by Mosaic
This last thought ripped through her mind, searing it like a jagged lightning strike, and she felt the beginning of tears sting her eyes. Daddy was looking at her, patient but unyielding. She knew he would not back down, would not simply take pity on her. He would expect her to come up with the answer. That realization was somehow calming to her, and she sank to the floor, sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap, eyes closed. She forced her mind to close out the room, the grandfather's clock, and Daddy's presence looming above her. She concentrated on the numbers, trying to see them in front of her. Nine tens was easy. She learned weeks ago that for ten times anything you just added a zero. So nine tens was ninety. She tried to see them in her mind, lined up in ordered rows: nine lionfish in one row, nine lionfish in a second row, nine lionfish in a third row. She proceeded this way until she could see all ninety fish, whiskered and malevolent, spread out in her mind's eye. If those were ten rows, she needed only add one more row. Eleven rows of fish... eleven nines. Ten of them are ninety, and if she added nine more- "Ninety-nine." She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was regarding her with a strange expression that she did not come to understand for a long time. He swooped down and lifted her up, holding her close to his chest. For a long time he didn't say anything, and she was terrified she had made a mistake.
"Is that right, Daddy?" Her voice was a whisper. "Exactly right." He sat her down and tousled her hair. "What a clever Goldenbird you are. How did you do that?"
The smile erupted on her face. "I could see the numbers. I just added another row."
He gazed at her fondly. "You know what? You not only get another ride-but you and I are going to the cornfields together."
This was the ultimate reward. Kathryn's favorite place on Earth was the cornfields of the agricultural park in which they lived, row upon row of stately tasseled figures, marching in unison, bending and swaying in the summer breeze, dancing on the wind. Sometimes when they went there, she and Daddy invented little stories they acted out-the cornstalks were Starfleet cadets, marching on the parade ground, or they were a corps de ballet, with beautifully gowned ballerinas dancing in unison-and sometimes they played hide-and-seek. Last year, when she'd watched the harvest, she cried for the loss of her companions.
She put her hand in Daddy's, and they walked out through the wide doors onto the patio. Her heart was thudding with happiness, and she wished she could preserve that moment forever.
CHAPTER 3
JANEWAY'S HEAD SHOT UP AND HER EYES FLEW OPEN AND FOR A moment she didn't know where she was. Childhood memories, recollections, and feelings hung about her, vaporous and fleeting. She tried to cling to them but they receded like shadows in the rising sun. Then the present came snapping back at her: she was on Voyager and they were in danger. The Kazon lurked outside the nebula and part of her crew was stranded on an alien planet.
A check of the time showed that she had slept for over an hour, though she would have sworn her eyes hadn't closed.
"Janeway to bridge."
"Rollins here, Captain.
"Can you give me an update?"
"Repairs are continuing. Engineering reports that we should be under way again in about four hours."
"Thank you, Lieutenant."
Now was the time to rest, to recharge her batteries in preparation for the ordeal that lay ahead. She lay down again, and tried to recapture the comforting feelings of home and family she'd been experiencing before she woke. She must've been dreaming... but what about? She couldn't retrieve it... every time she thought she'd snagged something with a corner of her mind, it slipped away again....
CHAPTER 4
"RACQUET BACK... TURN YOUR SHOULDERS... NOW- uncoil!"
