Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  She was gazing imperturbably at him now, her eyes a near duplicate of her mother’s, almond-shaped, tilting slightly upward at the outer edges, ringed with lashes that were black and lacy. Her bones were delicate, almost elfin, and her neck was as long as a winter swan’s. She seemed to him far older than her four years.

  “I am looking at the desert,” he replied.

  “Is there something out there?”

  “There are many things there, but not that we can see from here.”

  “Have you ever seen those things?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to?”

  Tuvok drew three breaths and then sat down in the padded window seat and drew Asil into his lap. She had a disconcerting ability, for such a young child, to discern what he was contemplating. He had not felt her search his mind, but he had no other explanation for her insights.

  “Yes, Asil, I would. For many years I have dreamed of making a pilgrimage into the desert, and of seeing Seleya, the sacred mountain.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  Tuvok hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much Asil could understand about familial obligation, nor did he want to burden her unfairly with the suspicion that children might prevent their parents from fulfilling long-cherished goals.

  “There is a time for everything,” he replied simply.

  Asil turned her small head away from him and gazed out upon the desert, which shimmered with heat in the midday glare of the sun, the red sands turned almost orange. To some it would seem an uninviting sight, cruel and unforgiving. Tuvok saw there only mystery and beauty.

  “It must be very quiet there,” said the child softly.

  “The quiet of the ages,” agreed Tuvok, marveling once more at his small daughter’s insight. Most spoke of the desert’s heat, or its vast expanse, the dangers contained therein. Who would think to comment on the purity of its silence?

  “I’ll go there someday,” Asil said matter-of-factly. “Maybe we could go together.”

  Tuvok rubbed her back tenderly, then was aware of something plucking delicately at his mind, almost imperceptibly, as though a tiny finger strummed one string of a harp. The little minx was touching his mind, so daintily that he was almost unaware of it.

  “What did you discover?” he asked her quietly, thinking it was best to let her know he was aware of her clandestine prowl through his mind. She looked up at him, unfazed.

  “That if ever I go, I must go alone,” she replied. “And so must you. But I think—and this is my thought, Father, not yours—that you must go soon.”

  And so it was, several days later, that Tuvok announced to T’Pel his intention to make a pilgrimage into the desert. “I wondered when you would realize it” was her only reply, although he noted that she turned away from him, as though there were an expression on her face of something she didn’t want him to see.

  His mother, as usual, had other thoughts. “Again, you long for isolation. Life’s lessons are not learned in this way, Tuvok. Detachment and seclusion are the easy ways. It is being part of the world that is difficult.”

  By now Tuvok was old and experienced enough to realize that his mother challenged him as a matter of course, forcing him to examine his choices and to process them in the machinery of reason. If he had announced his intention to return to Terra and immerse himself in the bustle of humanity, she would have argued the opposite of what she was now saying.

  Nonetheless, he appreciated her methodology and valued its wisdom. If a decision could hold up against the cold marble of her logic, it was unassailable.

  Therefore he had not anticipated M’Fau’s more rigorous examination. As he sat opposite her in the small stone chamber of the temple, her ancient eyes glittered like ebony, fathomless. “Anyone can make a pilgrimage to Seleya,” she said with an oddly challenging tone. “Transports are arranged daily.”

  “I don’t intend to transport,” Tuvok answered evenly. “I will make the traditional pilgrimage—through the desert.”

  She made no immediate answer, and Tuvok listened to the ragged wheeze of her breathing. She was old enough that the thin air on Vulcan was taking its toll, forcing the lungs to labor in order to get enough oxygen. The sound seemed to Tuvok like the breeze through the sails of some prehistoric sailing vessel, ruffling thick canvas sheets.

  “The desert is dangerous,” she said finally, and Tuvok started to respond to that when she continued. “You know all about the physical dangers, of course. Heat, sun, animals . . .” She glanced sidelong at him. “I assume when you say ‘traditional pilgrimage’ you mean that you will take only the ritual belongings with you?”

  He nodded curtly and she continued. “But there are other dangers, Tuvok. Dangers of the spirit, dangers of resolve. Those things are more perilous, and more damaging, than any lematya pride you might encounter.”

  “I am prepared to do what is necessary,” he said simply, wishing to have this interview over with so he could begin to make preparations. But he knew he could not go without M’Fau’s blessing.

  “I’m sure you are. But you don’t have any way of knowing what will be necessary, do you? Consequently, you can’t really be prepared. That is the point I am making.”

  Tuvok stirred in his chair, wanting only to be done with it. “I can only prepare for what I am able to anticipate, and be ready for whatever else I may discover.”

  A sudden strike, like a sand viper, and she was inside his thoughts. Startled, he nonetheless gave himself over to her and sat quietly as she hunted and probed the recesses of his mind, like an explorer who crawls patiently through secluded caverns, mapping each turn, each tunnel. It was not a sensation he appreciated, this intrusion, and he found himself having to draw deep breaths in order to keep himself seated.

  Then it was over, and she looked at him with an unusual expression: self-satisfaction? condescension?

  “As I thought. You have a fantasy of the desert, a romantic spiritualism which informs you falsely. You possess no realization of the reality of the desert.”

