Pathways - Jeri Taylor [111]
The name he had chosen was Tess. This was the name of a young woman he had adored during his first year in high school, albeit from afar. She was dazzlingly beautiful, intimidatingly brilliant, and wildly popular. Tom fantasized endlessly about asking her out, even going to the lengths of writing out the dialogue he might use, and practicing it so he would sound fluid and spontaneous. But he could never summon the courage to approach her.
And so it gave him perverse pleasure to name the shuttle after her, and to feel “her” respond to his commands, docile and compliant.
Of course he would never tell this to Odile.
She took the seat next to him, staring in fascination at the cockpit. “I can’t wait to start my training,” she breathed. “I’ve wanted to fly since I was a small child.”
“Me, too. I just had more access to shuttles because of my father.”
“It was very generous of your father to help you learn.”
This caught Tom by surprise. Generous? It was hardly a word he’d use to describe the admiral. He wasn’t sure how to respond, and when he did, he could hear his voice in his ears.
“I’ve never thought of it that way. Maybe you’re right.”
He could feel her gaze on him, and resisted turning toward her. He was going through the prelaunch check, and forced himself to concentrate on the routine. He didn’t like conversations like this.
“My father and mother weren’t particularly interested in what I wanted to do,” she continued. “They wanted me to do what they considered important. That was to ski.”
“And look at the result. You’re a terrific skier.”
“But could I have been a splendid artist by now? Or a poet? Or a pilot?”
“Are those what you’d rather be?”
He heard her heavy sigh next to him. “I don’t know. I’m not really trying to find fault with my parents—they did so much for me. I wouldn’t be at the Academy now if they hadn’t given me such support.” There was a small silence, no more than a second or two. “But I can’t help but wonder what might have happened . . . if they’d been more like your father.”
Something ugly rose in Tom’s throat. The retort was on his tongue: You’d have ended up believing you weren’t good enough. But he squelched it, and focused instead on the prelaunch. “All systems on-line. You ready?”
If she was surprised at his sudden shift of subject, she didn’t reveal it. “Anytime” was her reply, and if anything, what he heard in her voice was eagerness.
Tom maneuvered the shuttle out of orbit, moved as always by the sight of Earth receding from them, then set a course out of the Sol system and in the direction of the Alpha Centauri system.
“We’re ready to go to warp,” he announced presently. “I’m only taking us to warp one this time. I warn you, it can be disorienting at first.”
“I thought inertial dampers prevented any g forces,” she commented.
“They do. But seeing the distortion of the stars . . . well, you’ll see what I mean. Unless you don’t want to look.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she replied firmly.
And so he entered the commands, delicately as always, because a woman liked to be treated delicately, and then felt the palpable thrill as the shuttle responded, creating the warp bubble which cushioned it in a pocket of subspace, and then bursting forward into a speed faster than that of light.
He had gone through this process many times, of course, the first when he was only nine, but he never ceased to thrill at the sensation. The stars seemed to elongate, stretching as though they were rubber bands, further and further until it seemed they must snap and disintegrate before his eyes. When it looked as though they could protract no further, they blurred slightly. Then there was a brief moment of total silence, a vacuumlike stillness that seemed to pull at one’s stomach, which churned briefly, and