Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  “I am not concerned about shocking you.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” queried Tom. “Why not give us a peek into that Vulcan mind of yours?”

  Tuvok was beginning to feel that a tide of determination had taken over the room. It was as though the collective energy of the group had been galvanized toward one purpose: convincing him to unveil the innermost secrets of his life.

  But that, in his mind, was not good enough reason for him to agree to it. He felt quite capable of withstanding the most vigorous onslaught by his fellow crew.

  What he wasn’t prepared for was the unexpected plea that came from Vorik.

  “Sir,” said the young man with respect, but with an underlying urgency, “you have been my mentor. You assisted me in withstanding the rigors of the Pon farr. You have guided me in meditative techniques. You helped me endure the recent ordeal of transporting. Do you not think that there would be much I could gain from hearing of your own journey toward wisdom and enlightenment?”

  Tuvok was silent for a moment, reflecting on what Vorik had said. It was true, he realized, that there were many of his life’s experiences that might prove of value to a young man. He had, after all, done some things, and seen some things, that few Vulcans ever had. If Vorik were to become aware of them, the young man’s moral fiber might be enhanced. For that matter, so might that of everyone else in the room. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps he had no right to withhold the events of his life from them.

  And so he regarded the people in the room austerely, and said, simply, “Very well.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  “ARISE, TUVOK. THE MORNING IS HALF GONE.”

  Tuvok lifted his head from the pallet and squinted out the window. He saw T’Khut, Vulcan’s sister planet, hanging just above the mountains, huge and ringed with red. Dawn was just beginning to break, and the desert floor was still dark. This didn’t surprise him; his mother usually rose hours before the sun and considered sleeping until daybreak a wastrel’s schedule. He put his head down again and closed his eyes, though reason told him there was no point in this delaying tactic: his mother would loom over him until he pulled himself from the pallet and stood before her, awake and alert.

  But on this morning, reason failed to move him. He was fresh from rapturous dreams, and he craved their seductions. He sank again into drowsy mists, trying to recapture the delicious images. What was it that had been so pleasurable? A silken voice began singing in his head, a low and keening song, and he was inexorably drawn toward it. He found himself walking down a long and richly appointed corridor, following the siren song, which emanated from a door at the end, a door draped in rich brocades . . .

  “Tuvok. Do not make me call you again.” This voice was not silken. It was hard and glittering as a diamond, slicing through the vaporous dream world as easily as a blade carves through ripe fruit.

  “I am awake, Mother,” said Tuvok, defying reason once again by hoping that this pronouncement would satisfy T’Meni and make her leave the room, allowing him to drift once more into that opulent corridor and move inevitably toward the singing voice.

  “I did not tell thee to wake, I told thee to rise.”

  Tuvok’s eyes snapped open and he sat up instantly. His mother’s use of the formal mode was not to be ignored. The Eldest of a house could use it with any of her family, of course, but T’Meni was not the Eldest Mother—that honor fell to his great-aunt Elieth. Why had his mother chosen the formal mode at this hour of the morning?

  He rose to his feet and peered at her in the darkness. One rosy finger of light had begun to snake its way down the mountains beyond the desert, and it cast some small illumination into Tuvok’s room. The chamber was sparsely furnished, for he preferred a clean, uncluttered look, and did not wish to complicate his life with an accumulation of material objects.

  His mother stood before him, tall and slender, head held erect, black eyes glinting beneath delicately upswept brows, dark skin shining in the growing light. It occurred to him— as it did almost every time he looked at her—that he resembled his mother more than he did his father, with chiseled features, finely tipped ears, and a rounded hairline. His mother at ninety-three was still a formidably handsome woman, and a formidably powerful one as well. Even though her aunt Elieth commanded the title, most people in the family accorded T’Meni all the respect of an Eldest Mother. Something about her seemed to demand it.

  Tuvok regarded her curiously, reached out to touch her mind but found it sealed against his inquiry. “No, Tuvok,” he heard her chide. “Thee wilt not probe for answers now. Dress and come to the table. Thy questions will be answered.”

