Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  She eyed him dispassionately. “I’ve been looking for this book for years,” she retorted, closing it and starting to move away.

  “Wait, wait, please, you don’t understand. I need that book. My instructor ordered me to find it, and I can’t tell him I failed.”

  She gave him a cold look. “You Starfleet people are so arrogant,” she said with spirit. “You think you’re superior to everyone else, that you deserve to be treated like royalty.” She turned away again.

  “No, don’t go, please. Please.” She stopped and turned slowly back to him, as though something in his voice had reached her. Harry felt like a babbling, inarticulate child. “It’s not that way at all. I’ve got this commander, Nimembeh, and he makes my life miserable but I’ve got to do what he says or leave the Academy. And he said to get that book. I didn’t think I’d ever find it—what are the odds you’d want it, too?—and I’m begging you to let me have it.”

  His sincerity and his desperateness had caught her attention. Her dark eyes dropped to the book and then lifted again to Harry. “My father had this book,” she said softly. “He read it to me before I could read for myself. He said there were lessons in it that would stay with me forever. I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Then he died, and all his books were given to a museum. As I got older, I remembered what he’d said, and I started looking for it.”

  Harry stared at her. What she had said moved him tremendously, and suddenly her need to have the book eclipsed his own. He’d just have to deal with Nimembeh. He gave her a wan smile. “Then you should have it.” Then he could think of absolutely nothing else to say, and so he turned away from her and started down the aisle.

  “Wait,” she said. He turned back, and was startled once more by her ethereal beauty. “Maybe we could compromise,” she said, her voice velvet in the dusty room. “You could take it so your instructor would be satisfied. And when you’re done with it, you can return it to me.”

  Harry’s gratitude was immense. This beautiful creature was also generous! He looked at her, falling in love in that instant, and took a breath to thank her.

  And began sneezing.

  She had laughed, and they’d left the bookstore together, walking for hours in the fresh spring day, talking and talking, exploring each other with all the eagerness and energy of young love. He learned that her name was Libby Lattimore, that she studied art, that she loved cats, that she ate an orange every day, that her mother was a noted author who lived in England and that they talked frequently, and that she’d dated some Starfleet cadets and found them arrogant and full of themselves and had promised to avoid them in the future.

  And she did remember him from the music festival.

  Harry found her fascinating. He loved the sound of her laughter, which was rich and throaty. He loved the way her nose turned slightly sideways at the tip, the way her dark hair bounced as she walked. He loved her sensitivity, her caring, her sweet nature.

  He loved everything about her.

  But when he returned to his room that night, holding the ancient copy of The Bounty Trilogy in his hands, he found he didn’t want to tell George about her. How could he do justice to this wonderfully unique person? He was afraid he’d sound foolish, puppy-like, the victim of an adolescent infatuation. He wanted George, his best friend, to meet Libby and to see for himself how special she was.

  “Want to visit an art gallery with me?” he inquired casually of George, who had been studying calculus, a subject with which he struggled.

  “Sure,” replied George, agreeable as ever. “What’s the show?”

  “Paintings,” said Harry.

  “Paintings? As in two-dimensional canvases coated with oil-based pigments?”

  “That’s right.”

  George looked at him with a dubious expression. “Are they old?”

  “No, they’re done by a young artist. Very promising.”

  “I’d have thought just about everything that could be explored on a canvas has been. Many times over.”

  Harry shrugged. “Can’t hurt to check it out. The opening is tomorrow night.”

  “You mean Nimembeh will give you the night off?”

  Harry held up the book. “I pulled off the impossible. I think he’ll be sufficiently impressed.”

  And so he was. Nimembeh was so impressed, in fact, that he gave Harry a week’s respite from his scrutiny, the first time that had happened all year. Harry was free to go to Libby’s opening with George.

  The art gallery was a spacious building on Market Street, and by the time the young cadets got there it was already teeming with people. Harry and George worked their way through the crowd, Harry looking everywhere for Libby, but finding no sign of her.

  Her artwork, however, was extraordinary. Harry was frankly unprepared for the effect it had on him. The showing was a study in contrasts: huge canvases, covering entire walls, with images of dark, preternatural creatures, powerful and mysterious, engaged in strange rituals that seemed to have sprung from genetic memory. But other walls contained tiny miniature paintings done in such delicate realistic detail that it was hard to believe both had been done by the same artist.

  Even George was impressed. “I was wrong,” he stated firmly. “These are outstanding. Who’s the artist?”

  “Her name is Libby Lattimore,” said Harry, hoping the pride in his voice wasn’t too evident. “She should be here somewhere.” Harry looked around the room again and finally saw her, talking with a group of middle-aged people who seemed to hang on her every word. She was wearing a white jumpsuit that accentuated the blackness of her hair and the red of her lips. She was stunning.

  “That’s her,” he said eagerly, and noticed that George was staring at him somewhat curiously. “Come on, I want you to meet her.” He started making his way through the crowd, assuming George was right behind him. As he neared the group, Libby spotted him, and he saw her wrap up her conversation with the others and head toward him, clearly as glad to see him as he was to see her. She reached out her hands and took both of his in them, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she breathed. “It’s a madhouse, but people seem to like my work.”

