up the corridor to Sime senses, but though Rushi grinned too, Bekka did not.
Not yet,
Rimon thought hopefully.
She’s oblivious, still in a child’s world.

Bruce closed the door and leaned against the handle as if sealing Rimon in and skewered him with one of those soul chilling Companion’s looks with eyes and nager together.

“What happened during that transfer?” Bruce’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t let his alarm show in his nager. Or he tried not to. Rimon’s nerves were raw enough that he couldn’t help recognizing that his Gen had indeed felt something. Who says Gens can’t zlin? Some of them, you can’t keep a secret from to save your life.

“I’m not sure, Bruce. Maybe Solamar will know. He apparently knows things he hasn’t told me yet.”

“He’s been trying to.”

“I know,” answered Rimon, grim beyond what a Turnover day called for.
I should never have taken that belt off.
I have to get my lessons done, just like the children.

Rimon and Solamar were still sleeping in shifts, sharing the on-duty sleeping room that had always been Rimon’s temporary quarters. During the Need half of their cycles, their Companions bunked in the room with them, making it very crowded. Rimon had given priority to building the underground shelter, rather than new houses for the channels, so he had nobody to blame but himself.

Solamar opened the door just as Rimon was about to reach for the handle. Solamar, aching with Need, ushered them into the room.

“It happened again. Clire. You weren’t there this time. This was different.”

“He wasn’t where?” asked Kahleen, wrapping a blanket around her. “What was different?” The fire had burned to embers and the room was chilly. Solamar lit a brace of candles so Bruce and Kahleen could see.

“You haven’t told her?”

“No.”

“Told me what?” asked Kahleen grabbing a heavy leather glove off the mantle to shove wood into the fire.

Bruce explained, “Solamar has been working on some fancy nageric tricks with Rimon, but they don’t have a good handle on controlling it yet, so odd things keep happening.”

“Oh. Solamar told me something about that.”

Rimon ran tentacles around the nape of his neck. He was barely at Turnover and Solamar was due for transfer in less than a day. It wasn’t fair to burden the man with his miseries. He rearranged the fields, and Solamar helped. In a few moments, the strain in the room had leveled out.