Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  “Eat up,” he said as cheerfully as he could, and the group sat down and had their first meal as Subu prisoners. The torturous sun finally went down, and as night came on, the temperature cooled, bringing blessed relief. Tomorrow they would see about shelter, which might require bartering for materials, and about fuel for a fire. And they would reconnoiter the camp even more carefully, assessing the possible escape routes and methods, in preparation for what they now believed was a perfectly plausible effort. Food and water, no matter how unappetizing, had restored their optimism, and made them think that all things were possible.

  “Commander,” said Harry after they’d eaten and stretched out on the ground, weary after the events of the last two days. “How’d you get along with Commander Nimembeh?”

  “Get along with him? Fine, I guess. I only had him during prep squad, before my freshman year started. He was tough, but everyone respected him.”

  Harry looked a little sheepish. “I had quite an experience with him,” he said. “It wasn’t a lot of fun.”

  “No one would ever call Nimembeh fun,” agreed Chakotay. A silence fell on them, but Harry seemed to be pondering something. After a few moments, he turned again to Chakotay.

  “Sir . . . if I’m prying or anything, you don’t have to answer. But how was it . . . that you quit Starfleet, and joined the Maquis? I mean, to go through the Academy, and be a Starfleet officer . . . and then to give it all up—well, I just wondered how that happened.”

  Chakotay drew a breath. It was something he had spent a great deal of time contemplating, and he wasn’t entirely sure he had an easy answer. “To tell you that, I’d practically have to tell you the story of my life.”

  “If you’re willing to tell it, I’d sure like to hear it.”

  Chakotay looked around at his group. Several people were listening to the conversation, and seemed intrigued by the prospect of learning more about their first officer. It occurred to him that this might be as good a way as any to pass some time. “All right. If anybody gets bored you can go to sleep. I won’t be offended.”

  He paused a moment to think how to start, and looked up at the night sky, dotted with stars. Suddenly an image shot into his mind, one he hadn’t thought about for some twenty years, and he knew that was the beginning of his tale. “When I was fifteen, my father and I took a trip together, and it was a turning point in my life.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  “THERE WASN’T YET ONE PERSON, ANIMAL, BIRD, FISH, TREE, rock, canyon, forest. Only the sky was there, only the sea alone was lying under all the sky. Nothing stirs.

  “Whatever might be is simply not there. But in the Otherworld, the Hero Twins are preparing to destroy the power of Seven-Macaw, so that their father, the Maize God, can be reborn.”

  Chakotay’s mind drifted as he listened to the sonorous tones of his father’s voice. They were lying on their backs atop a grassy hill in Central America, on the planet Earth, where his ancestors had evolved. The sky was an ebony blanket salted with stars that shone so brilliantly they seemed able to burn holes in his eyes. But the sight held no majesty for Chakotay. He would rather have been anywhere else.

  “The Hero Twins knocked Seven-Macaw from the crocodile tree where he was perched, and then they put their father’s head back upon his dead body so that he was reborn. Three gods, the paddlers, bore him in a sky canoe, concealed beneath the carapace of a turtle, to the place where the dawn of life was conceived.

  “And then the First Father emerged through the cracked turtle shell, resurrected. All this happened at a place called lying-down-sky, before the First Father lifted the crocodile tree on high, pushing the sky upward and centering it.”

  Chakotay shifted restlessly. He’d heard this tale many times before, from the time he was a small boy. He remembered being intrigued by it at first, but now, at fifteen, he was beyond such nonsense. He failed to understand his father’s excitement at this strange ritual, looking up at the sky and retelling the story of creation.

  But his father’s exhilaration was palpable. It had begun to build as soon as he had decided on this quest, this return with his son to the planet of their ancestors, and had mounted steadily in the ensuing months. Now, as Kolopak recounted the ancient myth of the beginnings of the world, his voice was husky with emotion.

  Vaguely, Chakotay tuned back in to the familiar story. “First Father had carried with him from the Otherworld a packet of maize seeds, which he scattered on the earth, and those became man. And thus was the earth created, and centered, and ordered.”

