Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  “Surely you’ve begun by now, at least the martial skills,” said K’Karn, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “No, I . . .” B’Elanna felt herself stammering. She was suddenly embarrassed to admit to him that she had no desire to train as a Klingon warrior, no intention of doing so. “There isn’t any place to train,” she said quickly. “We’re the only Klingons, after all.”

  “Then you must stay here and enter the training program at Ogat as soon as possible. You can live with Aunt B’Kor—she’d love to have a young person in the house again.”

  B’Elanna had no idea how to respond to this outlandish suggestion. Live here, on this crowded, noisy, chaotic world with inedible food and rude people who pushed and shoved and yelled their way through life? It was an unbearable thought, and she panicked at the thought that others, the grownups, might get wind of it and think it a wonderful idea.

  “I can’t do that—I couldn’t leave my mother.”

  “Maybe she’ll move back here. No one ever understood why she left in the first place. Her roots are here, B’Elanna, and so are yours. This is your true home.”

  A panic so complete it overwhelmed everything else took firm hold of B’Elanna Torres. She lost sight of the fact that this relative was offering her what she had never had— acceptance, kinship, support—and could only imagine the terrors that awaited her on this planet of wild people. She stood up, pulse racing, mouth dry.

  “I’ll talk to my mother about it. Thank you.”

  K’Karn and Lanna rose to join her, and the two of them babbled endlessly on the walk back home about the fun they’d have together when B’Elanna moved here, hunting, fighting, and preparing for their warrior rituals. By the time they reached the home of B’Kor and Torg, B’Elanna was sick to her stomach.

  The scene in the house didn’t help any. The adults, it seemed, had been drinking ale, and had become even more raucous. Two men were amusing themselves by running at each other from opposite sides of the room, heads down, and ramming each other as hard as they could. These blows left them reeling, but seemed to afford great sport to the others, who let out rousing cheers each time they butted heads. The noise level was higher than ever, with loud music of some dreadful cacophony permeating everything, and the scent of greasy meats and strange, pungent spices seemed to clog her nose, and then everything began to revolve, slowly at first, then faster and faster, and she struggled to stay upright but then a blessed darkness overtook her.

  She awoke in a huge bed, her mother sitting by her side pressing a cool damp cloth to her forehead. B’Elanna’s head throbbed and her throat ached strangely. In her mouth, she tasted the acid aftertaste of vomitus—she had thrown up. Had she done that in front of everyone? It was too embarrassing to contemplate.

  “Feeling better?” her mother asked gently. “I should have realized your stomach might not adapt so quickly to Klingon food. Something didn’t sit right with you.”

  B’Elanna knew it was more than food that didn’t sit right with her, and she couldn’t hold it back—she had to know if living here was even a remote possibility.

  “Is this our true home?” she blurted out. “Are we going to stay here? Have we left Nessik forever?”

  Prabsa looked at her curiously. “Why ever would you ask such questions?”

  “K’Karn said we should live here. That I should begin my training as a warrior. Is that going to happen?”

  An unusual expression came over her mother’s face, both amused and serious at the same time. B’Elanna had no idea what it meant. “No, it isn’t,” Prabsa said, and B’Elanna’s relief was so overwhelming she had trouble concentrating on anything that followed.

  “Nessik is our home. I have my laboratory there, and it’s important to me. I love my family, but I decided long ago that my place wasn’t here, on the homeworld. And I still feel that way.” There was a small pause, and then she continued. “If you’d like to consider living here, I’d understand. You might be happier among family.”

  “No, I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back.”

  Prabsa studied her daughter for a long moment, then simply nodded and dipped the cloth into cool water once more, wringing it out and placing it on B’Elanna’s forehead. “Puq Doy’,” she murmured, “such a tired little girl.” It was a moment of uncommon closeness between them, and B’Elanna felt the dark question unfold in her mind like a black flower. Now was the time to ask it, now, when her mother seemed forthcoming, yielding: Why did my father go away?

