“You know,” he said, “I was going to suggest we go somewhere for this last day. Rome, or Paris… But then I realized I just wanted to be here.”
I smiled. I’d had the same thought.
And then he said, “Kate, you do realize, don’t you, that I want to marry you?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Mollie was snuffling around my boots. “I beg your pardon?”
He smiled at me. “You must have worked that out by now!”
“Mark, we’ve known each other… What? Two months? Not even that! Seven weeks!”
“Long enough for me to know.”
“But… You don’t mean it, do you? Surely you don’t mean it.”
He took my hand. “Kate,” he said, “I mean it absolutely. I think you’re great. I haven’t laughed this much… Well, you’ve made me feel happy again.”
I felt a deep wave of affection toward him. “Oh, Mark, I’m so glad about that! But marriage?”
“Listen,” he said. “Losing Lisa…” For a moment, his face took on a haunted look. He went on, “It brought home to me how fragile life is. How easily we can lose everything. And that if another chance comes our way, we should have the good sense to seize it. I mean it, Kate. I want to marry you.”
For a moment, I wavered. He really did make me feel so special. He made me feel loved. But I was leaving on the Billings the next morning. “Oh, Mark, it’s much too soon!”
He lifted my hand to kiss it. “All right,” he said, and began to laugh. “I’m hardly going to force you, am I?”
“Can we still see each other?”
“When you’re back home, you mean?”
“There is that,” I admitted. “Please?”
“Oh, Kate,” he said. “I’ll be waiting at the docking bay to welcome you home.”
So that’s where we left it, for the moment. Agreeing to see each other whenever I was home… And I found that whenever I was with him, that’s how it felt—like coming home. The Billings was close to Earth during this period, and so we saw a fair amount of each other. We found, yet again, that what made us most happy was simply being together. Lots of long walks, with Mollie, of course, but also just time at home. He was a great cook (I am not), and he would make me stop and take time away from messages and reports (once you reach a certain level at Starfleet, you’re never totally on leave). Left to my own devices, I would lose myself completely in my work. But Mark made me look up from my desk, made me relax and enjoy the world around us. And did I mention how handsome he was?
I thought long and hard about his offer of marriage. I was trying to see a way through, but I couldn’t yet. I didn’t want to be an absentee wife—he had lost one wife already, lost the home they had together. And I guess, too, that I had been frightened by my experience with my former lover. In my mind, perhaps, I had conflated an offer of marriage with the need to give up some essential part of myself. A year after his first proposal, tucked up at home with my big silly dog snoozing between us, he asked again, “Is it still too soon, Kate?”
“It’s still too soon, Mark.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’m still prepared to wait.”
Further discussion was interrupted as a message arrived for me.
“Damn,” I said. “The kennels have cancelled—”
Mark sighed. “I’m even prepared,” he said, “to take care of your dog.”
And he did take very good care of my dog.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN THE CAPTAIN’S SEAT—2371
EACH TIME THAT I SAID GOODBYE TO MARK (AND MOLLIE) WAS A WRENCH. Whenever I came home, we fell so easily back into step with each other. We picked up conversations again as if one of us had only been away for five minutes. We liked to do the same things. We liked to spend time with friends and family. We liked to sit in front of the fire, reading, sometimes sharing some piece of information that we knew the other would find interesting. We liked to be outdoors (his work, as an industrial designer, kept him at the drawing board; mine, of course, often kept me from the outdoors completely). And Mollie, of course, was growing and needed her exercise. We were often out together for hours, the three of us, walking through the woods or along the coast, Mollie running ahead. It was good just to be together. If this all sounds very sedate—I guess it was. My job brought enough in the way of adrenalin rushes. Home life I wanted to be steady and reliable.
We were fortunate that we both got on with each other’s friends, and we liked each other’s family members. Mark loved my nieces: partly for Yianem’s sake (their friendship went back a long way) and partly because he clearly liked children. He was good with kids too. He had a great deal of patience (he needed that, given my stubborn streak). But I often wondered why he was not a father already. I wouldn’t have minded if kids had been part of the package. One evening, back at his home in Portland, curled up before the fire with mugs of hot chocolate (with a good dash of brandy), and some Debussy whirling gently around us, I decided to ask. It’s one of those conversations that most partners have to have at some point. I knew how serious he was.
“Mark,” I said. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but was there a reason that you and Lisa didn’t have children?”
He looked at me in surprise, and with a little shock. I didn’t very often bring up Lisa—that was his prerogative—although I by no means minded if he wanted to talk about her. I never felt that I was in competition with a dead woman. Mark had loved her immensely, that was clear from the way he talked about her, and they had been very happy. She was a huge part of him, a part that I would never want to change or deny. And his relationship with Lisa proved to me how deeply and carefully he loved.
“That’s an interesting question, Kate.”