  There was a moment’s silence, which Chakotay didn’t hurry to fill. He could feel his father’s awe and reverence rising like a mist, and he wished again that he had been allowed to stay behind and avoid this wearisome experience.

  “Just think, Chakotay. We’re here, on the night of August thirteenth, the date of creation, watching the stars our ancestors watched, seeing the hours of the beginning play out once more.” Kolopak’s voice broke slightly, and Chakotay felt a twinge of embarrassment for him. “The crocodile tree and the sky canoe are nothing less than our galaxy, the Milky Way. First Father is represented by the constellation Orion, which our ancestors called the turtle. Its three belt stars—Alnitak, Mintaka, and Alnilam—are the three creation stones. And Seven-Macaw, who had to be knocked from the crocodile tree in order for the maize god to be reborn, is represented by the seven stars in the Big Dipper.”

  Kolopak pointed up, gripped with passion. “Look, Chakotay—the Milky Way is turning from its north-south position, and the Big Dipper is falling, falling toward the horizon. In another hour Seven-Macaw will disappear, vanquished, readying the sky for creation.”

  Chakotay stirred restlessly. They’d already been out here for two hours, and his muscles felt stiff, needing the relief of movement. He was also hungry, and pushed himself to his feet to search his knapsack for something to eat. He knew he wouldn’t find anything particularly tempting there; Kolopak had decreed that they would eat only the foods of their ancestors during this trek, so corn cakes, dried deer meat, and tubers were all he could look forward to. He rummaged in his pack and withdrew one of the corn cakes and a bottle of water. Yum.

  “Would you like anything?” he asked his father politely. Maybe if he were the model child he could get out of this ordeal as quickly as possible.

  “No, thank you,” replied Kolopak, still gazing upward in wonder. “I don’t have an appetite. I’m just overwhelmed by this.”

  Chakotay sat and munched his corn cake and sipped cold water. The night was warm and humid, and the cool liquid was soothing. The buzz of a mosquito seeking its own dinner hummed around his ear, and he flailed at it in irritation.

  Overhead, the skies continued their inexorable display, the Milky Way “canoe” appearing to tip toward the horizon, sinking to carry the maize god to the place of creation. By dawn, Chakotay knew, the turtle constellation, or Orion, would be at the zenith, signifying the rebirth of the First Father. He knew all this, having been shown the star maps since he was a child. There was no particular amazement to seeing it in person.

  “How long are we going to stay?” he ventured mildly, expecting his father to say, “Just a little while longer.”

  But Kolopak looked at him in astonishment. “We’ll stay the night, of course, until First Father is at the zenith, at dawn.”

  Chakotay’s heart sank. Back at their lodgings were padds with books and games that would hold his interest. Out here, on this lonely, humid hilltop, there was nothing. He flopped back onto the ground and closed his eyes, disturbed by the annoying buzz of the mosquito, still hunting for blood.

  He awoke at the gentle shaking of his father’s hand. Kolopak was looking down at him, face transfixed with joy. “Look, Chakotay—First Father is born again.”

  Chakotay struggled to a sitting position, eyes gummy with sleep, limbs aching, mouth fetid. The first faint paling of the eastern sky had begun, and Kolopak was pointing upward. Chakotay followed
the gesture. There, above them, Orion’s belt—the turtle constellation to the ancient people—was at the zenith, signifying the resurrection of the maize god, First Father.

  Kolopak’s face was shining. “It was incredible. To see this pageant replayed, just as our ancestors did—I can’t tell you how deeply it’s touched me. We have to come back on February fifth, the reciprocal date, and see the raising of the sky.”

  Chakotay stretched his stiff limbs and ran his fingers through his hair. He felt awful, cold and sticky, his stomach empty and his bladder full. The thought of going through this ordeal yet again made him shudder. He had to find some way to get out of it.

