Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  Across the desert she saw two figures moving rapidly toward her, more rapidly than anyone could run—at least, anyone she’d ever seen. She shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted, trying to make out the figures. As they came nearer, she realized there were actually four figures racing toward her, two beasts that were running on four legs, while simultaneously supporting two men on their backs. The beasts had long tails of hair which streamed out behind them as they ran, and they struck Kes as incredibly beautiful. She stared at them, fascinated, as they bore down on her.

  The men atop the beasts were very large, and wore an elaborate headdress which was wild and unkempt, giving them a fierce appearance that once more brought a chill to Kes.

  Were these Kazon?

  The beasts charged hard until they were almost upon her; she stood, immobile, frozen by apprehension, afraid to move and knowing there was no place to hide, anyway. The beasts pulled up suddenly, apparently at some command by the men astride them, and stood pawing and snorting, eager to run again.

  Kes looked up at the riders, who loomed over her, backlit by the sun so their faces were shadowed, presenting only their unruly silhouette. A low, growling voice emerged from one of the figures.

  “What’s this? A little mole that’s come creeping into the light?”

  “Maybe we should just squash it and let the insects eat it clean.” Both men laughed as though this were the height of hilarity.

  “Who are you? Where do you come from?” Kes intended her voice to sound strong and determined, but she was dismayed to hear a slight quaver in it. But the men seemed delighted that she had said anything at all.

  “Listen! It talks! Maybe we should allow it to live . . .” One of the men suddenly leapt off his beast and peered down at Kes. She could see his face now, which was the color of old leather and about as worn. His eyes were small and ringed with lines, the kind that only appeared on Ocampan people when they had entered the morilogium. Perhaps that’s what happened to people who lived their lives in this bright sunlight.

  “Where did you come from, little thing?” A foul odor emanated from the man, and when he spoke, a further nasty smell came from his mouth, causing Kes instinctively to turn her head away. Suddenly she felt a rough hand on her chin and her head was snapped back in the direction of the speaker. “I asked you a question,” he said harshly, still holding her chin in his grip.

  “I asked you a question first. Answer mine and I’ll answer yours.” She said this with all the courage she could muster.

  He stared at her for a brief moment, then burst out laughing again. “She’s a spunky little thing. Jabin will be intrigued with her. Let’s get her back to camp.”

  And Kes felt herself suddenly lifted into the air and flung across the huge beast, which whuffed and snorted until the man climbed on behind her. Then they were racing across the desert floor, hot wind on her face, teeth rattled by the pounding of the animal’s feet as it flung itself into the distance. Even though she was frightened, she was also exhilarated; the sensation of dashing across the desert on top of this powerful four-legged creature was remarkably exciting, no matter what awaited her at the end of the ride.

  In a scant few minutes, Kes could see what appeared to be structures rising from the desert floor, but which, upon closer inspection, were only partial structures—ruins of edifices that had crumbled from age or attack. Nearby was a cluster of makeshift buildings around which stood more of the wild-looking men with their bizarre headdresses.

  Their headlong ride over, the men jumped off the beasts and roughly pulled Kes down as well. They half-dragged, half-carried her inside one of the structures and she instantly felt a drop in temperature. It seemed too dark to see at first, but gradually it seemed to grow lighter, and Kes decided her eyes must have the ability to adjust to varying degrees of light intake. She saw at the opposite end of the room another of the rough-looking men, sitting in a chair, one leg over the armrest in an indolent, arrogant pose. He smelled no better than the others.

  Her two captors—for that is what they must surely be— scuttled her toward the man and then let go of her arms. The hulking man in the chair sat up in curiosity and peered at her. Kes decided once more to go on the offensive.

  “I’d like to know who you are and why you’ve brought me here,” she said, and was glad that this time her voice held steady. The man smiled, but it was not a smile of warmth or friendliness.

