Flashback - Diane Carey [64]
"It was her decision," Janeway contemplated, "but I guess I wasn't satisfied with that. I did for a long time think about her and wish she'd come. And I wondered why she didn't."
Tuvok made a small gesture in that direction. "Why not ask her, Captain?"
As an actor retreats into the theater wings, he stepped backward into the shadow again, as if to release her from concerns about him and give her a chance to follow her own lead.
With a last glance at him, she stiffened and stepped out into the open training area and crossed tentatively toward B'Elanna and Amelia Earhart.
Would they even see her? Would this be like the first moments on Excelsior?
Then B'Elanna looked up. "Oh, Captain. I didn't know you were down here."
"Yes, I am. What's the problem?"
Amelia Earhart turned to her, stark features and square jaw patched by the subdued lighting in this cubicle.
"What do you mean, what's the problem? You know what the problem is! Why did you ever bring me on this ship?" Bitterness roiled in the legendary woman's thready voice as she stood up and paced. "I've seldom felt so useless in my life! I hate this ship. I hate you. What have you done to me? What shall I have to do here? Clean the floors? I wish I had died in the Pacific Ocean like I was supposed to!"
In this light her cheekbones shone and her eyes were reduced to wedges. Her short-cropped hair was a sandy tuft, and she seemed rather mannish in her behavior.
Janeway motioned back to the swivel stools at the console. "Sit down, Miss Earhart."
To be more inviting, she sat down herself first.
With her hands on her hips and her head hanging a little, Amelia Earhart stared at the deck, then peered at Janeway.
After a moment she came back and sat down, gripping the sides of the stool with her hands. She stared at her knees. "I'm hopelessly out of date. I fail to understand the simplest details about this vessel. I barely can conceive of why it can go in space, not to begin mentioning how it propels itself without even air to pull on."
Watching the other woman for even the smallest nuance, Janeway asked, "Why . . . did you fly?"
"Because I was told I couldn't."
The answer came so quick as to be rather a shock. Obviously she'd been asked this before.
"I enjoyed flying at first," she went on then. "But even more I enjoyed the adventure, and more than that the limelight. Being famous was like being just a little drunk all the time. I got a lot of things out of the idea of flying, and out of having flown. I would make one flight, and sustain the fame for years. Speaking engagements, dinners with royalty, cables from presidents, people paying attention to me ... I was appointed assistant to the general traffic manager at Transcontinental Air Transport. I was supposed to attract 'lady passengers.'"
"Yes, I know," Janeway said. "Later that company became TWA. Very famous, and long-lived."
Amelia looked at her. "How do you know that?"
"I read a few files about your life after you ... were found."
The aviatrix bobbed her head in a kind of modest
nod. "That's very nice of you." She glanced at the warp graph display one more time, then turned her back on it. "In order to fly across the Atlantic, I had to learn the art of instrumentational flying, and even very few men knew how to do that well. Or at all. But I did it, in 1932. I was off course. I landed in Londonderry, and I had to ask a man in a pasture where I was. After a while, the question of a round-the-world flight came up. I was feeling rather pressured to accomplish this one more thing. I thought I had one more good flight in my system, but when I finished that job I intended to give up long-distance 'stunt' flying."
Leaning forward a little, Janeway clasped her hands and rested her elbows on her knees. "That round-the-world flight. . . beautiful, I'll bet. Exotic places-"
"Quite exotic, yes, very. Miami, San Juan, Africa, Karachi, Calcutta... oh, Rangoon, Singapore, Bandoeng... the monsoons stopped us in Bandoeng for several days.