  She trembled on the edge of that shadowy abyss, wanting to ask but afraid of the answer, and so remained silent, listening as her mother hummed a plaintive tune, cooling her face with the pleasantly damp cloth, and finally she fell asleep for a long dark time during which she did not dream, or if she did she retained no memory of it.

  Acceptance by the young people of Nessik, when it came, arrived in a manner wholly unexpected, in the summer she turned fourteen. She had become aware that adolescence hadn’t been kind to some of her human peers, many of whom became ungainly and silly. Some put on weight and others were reed-thin; a few had erupted with dreadful pustules on their faces until a series of medical treatments could return the clarity of their complexions. Behavior changed, too, in strange, unpredictable ways that seemed to leave the air around them charged with an untapped energy.

  B’Elanna was unafflicted by these changes. She did not develop pimples, though she developed breasts, and her body was lithe and supple as a result of the swimming she did every day in the huge lake near their colony. It was in, or on, the water that she was happiest. She was a strong swimmer and her redundant lungs gave her the capacity to stay under water for incredibly (to humans) long periods of time, and she enjoyed the wonder it produced in the other children. She also loved to sail, and had a small racing sloop that she had learned to maneuver with great skill. This predilection also set her apart: most of the young people preferred hovercraft, which were faster and easier to handle. But B’Elanna enjoyed the challenge of mastering the difficult waves, of conquering the elements, which, if one wasn’t up to it, could prove not only dangerous but fatal. Each time she set forth, she told herself it could be her last, and that to survive she would have to sail with consummate skill. These thoughts were strangely titillating to her.

  While she still had no true friends, the young people her age no longer shunned her, and had become (perhaps at their parents’ insistence) at least civil. She made no effort to move beyond that cordiality, and was content to keep largely to herself, studying hard and excelling in her grades. While adolescence seemed a time of turmoil for her classmates, it was for her a time of relative equanimity.

  At least for a while.

  As a child she had developed a protective barrier that allowed her to block out whispered remarks and unkind comments, and so she remained largely oblivious of any notice paid to her. This remained true as the young men of her school had begun to stare at her in unaccustomed ways, whispering among themselves when she walked by. She had no way of knowing that this serene aloofness made her all the more desirable to them.

  Late one afternoon in that summer she walked to the lake and set out in her sloop for a small island some five kilometers away. It was a favorite place, full of brooks and glens and shady nooks which she had discovered as a child and where she played out fantasy games in which she was, variously, a princess, a famed explorer, or a poet, each of whom was adored by millions, and whose company was always sought. Now that she was older, the island still had the power to bestow those magical feelings on her. If she no longer dreamed of being a princess, another dream had been forming in her mind, one that was just as unlikely: she thought of attending Starfleet Academy as her father had.

  This might have been so remote a possibility that it would never have occurred to her had she not been told by her mother that a Klingon actually had been accepted at the Academy, a boy whose parents had died at Khitomer and who had been raised by hu
mans. This knowledge began to burn in her, a tiny flame at first, but gradually gathering heat and intensity.

  She would go to the island and imagine herself at the Academy. She had a book, left behind by her father, with pictures of the fabled school, and she had pored over them for hours, trying to familiarize herself with the environs, imagining herself walking along those manicured walkways, attending classes in those imposing buildings, even sailing in San Francisco Bay, which the book assured her was a favorite pastime of residents there.

  It was no more than a ten-minute sail to the island, as the wind on the lake was gusting powerfully. She was drenched in spray by the time she beached the craft, but she felt invigorated.

  She made her way to a beautiful little clearing near a stream which ran over smooth stones, and sat in her favorite spot, leaning her back against a smooth-barked tree. She closed her eyes and tried to decide what classes she would take. She didn’t really dream of a career in Starfleet, a likelihood that somehow seemed out of reach, but convinced herself that she could attend the Academy and simply study what she enjoyed. Art, for example, and literature. What heaven to be able to read and read and receive college credit for it!