  He nodded briskly at her, though perplexity consumed him. This was most curious and inexplicable behavior on her part. What could it mean? His mind considered possibilities and rejected them instantaneously. Nothing in his twenty years’ experience with his mother provided a satisfactory answer for this unusual conduct.

  He bathed and dressed quickly, and by the time he had descended to the first level of their home, light from Vulcan’s primary white star (its lesser stars, a white and a red dwarf, tumbled about the giant mother star like gemstones) had turned the desert into a blazon of red and illuminated the high-ceilinged, spacious rooms of the house.

  His mother sat at the table, as did his father, Sunak, which was almost as surprising as the extraordinary beginnings of this day. His father was usually at the temple at this hour, meditating with the priests. In another year, Tuvok would be able to join him, for he would have passed the trial of his manhood and could retire with the adults to the temple sanctuary. It was a privilege he had been dreaming of for most of his life.

  His mother nodded him into a chair and Tuvok sat, resting his hands on the polished marble of the tabletop. It was a rare, green-veined stone, much prized on Vulcan, an heirloom that had been in his family for at least eleven generations. Tuvok had always loved the feel of it, glacial, precise, and unyielding. As a small child he made almost a fetish of running his fingers over it, knowing that each time, it would feel exactly the same. Its immutability was soothing.

  The cool touch of the marble helped settle the disquieting sense of puzzlement that had pervaded him since his mother’s unexpected summons. The marble was as it always was, and therein lay assurance.

  “Good morning, Tuvok,” said his father, and Tuvok felt comforted by the gentleness in his father’s voice. Sunak was not a typical Vulcan, though Tuvok would not come to realize that until he was much older. All he knew at this age was that his father’s presence was calming, and, given the singular beginnings of this day, he was glad his father was not at the temple but here, at the table, kind eyes resting on his son.

  Tuvok’s eyes drifted to his mother’s, and a unique sensation began to overtake him. How would it be described? A disquiet, perhaps, a lack of ease. Curiously, it manifested itself in his stomach, in the form of a tingling which he found thoroughly unpleasant. He made a mental note to describe the sensation in his journal, for the purpose of objectifying and then controlling it.

  For now, there was no control. The sensation resided in his belly like a school of tiny fish, flickering this way and that.

  He hoped his mother wouldn’t continue to speak to him in the formal mode.

  “Your initial schooling will be completed within four months,” T’Meni announced without preamble. Tuvok nodded, this pronouncement being obvious and unremarkable. His mother hesitated before saying the next, but when she did, it was with firm conviction. “You will be going off-world at that time.”

  The school of fish reeled in his stomach as though they were trapped in a whirlpool. Going off-world? What was she saying? This had never been in his plans, never even been discussed.

  His eyes swept toward his father, and he tried to interpret what he saw there: Pity? Compassion? Pain? None of it made sense. He drew a breath and turned toward his mother, whose elegant eyes immediately held him in her sway.

 
“Could you explain, Mother?” he asked in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I had never contemplated going off-world.”

  Something he’d never seen and couldn’t identify flickered in his mother’s eyes, and then was gone. “You have been accepted to Starfleet Academy, on Terra,” she said quietly.

  Tuvok pressed his fingers as hard as he could against the solidity of the marble; it held. There was stability in the universe. In his belly, the fish darted this way and that, careening into each other, colliding with his stomach wall. A faint taste of bile rose in his throat.

  “I am entering the temple,” he began, doing his best to eradicate the tiny quaver he noticed in his voice. “It’s been planned for years. I will study the Disciplines, and become a priest, I’ve pledged myself to cthia, to the writings of Surak, it’s all I’ve ever wanted . . .” He heard himself babbling, almost out of control, and closed his mouth before he embarrassed himself further.

  His mother’s eyes had become hard, like shale. “It is that desire which is unhealthy,” she announced flintily. “It comes dangerously close to passion, which has the power to usurp reason. You must first cleanse the mind with science. Then, if passion recedes, we may reconsider.”

