Pathways - Jeri Taylor [108]
On this day, the turns seemed to carve like butter. His edges were strong, but not so deep as to cost him time. He felt as though he were flying. There was no sensation of wind, just the exhilaration of streaking through the air, unfettered, part of the air and the sky and the snow, a headlong flight that was so smooth, so perfect, he might have been falling through space.
He sensed—no, more than that, he knew—that this run was undoubtedly a personal best. He might not overtake the Austrian, but he would be able to say that on this day, he had excelled.
What happened next he couldn’t explain. For no reason, no stimulus that he could identify, his eye focused for a fraction of a second on the spectators that lined the course. There weren’t that many, and maybe that’s why he could see whom he saw.
A figure in Starfleet winter wear, bundled against the cold, a sandy mop of hair tucked under an insulated cap, chiseled features in a stern face, a face that was looking directly at him.
His father.
His father had never come to a meet. Had he actually made the effort, taken the time to transport from San Francisco to Jungfrau in order to see his son compete?
The moment of effortless euphoria was gone. Tom was suddenly aware of everything around him, the cold wind, the shuddering bumpiness of the icy snow, the muffled sounds of people calling out to him. His mind snapped from its state of bliss into a rude awareness of the now, and suddenly he had to think about what to do. His body had taken over for him until this moment, and now his mind had interceded, disrupting the purity and clarity of the experience.
He felt one ski begin to lose an edge as he carved a turn, and he compensated by digging in, knowing as he did that he would be losing hundredths of a second. He tried to block that thought but it was with him as he approached the next gate and he determined to make up the time. He came into the turn too fast, dug his edge, felt it catch, shifted his weight, knew that his balance was slipping away, tried desperately to right himself, using his pole for leverage but knowing all these efforts were fruitless.
He went down in a sprawl, flipping over in a drunken somersault while clawing at the snow for a grip to stop his downward tumble. His face scraped an icy outcropping and he felt the sudden warmth of blood, saw it fleck out behind him in a shower of pink on the snow. Down he tumbled, over and over, leaving a bloody smear behind him, feeling bones twist and muscles tear, and nothing, it seemed, would slow his ignominious descent.
And then, finally, he was able to clutch at the icy snow, digging in his hands, raking them through the snow pack, bringing his frantic tumble to an end. He lay there, staring up through immense treetops at a gray and rolling sky, unwilling to move for fear he wouldn’t be able to. In seconds he was surrounded by teammates, medical personnel, and competition officials. When he demonstrated that he could move every part of him they asked, wasn’t seeing double and could count backward, they did an emergency transport into the medical facility.
Before he dematerialized, he scanned the crowd for his father, but saw no one that resembled him even slightly.
That same night he was transported home, bones regenerated and muscle tears reknitted, still residually sore in places but essentially whole once more. He mother fretted over him and offered to bring him dinner in bed, on a tray, as she had when he was a child and was sick, but Tom wanted to be at the family table that night. Whatever his father thought of him for his mishap, he wanted to know what it was.
His sister Moira was with them that evening, home for the weekend from South Carolina, where she was in medical