The Farris Channel Read Online Free

nager. She was no Companion, but when her attention alighted on him, he felt it. With two tentacles, he gestured her to caution.
    In response, she put her attention on the horizon beyond the Fort. Then, like the Fort Gen she was, she obediently pulled her horse up and dropped to the rear wagons, calling for their remounts which were already saddled and strung behind the wagons.
    Soon everyone was shouting for the Gens in the wagons to mount up. In small groups, they began to ride for their lives, and for the life of the Fort. Both Forts.
    Solamar did the one thing that might betray him to the Forters as an outsider. Without consulting anyone, without even telling anyone what he was about to do, he rode out ahead to meet the riders from the Fort—Fort Rimon, it has to be. A real channel would stay behind, well defended and safe. A real channel was a non-combatant. A real channel didn’t take stupid risks.
    But to Solamar’s Sime senses, it no longer seemed like a risk. What he zlinned now matched what his even more reliable intuition told him. Fort Rimon’s crack combat team was riding out to defend Tanhara’s refugees from the Freebanders chasing them.
    The Fort’s stockade lay at one end of a fertile valley, far from the junct village behind the hill at the other end. It was far enough from the steep sides of the valley that attackers couldn’t shoot down into the Fort, and it was on a slight rise that provided both protection from mountain floods and a tactical advantage in defending their walls.
    Surrounded by tilled fields, almost completely harvested now, and by terraces on the hillside—orchards, trin tea plants, and, yes, grape arbors, the Fort appeared secure and prosperous.
    It looked exactly as it had been described to him when he’d taken on this mission. It zlinned right, too except there were way too many people in that Fort.
    As he balanced his weight forward, urging his horse on, he let go of his ordinary senses, letting himself drift into hyperconsciousness, the Sime’s hunting mode. Gen nager flamed bright enough to sense from miles away, if you were sensitive enough and knew how to zlin for greatest distance.
    Closer now, the Fort ahead leapt into stark relief to his Sime senses, a towering vortex of powerful selyn fields. Even as he approached the line of riders coming toward him, the vortex over the Fort collapsed in on itself, turning quiet, intense, focused.
    The source of that invisible brightness more intense than the sun was to the naked eye had to be the Fort’s Companions, trained to work with the channels. The Companions’ brightness dominated the glow of the higher-field Gens, but as he watched, it all diminished. No doubt the Gens had withdrawn underground, leaving the renSime defenders on the walls. Oddly though, it seemed a number of low-field Gens were still outside the shelters.
    No, it wasn’t just a few low-field Gens. It was a lot of low-field Gens plus a few channels who where managing the nageric fields. They had used the Gen nageric power to shape a silent, invisible message to the Sime attackers who could read those fields.
    It was a message of supreme confidence, and a total absence of a sense of being threatened.
    Solamar had expected that when the last Companion was underground, the channels would follow them into the shelters, joining the children and most of the ordinary Gen donors.
    But they hadn’t.
    It was drilled into every denizen of the Forts that renSimes are expendable. The Gens, the Companions and the channels are the life of the Fort, just like the children.
    That drill was the only reason that Fort Tanhara had any refugees alive to flee the collapse of their defenses. Because the channels and Companions had been safe, they had healed the wounded. Freeband Raiders were only renSime, with maybe a few captive Gens.
    Solamar had joined Tanhara only four days after that last devastating battle. Lending his talents to the healing effort, he had been accepted as a