by Jeri Taylor
It all happened at Lake Tahoe, where Tom, Odile, and Bruno had gone over the New Year’s holiday to get some ski time in and to celebrate the passing of the old year. It was a ritual Tom had always found satisfying, the bidding farewell to the year past and the greeting of the new one. It was a time that seemed fraught with possibility, with hope and potential. He was invariably cheered by the prospect of the chronograph hitting twenty-four hundred hours and then beginning to count the first minute of the new year.
Starfleet Academy had acquired a building in the mountains surrounding the lake, and had turned it into a dormitory, largely for use by the ski team, which had grown in just two years to twenty-six people. Tom, Bruno, and Odile had planned to spend the whole New Year’s break there, and Charlie was added to the mix when Tom found that his family would be off-world for a month.
Tom had been visiting the crystal blue lake in the Sierras since he was a small child, and it held a special place in his heart. It was surely one of nature’s miracles, a vast basin atop a mountain range, breathtakingly spectacular whether viewed from the air or the ground. From lakeside, one saw 484 square kilometers of the purest blue water, ringed with majestic, rugged mountains. A forest of green clung to those mountain slopes, and the confluence of color—blue, green, white, slate—was powerful.
Nearby was another, equally pristine lake, smaller, which would forever remain linked with the tragic fate of the family that gave it its name: Donner. Even now, five hundred years later, the tale of the pioneers who had suffered so cruelly the ravages of nature and of each other had the ability to tantalize the imagination. There was still a shrine to the intrepid wagon train of long ago: a huge boulder had served as a cabin wall for one family, the Breens, and a plaque there commemorated their travails during the bitter winter of 1846.
Tom was the only one of the group who knew of that ancient catastrophe. To Odile and Bruno it was an obscure event in the history of another country; Charlie was more interested in science than in minutiae of the past. Tom was pleased, as they stood by the huge boulder, that they seemed moved by his reverential account of the Donners, the Reeds, the Breens, and the others of that ill-fated group.
“I’m not sure I could eat human flesh, even if it were the only way to survive,” Bruno commented. Odile fixed him with a penetrating eye.
“Of course you could. If you got hungry enough, you’d eat anything. The organism is developed that way—it’s in our genetic structure to survive.”
“But it’s in our cultural conditioning not to eat our own species. It’s a deeply entrenched taboo.”
“Deeply entrenched or not, I’m sure I’d do it if it were necessary.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if we ever go camping together,” observed Charlie mildly, bringing smiles to the group.
“Let’s go,” suggested Tom. “We can still get in a few more runs today.” In seconds they had transported back to the mountain range once known as Squaw Valley, now renamed for a branch of the indigenous Washo people: Wel Mel Ti. They took Charlie down the intermediate runs, giving him pointers as they went.
Charlie had amazed them all by taking to skiing with alacrity. In two days he was able to keep up with them on all but the most difficult runs, although he couldn’t match their speed. He took the slopes at his own pace, measured and stately, but he was unafraid of steeps and moguls.
He had no interest in racing, even though they urged him to give it a try. Charlie wasn’t a driven person, and seemed to feel no need to prove anything to anyone. Tom envied him.
On New Year’s Eve they gathered in the dormitory’s large common room with other students who were there for the holiday. The structure was several hundred years old, though it had been remodeled recently, and boasted a feature few of them had ever used: a fireplace. Even Bruno, whose parents had raised him in the woods and made him ski to and from school, had only heard about this ancient custom. But he knew enough to be able to pile some wood and pinecones they collected into the rectangular opening in the wall, and to ignite the mass with the intense beam of a tricorder.
The delight the group took in this ancient practice was instant and intoxicating. There was an appeal to the flames that was entirely lacking in microfusion energy systems, and the young people found themselves gathering round the burning logs, staring at the flickering flames as though mesmerized. The crackle of the pitch pine and the heady aroma of the woodsmoke were more beguiling than they could have imagined.