  She also wanted to study the history of Earth. She had been drowned in Klingon history by her mother’s endless stories, and she longed to know more about her other heritage, the one that seemed nobler. Of ancient kings and queens, of the millennia-long struggle for human rights, for democracy, for peace—of the long road toward the paradise, the jewel of the Federation, that Earth was now.

  She had never visited Earth, but felt that she knew it, somehow, had walked its farmlands and climbed its mountains. It was an Eden that she longed for, and Starfleet Academy was the route to that Eden.

  The snap of a twig on the ground interrupted her reverie and she stood quickly, alert. Sometimes others brought hovercraft to the island, but they usually stayed on the beaches, never venturing so far inland. Who would be disturbing her special place now?

  She heard the rustling in the brush of what seemed like several people, and heard murmuring voices. She waited, senses heightened but unafraid, until they moved into the clearing.

  Two boys from her class, James Chesney and Robin Beckett, stood before her. When they were much younger, the two had teased her unmercifully, but no more so than any of the others. It was just something young boys did. As they had grown older, the two had at least treated her neutrally, which was fine with B’Elanna. James had even once helped her work out a difficult physics problem, for which she had always been grateful.

  Now, they seemed unaccountably nervous. James had short blond hair and a smattering of freckles; they seemed etched on a face which was strangely pale. Robin was a redhead, cheerful and sturdy, but today he hung back, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  “Hello, B’Elanna,” said James, and his voice sounded faltering, almost cracking. She stared at him in bewilderment.

  “Hello,” she answered casually. “What brings you two here?”

  “We were out on the hovercraft and saw you beach your boat. Just thought we’d say hello.”

  “Well, you’ve done that,” she said, curious as to where this conversation was going.

  There was an uneasy silence. Robin contented himself with gazing around the clearing, as though it were an object of fascination. James shrugged and smiled. “I have some orange juice in my pack. Are you thirsty?”

  “Thanks.”

  James extracted three containers of juice from his pack and handed one to B’Elanna. It was cold, and sweet, and she was grateful for his thoughtfulness. “Want to sit down?”

  “Sure,” he replied, and Robin hurried to join them. “How did you do on that term paper Wheezer assigned us?” James queried. Wheezer was a teacher in their school, a man who had the habit of breathing through his mouth, thereby emitting a hoarse, wheezing sound. He had been referred to as Wheezer during his entire three-decade tenure at the Nessik school.

  “I’m working on it. I’m just not very interested in Bolian literature. Too frivolous.”

  “I kind of enjoy it. It’s funny.”

  “Some of the writers try to be funny, but it’s like they’re working too hard at it.” She was beginning to realize there was probably no purpose to this visit, just a happenstance encounter among schoolmates.

  “Did you read the story about the farmer’s wife who kept sneaking out in the middle of the night?”

  “I thought it was stupid.” The story had been a trivial accounting, a fairy tale actually, about an amorous wife who was dissatisfied with her husband and who sought the friendship of a supernatural being, a woodsprite. It was fanciful but silly, with a heavy-handed moral about faithless wives. B’Elanna had found it nothing short of moronic.

  “Really?” said James, as though this topic were of intense importance. “Didn’t you identify with the wife?”

  “What?” B’Elanna retorted in disbelief. James looked vaguely confused at this response, and ran his tongue over dry lips.

  “Well, I mean . . . she was so passionate. And frustrated. Her husband just wasn’t satisfying her.”

  She stared at him, not sure who was more confused now. “James,” she asked pointedly, “what are you saying?”

  He flushed, and his freckles temporarily seemed to disappear. He wet his lips again but his eyes danced off her, avoiding her. When he spoke, his voice was cracking again, uncertain. “Aren’t Klingons . . . I mean, we heard . . . well, they’re very passionate.”