  “I fail to understand how I could know something I have yet to experience,” Tuvok replied, “or, in fact, how anyone could.” He put his own dark gaze on M’Fau. “Have you, for instance, crossed the desert?” he asked.

  There was a long moment before she answered, and he feared he had crossed a boundary in the boldness of his question. But when she answered, he could detect no coloration in her tone. “No,” she said simply. “And that is because I have a respect for it that you lack. It is not my place to say that my attitude is superior to yours, but Tuvok . . .”

  She paused, shimmering eyes fastened on him. “I fear for thee,” she intoned. Then she turned away from him and he understood that the audience was at an end.

  And so it was that Tuvok, after a month during which he made such preparations as he thought fit, walked into the great red desert with a pack which included only the ritual artifacts of a spiritual retreat: a knife, a cup, and a holy stone which M’Fau, in a final gesture of acquiescence, had given him.

  T’Khut loomed fulsomely over the daytime desert in the first week of his journey. He stared at its swollen immensity, volcanoes sputtering fire and ash as they had for eons, and tried to find there some sign, some manifestation that would make clear to him the reason for his odyssey. For the truth was, for all his need to go into the desert, Tuvok had no idea why he was so compelled, and that enigma disturbed him in a way that few things had. He had become convinced that, once he entered the still purity of the vast expanse, the answer would become clear to him.

  But after a week, he was no closer to understanding why he was doing what he was doing than he had been when he started.

  He had examined the question from every side, bringing to bear all his formidable powers of logic. There was, for instance, the possibility of genetic predisposition. His ancestors had dwelled in the desert, had worshipped at the feet of Seleya, had endured the harsh rigors of the endless sands and the cruel sun. En
coded in his brain might be the need to experience this primal past.

  But if that was so, why was every Vulcan not so inclined? Many wanted to make a spiritual journey to Seleya, but that was easily done through transport and that was the method most people chose. Tuvok hadn’t heard of anyone for many generations past that had walked through the desert to the mountain.

  He considered the possibility that his spiritual side, because of his father’s influence, had been enhanced from the time he was a small boy, and had implanted in him this need to experience the desert’s depths.

  But he rejected that likelihood quickly; even M’Pau, the most spiritual being he had ever known, had never crossed the desert and, apparently, felt no need to do so.

  What then, in Tuvok, compelled him? He stared upward at T’Khut, focusing his mind, turning the logical possibilities over and over, only to reject each and every one.

  After a week, he realized he could no longer travel by day; he would not survive the journey. He chastised himself briefly for this most simple error in logistics; even in Starfleet Academy he had learned the wisdom of traversing intemperate landscapes by night. In his eagerness to find answers, he had stepped out boldly but foolishly; now, though he had supersaturated his body with liquids before starting out, he was already beginning to feel the effects of thirst. Had he traveled by night, he might have been able to move for another two weeks before having to address the problem of finding water.

  This was a fundamental mistake, and it grated at Tuvok that it marked the beginning of his trek, for it seemed to him to taint the entire endeavor. He had lost, at the beginning, the imperative of logic, and had hastened into the journey propelled by need, not reason.

  He vowed it would be the last such error.

  By resting during the day and walking at night, he was able to move for almost a week more, then had to acknowledge that, without fluids of some kind, he could not continue. There was no water, and so he would have to find liquids of another sort. The most obvious of those was blood.

  He had seen no obvious signs of any of the common desert inhabitants—sehlats, lematyas, asps—but he had not been looking for any. He had kept his head up, trained on T’Khut, looking for answers in the heavens rather than in the sands.

  As he concentrated on finding quarry, though, he saw much evidence that he was not alone here. Faint pawprints in the drifts, droppings, spoor that carried on the dry air: all spoke of the denizens of this fierce world, and of a means to replenish his depleted fluids.

  He rose before the sun had set and there was still at least an hour of daylight in which to hunt. It was an hour when smaller animals were likely to make an appearance, before night fell and the nocturnal hunters began to roam. He searched until he found what seemed to be a fresh set of prints, small tracks that led to an indentation in the sand. This would be the burrow of a merak, a small, catlike animal, and it would suit his needs admirably, being small enough to be dispatched easily, plump with blood that would slake his thirst, and muscled with meat that would refuel his strength.

  He sat behind the small indentation in the sand and, using his fist, began drumming in a constant pattern on the surface, creating a vibration that would disturb and confuse the merak in the burrow. Eventually, one would come out to investigate the unusual circumstance, and meet his doom.

  Tuvok pounded the burrow for what seemed the better part of an hour. He changed hands every so often, and then finally began using his feet. He began to wonder if this old folktale were true or if he were making a fool of himself, sitting on a mound of sand, pounding on it like a demented drummer.

  But, eventually, he saw a slight movement, a shifting in the sand, and then a long pointed snout poked into the air, twisting this way and that, trying to find the source of the disturbance. Gradually the head emerged, protruding eyes scanning nervously, but not, fortunately for Tuvok, behind it, and then furry shoulders shook their way out of the sand, followed by the squat fleshy body.

