Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  No one was better at Pre-Squares than B’Elanna. It had come naturally to her, an unlearned ability that had allowed her to conquer effortlessly the intricate patterns of ball-handling that took the others hours of practice. She would fly down the field, hair streaming behind her, Squares ball hovering low to the ground, completely under her control. A giddy feeling of freedom rushed over her every time she broke away from the pack.

  Her teachers praised her.

  Her classmates ignored her.

  That afternoon, she had stood on the sidelines, hoping to be invited into the practice game, certain someone would want her skills on their side. But no invitation came. She stood there, by herself, gazing longingly at the group of spirited children, for almost an hour.

  Finally, just about at the time she’d decided to give up and go home, the antigrav ball came skimming in her direction, out of control of either of the teams. She caught it on an ankle, then the opposite knee, and before she knew it, she was off and running, deftly maneuvering the ball, driving it with total command down the field. The familiar exhilaration consumed her and she focused on her goal, keeping the lively ball zipping from knee to elbow to ankle, using her arms to guard against defenders, for surely the others would be after her, trying to maneuver the ball away from her.

  She had taken the ball the full length of the field before she realized no one was coming after her. She crossed into the Square, then turned and looked behind her.

  The others were standing where they’d been when they lost the ball, forty meters away, staring after her but making no move to follow.

  They were just ignoring her. She was nobody. She didn’t even exist.

  She felt the ridges in her forehead begin to flush—she hated that, they always looked worse when they reddened—and she dug her fingernails into her palms, trying to calm herself and alleviate her mortification. As casually as she could, she carried the ball back down the field, stretching herself erect, walking with as much dignity as she could muster.

  As she approached, the girls looked at her with no visible emotion. She tossed the ball toward them. “Guess somebody lost control of it,” she said flatly, and watched as one, then another, of the girls tried to rein in the errant sphere. Then she turned and walked away from them.

  She was only a few meters away when she heard the whisper. “I hate those bones in her head,” someone said, obviously thinking she was speaking too softly to be heard but unaware that B’Elanna, as part Klingon, had keener hearing than humans.

  Now, at home, her mother’s voice was still droning on, but from its rising inflections she knew the story was coming to its conclusion. “And so Kahless came out of the wilderness, and entered the world once more, choosing to live among the people he was dedicated to lead, even if it meant suffering the pain that others inevitably bestow. That was the lesson he learned from the serpent of Shrika.”

  She looked up to see her mother gazing down at her quizzically, apparently trying to judge the effect of this fable. Then Prabsa knelt down, and her ridged face was suddenly level with B’Elanna’s, dark eyes peering at her, pointed teeth all but overflowing her mouth. B’Elanna recoiled.

  “Do you understand what Kahless learned?” her mother asked. “That a Klingon can’t hide from his destiny. That confronting your fears will conquer them, but flying from them gives them power. Do you understand that?”

  These were all just so many words to B’Elanna, but she nodded solemnly, hoping her mother would accept this acknowledgment. Her mother’s eyes probed her for a minute more, then she took hold of B’Elanna’s shoulders. “I won’t let you be weak, B’Elanna. All I can give you is a sense of your own strength, and I will do that.”

  Her mother didn’t understand. B’Elanna didn’t want to find her Klingon strength. She wanted to be consoled, and reassured. She was only a little girl, after all.

  “We’re going to have a party,” Prabsa said. “Invite all your classmates. We’ll go to the lake. You have to show them that you won’t be intimidated.”

  A party? Terror rose in B’Elanna with astonishing swiftness. She couldn’t imagine anything worse. Didn’t her mother realize that human children wanted nothing to do with her? How could she invite them to an outing at the lake? No one would come.

  Her mother stood up. “Just let me know how many to plan for. And you can choose the menu.”

  Prabsa reached over and gently removed the scarf from B’Elanna’s head, then brushed her hair up and away from her forehead. “You’re such a beautiful girl,” she murmured. “You mustn’t cover yourself up.”