Someone had made thick, fragrant soup, and Bruno replicated a hot Scandinavian drink, glugg, which warmed them from within even as the fire warmed their skin. Odile began singing, sweet, plaintive love songs from the past, and then they all sang, old songs, new songs, raising their young voices in friendship and joy, and Tom thought he’d never felt more at peace, more hopeful about the future. As the chronograph turned to twenty-four hundred hours, a great cheer broke from the group, and Tom drew Odile to him and kissed her, gently, feeling the moment freeze in time as the sounds from the others faded and there were only the two of them, locked in tender embrace, each completing the other, a union as old as eternity.
The next day, Odile told him she would be staying in France for her junior year.
Tom thought she was teasing him, and entered into what he assumed was a charade. “Good idea. I think I’ll just drop the junior year entirely. Commandeer a shuttle and chart planets where we can do some off-world skiing.”
Her emerald eyes were fixed firmly on his. “This is not a joke, Tommy. I am quite serious. My mama has asked it of me and I have agreed. I will study at the Academy campus in Marseilles, which is close to Beziers.”
“But . . . what about the ski team? What about your pilot’s training? What . . . about me?”
She reached out and took his hand; her fingers felt like liquid silver. “I will not compete next year. But I’ll continue my pilot’s training. And we will see each other. It’s not as though there aren’t transporters.”
What she was saying was true, but every part of him rejected it. It wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t run into her on campus, her red-blond hair flying behind her as she raced to class, never allowing even a minute’s leeway, always cutting it right to the second. He wouldn’t have lunch with her every Thursday, when their class schedules gave them a free hour at the same time. He wouldn’t walk under her dormitory window at night and look up, imagining her there, lying in bed, asleep in the pale moonlight.
“Why? Why is your mother asking you to do this? It isn’t fair.” He heard the petulant tone in his voice and stopped, swallowing, trying not to behave like a spoiled child.
Odile hesitated before answering. “I believe . . . that my father is not well. She has not come out and said so, but I have seen him. He has become thin.”
This blew away the head of steam Tom was developing. “Not well? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just my instinct.”
“That’s an archaic way of dealing with a problem. Why don’t they come out and talk about it? Why the mystery?”
“I think . . . they want to protect me.”
“That’s ridiculous. You suspect something anyway, only now you can’t get it out in the open.”
“That’s the way my parents are.”
Tom fumed to himself for a few moments, angry and frustrated, wanting to find someone to blame but knowing it mustn’t be Odile’s parents. This left precious few candidates, and Tom soon gave up and acknowledged the truth.
“I’m sorry, Odile, I’m selfish. I can’t stand the thought of your being that far away for a year. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
She picked up his hand and pressed her lips to it. “You are so sweet,” she murmured, and Tom vowed that he would not, under any circumstances, lose next year with Odile.
“Does the campus at Marseilles specialize in any particular area of study?” he asked, mind already nibbling at a solution.
“It offers all the course work of th
e Academy. But if there’s a strength, I would say it’s exophilosophy.”
This gave Tom pause. If she’d said any of the sciences, he’d be on firmer ground. On the other hand . . .
He put his arm around her, drawing her close as they gazed into the fire. “This is going to work,” he promised her. “We won’t be apart.”
And so it was that Tom Paris spent his junior year in Marseilles, concentrating on the study of exophilosophies, an area of his education in which, as he’d explained to his faculty advisor and his parents, he was woefully lacking.
No one was particularly fooled by this sudden interest in alien philosophies, but no one thought it could do any harm, either, and all remembered young love and how searing it could be. If these two wanted to be together, why not let them?
Tom hadn’t been in Marseilles a week when he discovered Sandrine’s, a waterfront bar and pool establishment which had been in continuous operation for almost three hundred years. It was an eclectic blend of the ancient and the modern, and populated with a colorful assortment of the town’s denizens.
