Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  There was none. A leaden silence hung between them, punctuated by insect hum and bird call. Chakotay continued, energized by finally getting this out in the open. “I got to know a lot of the Starfleet officers patrolling the Cardassian border . . . I asked Captain Sulu if he would sponsor me at Starfleet Academy.”

  He was prepared for his father’s distress at this revelation. Hiromi Sulu, grandson of the legendary Hikaru Sulu of the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701, had become a familiar figure on their homeworld, Trebus, which was near Cardassian space. Captain Sulu had warned the colonists that Starfleet was concerned about Cardassian military buildup, and had even suggested that the Indians relocate to a safer position, but of course the elders weren’t about to abandon the land they had found spiritually compatible.

  Chakotay was fascinated by the Starfleet officers, with their impressive uniforms and their array of technology— tricorders, phasers, replicators, transporters. They were symbols to him of life as it should be, lived in the present and anticipating the future, not linked in some unholy embrace with the past.

  Hiromi Sulu was in his mid-thirties, a lithe, handsome officer who seemed to move comfortably among his crew and the inhabitants of this unusual world. He had dined at Chakotay’s home on a number of occasions, and had struck up a friendship with the adolescent son of his host. Captain Sulu had three daughters, and seemed drawn to Chakotay as a kind of surrogate son.

  He had befriended Kolopak as well, and Chakotay knew his father would consider it a betrayal that Captain Sulu had sponsored him without discussing it with Kolopak. And indeed, that was his father’s first response: “He would do such a thing without discussing it with me?”

  “I told him I had your approval. I kept him as far away from you as I could.” This was true, and had caused Chakotay no end of trouble, disseminating misinformation to his father and to Captain Sulu alike. He felt faintly guilty at this manipulation, but wasn’t going to back down now.

  “I take it you have reason to believe you’ll be accepted at the Academy,” offered Kolopak, and Chakotay nodded tersely. He had to pass the entrance exams, of course, but he wasn’t worried about them. Another long silence ensued.

  “You’ve never fully embraced the traditions of our tribe, I know that. You’ve always been curious about other societies. And I allowed you to read about them because I believe ignorance is our greatest enemy. But to leave the tribe . . .”

  “Our tribe lives in the past . . . a past of fantasy and myth.”

  “That past is a part of you, no matter how hard you try to reject it.”

  “Other tribes have learned to accept the twenty-fourth century. Why can’t ours?”

  Kolopak’s voice was taking on a decided edge. “It is not the place of a fifteen-year-old boy to question the choices of his tribe.”

  “I know,” replied Chakotay solemnly. “That’s why I have to leave.”

  Kolopak scrutinized him with those burning, sorrowful eyes. “You will never belong to that other life. And if you leave, you will never belong to this one. You will be caught between worlds.”

  The truth of this caught Chakotay with a sudden chill, as though an icy breeze had knifed through the stifling forest. “I ask for your blessing, Father,” he said humbly, but there was no answer. Kolopak stared stonily ahead, and Chakotay knew no blessing would be forthcoming.

  A year and a half later he stood on a grassy plain on his homeworld, a satchel with his belongings at his side, his mother and father before him. He was minutes from transporting to Captain Sulu’s ship, which would carry him to San Francisco, on the planet Earth, the home of Starfleet Academy.

  The morning was cold, as though reminding the inhabitants that, although summer was just over, winter was coming quickly. Growing up, he had always eagerly anticipated that bracing nip in the air, as it seemed to energize him— probably some genetic throwback to an era when provisions must be laid in for the fallow months of winter.

  “Send us messages, please,” implored his mother, whose eyes, he noticed, were swollen from crying the night before. He felt both embarrassed and regretful.

  “If you’d put in a modern comm system we could have instant contact,” he suggested, only to be greeted by a dismissive grunt from his father. He might have known—there would be no place for sophisticated technology on this world.

  He put his arms around his mother, who gulped back her tears, knowing the effect they would have on him. “I’ll send lots of messages,” he promised her. “I’ll tell you about everything.” She patted his back ineffectually.