  Tuvok’s knife fell swiftly; the merak went from a condition of animal curiosity to oblivion in an instant, unaware of its own doom. Tuvok turned the creature upside down and slit the underbelly, then lifted it to his lips and drank the dark warm blood that poured forth. It had a salty flavor, musky and fragrant, and he gulped it greedily, hoping to get his fill before it began to clot. When the blood was drained, he skinned the animal and then cut the muscle from its bones, eating it raw, in small bites chewed carefully, until it was gone.

  Tuvok had never done anything remotely like this. Vulcans had been vegetarians ever since the time of Surak. He had read of the meat-eating practices of his ancestors, the desert-dwellers, and assumed that he would be able to do the same. But now it occurred to him how primitive an act it was to slay an animal, and how there might have been every chance that, when the time came, he would not have been able to perform it, or that he would have done it so unskillfully that it would have failed.

  But those were afterthoughts. In fact, when the time came, Tuvok moved with surety and ease, instinctively doing what he must. He pondered that fact, curious as to how this behavior fit into the continuing enigma: Why was he doing what he was doing, and what would be the result?

  Another two weeks into the desert, and those questions had still not been answered. Tuvok had killed and eaten twice more, and though he was not as strong as he had been when he started out, he was nonetheless able to maintain a constant pace across the sand.

  In the first blush of morning light and in the waning hours of the day—the only time he saw light on the desert— he noticed that the color of the sands was beginning to change. What had once been a rust-red had paled gradually, and was now the shade of a weak tea, a light brown flecked occasionally with umber. He knew that meant he was beginning to move into the vast white sands that surrounded Seleya, and his heart quickened to realize it. He began to think of his journey as nearly over, when actually it was just beginning, and his greatest trials were yet to come.

  Eventually, he lost track of how long he had been marching through the blistering wastes. There was only the vastness, the great expanse of sand, growing whiter with each day, and the broad horizon; time ceased to have meaning as he plodded in his steady pace, eyes straining to find the first sign of Seleya in the distance. He dozed fitfully during the day, then rose before the sun fell and started out once more.

  T’Khut was an occasional escort, waxing and waning, staring down at him, the “watcher” of ancient yore. He continued to search its immutable face for some indication of the motivation behind his quest, but then one day he questioned why he thought he would find what he was seeking in the face of T’Khut and he realized he couldn’t answer that, either.

  His journey was not proving satisfying; it gave him no answers, only more questions.

  Still he moved forward. Hunger and thirst were constant companions, so much so that he thought of his condition now as the natural state, and the absence of those sensations as abnormal. He found it more and more difficult to find meraks, and seemed to remember that they preferred the dark sand habitats; now he was moving into the territory of the sehlats and lematyas, and must be wary. They were a danger to him, but he also needed to hunt them, for they would be his only source of nourishment.

  His first encounter with a sehlat came in the middle of one night, as he was marching steadily toward the sacred mountain, whose peak had yet to be seen on the horizon. He heard an aberrant sound, a rustling in the sand, and stopped instantly, ears tuned for the shuffling noise, his fingers already gripping the handle of his knife.

  T’Khut was a slim crescent, and gave off only slight illumination, but it was enough to reflect in two red eyes some ten meters distant. A low growl told Tuvok he had encountered his first sehlat, but not what the result of that encounter would be.

  They stood like that, watching each other, for a quarter of an hour. The sehlat was tensed, ready to spring, long claws digging into the desert floor, dark fur standing in an agitat
ed ruff along his back. Tuvok acknowledged that he didn’t have a clear idea of what to do. If he moved off, turning his back on the animal, it would surely attack from the rear. On the other hand, he could not stand like this indefinitely, waiting for the sehlat to retreat; he must keep moving toward the mountain.

  “We must come to terms, sehlat,” said Tuvok aloud, and the sound of his voice was strange in his ears, like the vaguely familiar sound of an alien musical instrument; it was the first such sound he’d heard since he left his home weeks ago.

  The sehlat cocked its head at the utterance, fierce teeth bared, wicked canines glistening in T’Khut’s reflected light, and didn’t move.

  “I must keep moving toward Seleya,” Tuvok continued, “and I do not care to think of you attacking from behind.”

  The sehlat snorted briefly, and pawed the ground with one massive claw. Then it turned in the direction of the sacred mountain and began trotting toward it, not looking back. Tuvok watched it for a moment, and then followed. He didn’t believe the animal was going to Seleya; rather, the sound of his voice had broken whatever animal tension existed between them, and the creature was merely moving off to hunt, or to find its own kind.

  But by morning, the dark brown sehlat was still with him, trotting steadily toward the mountain. Again, Tuvok was uncertain. The sun was already warming the morning air, and it was time for him to rest. But if he fell asleep, there was every chance the beast would pounce, ripping out his throat and devouring him.

  He stopped and sat down on the sands, creating a berm, as was his custom, to shelter him from the sun. The sehlat had proceeded on his way until he sensed Tuvok was no longer behind him, and then he stopped, turned, and stared at him. He no longer bared his teeth, and seemed to Tuvok almost quizzical.