The commands were endless. They became a ceaseless drone in her mind, a part of her unconscious. "Sleeve to the mouth... lengthen your follow-through... racquet face steady... level your backswing..." Her tennis coach's voice rolled over the net from the opposite end of the court as smoothly as the balls she hit. Coach Cameron made it look so easy. But most of Kathryn's balls went into the net or out of bounds, no matter how hard she tried. She "was getting frustrated. Kathryn was on one of the tennis courts of a small athletic complex near her home. It was the locus of what were known as "traditional" games-tennis, golf, and swimming. Another complex nearby housed contempo- rary activities, which included hoverball, Parrises Squares, hurdleleap, and loft circles. That's where Kathryn would much rather have been. She was good at most of those games. The Indiana spring was in fulsome bloom, with forsythia and dogwood emerging in an ecstasy of color. The air was fragrant and warm; two months later baking heat would join with oppressive humidity to create a veritable steam bath, but now the May morning was pleasant. Kathryn, however, had no appreciation of either the landscaping or the weather. She jabbed ineffectually at a stray lock of hair that kept falling in her eyes, trying to hook it around her ear. It would only fall forward again. There seemed to be nothing she could do to her thin, fine hair that would keep it out of her eyes when she exercised. "Kathryn, come up to the net." Coach Cameron was walking to her side of the net, racquet in hand. She was a short, muscular woman with thick blond curls and a smiling face. Kathryn wanted to look just like her when she was grown up, but even at nine years of age she realized that her hair would never look like Coach Cameron's. And neither would her tennis strokes. "I want to check your grip." Kathryn put her hand in the forehand grip and Coach Cameron inspected it carefully. "That might be the problem," she said. "Your grip is rotated too far to the right, so the racquet face is coming through at an angle. See?"
She swung Kathryn's arm through an exaggerated stroke. "You're hitting the ball up, and that's why so many of them are going out. Turn your hand back this way just a little." Coach Cameron rotated Kathryn's hand slightly to the left. "That should level out the stroke."
It felt awful. How could she hit the ball at all? Her hand clutched the racquet like a claw, foreign and unnatural. She practiced a stroke and felt as though her arm were some new appendage she'd never used before. "I can't do it this way," she protested, but Coach Cameron wasn't about to accept that. "It feels strange because you got used to the other way. It'll take a while before this grip feels natural." Kathryn didn't reply, but marched stoically back to the baseline. As she did, she saw something that made her mood even blacker: Hobbes Johnson, arriving early for the lesson he took right after hers. That's all she needed, jerky Hobbes Johnson to see her make a fool of herself. He was a year or two older than she, thinner than the scarecrows that stood in the cornfields, upper teeth protruding slightly, dark hair unruly under his tennis cap. Nobody wore a tennis cap, it was the dumbest thing in the world, but it was just what you'd expect from him. "Hi, Kath!" he called out, waving at her. She didn't answer. She hated being called Kath. No one called her that except this toad. And he was too ignorant to realize she was ignoring him, and smiled broadly at her. She turned and waited for Coach Cameron to start hitting balls to her, trying to get the feel of the new and uncomfortable grip change. The first ball she hit into the net. The second hit the ground in front of the net. She could feel Hobbes's eyes burrowing into her from behind. She was humiliated.
"Try squeezing the handle of the racquet as you make impact," called out Coach Cameron. Kathryn did, and hit the ball wildly to the left. She tried again and missed it entirely.
"I can't do this!" she wailed, and threw down her racquet. She'd have done anything to be allowed to stop right there. But Coach Cameron wasn't about to let her off the hook. "You have five minutes left in your lesson, Kathryn. And we're going to use them. Now-keep your eye on the ball. was In the next five minutes, she managed to hit maybe ten balls over the net. The others went wildly astray. By the time Coach Cameron called an end to it, Kathryn's eyes were beginning to sting with tears of frustration. She couldn't look at Hobbes. She walked toward her tennis bag, eyes on the ground.
"Hobbes," said Coach Cameron, "I have to go inside for a few minutes. Maybe you
could warm up with Kathryn?"
"Sure," Hobbes said agreeably, and Coach Cameron walked away from them and toward the office of the tennis facility. Kathryn kept her face down and opened her racquet cover, sticking the racquet inside. Perspiration dripped from her; she was hot and angry. She thought of the cold juice waiting for her at home.
"Don't you want to hit some?" asked Hobbes, the disappointment in his voice not hidden.
"I hate this game," said Kathryn emphatically. "I don't know why my parents want me to play it. It's a waste of time. I'd rather be playing Parrises Squares."