  He turned to his father, hating this moment and yet strangely empowered by it as well. He had made his choice and he was following through. He would chart the course of his own life, unbound by the past, free to explore any of the options that might lie before him.

  In his father’s eyes he saw only pain.

  Kolopak embraced him, but it was a gesture without warmth. Chakotay tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat, and he silently cursed the revelation of emotion. He had wanted to appear manly before his father, and now his throat had clutched, betraying him. He stepped back and touched the comm device Captain Sulu had given him. “Chakotay to Captain Sulu. I’m ready, sir.”

  And in the disembodying moment before transport, he saw both love and anguish on his parents’ faces.

  “Way too slow, Cadet. Ten times around the track.”

  Chakotay’s head whipped toward Lieutenant Nimembeh, his prep squad officer. He was sure he’d shaved several seconds off his time—his phaser had been disassembled, reconfigured, and reassembled in just under seventeen seconds. How fast did he have to be? He started to ask just that when Nimembeh spoke again. “When I give an order, you follow it immediately. That’s fifteen times around the track.”

  “In my uniform and boots?” queried Chakotay, incredulous and inexperienced enough with Starfleet discipline to realize what he was buying himself.

  “Make that twenty.”

  Chakotay moved off before Nimembeh added more, but he was indignant and furious. Run the track twenty times in his uniform and boots? It would be easy enough in running shoes, but the black leather boots weren’t at all conducive to jogging. He’d be in blisters by the end of it. This was all so arbitrary. What were they trying to prove?

  Fortunately the day wasn’t a warm one—rarely was it too warm in San Francisco—and a cool breeze braced him as he trotted from the parade ground, over the immaculately groomed grounds of Starfleet Academy, and onto the track. If he were properly outfitted, it might be energizing to take this run. Just under five kilometers was a warm-up for him under ordinary circumstances.

  But halfway around the first turn, he knew it would be different this time. His cadet’s uniform chafed at his skin and the boots were heavy, clumsy on his feet. Eventually, they would feel like iron weights.

  He set about clearing his mind, focusing on the rhythm of running, rather than on his body. He could do this, was determined to do it without complaint, because to do otherwise would give Nimembeh a satisfaction Chakotay didn’t want him to have. He placed himself, in his mind, on his homeworld of Trebus, on the plains where, growing up, he had run for hours on end, seduced by the independence he felt when he was alone and the wind embraced him. He was utterly at liberty in those times, impeded by no one, obstructed by nothing. They were golden moments of his childhood, and he focused to relive them now.

  For a while it worked. He discovered a pace that the boots could tolerate without punishing him, and found the stride that minimized the abrading of his uniform against his inner thighs. He recaptured the sounds, the smells of his childhood revels in the meadows and the woods. He had not realized until now how precious those memories were to him.

  For ten laps it was bearable, and he couldn’t avoid the rueful acknowledgment that if he had responded to Nimembeh’s order immediately, he would be done now. But he was only halfway through, and there were indications that it was going to get worse quickly.
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  His feet had begun to protest the pounding in the leather boots. His legs had started to weary of lifting their heavy weight. But most important, his skin was beginning to feel raw in places where friction was wearing through his socks and rubbing at a toe joint, at a heel, at a metatarsal bone.

  That’s what would be the hardest part of this to endure. Strange that a tiny lesion in the uppermost layers of the skin could produce such pain—a testimony to the complex network of nerves that lay there. But pain could be dealt with.

  Twelve laps. There were three distinct places in his feet that he could identify as blistered: left big toe, left heel, and right instep. The pain had increased geometrically in the last two laps, which didn’t bode well for the next eight.

  Thirteen laps. The track seemed to have lengthened horrifically, far beyond its quarter-kilometer starting point. Now it felt like a kilometer each time around. His gait had slowed appreciably, though the lessened pace didn’t alleviate the pain. He clenched his jaw, determined to get through this.