  “By all means, plucky one. I am Jabin. These are the men that work in the mines under my command. And they wisely brought you here because they realized you can be of great service to us.”

  “Are you Kazon?”

  The man smiled again, and this time Kes noticed that his teeth were stained in ugly brown blotches. “We are indeed. Kazon-Ogla, the strongest and most courageous of all the sects.”

  Kes’s stomach clutched slightly. Everyone else had been right—the Kazon still loomed on the surface. Did they still consider the Ocampa their enemy? “What do you mean,” she asked, “by being ‘of great service’?”

  Jabin reached out and put his fingers on her face, turning it first one way and then the other. “I mean it literally. You will make a lovely serving girl.”

  Kes jerked her chin out of his grasp. “I have no intention of becoming your servant,” she said hotly, deciding that the time had come to let them know she wouldn’t be taken advantage of.

  But immediately she felt a stinging blow to the side of her head and she went sprawling heavily to the floor, her ear ringing as though it were on fire. She clutched at it, trying to stifle the pain, as Jabin stood over her. “Let’s be clear on this. Everyone in this camp does exactly as I tell them. You are certainly no exception. Do you understand?”

  Kes managed to nod, but Jabin drew back his boot and kicked her viciously in her shin. She screamed and grabbed at it, the pain eclipsing that in her ear. “When I ask you a question, answer me. Like this: ‘Yes, Maje.’ That’s all I ever want to hear from you. ‘Yes, Maje.’ Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Maje,” whispered Kes, who could barely make herself form the words as she battled to combat the pain in her leg and her ear. She was suddenly jerked to her feet and she struggled to stand alone.

  “That’s much better. You’re a pretty little thing and I’d rather not deface you. If you behave, we can get along very nicely. Don’t you think?”

  He looked piercingly at her and Kes knew what he was waiting for. “Yes, Maje,” she said hoarsely. He positively beamed.

  “Very good. Very good. Bring me some of the bread from that table, and then we can have a nice, long conversation. I want to know all about you—and I particularly want to know how you got to the surface. You, my little Ocampa, will be the means of our regaining the water that is rightfully ours.”

  Kes went to the table with dread in her heart, and for the first time in her life she wished devoutly that she had listened to others instead of following her own youthful impulses.

  Three weeks later, Kes could barely remember anything of her life underground. Only the now, the miserable present, was with her. She spent long days waiting on Jabin, preparing and serving him meals which he consumed rapidly and messily, all but destroying her own appetite. When she wasn’t busy tending to his needs, he made her chip cormaline nuggets, a hateful job that left her hands splintered with shards of the ore, nasty little cuts that took forever to heal. He never told her why she was doing it, and she suspected it was for no purpose other than to make her do a mind-numbing task.

  Sometimes at night, when she was finally allowed to crawl to a crude mat in a small outbuilding and sleep for a few hours, she would try to summon up the memory of her mother and father, but they seemed like dream figures, vaporous and fleeting.

  She had lost the ability to cry. At first she wept constantly, until Jabin’s vicious slaps conditioned her not to, and eventually, even when she was alone, she couldn’t summon tears as a release for her misery. It was as though she were inert, not dead bu
t not living either, a husk that moved through the parching days by rote, trying not to do anything that might ignite Jabin’s temper.

  Only one triumph was hers, and she clung to it desperately, determined not to relinquish it for it had cost her a great deal of pain and she refused to have suffered like that for nothing.

  She had not revealed the place of her emergence from underground.

  Jabin had taken her to the place where his men had discovered her, and she poked in a desultory fashion around the rocks, but insisted to the Maje that everything all looked alike to her and she didn’t know where the entrance to the tunnel was. She was thankful she had thought to conceal it when she first stepped out into the desert.

  Jabin beat her then, assuming she was lying, but even then she insisted she didn’t know where it was. Jabin’s men didn’t find it either, for all the searching and kicking and jabbing with sticks they did. It occurred to Kes at one point that perhaps it didn’t exist, that the dimly remembered past was a fantasy and that she had lived in this hard servitude forever.