  “It’s incredible. I mean that—I had no idea.”

  She beamed at him in response, and he turned around to introduce George, only to find that his roommate wasn’t right behind him. Harry looked back and saw him standing in the same spot, watching them, a strange expression on his face. Harry waved at him impatiently, and finally George moved toward them.

  “This is Libby Lattimore, the artist,” said Harry proudly. “My roommate, George Mathers. He said your work is outstanding.”

  Libby extended her hand. “Thanks so much for coming, George. Harry’s talked on and on about you.”

  George made what looked like an attempt to smile, but to Harry it seemed forced. What was wrong? “You’re very talented, Miss Lattimore,” said George formally. “Thank you for the opportunity to see your work.”

  George didn’t talk this way, thought Harry. Why was he so stiff and formal? Harry was baffled, but also disappointed. He wanted these two people, the two he most cared about, to like each other and to get along. But George was almost icy.

  Now he turned to Harry with a façade of good cheer. “Well, I better get back to calculus. I have an exam day after tomorrow and I need every minute I can get. Nice to meet you,” he added to Libby, and then he hurried off through the crowded room.

  “Did I say something wrong?” asked Libby, obviously having noticed his strange demeanor.

  “Of course not. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well.” Harry looked into Libby’s black eyes and immediately forgot about George. They spent the evening together, Harry feeling unaccountably proud as he heard the accolades heaped on Libby from all who saw her work, and he didn’t think about George and his unusual behavior until late that night, when he returned to his room at the Academy, aglow with thoughts of Libby and the sweet mem
ory of their first kiss.

  He entered quietly, in case George was asleep, and indeed the room was darkened. But he spotted his roommate sitting in the window seat, staring out at the trees in the quadrangle of which their dormitory was a part. George was silhouetted against a sky that was illuminated by a half-moon.

  “George? You all right?”

  George didn’t turn his head to answer. “Fine,” he said unconvincingly. Harry looked at him, reminded of his earlier behavior at the gallery.

  “I thought you might not be feeling well,” Harry said. “You left so abruptly.”

  George finally turned toward him, and in the moonlight Harry could see naked anguish in his eyes. “I’ve been a fool, Harry, and it’s a little tough to admit that to myself.”

  “What are you talking about?” Harry was genuinely puzzled. There was a long silence in which Harry could hear George breathing, as though he weren’t quite getting enough oxygen.

  “When I saw you with that woman tonight, it was clear how you feel about her. And—I just didn’t realize.”

  “Realize what?”

  A sound of exasperation emitted from George, half a laugh, half an ironic expletive. “Are you so dense, Harry? Do I have to spell it out?”

  Harry felt trapped and confused. He couldn’t imagine what was making his friend act like this, couldn’t wrap his mind around whatever it was George was trying to say. “George, please, I honestly don’t understand.”

  George stood up, the moon catching one side of his face while the other remained in darkness. His one visible eye looked immeasurably sad. “I love you, Harry. I’m in love with you. And I thought you felt the same way.”

  Harry stared at him, suddenly understanding everything, realizing that he was the one who’d been a fool. It had never occurred to him that George had made this assumption about their relationship. And he blamed himself for not seeing the obvious.

  “George, I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty stupid.”

  But George was shaking his head. “I made assumptions because I wanted to make them,” he admitted. “You didn’t date women, you seemed to enjoy my company, we did everything together . . . I interpreted those things in the way that made me happy.”

  “But there was never anything romantic between us . . .”

  “I wanted there to be. But I told myself it would come with time. And I liked being with you so much that I didn’t want to take the risk of pushing it.” He shook his head ruefully. “If I’d been honest with myself, I’d have known I was fantasizing. But I didn’t want to admit it. I loved you too much.”

  An immense wave of friendship, of caring and concern and, yes, of love, swept over Harry. He went to his friend and put his arms around George, who responded in kind, and they stood like that for a long time, locked in a healing embrace. Then George pulled away. “I have to request a change of rooms,” he said quietly. “It’d be too difficult to live with you now. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course I do.” Ineffable sadness enveloped Harry, and he felt a palpable sense of loss, the only such pain he’d experienced in his life since Mousie had died years earlier. “I want to be your friend, George. Can we still have that?”

  George took a breath, looked away from him. “I hope so. In time. But not right away. I have to . . . to get over you.”

  Harry would have done anything at that point to take George’s pain from him, to suffer himself rather than see his friend anguish. But he knew George must walk that path by himself, and could only hope that when he was done, they could be friends again.

  Three years later Harry stood with his classmates in the stadium of the Academy, listening to Admiral Brand inform them that they had now graduated and were setting forth to represent Starfleet throughout known and unknown space. It wasn’t a particularly inspiring speech, at least not to Harry, who was simply glad to be finally out from under Nimembeh’s tutelage. In the four years of his college experience, Nimembeh had been unchanging: flinty, impervious, exacting. Not once had he offered an encouraging word, a compliment, a sympathetic utterance. Now, at last, Harry could look forward to getting away from him.