  And then she was gone. B’Elanna clutched Gato tightly to her chest, ridden with despair. She wasn’t going to risk further humiliation by trying to arrange this awful party. She just wouldn’t do it.

  But she knew it wouldn’t matter. Her mother would then take over, issuing invitations through the parents, who would be too polite to refuse, and so the event would take place, an agonizing afternoon in which everyone would pretend they were having a good time, the human children desperately eager to get away from them so they could snicker and gossip about the Klingon women: the friendless, belligerent child and the overbearing mother, whom they surely found the ugliest creatures they’d ever seen.

  The first thing she noticed about Qo’noS, the Klingon homeworld, was the noise, and it was the noise that continued to assault her during the entire time of their visit. From the time they arrived, she longed for the quiet of Nessik.

  The Terran colony at Nessik was, for all the loneliness it imposed on her, a serene and orderly place. Houses were clustered in beautifully landscaped parks which were tended by those who enjoyed gardening, and those people seemed beset with a kind of genial competition, each trying to make his or her assigned section the most abundant, the most breathtakingly lush. Each walkway, each path, was immaculately maintained, and animal life of every kind abounded.

  These idyllic surroundings lent an atmosphere of harmony and tranquillity. Walking through these parks, one could hear the call of songbirds, or the distant sound of children playing, but that was all. There was an ineffable stillness that permeated Nessik, a calming aura that quieted the mind.

  This was an assessment that B’Elanna could never have made until her visit to the Klingon homeworld at the age of ten, when her mother decided that it was time she come face-to-face with her heritage, and booked transport from Runii to Minis Prime, where they were able to procure space on a freighter bound for Gostak, which was just inside the confines of the Klingon Empire, and were then able to find a shuttle that would take them to Qo’noS.

  It was a long, wretched journey, and B’Elanna hated every minute of it. She had never traveled in space, and it left her faintly nauseated. Their accommodations were never more than spartan, at best, because her mother foolishly abjured her right to take Starfleet ships, and procured only civilian transportation. The food was uneven and their fellow travelers a rough lot of polyglot species.

  All during the flights, Prabsa had extolled the wonders of Qo’noS, telling B’Elanna rapturous stories of the things she would see: historical battle sites, splendid cultural centers, natural wonders that defied description. She chattered on and on, B’Elanna by habit tuning her out for long stretches, about the richness, the diversity, of Klingon society. Prabsa herself hadn’t been back to Qo’noS for over ten years, and she was all but giddy with anticipation, sleeping little, nibbling at her food, and babbling endlessly about home.

  “We’ll go to the shrine of Kahless first,” Prabsa said in one of a myriad of itineraries she concocted and then threw out. “That’s obligatory, and it sets the proper atmosphere for everything else. Or maybe the battlefield at Mithrak should come first, so you’ll have an understanding of the context Kahless sprang from.”

  All of it sounded dreadful to B’Elanna. Battlefields? Shrines? She could relate to none of it. She knew her mother assumed that, after ten years of hearing the history, the myths, the legends, the stirring
tales of valor, she was sufficiently inundated in the Klingon past to appreciate its present. Prabsa couldn’t know how completely her daughter had shut out her ceaseless teachings.

  They were disgorged from the final shuttle flight into a vast spacedock thronged with people, all of whom seemed to be talking at the top of their voices. B’Elanna clung to her mother’s hand as they made their way through the crowds, her mother entering into the verbal fray right along with the rest.

  “Move aside . . . we’re passing through . . . watch yourself, ghargh, your smelly feet are in the way.” Prabsa kept up this oral bombardment as they pushed and shoved their way across the huge floor of the docking area, hurling insults to anyone who was in their way, snarling with what B’Elanna assumed was feigned rage when people failed to move aside, and in general behaving as rudely as everyone else there.