  His father, relentlessly cheerful, extended his hand to help Chakotay to his feet, chattering about the power of the nightlong experience, his soul’s response to participating in such an ancient and important ritual. If he sensed Chakotay’s diffidence, he didn’t show it. He spoke as though they had shared the night and the spiritual adventure, when in fact Kolopak had been alone.

  “Let’s go,” his father said, with as much energy as though he had slept like a baby all night long. “We’re meeting our guides soon. They’ll take us into the wilderness.”

  Chakotay’s hand went to his neck, which he realized was itching uncomfortably. His fingers discovered a thick welt there, and he dug at it until it hurt. The mosquito, at least, had had a successful night.

  If the night had been long and uncomfortable, it was a time of luxury compared with the trek into the rain forest. Chakotay couldn’t believe his father was determined to plunge into this malodorous jungle, replete with vicious insects and poisonous reptiles, simply to find the village of their ancestors. Who could even be sure the village still existed? There had been an exodus from this part of Earth over two hundred years ago; who knew what might have happened to those who stayed behind? They had probably become blended into contemporary human society, losing the ancient ways. At least, that was the fear that had driven his father’s tribe to leave Earth and settle on a remote planet several thousand light-years away, hoping to find a place where they could preserve their customs and rituals.

  This was, in Chakotay’s mind, a way to insure that his tribe remained rooted in the past, clinging desperately to centuries-old traditions, instead of welcoming the new and exciting future. He, for one, was determined to embrace the twenty-fourth century, but he had yet to inform his father of that.

  Now, they were slashing their way through a jungle that was oppressively hot and almost unbelievably humid. Chakotay swore he could see moisture suspended in the air, shimmering in the shafts of sunlight like a filmy curtain of water. Grotesquely huge insects hung in swarms under the canopy of trees, buzzing violently as though infuriated by the intrusion of humans. There were fifteen of them: Chakotay, Kolopak, and thirteen native guides and porters. What would have been so wrong, the boy wondered, with simply transporting all of them into the designated area? Why behave as though this were some kind of ancient safari?

  Chakotay occupied his mind by trying to determine the best way to inform his father of his plans. This wouldn’t be easy—he anticipated every reaction imaginable: anger, frustration, sorrow, adamancy—but he was determined to confront the issue sooner rather than later.

  But how? With a prelude explaining his dissatisfaction with his father’s ways, his insistence on making his own choices? Or by asking for understanding and requesting permission? He ran down several versions of the conversation in his mind, but no matter what approach he took, he could envision only a disappointing outcome.

  A bright flash of movement at the periphery of his vision made him turn and then follow it. It was a lizard, orange and green, scurrying over a tree stump. Something was marked on the tree stump, and Chakotay moved toward it. He vaguely heard his father’s voice admonishing him: “I don’t want you wandering off . . .”

  “I wasn’t,” the boy replied. “I was just looking at something.” He heard Kolopak move behind him to look at the symbol that had been etched on the face of the tree trunk.

  “Antonio,” his father called. “Come here and see what my son found.”

  Antonio, a cheerful man in his thirties, with dark hair and a brilliant smile, joined them, inspecting the marking. “We’re getting close, Kolopak. Your son is quite a scout.”

  Kolopak beamed with pride, making Chakotay uncomfortable. “I was just looking at a lizard and I saw it,” he muttered self-deprecatingly, but Kolopak wasn’t dissuaded.

  “Well, your eyes saw it, no one else’s did—that’s the important thing.”

  Chakotay sighed inwardly, barely listening as his father launched into a dissertation about the symbol, an ancient blessing to the land, a kind of apologia for cutting down the tree. Why did he have to be told all this, over and over again? He had absolutely no interest in these old customs. He wandered back onto the trail, wondering how long it was until lunch, and hence didn’t see the disappointed look on his father’s face.

  The discovery of the huge snake came shortly after they had eaten a midday meal. It was a decidedly unnerving event to Chakotay, and left him with a cold knot in his stomach.