  Fourteen. He forced his mind to think of summers on his homeworld, when he and his friends would spend all day in the woods, playing, laughing, engaging in mock combat. In many ways they were like a pride of lion cubs, tumbling and roughhousing, but all the while honing skills for survival.

  But what had driven that instinct? Members of the Federation didn’t have to fight to survive anymore, didn’t have to struggle or make war. What genetic predisposition compelled him and his friends to take on the role of warriors, battling for defense of home and family? Apparently something not easily lost in a few hundred years of relative peace.

  Fifteen laps. His feet were now identified by three points of fire, three hot coals that were burning into the bone. He stumbled briefly but forced himself to keep going. He’d made it around that last lap by summoning visions of home. Maybe those would sustain him until the end.

  His people, in the past, had been subjected to hideous tortures, many involving hot coals. The European conquerors had intimidating ways of meting out punishment, of demonstrating their authority over the “savages” they had found occupying the land they intended to claim. Chakotay had heard these stories from the time he was a small boy.

  On the other hand, his people were equally well versed in such techniques, and used them with impunity against each other. Cruelty wasn’t the exclusive province of the Europeans. It wasn’t uncommon among his ancestors for captured prisoners to be tortured for months, even years. Sometimes the enemy was tied into a makeshift “ball,” and kicked around the ball court until he died. Inventive.

  Sixteen. Keep the pain at bay. If you give in to it it will be unbearable. Focus elsewhere.

  His people had any number of customs involving self-sacrifice. The noble women, for instance, performed a ritual in which they pierced their tongue with a barb and pulled a length of rope through it. And just to make it an equal-opportunity culture, the noble men often pierced their fore-skin, dripped blood on paper, and then burned it as a blessing to the gods.

  And of course there were the ritual executions, the heart extrusions, the stonings, the disembowelments. His ancestors had little reason to accuse the Europeans of excess cruelty.

  Seventeen. Pain was beginning to interfere with his ability to project his mind elsewhere. Cruelty. Was this what Starfleet was all about? What was being accomplished by this brutal exercise? Did Nimembeh derive some sick pleasure from exercising his power over his cadets? It had struck Chakotay that way ever since he reported to the Academy and had been assigned to Nimembeh. There were twenty of them in each prep squad; for two weeks they would belong to their instructor, who was responsible for molding them into a disciplined, finely tuned unit before they actually started academic course work.

  From the beginning, he had felt singled out by Nimembeh, who seemed to mete out particularly rigorous tasks to Chakotay, and to inflict especially strict penalties if the young man didn’t perform up to expectations— which, he had learned, was just about always. This grueling five-kilometer run was just another in a series of disciplines to which he, and he alone of his group, had been subjected.

  So Nimembeh didn’t like him. But there were only three laps to go, and he would show the drill instructor he couldn’t be broken quite so easily. Chakotay could endure whatever this sadist might concoct for him.

  Eighteen laps. Each step sent lances of pain from his feet to his brain, and he struggled feverishly with some way to deal with it. He began to sing, summoning up remembered chants from his childhood, lamentations and invocations to the spirits which were supposed to augur well for the future. It was foolishness, of course, but he remembered being soothed by hearing the voices of his people joined together, conjurations lifted to the skies in ancient harmonies. Now, as the barely remembered chants came panting out of him, he was soothed once more.

  Ahead of him, standing at one end of the track, silhouetted by the low afternoon sun, was a figure. It was Nimembeh, whose whippet-thin body and dark, bald head Chakotay would recognize anywhere. He’d come to see his charge fail, but he would not be given that satisfaction. Chakotay rounded the track in front of him, not making eye contact, seeing the familiar ebony face and chiseled features only in his periphery.

  Nineteen. One more to go. He could run one more lap, one slight quarter-kilometer, even if his feet were bleeding and he felt as though he were running on knife points. He summoned in his mind’s eye that dark figure standing against the sun and flung against it all his fury and indignation. Every pounding step radiated pain, and that pain fueled rage. He envisioned Nimembeh erupting into flame, consumed by the sheer intensity of Chakotay’s wrath.