  B’Elanna was horrified. She had never seen people conduct themselves in this way, had never known these kinds of crowds, where people all shouted and reviled each other, where there were no rules of decorum, no manners. Her ears began to ring from the din, and her arm ached where her mother clutched it, dragging her through this mass of pulsing, chaotic Klingonhood.

  Finally they were at the transport area, where once again her mother pulled her into a group that was ready to dematerialize, ignoring the shouted protests of the transport engineer and steadfastly planting herself and her daughter within the group. Prabsa and the engineer exchanged a volley of insults that made B’Elanna want to shrivel into herself for shame, but finally the man backed down and they were transported to the surface.

  Things didn’t improve there. Crowds were everywhere on Qo’noS, a hurly-burly mass that never seemed to move in a discernible pattern or toward a common goal. The masses were swirling eddies of movement, here, there, anywhere, as though a common madness had struck them all and impelled them to move against any tide they encountered.

  And they continued to yell. Even general conversation, B’Elanna realized, was conducted at an earsplitting level, often with loud guffaws of laughter punctuating the cacophony.

  The edifices of Qo’noS were certainly imposing. The buildings all loomed large, and dark, ornately constructed and richly appointed, a dazzling display of architecture as an expression of national ideology: gazing at vaulting towers and pillared courtyards, one couldn’t escape the sense of haughty pride, of strident militancy, of reverence for ritual and tradition.

  By the time they reached the home of B’Elanna’s maternal grandparents, she had a terrible headache. She longed for the quiet of her garden on Nessik, the call of a single bird the only sound to disturb a summer night. But inside the home, she found, things were as disorderly as everywhere else.

  “Look at her!” bellowed her grandfather Torg, a huge, barrel-chested man with long, unkempt hair, and a full beard and mustache that seemed full of bits and pieces that B’Elanna didn’t want to identify. He leaned down and picked her up as easily as if she were a piece of cloth, lifting her high in the air above him. Her stomach quailed.

  “She’s a little runt of a thing, isn’t she,” he continued, turning so that everyone in the crowded room could get a good look.

  “She’s just a bit scrawny,” assessed a gray-haired woman as she scrutinized the child in the air. “A month of good Klingon food and she’ll fill out nicely.”

  Suddenly, Torg tossed B’Elanna upward and she began to fall, her stomach clenching with fear before she felt herself caught from behind by another huge Klingon man. “I’m your uncle Kor,” he thundered, specks of spittle bursting from his mouth as he did. “You’ve got more family here than you can imagine.” He plopped her down on the floor, where she reeled slightly and tried to keep her balance, and then stared up into a panorama of faces, old, young, big and small, all with their eyes locked on to her as though they were missiles and she were the target.

  “Does she talk?” roared one of the younger men, producing a fierce howl of laughter from everyone—including her mother, a fact that made her feel as though an icy dagger had pierced her heart. Here, as on Nessik, she was alone and friendless, an object of scorn and ridicule, with no one to take her side. So she was surprised when the gray-haired woman spoke again.

  “She’s been traveling for a week, you lummoxes. She’s tired and hungry. Make way while I get her some food.” This, she was to learn, was her grandmother, B’Kor, who pushed her way through toward B’Elanna and grabbed her with a strong hand and led her through the group—which did have the good grace to part and not make her fight her way through—to a room where a huge table stood, laden with more food than B’Elanna had ever seen in her life.

  “Here, little be’Hom, I’ll make you a plate. We’ll get you fattened up in no time.” B’Kor was pulling morsels of food from the vast array, most of which was unfamiliar to B’Elanna. A few dishes she recognized as those her mother had made, but most were an exotic array of roasted meats, strange vegetables, runny cheeses, and—to her dismay— dishes of creatures who seemed still to be moving.

  B’Kor had piled her plate until food was dropping off the edges, and she put it in B’Elanna’s hands with a huge smile that showed her twisted Klingon teeth to full advantage. “When you’re done with that I’ll cut a big slab of blood pie. You’ve never tasted better.”

