Tales from the Captain's Table

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  She strode off angrily. I watched her go. Eventually, everyone would find out, but I hoped that would not be until I was packing to leave for San Francisco aboard the Mandela.

  A week later, I struggled into the animal skins that were to be the formal outfit for the evening, pausing to think about the unspoken hypocrisy of my tribe who would not eat the flesh of animals but did not hesitate to clothe themselves in them. Around the single candle that provided illumination in the Waiting Hut, I saw the shadows and heard the noises of the other six boys who would become men by the time the evening’s ritual was over. We did not speak; that much I knew, but I was starting to hyperventilate as I realized that I had spent nearly the entire time allotted to prepare for the ritual reading padds and talking to T’Piran and Captain Sulu.

  How hard can it be? At any point, just do or say the most pretentious, old-fashioned thing that pops into your head and you’ll be fine.

  Sekaya was a year younger than I, and madly jealous that I was going through the adulthood initiation ritual first. She ate this stuff up—the clothing, the face paintings, the ritual words. I’d seen her just the other day, following one of the shamans, chattering about something or other. The poor man looked both flattered and exasperated by her interest.

  The loincloth chafed, and I felt naked with nothing on my legs or torso. Furtively, I looked around; none of the other boys seemed to feel as out of place as I did. But then, none of them was as out of place as I was.

  Next, we pulled the ritual headbands around our foreheads, tying them securely. I was aware that my hands were shaking. For right now, I could follow the lead of the other boys, but once we got out there, I would be on my own.

  Kamaran, the perfect boy as always, looked calm and in control. More than one boy was watching him, taking his cue from this youth who seemed destined to become either a tribal leader or a shaman.

  I hated him with a passion.

  He sat down and reached for the pots of paint. He turned to the boy on his left, and began to decorate his face. The boy sat quietly, accepting the blue and yellow and black dots and swirls in silence. When Kamaran was done, the boy whose face had been decorated turned to the boy on his own left and repeated the process.

  One by one, we adorned one another. Part of me felt myself sinking into the ritual; the other part of me fought like hell. The paint dried on my face, pulling it taut. I resisted the urge to scratch.

  We then sat in silence, waiting to be summoned. One by one, the Walker Between the Worlds—really the shaman’s assistant Lakkam—came for us and took us out. I didn’t want to be first, but I certainly didn’t want to be last, either.

  Finally, Lakkam came for me. “Chakotay, son of Kolopak, stand and step into manhood.”

  I rose, feeling this whole thing to be stupid and a waste of time, at the same time realizing I was shaking. I walked on unsteady legs to where Lakkam stood in the doorway. He took my hand and guided me to step forward, closing the door after me. When I would have continued on, he stopped me with a hand on my chest and a slightly surprised look on his face. In front of me, he drew a line in the dirt. In the flickering torchlight, I could barely see it.

  Of course, the threshold. The first step in the ritual and I’d already forgotten about it. Beads of sweat dappled my forehead. I wondered if they would ruin the paint pattern. Then I wondered if ruining the paint pattern by sweating would get me kicked out of the tribe.

  Calm down, Chakotay, I thought, annoyed with myself. I bet there’s no one who gets the ritual perfect. You just need to do it…right enough.

  I stepped over the line, then stooped and rubbed it out with my hand. “I am between the worlds,” I said, remembering the words more or less correctly, “for I have left behind the world of the child forever, but I am not yet a full man of the tribe.”

  “You are between the worlds,” Lakkam said, “and you will walk with me.” He turned me around so that my back was to him, and a blindfold went around my eyes.

  For a moment, I panicked. This part, I hadn’t heard about, and my heart began to slam against my chest. What was going on? Lakkam gripped my upper right arm and urged me forward. I followed, nervous, my bare feet stumbling frequently.

  Objects were thrust into my hands and I was asked to identify them. At first it was easy; a pinecone, a rabbit pelt. But they got harder. What type of traditional pipe was this? Identify this herb by feel and smell and name its uses.

  Even the things I thought I knew suddenly deserted me. I don’t know what answers I gave, but I knew they weren’t right.

  Suddenly I was brought to a halt and the blindfold was removed. I stood in the center of a circle of men, all clad in traditional garb, all gazing at me expectantly.

  I tried not to look at my father, for I knew if I met his gaze, every semblance of calm I sought to project would vanish utterly. I knew in my very cells that I was about to disgrace him, and I couldn’t bear that.

  “Chakotay, son of Kolopak,” said the shaman, almost unrecognizable in his paint and animal pelts, “tell me of the Star Walker and his daughter.”

  Relief shuddered through me. I knew that one, at least. Sekaya used to throw it up in Father’s face as a reason why women should be permitted on the tribal council. I dutifully recounted the story of Star Walker and his intelligent, quick-witted daughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kolopak relax ever so slightly.

  “That is well,” the shaman said. “Now, what is the story of the Bear and his Beloved?”

  Confidence ebbed from me like water at low tide. I stammered out the part of the story I could remember, but I got the ending wrong.