"Your parents are traditionalists, like mine. That's why we live in the agricultural community. That's why we go to the school we do." Only Hobbes would use a word like "traditionalist," Kathryn thought. He was such a vulk that he didn't realize his grownup vocabulary sounded ridiculous. She began stuffing her things into her tennis bag. "I don't see why that means I have to learn to play tennis. It's a ridiculous game."
"I think it's fun."
"You can hit the ball across the net."
"I couldn't two years ago."
She looked up at him. Hobbes played so well she'd assumed it came naturally to him, like mathematics did to her. "Really?"
"My first coach told me I should forget tennis and take up hoverball."
"Why didn't you?"
"I guess because he made me mad."
This was surprising to her. Hobbes was such a quiet, meek boy that the thought that he could get mad would never have occurred to her. "Coach Cameron makes me mad, too. But she makes me feel like quitting."
"Quitting is easy. I didn't want to give old Epkowicz the satisfaction."
"I'm telling my mother this was it. I'm not going through this anymore." He regarded her solemnly. She felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny, as though he were judging her: she was taking the easy way out. Well, so what? If she never had to experience the disgrace she had felt today, she'd gladly take Hobbes Johnson's censure instead. She batted an errant lock of hair out of her eyes.
"Well, so long, Hobbes. Have a good lesson."
"If you'd ever like to hit some, let me know."
"Sure."
"Sometimes playing with kids your own age is better than working with the coach."
"You're probably right."
"How about tomorrow?"
The thought of being seen playing tennis with Hobbes Johnson was enough to make her toes curl under.
"I have piano tomorrow. And I have to help my mother with something." His earnest eyes gazed at her. She realized that Hobbes was accustomed to being rejected by his peers, and for a brief moment she considered accepting his offer. But then the vision of facing Emma North or Mary O'Connell and admitting she'd spent time with him overwhelmed her. "Sorry," she mumbled, and picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Maybe another time," he said mildly, and she nodded and walked away. What a terrible day this was turning into.
It didn't get better when she announced to her mother that she was quitting tennis. Her mother was a tall, gracious woman with curly brown hair-why did everybody have better hair than she did?-rich blue eyes, and a beautiful smile. When she was very young she used to do whatever she could to make her mother smile, because her face looked so happy when she did. Her mother wasn't smiling now. She sat in the breakfast room, listening quietly as Kathryn poured out her woeful tale. "I'm no good at it, and I hate it, and I'm never going to get better. I'm not doing it any more. It was embarrassing! Vulky Hobbes Johnson was there and I couldn't even hit the ball."
"Please don't call your friends vulky," murmured her mother. "He's not my friend. And it was horrible to have him see me be humiliated." She felt tears begin to sting her eyes again as she relived the awful experience. "I want to play Parrises Squares. I could be on the fourth-grade team, Mrs. Matsumoto said so. But even if I don't get on the team, I'm not going back to Coach Cameron, I don't care what you say!" The tears began spilling out of her eyes, and the pentup emotion of the day erupted, and she shuddered with great sobs.
Her dog, Bramble, a little wire-haired mutt, had been sitting quietly nearby, and now he became alarmed and came up to her, tail wagging, sticking his wet nose against her leg.
Her mother regarded her pensively, then held out her arms. "Come here, my angel."
Kathryn fled into her arms. There lay refuge; there lay comfort. She had been rocked in her mother's arms since she was born, and though she knew she was too old now, she still loved the feeling of haven. There, on her mother's lap, she was safe from the world; tears were dried, feelings were soothed, anxieties calmed. She was sure this would be the end of tennis lessons. Bramble, too, seemed to feel the crisis was over, and sat at the foot of the rocking chair, gazing up at the two with big dark eyes.
Her mother rocked her, and stroked her hair, and wiped her eyes, and murmured "There, there," the way she always did. But when Kathryn was calm again, her mother began talking.