  When I’m done with that I’ll be dead, thought B’Elanna as she eyed the huge platter with some apprehension. She’d never seen that much food on a plate before. She couldn’t possibly get it all in her stomach. She felt arms on her shoulders propelling her into yet another room, this one full of trestle tables and benches, and she realized she was to take a seat and begin gorging on this massive plate of food.

  She sat and tried to distinguish the various edibles before her. She was disconcerted that one pile of yellow mealy things seemed to be squirming, and tried to cover them with a piece of dark bread. Other young people then began to join her in the room, which she soon realized was designated for the children. There were boys and girls of all ages, from toddlers to adolescents, all with unfettered energy and high spirits. And loud voices.

  A boy that she judged to be about five years older than she sat opposite her, his plate piled even higher than hers. He had dark, flashing eyes and a smile that would have been attractive if it hadn’t been for his teeth. “Be sure you try the blood pie. Aunt B’Kor makes it better than anyone in the family.”

  “Not so, you QIp. My mother Toksa’s is far better.” This was from a girl just about B’Elanna’s age who sat down next to her. The benches were filling fast with noisy young people, and B’Elanna strained to tune in to the two near her.

  “I’m K’Karn, your second cousin,” said the boy. “This deluded child is my first cousin, Lanna. When she’s a few years older she’ll have more experience by which to judge blood pie. She’s just a stripling now.”

  B’Elanna saw Lanna’s ridges flush and realized she wanted to be liked by this dashing young boy, was infatuated with him. And she could understand why; K’Karn had an air of genial confidence that was infectious. Even B’Elanna was drawn to him, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of anything to say to him. She began to pick at her food, realizing for the first time that there were no utensils. This didn’t deter the others, who were plunging into the meal with both hands, tearing meat from bones and licking greasy fingers with gusto.

  She chewed a few pieces of bread as she listened to K’Karn and Lanna banter back and forth. K’Karn was describing his latest exploits in mock battle, his preparations for the Ascension rites. Lanna seemed enthralled, asking him questions, urging him on. But finally he turned again to B’Elanna.

  “Tell us about you, cousin.” He smiled. “What is life like for a Klingon on Nessik?”

  The question caught B’Elanna like a blow to the belly. Never in her life had anyone made such an inquiry, never sought her opinion, her feelings, her reaction to her own life. Her father had disappeared and her mother proceeded to tell her how she ought to
live her life, her teachers were not unkind and treated her as they did the other children, and the children of course ignored her. But no one had ever asked that most simple of questions: What is it like for you?

  Her eyes stung and she blinked fiercely in order to keep any moisture from escaping, but K’Karn and Lanna both realized what was happening. There was a stunned silence, and B’Elanna knew in the next moment they would move off, embarrassed by this weak cousin, and leave her alone once more. That she could endure; that was familiar.

  But to her surprise K’Karn rose and crossed round the table to her, taking her arm and pulling her upward. “Come on, cousin, this isn’t a night for tears. Lanna, let’s show her the caverns.”

  And they escorted her outside, one on either side, chattering as though nothing were amiss even though tears were spilling over B’Elanna’s cheeks.

  An hour later, they sat in an amazing, glowing cavern, whose walls were studded with tiny mothlike insects that were iridescent and beautiful, casting a light from within. B’Elanna had told them both of her life on Nessik, of her nonexistence, her isolation, her utter and complete rejection.

  When she was done, K’Karn’s face had hardened, and he rose to his feet, seething with energy, pacing the floor of the cavern, low growls occasionally punctuating his diatribe. “VeQ ngIm,” he snarled. “Humans don’t have the courage to settle things in an honorable fashion. You should challenge them, B’Elanna, and then they’d know immediately who was superior.”

  This was startling advice. Challenge them? To what? B’Elanna felt confusion invade her mind, but K’Karn didn’t seem to notice.

  “How is your warrior training coming? What level of fighting skills have you achieved?”

  “Warrior . . . training?” B’Elanna had no idea what he was talking about.