by Jeri Taylor
He frequently found himself on the receiving end of that sting.
“Let me see if I understand you,” she said musingly. “You kept making your bed the way you wanted to, rather than the way Starfleet says you should, but it’s your dorm officer’s fault for putting you on report.”
“You don’t understand at all. The bed looked perfectly fine, just as neat as regulations called for. Most people couldn’t tell the difference. And my room was spotless.”
“I should hope so. You don’t even have a roommate to contribute to the mess.” It was true. One of the few fortunate things that had happened at the Academy was that he had not been assigned a roommate, and occupied two-person quarters in solitary splendor. Chakotay, who valued his privacy, couldn’t have been happier.
Today, he and Sveta were sprawled in a window seat of one of the Academy’s study rooms, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Just a day before, sunlight had danced on the water and aficionados of the old and pervasive sport of sailing had taken advantage of the inviting weather, careening around the bay in small craft with brightly colored sails. They had looked to Chakotay like dozens of vivid birds, skimming and dipping among the waves.
Today, the weather that he would learn was far more characteristic of the area had arrived: the skies sagged darkly, and a cocoon of fog obscured the vast Golden Gate Bridge, which still spanned the bay. The day looked as bleak as he felt. Being put on report was not a good way to begin his Starfleet education, and could damage his prospects for a command track, all because of arbitrary and overly exacting rules.
Sveta didn’t seem to understand this, and frankly he was getting frustrated trying to explain it to her. She just kept staring at him with those gray-white eyes, implacable, refusing even to try to comprehend his side of it.
Like right now, over the matter of making beds. Chakotay frankly thought it was a waste of time to do it at all—why make a bed when one is going to get right back in it a few hours later? He’d never made a bed as he was growing up, and his parents had never suggested he should. They understood which things were important and which weren’t.
It wasn’t as though he were refusing to do this pointless task. He understood that Starfleet had rules and he was willing to abide by them.
But weren’t there reasonable rules—and those that were completely ludicrous? Starfleet seemed a slave to the latter, and surely there was a point at which one just didn’t let oneself be manipulated by slavish adherence to ridiculous policies.
“What’s so important about a mitered corner, anyway?” he continued, still irked by the dorm officer’s insistence on conformity.
“A mitered corner,” Sveta replied, “is a technique that’s hundreds of years old—”
“And I suppose that makes it instantly superior,” interrupted Chakotay, but she ignored him.
“It’s what Starfleet has chosen as the way we’re to make beds. That’s the only thing that matters.”
“Why is it the only thing? Doesn’t common sense enter into it? If my bed looks just as neat as the next one, why isn’t my method as good as Starfleet’s?”
For a brief instant, he thought he saw her lips tug in amusement, but it might have been a trick of the light. He hoped so: he disliked the thought of being an object of scorn by this perverse woman.
“Were you indulged a great deal as a child?” she asked now, changing the subject, a tactic he’d observed in her before. He wasn’t about to play into it.
“What does that have to do with what we’re discussing?” he queried.
“You behave very much like someone used to getting his own way.”
Irritation bubbled into aggravation. Sveta had a way of picking at a point, like someone worrying a scab until it began to bleed. “I had a very disciplined upbringing,” he stated, and recognized the hint of defensiveness in his voice. “I had to do all kinds of things I didn’t want to. My father insisted on steeping me in all the history and tradition of our tribe, and taking me on pilgrimages and teaching me all kinds of old myths. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I’d had a choice.”
She regarded him evenly. “Then why are you so contrary?”
He blinked. “Did you use that word on purpose?”
“What word?”
“Contrary.”
“It’s just how you strike me.”
“That’s a term in our tribe. I’ve always been called a ‘contrary.’”
“Because you always swim against the current?”
“Something like that. My father says it started when I was born feet-first.”
She smiled, but there was no condescension in it. It was tender, and its sweetness melted him. “Starfleet will be very good for you, Chakotay,” she said softly. “But you have to allow it to reach you.”
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the mouth, then gathered her padds and was gone. He stared after her, tasting her lips on his, wondering when he’d see her again and what she’d meant by her last statement.
When Chakotay was given his class assignments, he was relieved to see that Nimembeh had given him high marks for his prep squad experience, but distressed that several bad reports from his dorm officer had resulted in his being denied entry to the pre-command class. He appealed to his faculty advisor, but was told he’d have to clear the bad reports from his record before being allowed to take pre-command. The only way to do that was to avoid being put on report for the rest of the semester. Chakotay seethed inwardly, knowing there would be no recourse.
Negative thoughts and disagreeable feelings enveloped him, and he decided to go back to his room, where at least he could be alone and possibly shed this annoying mood. The dormitory was deserted, as he’d hoped it would be, with most students going through the process of getting their class assignments. The halls were blessedly quiet and Chakotay looked forward to the haven of his quarters. He entered the security code into the panel beside his door and entered as it slid open.
A blue-skinned creature was standing in his room.