  Things rapidly deteriorated from that point. It was one of the worst moments of my life. To this day, just recounting it makes me uncomfortable. I was asked to draw a specific constellation from Old Earth, and I drew Orion instead of the requested Big Dipper. I was asked to chant a war cry, and I couldn’t remember any of the words. And finally, I was asked to tell at least one story of the Hero Twins.

  I made one up on the spot, and when I looked up, I saw my father had left the circle.

  The shaman walked up to me and without warning upended a gourd of water over my face. The liquid was cold and I couldn’t suppress a gasp of shock. He rubbed at the paint violently, washing it away. When he was done, he stepped back, contempt on his face.

  “The Hero Twins,” he said in a voice that reeked of scorn, “are from Navajo mythology, not ours. You should have said so, or at least said that you did not know the names. Instead, you made up a story to hide your shame, to cover your pathetic ignorance. Go from this circle, Chakotay, and remain still between the worlds. You are not a boy, but by the Great Spirit, you are most certainly not a man.”

  I don’t remember stumbling out of the circle, but I must have, for the next thing I clearly recall was sitting by the little pool I had discovered. The last thing I wanted was to go home and face my father.

  The moon was full and the water caught and held its reflection. No doubt the shaman will catch the moon’s reflection in a bowl of water and use it for some ritual, I thought. Some ritual for Kamaran and his kind who don’t flunk out of becoming a man—

  My fingers had closed around the stone and hurled it at the moon’s reflection before I even thought. I took a savage satisfaction in the splash and resulting shivering of the image.

  “You shouldn’t throw stones in the dark,” came a soft voice. “You don’t know what you might hit.”

  I growled. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

  Blue Water Boy ignored me and sat beside me, his long legs folded up beneath him. “Sekaya told me what happened,” he said quietly. I ducked my head, feeling my face grow hot for the dozenth time that night. “I’m sorry, Chakotay.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not,” I said fiercely, grasping another rock and tossing it into the lake’s depths. “I don’t need a stupid ceremony to become a man.”

  “Well, not to be argumentative,” said Blue Wa
ter Boy, as if he could possibly ever be argumentative, “but you kind of do. I mean, after all, you’re going to live your life here and—”

  “No I’m not,” I said. That shut him up and for the first time ever I saw Blue Water Boy whirl to stare, shocked, at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m preparing to take the entrance exam for Starfleet Academy,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to break it to him this way, but the words poured out of me. “Commander T’Piran is helping me study. And Captain Sulu has agreed to sponsor me if I’m accepted.”

  After his shocked outburst, Blue Water Boy stayed silent. I couldn’t see his dark eyes; the moon’s light threw his face into sharp relief and shadows.

  I kept talking. “I’m tired of adhering to a tradition that has no place in the twenty-fourth century. That won’t take a look at itself and change where it needs to. I’ve got to get out of here before I suffocate.”

  “It’s not like it’s over the mountains,” Blue Water Boy said. “You’ll be going far away from us, Chakotay. From Sekaya and from me as well as from the tradition that has no place in the twenty-fourth century.”

  “I’d come back for visits,” I argued.

  He shook his head slowly. “Not for a long time, and by then, things will be so different…things will have changed so much….” He fell silent and stared into the now-still water. Uneasily, I wondered what he was seeing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  But my mind was made up. “Change is a good thing,” I said. “It’s good to shake things up now and then. Isn’t that what Coyote and Raven are all about?”

  He smiled then. “You have absorbed more about this world than you think, Chakotay. I wonder if you’ll be able to let it go as easily as you think you will.”

  I thought about all that I’d learned in just the past few days: scientific theories and fact, technological marvels, species with characteristics I could barely wrap my mind around. Things that people in Starfleet treated as everyday matters seemed to me wonders almost beyond comprehension. That was the world I longed to be a part of; that was the world that made my heart race and filled me with dizzying longing. I was hopelessly in love with the world of Starfleet, and I had to pass the entrance exam. Had to.

  “We’ll leave it up to fate,” I said. “If I pass the exam, I’ll be going to Starfleet Academy. If I don’t, I’ll stay here.”

  Blue Water Boy said only, “I will miss you, Chakotay.”

  “Earth?” I cried. “Earth?”

  “Central America, to be precise,” my father said implacably. “We’re going to hunt for the Rubber Tree People and explore your heritage, Chakotay. After what I saw last night, I think you need a solid reminder of where you are from. If you go, perhaps I can persuade the council that next year you can try the initiation rite again.”

  Despair and terror flooded me. My father was going to take me away from the Starfleet people and plop me down in the middle of a wet, bug-infested Central American rain forest on a hopeless quest for people who probably never existed.

  In two weeks.

  I had barely begun my studies. The odds of my being able to prepare sufficiently, take the exam, and get the results back before then were not good. I wanted to rage, scream, yell at my father. I wanted to tell him right there what I planned to do, and what he could do with his Rubber Tree People and his Central American rain forest.

  By some miracle of restraint, I held my tongue. “You know I don’t want to do this, Father,” I said quietly. Where she was sitting in the corner working on a headdress, Sekaya’s eyes grew enormous at my words and at the calm manner in which they were spoken. “However, you are my father, and I will do as you say.”

