Pathways - Jeri Taylor [16]
On the other hand, his people were equally well versed in such techniques, and used them with impunity against each other. Cruelty wasn’t the exclusive province of the Europeans. It wasn’t uncommon among his ancestors for captured prisoners to be tortured for months, even years. Sometimes the enemy was tied into a makeshift “ball,” and kicked around the ball court until he died. Inventive.
Sixteen. Keep the pain at bay. If you give in to it it will be unbearable. Focus elsewhere.
His people had any number of customs involving self-sacrifice. The noble women, for instance, performed a ritual in which they pierced their tongue with a barb and pulled a length of rope through it. And just to make it an equal-opportunity culture, the noble men often pierced their fore-skin, dripped blood on paper, and then burned it as a blessing to the gods.
And of course there were the ritual executions, the heart extrusions, the stonings, the disembowelments. His ancestors had little reason to accuse the Europeans of excess cruelty.
Seventeen. Pain was beginning to interfere with his ability to project his mind elsewhere. Cruelty. Was this what Starfleet was all about? What was being accomplished by this brutal exercise? Did Nimembeh derive some sick pleasure from exercising his power over his cadets? It had struck Chakotay that way ever since he reported to the Academy and had been assigned to Nimembeh. There were twenty of them in each prep squad; for two weeks they would belong to their instructor, who was responsible for molding them into a disciplined, finely tuned unit before they actually started academic course work.
From the beginning, he had felt singled out by Nimembeh, who seemed to mete out particularly rigorous tasks to Chakotay, and to inflict especially strict penalties if the young man didn’t perform up to expectations— which, he had learned, was just about always. This grueling five-kilometer run was just another in a series of disciplines to which he, and he alone of his group, had been subjected.
So Nimembeh didn’t like him. But there were only three laps to go, and he would show the drill instructor he couldn’t be broken quite so easily. Chakotay could endure whatever this sadist might concoct for him.
Eighteen laps. Each step sent lances of pain from his feet to his brain, and he struggled feverishly with some way to deal with it. He began to sing, summoning up remembered chants from his childhood, lamentations and invocations to the spirits which were supposed to augur well for the future. It was foolishness, of course, but he remembered being soothed by hearing the voices of his people joined together, conjurations lifted to the skies in ancient harmonies. Now, as the barely remembered chants came panting out of him, he was soothed once more.
Ahead of him, standing at one end of the track, silhouetted by the low afternoon sun, was a figure. It was Nimembeh, whose whippet-thin body and dark, bald head Chakotay would recognize anywhere. He’d come to see his charge fail, but he would not be given that satisfaction. Chakotay rounded the track in front of him, not making eye contact, seeing the familiar ebony face and chiseled features only in his periphery.
Nineteen. One more to go. He could run one more lap, one slight quarter-kilometer, even if his feet were bleeding and he felt as though he were running on knife points. He summoned in his mind’s eye that dark figure standing against the sun and flung against it all his fury and indignation. Every pounding step radiated pain, and that pain fueled rage. He envisioned Nimembeh erupting into flame, consumed by the sheer intensity of Chakotay’s wrath.
That vision got him halfway around. He was on the last half lap, heading into the sun once more, heading toward that dark figure . . .
Except the figure had changed. He didn’t see Nimembeh’s dark presence, his erect form, his studied stillness.