"I know it's hard to struggle with learning a new skill. And no one likes to feel frustrated or humiliated. Anyone would be upset by feelings like that." Kathryn nodded. "But not everything in life comes easily. Some things require struggle. And if we don't learn how to make that kind of effort, we won't be prepared to learn the difficult lessons of life." With a sinking heart, Kathryn realized what her mother was saying. "You're not making me go back! I won't do it! I don't care!" But her mother kept talking, calmly and soothingly. "So many things come easily to you, Kathryn. If we let you quit everything that was difficult, you wouldn't learn to work for what you earn. You'd expect everything to be easy. And life isn't that way. What you must work to earn, you value more. So it's important that you not quit tennis. If you have to work harder to learn to play-then you have to work harder. It may not seem that way now, but you'll be very glad later on that we didn't let you quit." Kathryn felt like crying all over again-it wasn't fairffb suddenly the whoop and clatter of her sister Phoebe rang through the house. She was coming home from her play group; she carried artwork and crumbling cookies and, as usual, exuded the energy of a hurricane.
"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, we baked cookies and I did fingerpaints and clay and-was Phoebe came skidding to a halt when she saw Kathryn on her mother's lap. "I want lap, too," she announced firmly, and began crawling onto Gretchen Janeway's already crowded legs.
It isn't fair, thought Kathryn. Phoebe wasn't upset, Phoebe wasn't being forced to do something she hated, Phoebe didn't need comforting. Phoebe even had curly hair! Why did she have to share? Kathryn felt misery begin to envelop her completely, and she slid off onto the floor. "I'm going to my room," she announced, and marched away with Bramble toddling after her, hoping her mother would be really, really sorry she'd driven her away.
She shut the door of her room firmly-no one could accuse her of slamming it, but it felt good to hear the louder-than-usual snap as it closed-and threw herself on the bed. Bramble immediately jumped up and snuggled next to her, and Kathryn wrapped her arm around his warm, woolly body. Tears continued to roll out of her eyes as she indulged in her miserable feelings, and soon she felt Bramble's silky tongue licking the salty droplets. This was almost as good as her mother's lap. Bramble had been lapping up her tears ever since he was a puppy, and Kathryn was convinced he did it because he knew it made her feel better (and not, as Daddy had suggested, because he was attracted to the salty taste). Daddy. Would he let her quit tennis? Kathryn pondered that one for a minute, then dismissed it. She couldn't remember when Mommy and Daddy didn't agree on issues like these. Was that part of being traditionalists, too?
She looked around her room, which didn't look like the room of any of her friends. They had spare, minimally furnished rooms with no evidence of clutter; Kathryn's was decorated in a style she knew was ancient: a white four-poster bed with a ruffled flounce, lace curtains at the window, shelves lined with stuffed animals. Her mother had shown her pictures of rooms like that from centuries ago; their whole house looked like an ancient heirloom from the twenty-
second century. She supposed that was how "traditionalists" decorated their houses.
The chime of her desk console interrupted her thoughts, and she rolled over to see that it was an incoming message from her friend Mary O'Connell. Kathryn wiped at her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair; Mary was always immaculate, and she didn't want to appear mussed by comparison. She pushed the control on the console, and Mary's cheerful face appeared on the screen.
"Kathryn, guess what?" bubbled Mary. She was a vivacious girl with huge brown eyes and satiny hair so blond it was almost white. She looked as though she were about to burst with some wonderful news, and indeed, without waiting for Kathryn to make a guess, she barreled ahead. "I'm captain of the fourth-grade Parrises Squares team!" This announcement hit Kathryn like a slap, and that must have been apparent to Mary, because she looked puzzled. "What's the matter?" Kathryn wasn't going to tell her that she was better at Parrises Squares than anyone in the fourth grade, including the boys, and that if anyone should be captain it should be Kathryn Janeway. Instead, her voice rising once more into a wail, she poured out her lament to her friend: "My parents won't let me be on the team. I have to learn stupid tennis instead! It's not fair-we could be on the team together!"