  “I have no need of science. The Disciplines will cleanse my mind. I am well on the way to achieving mastery of my volatile elements and believe I should be allowed to continue on my present course.”

  “The decision has been made, Tuvok.”

  Something hot and unpleasant burned in him. He realized the tiny fish had disappeared from his stomach, only to be replaced by a scalding ember. He drew a breath as though in physical pain, and felt his heart hammering against his ribs. Desperately, he repeated a prayer in his mind, striving for control. Heya . . . heya . . . heya . . . The image of Seleya, the sacred mountain, cooled his mind and his breathing became more regular.

  “It is illogical to make this decision without me,” he began, but his mother quickly snatched that line of defense from him.

  “Do not invoke logic to support your desire. It is clear you are ruled by emotion in this matter. It must be purged, and the object of your desire denied you. Only in that way will you truly achieve cthia.”

  Tuvok turned from his mother’s implacability and sought his father’s support. “Terra is a barbarous place,” he pled, “and humans are intemperate and ungainly. Surely it is deleterious to spend time in such an undisciplined environment.” Images of the temple crept into his mind, its vaulted ceilings and unadorned spaces, the absolute quiet, tranquil priests padding softly to their meditations. This was where he belonged.

  “Have you ever been on Terra?” his father inquired mildly. “And have you ever met a human?”

  Tuvok instantly regretted his rash statements, for they had led him into a corner from which there was no escape. Indeed, he had never visited Terra or met a human. He decided to make one final stabbing effort.

  “I have never met an Underlier, either, but everyone knows they dwell beneath the sands of the desert. Would you suggest I deny their existence because I have never encountered one?”

  Sunak turned his palms up in a gesture of diffidence. “What one has not experienced, one cannot know. What one accepts on faith is fraught with ambiguity. Once one accepts the ambiguous as truthful, one is doomed to ignorance.”

  Tuvok regarded his father with respect. His mother was all flinty strength, and the most powerful presence he had ever encountered; but his father for all his kindheartedness possessed a command of logic that was almost unbearably elegant. Sunak’s mind could seize on a point and turn it and turn it, honing and polishing, then unspool the idea like silver wire into an argument that was tensile, incontrovertible.

  Tuvok acquiesced, but allowed himself one last pettiness. “Am I at least able to choose my course of studies? Or has that been chosen for me as well?”

  A lightning strike into his mind, instantaneous and searing. “Thee will not speak with such insolence, child. Apologize at once.”

  Tuvok suddenly felt like a small child again, remonstrated, powerless. Like a child’s, his mind reached out to his parents’, tentative and hopeful. “I ask your forgiveness,” he offered sincerely. “I ask that you understand how unprepared I was for this decision. I am being unreasonable, which ill befits a person of my age. It will not happen again.”

  The briskest nod from his mother, and a sweet, ineffable look from his father, ended the moment of mild rebellion. His mother plucked a crystal bell from the sideboard and rang it, summoning breakfast.

  It was the last discussion they would ever have on the subject of his attending Starfleet Academy.

  “Go, Tuvok, you pointy-eared wonder, go!” The howl from the sidelines carried easily to Tuvok’s sensitive ears, but he hoped that for others, it would be lost in the tumult of the exuberant crowd that packed the Academy stadium. He didn’t begrudge the enthusiasm of his roommate, Scott Hutchinson, but he did wish that the young man would rein in the excesses of his sobriquets. Pointy-eared wonder, indeed.

  Tuvok was running the four-hundred-meter hurdle race in a track-and-field competition against their longtime foe, the University of California at Los Angeles. For generations, the “plucky little Bruins” had dominated collegiate sports in the western part of the country, until the advent of Starfleet Academy, in 2161. Gradually the Academy developed its sports program, highlighted by top-notch Parrises Squares teams, until the school rivaled mighty UCLA and the competition between them became ever more intense.

  Vulcans weren’t eligible for many sports because their superior physical strength gave them an unfair advantage over other species. Running, however, was open to them, and in his first year at the Academy, Tuvok had elected as his required sport to run the intermediate hurdles.