His face was turning sad. I reached over to take his hand. “Hey,” I said. “I don’t want to upset you. We don’t have to talk about this.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “No, it’s a fair question. It’s just… another one of those regrets. I guess we thought there would always be time. We were busy; we were enjoying life. We’d only been married three years, you know.”
I nodded. Another late starter.
“We knew it would be a huge commitment, a huge change,” he said. “We’d both seen what happened when friends had children. You have to hunker down, don’t you? Focus on building a home.”
I had observed this too, with my childhood friends. Knowing this was something of a weight on my mind: How did I square that with my desire to be on board ship? With my desire to be a captain? How would I be able to make this work: ship life and home life? Would I want to be away so much, like Dad had been? In my heart I knew I couldn’t give up ship life. But was it fair to ask this of Mark, who had lost one home already? I started to feel very sad that I couldn’t square this circle.
“But it just never happened?” I said.
“Pretty much. I guess we thought, let’s store up a little more time together as just the two of us before we brought someone else into the mix. But we were nearly there. I guess there would have been a baby within eighteen months.”
My heart went out to him. This was another part of his future that had been lost: a child of his and Lisa’s that could only ever now remain imagined. I reached out to hold him and he accepted my embrace. We sat like that for a while, simply being together. Talking about this had made him sad, but I wasn’t sorry that I had asked. I understood him better now.
“Do you not want children, Kate?”
I sighed. “I like the idea… You know how I love the nieces.”
“Well, they’re very lovable. But?”
“But it doesn’t seem very practical, does it?” I said. “It’s like you said, you have to hunker down. Turn inward. Build… I don’t know, a nest, or something!”
“That’s Phoebe and Yia, isn’t it? Two momma birds running around, and three chicks, beaks upturned and squawking!”
I laughed. “That’s exactly it!”
“And
you don’t want to build a nest, Kate?”
“I want to be a starship captain.” I flushed. I sounded like a kid, saying what job they wanted when they grew up, blurting out a dream. But I was a Starfleet commander, chief science officer on a large ship, overseeing a big team. It wasn’t a dream. It was within my grasp. “And I guess I struggle to see how I can do both.”
He thought about that for a while. “Your father did it,” he said.
“He did, didn’t he.” I looked Mark straight in the eye. “He also died young.”
“I understand,” he said. “But, you know, Kate—life is risk—”
“You need to visit my workplace, mister! Far too many Cardassians, these days!”
“But there’s a treaty now, isn’t there? I thought we were at peace.”
And we were, more or less. Some rumbles on the border, and some very unhappy colonists.
“Anyway,” he said, “I don’t mean that kind of risk. I mean, risking connection. Risking what being with someone might mean. You know, don’t you, that I’m ready to take that risk again.”
After all he had lost. “Oh, Mark…”
He smiled at me. “I’m ready to wait, you know. And, Kate, one more word on this—if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that we shouldn’t meet trouble halfway. Life has a way of taking us by surprise, and we should take our chances of happiness while we can.”
* * *
Going back to the Billings that time was very hard. My conversation with Mark filled my mind, as if he had offered a glimpse to me of how I might have it all; how there needn’t be this divide between ship life and home. He was right about Dad: he had kept on within Starfleet, and he would have carried on indefinitely—if it hadn’t been for the Cardassians. I guess that this was what had always held me back: the thought that I might at any moment be called to action, and that this was not fair to someone outside of Starfleet. I knew how hard Dad’s death had hit us all. I realized now that at the back of my mind I had always assumed that there was going to be open war with the Cardassians, and that when that happened, I would have duties to perform. But Mark was right: the treaty with the Cardassians had been signed, and the Demilitarized Zone established, and, at that time, it really did seem that war was no longer going to happen. Perhaps it really would be possible for me to combine my two loves.
Yes, I was most certainly in love with Mark, and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. My affair at the Academy, my only other comparator, had been a children’s game in comparison to this: two people who were barely adults playing at having a serious relationship. As for the affairs I’d had since, all of which had been with other officers—well, they had most certainly been a lot of fun, good company and great sex, but they had not been intended by any of the participants to be anything more than brief encounters while between postings. Being with Mark was nothing like that. With Mark, I had felt straight away that I was coming home. We had skipped the whole dating period completely; we had never felt the need to dress up and go out or spend time away in exotic and romantic locations. It was as if we didn’t need these set dressings: we got the hang of each other very quickly. We were happy puttering around his home or my home; walking Mollie; reading and listening to music; cooking, talking, or even just being together. We were happy looking inward.
When I was back on the Billings, but still in near-Earth orbit, we spoke again briefly via the comm. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation,” I said.
“Have you changed you mind? About my offer, I mean.”
“Not yet… I guess, I’m trying to see how we can make it work. When I’m on board ship so much. Away so much…”
“If that’s all that’s stopping you, Kate, then let’s think about it. Because I don’t think it needs to. What we have—it’s great. It already works. We can keep on making it work. We’re grown-ups.” He smiled. “Aren’t you Starfleet command types meant to be tactical geniuses?”
