The Farris Channel by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Page B

fields. Still, when you were so upset, I picked up on some of it. I’m sorry. They were after all your ghosts, not mine.”
    Rimon grinned into a gust of snowflakes.
    “Now why would that make you happy?”
    “I have a theory that the people from the other Forts who’ve ended up here don’t trust Lexy and me, don’t trust our judgment because they can’t zlin us clearly. Maybe you won’t distrust us just because we’re Farrises. Maybe they’ll listen to you. Maybe things will get better here.”
    “Things weren’t good here before we arrived?”
    Snow spackled them while Solamar listened intently to Rimon’s summary of events leading up to Clire’s Killing Losa. “That explains a lot. Clire was a Farris. Losa was a good Companion for me, but not up to what a pregnant Farris would need.”
    “So you see, Solamar, we must hold new elections for a Fort Council to include Tanhara.”
    “I hope Tanhara can help unify these groups.”
    “We must become not seven Forts, but just Fort Rimon, one united community.”
    “Rushing to hold elections won’t create that unity. We should hold elections when we’ve finished digging privies, wells, and post holes before the hard freeze. Right now, no one from Tanhara would know who to vote for, and the rest don’t know who from Tanhara to vote for.”
    “That’s what I thought when there were just three Forts here. It didn’t work, and things have become worse.”
    Solamar took a chance. “Seven is a better number for this than three, more idealistic.”
    “A number can’t be idealistic!”
    “No?” He conceded with a shrug. “Perhaps not.”
    Rimon zlinned him, and Solamar dropped his showfield and opened himself to the Farris perceptions.
    Then Solamar zlinned the Farris back, and was treated to a view of the depths of that formidable channel’s soul.
    Rimon laughed as he disengaged their fields. “Well, perhaps a number can be idealistic. Stranger things have happened today!” He turned to go back down the stair, then paused. “My father, Zeth Farris, saw ghosts too. They say it drove him to his death.”
    Solamar felt the apprehension in the man. He stepped forward and gripped the bony Farris shoulders. “You are forgiven by your ghosts. You are not imagining that. You couldn’t have done anything else with Clire under the circumstances. We have to prevent such a circumstance from developing again. What began in Fort Freedom with your grandfather, is vitally important to the world. We will not fail.” That is my mission, thought Solamar.
    “You believe in ghosts,” Rimon accused.
    “Yes. Only...I’d rather that weren’t generally known. No one in Tanhara knows.” He’d been sworn to secrecy about what he knew, what he could do, before he’d been trained, and until now he’d never broken that oath.
    “You believe in life after death?” asked Rimon.
    “...uuuhhh...yes.”
    “It really is real,” he half asked, half begged.
    “Yes. We were not hallucinating. They came because you were hurting so very much and they love you. They had to tell you that they know it wasn’t your fault.”
    “Yes. And they did that. So they won’t come again.”
    “Probably not.”
    “Only probably?
    “I can’t foretell the future.”
    “That would be a handy skill.”
    “Probably not.”
    Rimon laughed, a short, harsh, bark. “Good point. I don’t want to know how I’m going to die, or when.”
    “It will be at the right time. That much we know.”
    “Do we?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re positive.”
    “Yes.”
    Rimon scrutinized him in every way. “I believe you. I don’t know why. But I do.”
    “Good. You won’t discuss it with anyone else?”
    “No. No, I won’t.”
    It had the weight of a solemn oath. “I’ll sleep better knowing that.”
    Rimon nodded slowly, still studying Solamar. “Take your turn in the room first. I’ll catch a few hours right after dawn. I left Bruce tending a renSime who may be permanently crippled from his