Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [14]
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