  Finally, Jabin gave up the search, but denied her food and water for the rest of the day.

  She was constantly thirsty. Water was doled out by the tiniest of cupfuls, and she was the last to drink; often there were only drops left for her. She tried to remember the gushing waterfalls that ringed her city, as though the thought might quench her thirst, but they, too, seemed impossibly unreal.

  But the worst of times came when Jabin indulged in a drink called gannit, a strong, foul-smelling liquor that he fortunately didn’t imbibe often, as it dried the mouth and produced a thirst which couldn’t be quenched with limited water supplies. He’d have been better off to leave it alone entirely, but he couldn’t seem to do that.

  The first time she saw him drink gannit was a week after she arrived in the Ogla camp. She was lying, exhausted, on her pallet when she heard him bellowing her name. She jumped up and ran into the room that served as his “office.”

  “Yes, Maje?” she offered as she entered the room. He was standing up, but he seemed uncertain on his feet. His eyes were red-rimmed and when he spoke, he words weren’t uttered crisply.

  “Little Ocampa,” he began, and then seemed to lose track of what he wanted to say next. He sat down heavily on a long, low bench that stood against one wall of the cluttered room. He raised one hand and gestured vaguely with it, and she surmised that he was telling her to sit opposite him. She did.

  “Didn’t . . . feel like being . . . alone. Tonight.” His words were halting and slurred. She was astonished; she had never seen him—never seen anyone—behave like this. Was he ill?

  “A woman . . . understands. You understand. Don’t you?” He sounded like a confused child, and had she not hated him so much she might have felt sorry for him.

  “I hope so, Maje,” she said neutrally. She hoped only to escape this encounter without his hitting her, and carefully edited her words and her demeanor not to set off his volatile temper.

  But Jabin was in another mood entirely, morose and self-pitying. “Should have . . . been the most powerful of Majes . . . why am I here, on this cursed planet with no water . . . no family . . . I had a family once . . . did you know that?”

  “No, Maje.”

  “A woman . . . two sons . . . killed by the Nistrim. Butchered. I still dream of them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He grunted at this and rose, proceeded unsteadily to a table that was piled with various artifacts, and picked up a dark glass bottle. He drank from it briefly, then stoppered it and put it down again. He looked at her with a rueful smile. “I’ll pay for this tomorrow. My mouth . . . will be drier than the sands . . . but sometimes . . .” He trailed off and went back to the bench, where he lay down. Kes sat very still as she watched his eyelids droop closed, but only when he was snoring strongly did she feel safe in leaving.

  The next morning Jabin was in a terrible temper, and even his men did their best to stay out of his sight. He took the water rations of several people, including Kes, to slake his heightened thirst.

  The second time he became intoxicated—for she now knew this is what was happening to him—was not so easy. He summoned her well before he was ready to pass out and indicated that she should sit next to him on the bench. He had a cup of gannit from which he sipped as he told her long, rambling tales of his valor and cunning.

  “One day the Ogla will achieve supremacy over all the Kazon,” he declared emphatically. He seemed agitated, bursting with energy, and Kes was fearful; these were the moods in which he was most volatile. “We have the only supply of cormaline, and if I manipulate the market properly, they’ll all have to come begging to me.” He took a healthy swig of the drink, then put one hand on her thigh as he continued to rant.

  “I’ll get off this planet, as soon as the mines are barren, and trade the cormaline for more ships, warships, stocked with weaponry. And then I’ll make my move.” As he spoke, he punctuated his words by squeezing her thigh. Kes felt bile rising in her throat and her mind searched desperately for a way to get away from him.

  “You’re very clever, Maje,” she said, sliding off the couch and reaching for his cup. “Let me get you a little more.” She went to the table and poured more of the liquor into his cup, then returned it to him, forcing herself to smile at him. He took the cup and drank, but before she could back away, his hand snaked out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back down on the bench.