“We have our moments.”
“Then, like the song says—we can work it out.” I heard a whining noise in the background. Mollie jumped up into view and barked. Mark sighed. “You’ll have to excuse me. Your damn dog needs walking.”
* * *
The treaty with the Cardassians was in place, but during the following year we were seeing how fragile it might prove to be. During this year, a new complication arose which threatened the hard-won peace with the Cardassians, and which certainly tried the consciences of everyone in Starfleet. There were numerous Federation worlds that now found themselves within the new Demilitarized Zone. Other worlds found that, with the new border that the treaty established, their worlds were suddenly transferred to Cardassian jurisdiction. Naturally, these people did not want to become subjects of the Cardassian Union. Everyone was offered the chance of resettlement—and the resources were put there to assist them—but who willingly abandons their home? How would I have felt, if I had been told that our old farm was now the property of the Cardassians, and that I could either live with it, or move on? I had a great deal of sympathy with their plight, but there were broader concerns, and a larger peace to maintain. When colonists on these worlds began to arm themselves, my sympathies lessened considerably. Terrorism is never the answer, and, ultimately, that’s what the Maquis were. Suddenly, that peace we had all expected had become more precarious.
It’s remarkable, looking back, to realize how many Starfleet personnel went over to the Maquis. Some went out of principle—this was why Chakotay joined them, and I respect that decision, although I do not agree with it. But some were just looking for adventure, a chance to live outside the confines of the Federation. Laurie Fitz informed me that Owen Paris’s son, Tom, had gone out there. I guess I wasn’t surprised—Tom’s decisions now seemed to be entirely guided by what would most cause embarrassment for his father—and my heart went out to Owen. All of this, as well as my conversation with Mark, whirled around my head. What was my duty? Was there anything that I could contribute to this? I had believed that I had a duty to stay in Starfleet as long as war was coming, and although war seemed no longer imminent, the peace was still not secure. The next few years would surely see me back in combat, even if this time I was fighting people who had once been colleagues.
Life on the Billings had not improved. After a couple of months back on board, playing Ward’s pointless games, I began to give serious consideration to resigning my commission. I was missing Mark terribly, and I was starting to think I had made a bad decision coming back. I felt that I was not being reasonable asking him to wait. I knew he wanted to marry me, and I knew he wanted children. He had lost so much when Lisa died, and I felt that maybe this delay wasn’t fair on him. I felt as if I should make a decision, either way. I should commit, or I should let him move on. Increasingly, however, I was struggling to think of how I could be happy without him, and I was struggling to see how I could combine this with fighting the Maquis. This wasn’t a decision to take lightly, so I turned to my mentor for advice.
Parvati Pandey was semiretired now, but was still teaching her Ethics of Command classes at the Academy. She smiled when she saw my face.
“Kathryn. Always good to see you. How’s life on the Billings?”
“That’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”
“I think I can guess. Ward being his usual self?”
“It does baffle me, Parvati, how he’s gotten this far.”
“I’ve seen him in action. He knows how to flatter people.”
I guess it was indiscreet of an admiral to talk this way to a commander about her captain, but I’ve observed that as people move closer to retirement, they start to care less and less about workplace diplomacy. I suppose they’re halfway out of the game, and this is their last chance to shape how it’s played after their departure. These days I sometimes find myself doing the same.
“I never did quite work out how to flatter people.”
“Oh, you have your own charms, Kathryn.
I’ve watched senior officers fall over themselves to raise a smile from you. But you said in your message that you wanted some advice?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m thinking of resigning my commission.”
She looked at me in horror. “What? Kathryn! That’s a terrible idea!”
I laughed. “Well, I guess I don’t need to force you to tell me your opinion!”
“Why on Earth would you do that? Not over Neil Ward, surely!”
“No, no, it’s not just that, although—damn the man, he sure does make life miserable! It infuriates me! It doesn’t have to be this way! It shouldn’t be this way!”
“It’s not how you’d run your ship?”
“Damned right.”
“So at least you’ve learned something from him.”
“I guess…”
“And you’ve made sure you’ve got command opportunities?”
“Yes, night-shift command, all the usual boxes checked.”
“So tell me the whole story.”
I explained about Mark; how much I missed him and wanted to be with him. How he wanted me to marry him. How I felt I was being unfair to make him wait.
“Is he asking you to resign, Kate? To choose between him and your commission?”
“What? No! Quite the opposite—”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I made that mistake before, Parvati. Marriage isn’t sacrificing yourself, is it? It’s… about each of you letting the other flourish.”
“But you don’t think that’s possible?”
“I think it’s hard.”
“You never struck me as someone who would back away from a challenge. Do you think you can flourish outside of Starfleet?”
I thought about that. Haltingly, I said, “Starfleet isn’t everything.”
“I think it is for you, Kate. All right. Let’s say you leave. What would you do instead?”
“Maybe… teach at the Academy?”
The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway Page 13