  But where he would be going was another question. Harry was caught in a dilemma and didn’t know how to resolve it. He’d even sought the counsel of Boothby, the groundskeeper, as he had on numerous occasions over the years. Boothby’s practical, down-to-earth common sense always seemed to clear away doubts and confusion.

  But even Boothby hadn’t been able to help him with his current situation.

  “I’ve got two ways to go after graduation,” he said to Boothby one overcast day as the old man planted a flat of impatiens. “I can stay here in San Francisco, with Starfleet Command, as a design specialist in the Engineering Corps. Or I could become the operations officer on a small starship.”

  “Which do you want to do?”

  “That’s the problem—I can’t decide. I’ve always wanted to explore space, and it’s a terrific opportunity to become an ops officer right away.”

  “But?”

  “But that would take me away from Earth. Away from San Francisco.”

  “From the tone of your voice I’d imagine it’s the young woman you’re thinking of.”

  “Yes. We’ve gotten . . . very serious. And it’s not going to help our relationship for me to be gone for months at a time.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “I know it’s a problem. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  Boothby looked up at him, grizzled face squinting, bright eyes searching his face. “Think I’ve got the answer, do you?”

  “You always seem to.”

  Boothby cackled briefly, then continued to insert plugs of small, multicolored flowers into damp soil. “Well, sorry to disappoint you, but seems to me this is the kind of decision only you can make. You have to decide what’s really important to you and decide accordingly. No one else can see inside your heart.”

  And that was it from Boothby. He also talked it over with George, whose friendship he had cherished over the four years, and who always seemed wise beyond his age. George was adamant in his opinion. “Stay in San Francisco. Marry Libby and have a family. You two have something special between you, and you don’t walk away from something like that.”

  But Libby had yet another opinion. “I won’t be the cause of your giving up something you’ve worked so hard for. If what we have together is going to last, it has to be strong enough to endure some minor separations. There are a lot of married people in Starfleet, and they seem to make it work. I don’t see that we should be any different.”

  His mother and father refused to commit themselves, although Harry knew that they wanted him to stay nearby. His faculty advisor, Commander Moffat, helped him to see the advantages of either choice professionally, but carefully avoided recommending either one.

  And so Harry was alone with his problem. And as he listened to Admiral Brand drone on and on during the graduation ceremony, in his mind he was no closer to a decision than he had been a month ago. But he’d run out of time: the choice had to be made today. He’d heard of the ancient custom of tossing a coin, which was common when there was still currency, and considered some equally random way of resolving this dilemma.

  Admiral Brand finally finished talking, the ceremony concluded with loud cheers, and Harry stood waiting for Libby and his parents to make their way through the crowd that was streaming from the stands. As his eyes searched the teeming masses of people, they fell on Commander Nimembeh, who was standing to one side, alone, his presence as formidable as ever. He was looking right at Harry.

  Harry walked over to him, impelled to have a final statement, to bring to some kind of satisfying closure the travail of the last four years. “I made it, sir,” he said to Nimembeh, his tormentor. “You did everything you could to make me quit, but I held out. What I’d really like to know is whether that makes you happy or if you’re disappointed.”

  An expression Harry had never seen
before flickered over Nimembeh’s face. What was it? There was a slight tug at his lips—a smile? Was the man mocking him?

  “You’ve made me proud, Ensign,” the older man said flatly. “I expect you to continue to do just that.”

  A sudden and unexpected emotion flooded over Harry, the realization of the gift Nimembeh had given him. He had arrived at the Academy a pampered and spoiled child. Nimembeh had seen that and spent four years toughening him up, turning him into a man—a man of whom he could be proud. Harry was moved, so much so that he could hardly speak.

  “Sir,” he began shakily, “what do you think I should do? Stay in San Francisco or take the posting aboard Voyager?”

  Nimembeh’s coal-like eyes glinted at him. “I didn’t spend four years on you so you could sit at a desk, Ensign,” he said, and then turned and walked away, erect as ever.

  And thus was Harry’s decision made. A week later he had joined Voyager at Deep Space Nine, and walked into Captain Kathryn Janeway’s ready room. “At ease, Ensign, before you sprain something,” she said wryly, and so their adventure began. Harry had endured many losses during their long odyssey through the Delta Quadrant, for he missed Libby, and his parents, and George, and all the people who had been a part of his life. But one of the regrets that he lamented the most was that Nimembeh would never know how well Harry had learned his painful lessons.

  CHAPTER

  5

  HARRY LOOKED UP TO SEE EVERY EYE ON HIM—INCLUDING those of Coris, whose orangy disks caught the light of the fire like mirrors. Everyone was utterly silent, rapt. Harry had a moment’s discomfort, thinking briefly that they were embarrassed by his tale of youthful inadequacy, but soon Chakotay moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I wish he could see you now, Harry,” and in his voice the young ensign heard warmth and approval.

  They moved into the shelters after that, stretching out on the ground, young animals strangely at peace after Harry’s tale of innocence and initiation. Coris followed Harry without a word, and curled up next to him, back to back. Within minutes, he was asleep.