  Robin suddenly stood, embarrassment apparent in his expression and his posture. “I’m going back to the hovercraft,” he said over his shoulder as he barreled out of the clearing. B’Elanna resisted the temptation to giggle. It was so obvious now what was going on, and she felt an infusion of power, knowing she was in control of the situation. She put her fist under her chin, contemplatively, and leaned toward James.

  “What about human girls?” she asked silkily. “Are you saying they’re not—passionate?”

  His face had seemingly acquired a permanent blush. “I . . . wouldn’t know,” he croaked, rubbing his hands on the sides of his pants. “Listen, I better go now. Robin’s waiting.”

  She put out a hand and touched his thigh to stop him. It had an electrifying effect. He sat rigidly still, as though afraid to twitch even a muscle. “Don’t go yet,” she purred. “I’m interested in what you’re saying.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. It’s fascinating. Tell me what you know about Klingons.” Her voice had become low and throaty, inviting.

  “Well . . . I guess . . . they’re supposed to have very strong urges. Almost uncontrollable.”

  “Really? Where did you hear this?”

  “You know . . .”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Just . . . around.”

  “That’s so interesting. Uncontrollable urges . . . sounds pretty powerful. How do they satisfy these urges?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, exactly. They have to find someone who can take it. I mean, it’s supposed to get violent.”

  “Mmmmm.” She looked at him for a moment, dark eyes peering through her thick lashes. “Are you saying you might be someone who’s up to it?”

  James tried to control what seemed a paroxysm of anxiety. He rubbed his hands on his pants legs again, and wet his lips. “Maybe,” he said, but his voice cracked dreadfully as he said it.

  “I’ll bet you are,” she whispered, as she drew closer to him. She put her hands on his arms and drew him upward, standing, mouth very close to his. James was all but hyperventilating.

  Then, in a movement so swift it seemed instantaneous, she had flipped him onto his stomach, put a knee on his back, and held his arms extended from his body. “B’Elanna!” he huffed. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Shame on you, James Chesney,” she said purposefully. “Shame on you for thinking so little of me. Did you think I’d be taken in by that crude approach? Didn’t you realize how obvio
us you were? Did you really think I have such uncontrollable urges that I wouldn’t see through you?”

  “I . . . I . . . didn’t mean any harm . . .”

  “Then you don’t think it causes harm to insult someone like this?”

  “B’Elanna, I’m sorry—”

  “Listen to me. If you want to spend time with me, I’ll consider it. But you’ll have to treat me with respect. You’ll have to ask me on dates, and take me to dances, and all the things you’d do with human girls. I am not some Klingon slut you can corner in the woods and have your way with. Do you understand me?” Where these words came from, B’Elanna didn’t know. They just poured out of her, a stream of pent-up indignation that had been years in the accumulating.

  “Yes.”

  “If you want my company, you’re going to have to treat me very, very well, with more dignity and appreciation than you’ve ever treated anyone. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She released him, then, and stepped back, watching as he got to his knees and then rose, looking at her with a clear expression of awe.

  “Go home and think about it. Decide whether or not you want to get to know me.”

  Without replying, James dashed out of the clearing, and B’Elanna was sure that would be the last conversation they would ever have.

  But when she got home, there was a message from him on her comm console. He very politely invited her to a concert that would be held in the park three nights hence. He promised her she could trust that he would treat her in the manner she deserved.

  And he did. James became her friend, her confidant, her defender. He wouldn’t allow an ill word to be spoken about her, and he extolled her virtues and abilities to everyone. He gave her a validation that she had never had before, and so her last years on Nessik were the most stable and fulfilling she had ever known.

  With James’s enthusiastic support, she applied for admission to Starfleet Academy, and set about fulfilling the rigorous requirements. James also wanted to be schooled on Earth, but had made his primary application to a small and ancient school in Indiana, DePauw University, a highly respected liberal-arts school.