  It was Antonio who found it, a boa constrictor over three meters long, grotesquely swollen from a recent meal. The snake was torporous from its ingestion, which Antonio surmised was a small boar, or peccary. Chakotay stared in disgust, envisioning the slow devouring. The constrictor would have crushed the boar first, wrapping its coils around the pig’s rib cage and then tightening slowly, inexorably squeezing air from its lungs and making it impossible for the pig to breathe. As its ribs snapped, it would pass into blessed unconsciousness.

  At that point, the snake’s jaws would spread wide, allowing it to envelop the boar’s head, and gradually, using its powerful muscles, it would gulp the creature into its stomach. Then, worn from the effort, sated as it began to digest its meal, it would sink into languor, able only to lie on the floor of the forest until the boar was completely digested, some weeks hence. Then it would begin its relentless search for the next repast, sliding silently and surprisingly swiftly through the undergrowth until some other animal was caught within its powerful coils.

  Chakotay hated snakes. As a child his nightmares were those of being pursued by giant reptiles, or of being shut inside a dwelling where somewhere, he knew not where, there was a snake that would spring at him when he least expected it. He would wake crying aloud, damp with sweat, and creep into bed with his mother and father, a place where snake dreams wouldn’t dare to pursue him.

  Of all the creatures Earth had spawned, these were the ones Chakotay had difficulty countenancing. They seemed to strike at some primal fear that couldn’t be rationally understood; his people, after all, had been at one with all animals, and some had even worshipped the serpent, or at least put it in a position of special reverence. Their creation myth certainly spoke with awe about ancient and mysterious reptiles.

  But to Chakotay they were discomfiting for reasons he couldn’t articulate. The sight of one produced a slight chilling in him, a faint but pervasive sense of unease. He disliked their colorations, their scaliness, the undulating way they moved.

  Now, as Chakotay was confronted with the gruesome sight of the bloated constrictor, his stomach contorted and he turned away in revulsion. He felt his father’s gaze on him, but didn’t care. This was just one more example of the horrors and indignities that were being thrust on him in this foolish quest for their forebears.

  “Serpents have been devouring their prey here for thousands of years,” offered Kolopak. “Our ancestors worshipped these majestic reptiles because of their powerful ability to shed their skins and be reborn.” Chakotay could tell that his father viewed this discovery as another sign of the symbolic significance of their journey.

  “Tell that to the boar,” he said churlishly.

  “Animals have killed each other for food since the dawn of time,” Kolopak began, but Chakotay waved him off.

  “Please, not another lec
ture about the natural order of things,” he said. “I know all that. Can’t we get going? The bugs don’t bother you as much if you keep moving.”

  His father’s eyes seemed sorrowful as he gazed at Chakotay, and the boy felt faintly guilty. He broke the look by slapping at the insects that buzzed about his head. After a moment, Antonio took the lead and they proceeded deeper into the rain forest.

  As the afternoon wore on, Chakotay became more and more irritable. He was suffocatingly hot, damp with perspiration, covered with welts from insect bites, and tired of this endless trek through a snake-infested jungle. The cacophony of animal and bird calls that swirled around them had given him a headache, and he wanted nothing more than to be back at home, swimming with his friends in the cool green lake that was fed by mountain streams.

  Gradually, he became aware that his father was saying something, something that had blended into the clamor of parrot and monkey sounds. He turned to see his father looking up, pointing toward the sky. His gaze followed. “Listen to him, Chakotay. Do you hear what he says to you?”

  Chakotay located the hawk circling above them, its screech indistinguishable from that of other wild birds. He looked at his father, whose face was shining once more with joy. Kolopak looked back at Chakotay, beaming. “Do you hear it?”

  Chakotay shrugged and shook his head. “He says, ‘You are home,’ “ said Kolopak with heavy significance.

  Something unloosed itself in Chakotay’s mind, even as the sudden slippage of wet earth on a sodden hillside will precipitate a mudslide. He hadn’t planned to say the words, but they came unbidden, and he could no more stop them than he could hold back tons of sediment single-handed.

  “I’m leaving the tribe, Father,” he announced, and waited heavily for Kolopak’s response.