  “I do get lonely,” he continued. “I had a family once . . . a woman, two sons . . .”

  “I know.” He turned abruptly to look at her, puzzled.

  “How could you know? I’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “Forgive me, Maje, but on another lonely night you told me about them. They were killed by the Nistrim.”

  He stared, utterly perplexed. “That’s right,” he said finally, “but I have no memory of having told you. I rarely mention them.”

  “I was honored that you would share it with me.” His hand was on her thigh again, squeezing aimlessly.

  “Little Ocampa,” he murmured, now trailing his hand up and down her leg, “you’re nothing like her. She was a big woman, strong and passionate. She always told me I was the only man who could satisfy her. You’re such a pallid little thing, it’s hard to imagine you in lust.” His other hand was now on her cheek, her shoulder, her upper arm. His liquor-laden breath stifled her and for a moment she thought she might be sick at her stomach. It occurred to her that a beating might be preferable to this.

  He spent some minutes fondling her body, telling her erotic stories about his amorous wife. Kes sat quietly, enduring it, refusing to look him in the eye. Finally he uttered an oath of disgust, shoved her aside, and returned to his cup. “Icy little bird. It would take the heat of a thousand suns to warm you up.”

  He took the cup and walked out into the hot desert night; Kes waited for a long time before she dared to venture back to her pallet, where, in spite of the heat, she shivered uncontrollably.

  Two weeks after that, Neelix came into her life.

  She’d been aware that someone new had visited their camp, a man of a species unlike the Kazon, who brought water in return for cormaline. She had watched from the recesses of Jabin’s room as the two men talked and negotiated, but she kept to her usual practice of staying out of sight unless called for.

  She liked the voice of the visitor; there was a kindness to it that Kes hadn’t heard in a long time, and after the man had visited, she was able to conjure visions of home, where compassion and tenderness were so widespread. She found herself looking forward to this stranger’s visits, so she could sit in the darkness in a corner of the room and listen to his gentle voice.

  One night Jabin summoned her to his room and when she entered she realized with dread that he had been drinking gannit again.

  This time, he was neither melancholy nor amorous. His eyes flickered hotly and he paced from one end of the crowded room to the other. “You know
how to get back to your underground city. Did you think I believed your lie? I’d hoped you would reward my generosity to you by giving me the information, but I can see you’re entirely too selfish to do that. I’ll get it out of you, don’t think I won’t.”

  Fear nibbled at her belly. He hadn’t mentioned the tunnel in quite a while, and she’d hoped he’d given it up as a lost cause. Now, in his liquor-induced madness, it became a dangerous subject.

  “Do you think it’s painful when I beat you? You have no idea what real pain can be. I promise you, it won’t be long before you’ll be promising me anything if I will just stop hurting you.”

  “Maje, I’ve served you faithfully. Please believe me when I tell you I couldn’t find the tunnel again—”

  “Quiet!” His voice was an explosion that reverberated through the night. He leaned across the table toward her, eyes glittering, frenzied. “Think about it all night, little Ocampa. That frail body of yours won’t stand much, I promise you. Go. We’ll see if you’re more cooperative tomorrow morning.”

  He turned away from her and drained the last of his cup of gannit. Kes scurried away and huddled on her pallet, terrified, afraid for the sun to rise again.

  But morning brought no mention of the tunnel, or of his threats of hideous torture. She stayed out of sight at the back of the room, hoping the liquor had clouded his memory. Then a figure entered the room and she heard Jabin say, “Did you bring water?”

  The visitor whose voice she cherished replied, “Indeed, my good friend, I have seven barrels—cool and pure. It should slake your thirst handsomely.”

  Jabin called out an order and almost instantly a water barrel was brought before him. “Ocampa!” he yelled, and Kes quailed. He’d not forgotten about her. She walked out of the protective darkness and toward the two men, hoping to escape this encounter without being hurt.