  The words almost stuck in my throat, but I got them out. There was no way I was going to talk my father out of this, not after the spectacle I had made of myself last night, and by not arguing with him I would likely buy more time to myself to study.

  I closed the door behind me and took off running, but not before I heard my father say, “Well! That was easier than I thought.”

  Fear at the thought of losing the sweet fruit of Starfleet that was almost in my grasp gave my feet speed. I’m sure I must have set a record running the two miles between my father’s hut and the place where the Starfleet people were housed. In a typically contrary manner, I said a prayer to the Sky Spirits I didn’t believe in that I would find T’Piran or Captain Sulu alone.

  I was gasping for breath by the time I arrived and I caught a glimpse of T’Piran walking down the trail that led away from the Starfleet quarters to the river. Gulping air, I ran after her. She eyed me curiously.

  “You are in a hurry, Chakotay,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Commander,” I gasped, “I need…to take the test…in less than two weeks. And…know the results too….”

  That eyebrow reached for the sky again. And again, I marveled at her cool beauty.

  “That does not give us much time.”

  Us. She said us. It was then that I realized that for whatever reason, T’Piran was as anxious as I that I get into Starfleet. Briefly, I wondered why, then let it go. It didn’t matter why. The point was, she was.

  “No,” I managed, still breathing heavily.

  “I am going to the river to meditate,” she said. “You will accompany me.”

  I’m sure my face fell. Meditate? If I wanted to meditate I could do it by myself, or under the guidance of the shaman. At my look, T’Piran said, “I know you do not consider yourself to be as spiritual as the other members of your tribe.”

  She had me there, and I nodded.

  “You should respect that aspect of your heritage,” she said. “It is not incompatible with a Starfleet career. We Vulcans are highly spiritual and have many intricate rituals.”

  “Really?” I never would have guessed it.

  “Logic and ritual are not opposed. Such meditation and ceremony open pathways in the brain that are otherwise not easily accessible.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  She stopped and faced me squarely. She was almost as tall as I was and, like Captain Sulu, had a gaze that seemed to bore into my very soul.

  “The captain and I are interested in your success, Chakotay. We both feel you would make an excellent officer. You do not have the luxury of a great deal of study time, so I will teach you how to make the most of what you do have. The meditation techniques you will learn will enable you to focus and absorb information more quickly.”

  “That would be great,” I said, never meaning any words more. Who would have thought an old tradition from my own homeworld would help me to escape it?

  If Captain Sulu was my sponsor, then T’Piran was my drill sergeant. On leave, she ignored her own interests to teach me how to meditate. She timed my runs and helped me devise an obstacle course to make sure I would pass the physical exams. Living the highly active life I did, I had an edge over more coddled cadets, though, and she quickly realized that I would do fine in that area. She graded my essay with a ruthless eye and then one day, she and Sulu had a surprise for me.

  They let me come aboard the Mandela.

  Like a child in a dream, I wandered with them from the bridge to engineering to the mess hall to stellar cartography. It was almost more than I could take in. At one point, as I stood gazing down at the blue and green orb that was my homeworld, Sulu stepped beside me and put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you all right, Chakotay?” she asked quietly. We were alone in stellar cartography.

  “Yes, Captain,” I replied, but my voice, thick with tears, gave me away, I’m certain. I cleared my throat. “You have no idea how amazing this is to me.” Or how I long to be a part of it, I thought, but did not say.

  She looked at me penetratingly. I thought a tricorder couldn’t have done a more thorough analysis.

  “I’ve sent messages to your hut,” she said. My blood ran cold. “I want to talk to your father about the exam and what it will mean for you, but
he hasn’t answered. Sekaya promised she’d give him the messages.”

  Bless you, Sekaya, I thought.

  “You and your father do not always get along well,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. My face grew hot.

  “How did you know that?”

  She smiled a little. “I can recognize the signs. It might interest you to know that I didn’t even know my father for the first six years of my life, until my mother died. When he came to get me, to raise me, I resented the hell out of him. The word ‘hate’ comes to mind.”

  I couldn’t believe she was speaking so frankly. I’d done my research on her, once I had access to information—Demora Sulu was the daughter of the famous Hikaru Sulu. To hear that even a famous father and daughter had problems was both unsettling and reassuring.

  “I don’t hate my father,” I said, and as the words left my lips, I knew they were true.

  “Good,” she said. “Then you don’t have as far to go as I did. I eventually did come around, learning to grudgingly respect, then like, then love him. This tension between child and parent is nothing unique to you, Chakotay, though I know it must feel as though it is. I once told a good friend of mine a bit of wisdom that I think I’ll share with you. You have two families, the one you were born into, and the one you choose every day of your life.” She looked at me with those eyes that seemed to see everything. “And it looks to me like you will need to leave your homeworld to find that second family.”

  “Will I find them?” I winced at the need behind the words.

  She smiled that wonderful smile and said, “I’m certain you will.” Again she squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. You haven’t seen the holodeck yet. I think that’s going make your eyes fall right out of your head.”

  I took the test in time.

  I passed with flying colors.

  The trip to Earth was a disaster, except for one thing: I told my father everything, and though he was disappointed and saddened, he accepted it.