They stood facing each other in a moment of mutual surprise. Chakotay noted that the young man was hairless, his skull covered in the same blue skin as the rest of him. A line of demarcation ran down the middle of his face from the top of the skull to his neck. He was rounded, if not plump, and he stared at Chakotay with eyes that were small and bright.
“You must be my roommate,” the blue person said with what Chakotay thought was excessive enthusiasm. “I’m Chert. Are you human? I’m Bolian.”
Chakotay felt his spirits sink. His good fortune was over; they’d assigned him a roommate. He took a breath and tried to appear more welcoming than he really felt. “Yes, I’m human. My name is Chakotay.”
“Chert and Chakotay—alliterative names, I like that.” Chert burst into a shrill giggle, which sounded like a horse neighing in pain. Chakotay’s nerve endings felt as though they’d been rasped. “I was transferred from Fillmore Quad because some upperclassmen were assigned single rooms. Oh, well, I was getting lonely by myself. It’ll be much nicer having a roommate. What are your interests? I hope you’re a chess player, I think I could tolerate anything in a roommate except one who doesn’t play chess. And what about music? Do you know Bolian music? It’s an acquired taste, I’m told, but once your ear accustoms itself to the dissonances, you’ll be bored with anything else. You wouldn’t happen to have any snacks, would you? Moving over here has famished me.”
Chakotay groaned inwardly. How could he bear this prattling fool? He wouldn’t have an instant of peace, not a moment’s quiet with this garrulous blue man. He would have to draw the lines from the beginning. “I don’t have any snacks and I don’t play chess and I’m not fond of music at all. So it appears we have nothing in common. If you’d like to petition for another roommate, I won’t protest. We’d both be better off.”
It was a harsh statement, and Chakotay felt somewhat guilty, but reminded himself that every word he’d spoken was true. He prepared for wounded feelings.<
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But Chert was unfazed. “No need, no need. I can teach you chess. And I’ll introduce the music gradually and softly, you won’t even know it’s happening. Before long if I don’t play it you’ll be asking me to. And from now on I’ll make sure to keep us supplied with snacks. I like sweet things, do you?”
“What courses did you draw?” asked Chakotay, hoping at least he wouldn’t have to encounter this bombastic fellow in class.
“Thermodynamics, Engineering Analysis, Duonetic Systems Design, and Warp Field Theory,” replied Chert ebulliently. “I’m heading for the engineering track.” This was good news to Chakotay, because it meant their lives wouldn’t intersect in the classroom. And if he used his room only for sleeping, maybe he could get through the year without killing this gibbering oaf.
At the end of that year, Chakotay had decided to leave Starfleet Academy. He had served a full school term laboring under Starfleet’s rules, and he didn’t intend to spend the next three in the same fashion. He had worked harder and trained longer than anyone he knew, but he kept getting put on report for not adhering strictly to some regulation or another. Even his roommate, Chert, clucked with concern over his improprieties. “You’ve got to be more careful or you’ll never graduate. Why is it so hard for you to pay attention to details? I’ll be happy to make your bed for you, but I can’t follow you around to make sure you follow all the rules. Want a doughnut?”
Chakotay vowed that his first year would be his last. Once he returned to Trebus in June, he would announce his refusal to return to San Francisco. He wasn’t entirely certain what he would do with his life, but he’d figure something out.
And, in fact, he told his parents just that when he went home. There was a joyous celebration the night he returned, with tables set up in the meadow, laden with food. His parents were, of course, completely supportive of what he wanted to do. “We never wanted you to go there, Chakotay,” his mother assured him. “Your place is here, with your people, helping to preserve the traditions we’ve kept alive. It’s time you began to think of taking a wife. I noticed tonight that Philicia was watching you carefully. She’s a lovely girl, very intelligent. You should get to know her.”
Chakotay sighed. He’d known Philicia since he was a baby. She was sweet, but he had absolutely no interest in her other than as a childhood acquaintance. She was insular and predictable, her worldview extending only as far as her place in this tribe on this planet. He didn’t see how he could spend a lifetime with someone like that.
For that matter, what would he do if he didn’t return to the Academy? The thought of staying here and working to preserve his people’s traditions was stultifying. He’d entered the Academy in order to escape just such a fate. How could he return to his parents’ world so submissively?
He spent the summer wrestling with the decision, enjoying the rough and tumble of games with his friends. He and the young men he’d grown up with would lie under the summer stars, looking up at their twin moons, reminiscing about childhood and laying plans for the future.
It was the latter that left Chakotay feeling uneasy. It seemed all his friends, like his parents, like Philicia, envisioned a destiny no broader than staying on this planet, mating, procreating, and starting the cycle all over again. To Chakotay, it was a disturbing thought.
But what alternative did he prefer? He found it difficult to envision any except staying put or returning to the Academy. He’d heard of itinerant traders, vagabonds who roamed the stars, a footloose existence that took them where the solar winds blew them. And there were freight haulers, who carried goods between the star systems, minerals here, medical supplies there, a constant crisscrossing of space to insure the survival of people who lived on planets that didn’t have the natural resources necessary to sustain life.