  That vision got him halfway around. He was on the last half lap, heading into the sun once more, heading toward that dark figure . . .

  Except the figure had changed. He didn’t see Nimembeh’s dark presence, his erect form, his studied stillness. Someone stood against the sun but whoever it was emitted a paleness, a glowing white, as though a snow-figure had descended from above. A sky spirit? One of those to whom he had been chanting? A quiver of awe moved through him.

  Closer he drew, and the glow began to take form: it was a woman, dressed in white, with hair so light it looked like a cloud of milk. She was standing where Nimembeh had, looking directly at him. Was she the drill instructor’s simulacrum? His gaze blurred and he shook his head to clear it; perspiration ran into his eyes, stinging them with salt. At that moment he completed his twentieth lap.

  The impact on his feet changed suddenly as he ran off the track and onto the grass that surrounded it and felt, rather than saw, the difference in the surfaces. His knees buckled under him and he sprawled headfirst onto the grass, which was cool and yielding. His fingers clutched at the earth in a spasm as his feet howled with fire.

  He breathed in the damp aroma of dirt and cut grass, a comforting balm that gradually appeased him. He rolled over on his back and saw the cloud-woman standing over him.

  She was probably his age, with skin that was impossibly white. Her eyes were almost colorless, and he realized that she must be from another planet.

  “Here,” she was saying, with just the hint of an accent he couldn’t identify. “I thought you might like this.” She was tipping a cup of cool water into his lips, and he slurped at it hungrily, like a baby at its mother’s breast.

  “Thanks,” he said, but his voice emerged as a kind of hoarse growl. He realized he hadn’t hydrated before making that run, and might be suffering from electrolyte depletion. He struggled to a sitting position, wincing as the blisters on his feet protested any motion.

  “You should get those shoes off,” the woman said. “Better to go barefoot.” She let him take the cup and drain the water from it, then sat back and gazed at him implacably with those impossibly pale gray eyes.

  “Who are you?” he asked, as he began the uncomfortable process of removing his boots.

  “Svetlana Korepanova,” she replied. “Sveta for short. I
’m a first-year cadet, too. From Ekaterinburg, Russia.”

  So she was human. He was surprised, and tried to reconcile that fact with her unique features and the almost mystical nature of her appearance on the edge of the track in the place where Nimembeh had been.

  “Was my prep squad officer here before?” Chakotay asked, drawing off a sock and seeing two bloody smudges on his toe and heel.

  “Yes. He stood there for almost the entire time you were running. Then he left just before you finished.”

  “Couldn’t stand it that I lasted the twenty laps,” said Chakotay with a hint of sullenness that Sveta immediately noticed.

  “You think he was disappointed to see you persevere?” she asked. “What a curious attitude. He has no reason to want you to fail.”

  Chakotay had removed his second boot and sock, and he studied the blister on that foot before he replied. “That’s not the feeling I get. I think he’d enjoy it thoroughly.”

  “Would you like to walk in the arboretum tonight?”

  Her words took Chakotay completely by surprise. The arboretum was traditionally the location of romantic trysts of various levels of intensity, and as such the source of much titillation and curiosity by the entering cadets. It would never have occurred to Chakotay that a female might invite him on such a dalliance after having exchanged no more than a few dozen words.

  “Well?” she asked quietly but with determination. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet you at the entrance at nineteen hundred hours.”

  Chakotay had forgotten the pain in his feet, and the walk back to his quarters was euphoric.

  If Chakotay had thought that there was nothing more in store for him than a romantic interlude, he had miscalculated. Not that Sveta wasn’t passionate, for she was, in a straightforward, unabashed way that left him breathless and awed. But she turned out to be a complicated young woman, possessed of many aspects, some of them seemingly contradictory. Affectionate and compassionate, she exuded a concern for others that Chakotay found extraordinary. On the other hand, she held strong opinions about many things, and had a stubborn streak that wouldn’t be dislodged with a photon torpedo and a tart tongue that could sting like a scorpion.