Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [28]
Torres tilted her head and placed one hand on her hip. “Well, you’re flushed and a little bedraggled.” She nodded at Kes’s hair. She was right; Kes had been running her hands through it just moments before.
“Most of all, though,” Torres continued. “You’re not in your usual resting position: posture straight, head high, hands clasped behind your back.” She smiled slightly as though afraid to give offense.
Kes blinked hard. “I didn’t realize you’d ever paid that much attention to me.” B’Elanna pursed her lips. “You have to admit we’ve never really spent any time together before.”
Torres looked down at the floor and then back up into Kes’s eyes. “I know. Frankly, I didn’t think we had much in common. You’re good with people. I’m good with equipment, engines. I’m half Klingon, and you’re always so… serene.”
“Serene,” Kes echoed. “It certainly isn’t the case now, if it ever was.”
Torres smiled. “I know. I kind of like it. It’s as if you’ve fallen to my level of imperfection.”
Kes just stared at her until Torres laughed, then handed over a padd she’d been holding.
“Here,” she said. “A new idea. If you like it, we could try to make it on the holodeck.”
Kes looked at her in wonder. “You’re not giving up on me, even though I was so nasty to you? Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Torres shrugged. “Oh, and anybody who picks a fight with me deserves to call me by my first name. Let me know if you’re interested in the project and I’ll arrange it.” She patted the side of the door frame and was gone.
Kes went to the bed, sat down, and turned the padd on. Scrolling through the pages, she realized it was a set of building plans. It contained diagrams, measurements, and directions for a project, but it was the photograph of the finished construct that captured her attention.
She didn’t know what it was, but it was beautiful. On a small rise in the middle of a field of tall grass stood a wooden structure: the skeleton of an elongated pyramid with a lattice of supports crisscrossing it and a ladder running up one side. Metal blades bloomed at its apex like the petals of a flower. According to the accompanying description, she was looking at a device called a “windmill.” There were several different kinds, but this one was like those that had been used on Earth’s North American continent near the end of the nineteenth century to pump groundwater. The circle of blades-it was called the wheel-rotated when the wind blew and turned a gear that moved a shaft-the sucker rod-up and down, pumping water up from the ground for drinking, washing, and irrigating crops. How handy a windmill would have been on Ocampa!
She sent a quick “yes, thank you” message to B’Elanna through the companel, then headed to bed. As had been typical for several weeks, she had difficulty dropping off. But this time, her thoughts were of windmills and clear, clean water rising from the ground, rather than of anger and blood. Sleep, when it finally came, was met with a smile.
Two days later, Kes met B’Elanna outside holodeck one, where the engineer had the program ready and waiting. “This is Tom’s holodeck time we’re using” was the first thing she said. “He lost a bet.” Her mouth quirked upward in a smile. “It’s going to take a while for us to finish, so we’re going to have to beg, borrow, or steal some extra timeslots.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I always have extra replicator rations because I actually eat Neelix’s cooking. I’m sure I can arrange some trades,” Kes said.
B’Elanna nodded, then gestured that Kes could enter the holodeck.
The doors opened to a wonderland. The first thing Kes noticed was the sky. It showed as much white as blue; puffballs of clouds, their top sides glowing gold in the sunlight, hung low enough to cast shadows on the knee-length grass that billowed as far as the eye could see. To her right stood a white wooden house flanked by a bright red barn. About a hundred meters away, in a mowed area to her left, sat stacks of lumber and a wooden chest with a closed