Most enchanting, to Tom, was Sandrine herself. That wasn’t her real name, of course—every proprietor of Sandrine’s for the past three hundred years had taken the honorary name of its legendary founder, Sandrine Normand, who had established the bar in the troubled twenty-first century. She had created an environment that was clean, safe, and quintessentially French, in an era when those qualities were hard to come by. She was revered by her patrons, lived well over one hundred years, and died at work, making an aperitif for a wealthy horse breeder half her age who found her the most vital and appealing woman in all of France. She had presented him the drink, smiled and said, “A votre sante, mon cher,” and then keeled over behind the bar. The end was swift, painless, and elegant, characterizing Sandrine accurately.
Since then, each of the proprietresses had taken the honorary name of Sandrine. This one was sleek and blond, in her forties, with a worldly air that Tom found provocative. She was sexually bold to a degree that startled, but also tantalized, the younger man.
“You are tres beau, Thomas,” she would purr to him. “Those eyes . . . alors, you know how to make a woman weak, non?”
Tom found this flirtation great fun, gradually lost his embarrassment, and entered into the teasing with complete enthusiasm. He assumed it was understood by all parties that it was nothing more than a harmless game. That’s when he learned something more about French women.
Odile had spent the weekend at her parents’ in Beziers, but had promised to meet him at Sandrine’s on Sunday evening, when she returned to school. Tom had passed the time in her absence at the library, studying Vulcan cthia, the stoic approach to emotion control that had been formulated centuries ago by Surak. He found it mildly interesting but not enthralling, and by Sunday afternoon he felt justified in taking a break and heading for Sandrine’s just a little early.
He’d made some friends among the regulars there, particularly the pool players, with whom he felt an affinity. One of those, a grizzled, wizened man named Balzac, who claimed direct lineage with the ancient writer, was an astonishingly talented player who had taken Tom under his wing and coached him in the finer points of the game. Tom found himself a natural student, and became semi-addicted to pool. He arranged a system of “rewards”: four hours in the classroom or the library netted him twenty minutes of nine-ball. Eight hours, forty minutes. It took all his discipline to stick to this arrangement, but he did it with surprisingly few lapses.
Having spent all of Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday morning, and most of Sunday afternoon in the library had earned him an entire hour and a half of nine-ball. Since he was meeting Odile there later that night, he decided to collect his reward before that.
He arrived about six, before the place was too crowded. He eyed Sandrine behind the bar, exchanged a few ribald pleasantries with her, and then sought out Balzac. They’d been playing for about ten minutes when Sandrine brought them both a covered soup dish which contained a heavenly fragrant stew.
“It is venison, cheri,” she whispered in her husky voice. “I think you are a man who needs meat, eh?”
“There’s no such thing as meat, Sandrine. It’s all replicated.”
“C’est vrai, but this is a special replication formula derived by my father. He claimed to have eaten the real thing, and said this was the closest version he’d ever tasted.”
“Interesting.” Tom took a healthy spoonful of the stew, which was rich with garlic and sage. It was a powerful taste, ripe and gamy, but not unpleasant. He smiled appreciatively at Sandrine. “Not bad.”
She sidled closer to him, pressing one leg against his, and he was immediately conscious of the heat rising from her. She looked up at him through lowered lashes. “It is a wild meat,” she murmured. “I think it is the right choice for a man like you.”
Heat began rising from Tom, too. She was wearing a faint fragrance, something so subtle one was drawn closer in order to detect it, not cloying, not overly musky, but a hint of something delicate, delectable, sensual. He became aware of Balzac’s bemused presence and backed away slightly, spooning more of the stew into his mouth, but keeping his eye contact with Sandrine. “I think you’re right,” he said right to her, not looking away. Her smile was hooded, mysterious.
“Are we going to play or are you two going off together?” asked Balzac with good humor. Tom put down the stew and picked up his cue. “To leave a game in the middle isn’t honorable,” he announced, enjoying this flirtation. It didn’t seem dangerous to him, not yet.