Would that be satisfying? A nomadic life in space, a peripatetic existence, rootless and ungrounded? He thought not. But what, then? Would he ever find anything satisfying? He wished longingly that he had come out of his mother headfirst, like everyone else, rather than beginning life, and continuing it, in such a contrary fashion.
In the end, he asked his father to help him choose. In truth, he wanted someone to make this choice for him; he was too young, too inexperienced to make it for himself. He needed a helping hand.
“I’ll do whatever you say,” he said to Kolopak one day in late summer, when the heat rose in shimmering planes from the ground, and all the animals were still, taking refuge from the searing sun. Chakotay was confident his father would make his decision. Hadn’t he spent his life trying to tell his son how he should live?
But Kolopak squinted into the sun for several moments as Chakotay felt a drop of perspiration trickle down the left side of his neck to his shoulder blade, then down his back. Finally, his father turned to look at him, his eyes, as always, shining with love when he regarded his son.
“The time is past when I can make your choices for you,” he said. “You must choose your own path now, for only you can walk it.”
Chakotay deflated. Now, when he needed guidance, his father wouldn’t provide it! There must be some cruel irony at work here. All his life he had chafed under his father’s control, and now when he was ready to accept it, it was withheld.
“But I don’t know what path I want to take. That’s the problem.”
“You must look within yourself. The answers will be there.” And Kolopak walked away.
Chakotay knew what he meant. He was suggesting Chakotay embark on a vision quest, abetted by the Akoonah, technology that had been developed to help one explore one’s own unconscious. What his ancestors had achieved through fasting and smoking potent hallucinogens, his people today could accomplish safely, through a neuroelectric stimulator.
Chakotay had always resisted the vision quest, for it was part of a tradition that he eschewed. But today, in the throes of his ambivalence, it sounded almost tempting. In a moment’s decision, he went to the small chamber of the house, the habak, which was dedicated to inner exploration.
His father had brought him into that room many times, pointing out artifacts, explaining rituals. Chakotay, of course, had turned a deaf ear to all of it. Would he even remember, now, what to do?
His eye traveled the walls of the room, adorned with ancient writings. He knew that some of them described the creation myth, the story of the First Father and his raising of the sky. For the first time, he actually looked at the symbols, to see if he could decipher what he knew of the story.
It was all gibberish to him.
Ancient artifacts were everywhere—carvings and figurines, fetishes and amulets. And, in the center of the room, a small bundle that held his father’s most precious spiritual talismans. Chakotay sat and unwrapped the leather hide, revealing several decorated stones, an oddly shaped bone, a disk of feathers.
And the Akoonah.
The Akoonah was a flat piece of technology upon which Chakotay must lay his palm. He knew he was supposed to chant a ritual prayer, but from what he understood, that was just for ritual’s sake. The journey inward was actually induced by the Akoonah, which stimulated the neurons of the hypothalamus, producing a lucid REM state.
Ignoring the artifacts in the bundle as well as the ritual prayer, Chakotay placed one hand on the Akoonah and focused his eyes on the row of fetishes in front of him. At first he felt nothing, but then a faint tingling sensation drifted through his hand, and then through his whole body. He began to feel a contentedness, a sense of well-being that was unfamiliar. He liked this blissful sensation, and hoped it would continue. His mind relaxed, and he felt himself entering willingly into a euphoria.
Gradually, he became aware that his surroundings were changing. The row of fetishes were becoming formless, vague. Their colors melted somehow and rearranged themselves, even as the very quality of the air began to change. It was cool and sweet, assuaging his cares, pacifying his anxieties. If only he could feel like this forever, without having to make uncomfortable choices . . .
Colors melted still further and swam in constantly shifting patterns until they settled once more into recognizable form.
He was in a secret spot within the forest. He knew this place well; he had found it as a child, a small clearing where the stream pooled and leafy fronds obscured it from prying eyes. It was a place he came to when he wanted to be absolutely alone, a place where he felt safe.
Chakotay smiled. It felt good to be there. Even though there was a rather large green-and-yellow snake coiled right in the middle of the clearing. He felt no apprehension, none of his usual trepidation. He simply stared at the reptile, amused at this strange irony. Did his unconscious have a sense of humor?
“Are you my spirit guide?” he asked of the snake.
“Am I?” the serpent replied to his mind, in a voice soft as a breeze through the trees.
“I thought that was how this worked. I’d take this journey and find a spirit guide.”
“I wasn’t aware there were rules and regulations. This is your journey. It will be what you want it to be.”
“That can’t be true. I don’t like snakes. I wouldn’t have chosen you.”
The reptile’s forked tongue darted out, testing the air, his lidless eyes glittering. “Then don’t. What would be more to your liking?”
Chakotay pondered. “Something—more powerful. A bear, perhaps.”
The snake’s voice in his mind was amused. “If that’s what you wanted, where is it?”
“How should I know?” Chakotay was beginning to feel annoyed. “I don’t know how this works.”
“You came here easily enough,” the snake’s voice said lightly. “You must be at least somewhat receptive to what you find.”
“I came here to get answers about my future.”
“Oh, your future. That’s very important.”