Pathways - Jeri Taylor [13]
“Please, not another lecture about the natural order of things,” he said. “I know all that. Can’t we get going? The bugs don’t bother you as much if you keep moving.”
His father’s eyes seemed sorrowful as he gazed at Chakotay, and the boy felt faintly guilty. He broke the look by slapping at the insects that buzzed about his head. After a moment, Antonio took the lead and they proceeded deeper into the rain forest.
As the afternoon wore on, Chakotay became more and more irritable. He was suffocatingly hot, damp with perspiration, covered with welts from insect bites, and tired of this endless trek through a snake-infested jungle. The cacophony of animal and bird calls that swirled around them had given him a headache, and he wanted nothing more than to be back at home, swimming with his friends in the cool green lake that was fed by mountain streams.
Gradually, he became aware that his father was saying something, something that had blended into the clamor of parrot and monkey sounds. He turned to see his father looking up, pointing toward the sky. His gaze followed. “Listen to him, Chakotay. Do you hear what he says to you?”
Chakotay located the hawk circling above them, its screech indistinguishable from that of other wild birds. He looked at his father, whose face was shining once more with joy. Kolopak looked back at Chakotay, beaming. “Do you hear it?”
Chakotay shrugged and shook his head. “He says, ‘You are home,’ “ said Kolopak with heavy significance.
Something unloosed itself in Chakotay’s mind, even as the sudden slippage of wet earth on a sodden hillside will precipitate a mudslide. He hadn’t planned to say the words, but they came unbidden, and he could no more stop them than he could hold back tons of sediment single-handed.
“I’m leaving the tribe, Father,” he announced, and waited heavily for Kolopak’s response.
There was none. A leaden silence hung between them, punctuated by insect hum and bird call. Chakotay continued, energized by finally getting this out in the open. “I got to know a lot of the Starfleet officers patrolling the Cardassian border . . . I asked Captain Sulu if he would sponsor me at Starfleet Academy.”
He was prepared for his father’s distress at this revelation. Hiromi Sulu, grandson of the legendary Hikaru Sulu of the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701, had become a familiar figure on their homeworld, Trebus, which was near Cardassian space. Captain Sulu had warned the colonists that Starfleet was concerned about Cardassian military buildup, and had even suggested that the Indians relocate to a safer position, but of course the elders weren’t about to abandon the land they had found spiritually compatible.
Chakotay was fascinated by the Starfleet officers, with their impressive uniforms and their array of technology— tricorders, phasers, replicators, transporters. They were symbols to him of life as it should be, lived in the present and anticipating the future, not linked in some unholy embrace with the past.
Hiromi Sulu was in his mid-thirties, a lithe, handsome officer who seemed to move comfortably among his crew and the inhabitants of this unusual world. He had dined at Chakotay’s home on a number of occasions, and had struck up a friendship with the adolescent son of his host. Captain Sulu had three daughters, and seemed drawn to Chakotay as a kind of surrogate son.
He had befriended Kolopak as well, and Chakotay knew his father would consider it a betrayal that Captain Sulu had sponsored him without discussing it with Kolopak. And indeed, that was his father’s first response: “He would do such a thing without discussing it with me?”
“I told him I had your approval. I kept him as far away from you as I could.” This was true, and had caused Chakotay no end of trouble, disseminating misinformation to his father and to Captain Sulu alike. He felt faintly guilty at this manipulation, but wasn’t going to back down now.
“I take it you have reason to believe you’ll be accepted at the Academy,” offered Kolopak, and Chakotay nodded tersely.