Later Sandrine approached him again, carrying a crystal goblet. “C’est un vin vrai,” she said throatily, handing him the beautifully carved glass. “Not the wretched synthehol.” She pronounced it “seen-tha-hol,” which he found enchanting. When he tasted it, it was elixir. He never had real wine before, and now began to understand the French obsession.
Two glasses later he was flushed and exhilarated. He had beaten Balzac in the last three games, a unique experience. He had long since abandoned his reward system, having exceeded his hour-and-a-half limit, but it didn’t seem a major transgression. He had to wait here for Odile, anyway, and had to pass the time somehow . . .
Never had the room seemed so inviting, never had pool been so effortless. And never had the extraordinary Sandrine been more desirable. Not that he intended to act on anything, but the delectable dance they were creating between them was too seductive to end just now.
“Thomas,” she cooed, taking the pool cue from him, “help me with my technique. I think I’m not getting the stability I need for a strong shot.” She bent over the table, positioning the cue, forming the fingers of her left hand into a “bridge” upon which the cue rested. She was stretched over the table like a supple lioness, blond hair sprawling, lithe body straining against her tightly fitting bodysuit. Tom wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead.
He bent himself over her, stretching his arms to encompass hers, taking her fingers in his to reposition them. “Zut alors,” said Balzac, and wandered off to a less exclusive situation. Sandrine turned her head to look at him, her mouth only inches from his. “Do what you must, cheri, I am a very good student.”
They were just like that, Sandrine stretched over the pool table, Tom virtually on top of her, faces only inches apart, when Odile walked in.
Balzac tried a discreet cough as a warning, but it was too little too late. Odile sized up the situation in an instant and strode to the pool table, directly across from Tom and Sandrine, and began speaking in rapid-fire French that Tom, though fluent, couldn’t begin to follow. He leapt up, too late realizing how compromising the pose looked, and tried to babble some lame excuse. He knew, whatever he was saying, it didn’t quite make sense, and he realized how the wine had garbled his thoughts. Odile paid him no attention and continued her diatribe toward Sandrine.
Whatever she said, it produced an instant, electric response from the older woman, who rose in res
ponse to the challenge, circled the table toward Odile, and began her own ardent harangue.
Tom had the sense that things were roiling out of his control, but he gave his best effort to contain the damage. “Odile,” he said heartily, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just giving Sandrine some tips about her bridge.” It sounded inane, even to him, and he saw Balzac in his peripheral vision passing his hands over his eyes in mock despair, but the two women paid him no attention whatsoever, and continued their vicious tirades, which were growing in intensity and volume.
Tom found them both frightening. Odile’s green eyes had changed from emerald to a deep, sea green that looked decidedly menacing, and her hair seemed to have lost its blondness and was the red of fire, almost giving off sparks.
He had never seen her like this, but he was equally unprepared for Sandrine’s transformation, from sleek and voluptuous feline to a forceful predator. It had to be his imagination, but her fingernails seemed to have grown long and razor-sharp in the last minute. Maybe that’s because she held them, curled as though for attack, just in front of Odile’s face.
That’s when Tom became really frightened, not for Odile, but for Sandrine. Odile was a fourth-degree black belt, and if she went for Sandrine, no sharp fingernails would stop her from inflicting real damage. Of course, one of the most formidable principles of martial arts was to avoid physical combat if at all possible, but the way Odile was behaving, he wasn’t sure if pacifistic teachings would endure.
“Ladies, please, there’s no need for this,” he tried again, just as ineffectually. “Let’s all cool down and talk this over like civilized—”
It was all he got out before Odile turned to him, and he suddenly realized her venom was about to be directed toward him, a prospect that struck dread in his heart. Far better that she and her countrywoman continue whatever ancient ritual they were observing. They seemed to know the rules, but he didn’t even know the game.