  The whole emphasis on sports competition was one of the many strange anomalies he discovered when he arrived on Earth—the name by which humans referred to their world—four years ago. He was unable to understand fully the ardor with which humans treated their games. On Vulcan, games had two purposes: the dissipation of excess energy and the quieting of the mind. Neither purpose had anything to do with winning or losing, and Tuvok had never acquired the typical human determination to defeat anyone who challenged them.

  Nonetheless, his natural physical prowess insured that he won most of his races, to the utter delight of his teammates and the student body, and particularly his irrepressible roommate. And he had to admit that he found running a particularly satisfying activity; now that he had adapted to the thicker and cooler air of Earth, it was bracing to sprint around the track, hurdling the barriers in a measured cadence. He found the layout of the track appealing; its symmetry pleased the eye, its neatly configured lanes with their precisely placed fences forming a unified pattern.

  Tuvok and a human from UCLA had been neck-and-neck for most of the race and were heading for the last hurdles. A lusty roar from the crowd urged both runners on; Tuvok tried to shut out the din, which he found distracting, and to concentrate on his form, leaning forward as his first leg cleared the hurdle, his rear leg at nearly a right angle from his body. He worked to keep his body relaxed, the rhythm of his stride intact, the hurdle just a smooth part of the whole. Finally they were sprinting for the finish, the last forty-three meters, and Tuvok focused his mind, cleared it of everything except a tiny pinpoint of light and ran for that light, watched it get larger and larger and larger—

  And he crossed the finish line one half step ahead of the UCLA runner.

  The crowd erupted in a frenzy and Scott came tumbling out of the stands, orange hair falling in a mop over his freckled forehead, to fling himself on Tuvok in some kind of ecstasy, pounding him on the back and babbling almost incoherently.

  “Tuvok, you did it, old pointy-ears did it, I knew you would, you’re the best, Vulk, the best of the best of the best. Hey—this is my roommate! I taught him everything he knows!” This to the gathering crowd of well-wishers who pressed close to congratulate Tuvok.


  “Hey, hey, roomie, give us a smile, what do you say? A great, big, toothy Vulcan smile—c’mon!” This was a frequent plea from Scott, a game which seemed to provide him never-ending amusement and which Tuvok frankly found baffling. Surely Scott knew that a smile would never be forthcoming, and consequently, what could be the continuing allure of this doomed request?

  After four years, Tuvok still found humans puzzling in general. They were rambunctious, eager, generous, disorganized, unruly, passionate, argumentative, compassionate, ebullient—in other words, as far removed from the ideals of cthia as could possibly be imagined. On several occasions, he had been granted audience with Sarek, the Ambassador Extraordinary Emeritus of Vulcan to Earth (and the entire Federation of Planets), and had sought greater understanding of this puzzling species.

  Sarek had been less than helpful. It was clear that he was comfortable among the Terrans, and had even taken one as his wife. Sarek had some affinity for these people, but he was never able to articulate it in a way that Tuvok could grasp.

  “You cannot hold them to Vulcan standards,” the venerable old man told Tuvok. “Of course by such measurements they will fail. You must see them only in relationship to each other.”

  “I think they must resemble Vulcans in the time before Surak.”

  “No, no, no, not so bad as that. They are exuberant, but not violent. They are undisciplined, but not chaotic. They have much to recommend them.”

  Tuvok decided to risk a query which was potentially embarrassing. “One thing I do not understand is what they call ‘jokes.’ By placing someone in a humiliating position, they seem to derive such pleasure that they laugh aloud. Can you explain that?”

  “Give me an example.”

  “On the first night that I was here, I dressed for sleep and got into bed. As I put my legs under the sheets, my feet encountered a barrier, and I discovered that the bedclothes had been folded in such a way that it was impossible to extend my legs fully. This was an oddity, certainly—but then I witnessed my roommate doubled over with laughter, as if this were the most amusing thing he had ever seen.” Tuvok paused a moment before continuing. “And the fact that I failed to understand the humor encouraged him to an even greater state of hilarity.”