Pathways - Jeri Taylor [221]
“It must be very quiet there,” said the child softly.
“The quiet of the ages,” agreed Tuvok, marveling once more at his small daughter’s insight. Most spoke of the desert’s heat, or its vast expanse, the dangers contained therein. Who would think to comment on the purity of its silence?
“I’ll go there someday,” Asil said matter-of-factly. “Maybe we could go together.”
Tuvok rubbed her back tenderly, then was aware of something plucking delicately at his mind, almost imperceptibly, as though a tiny finger strummed one string of a harp. The little minx was touching his mind, so daintily that he was almost unaware of it.
“What did you discover?” he asked her quietly, thinking it was best to let her know he was aware of her clandestine prowl through his mind. She looked up at him, unfazed.
“That if ever I go, I must go alone,” she replied. “And so must you. But I think—and this is my thought, Father, not yours—that you must go soon.”
And so it was, several days later, that Tuvok announced to T’Pel his intention to make a pilgrimage into the desert. “I wondered when you would realize it” was her only reply, although he noted that she turned away from him, as though there were an expression on her face of something she didn’t want him to see.
His mother, as usual, had other thoughts. “Again, you long for isolation. Life’s lessons are not learned in this way, Tuvok. Detachment and seclusion are the easy ways. It is being part of the world that is difficult.”
By now Tuvok was old and experienced enough to realize that his mother challenged him as a matter of course, forcing him to examine his choices and to process them in the machinery of reason. If he had announced his intention to return to Terra and immerse himself in the bustle of humanity, she would have argued the opposite of what she was now saying.
Nonetheless, he appreciated her methodology and valued its wisdom. If a decision could hold up against the cold marble of her logic, it was unassailable.
Therefore he had not anticipated M’Fau’s more rigorous examination. As he sat opposite her in the small stone chamber of the temple, her ancient eyes glittered like ebony, fathomless. “Anyone can make a pilgrimage to Seleya,” she said with an oddly challenging tone. “Transports are arranged daily.”
“I don’t intend to transport,” Tuvok answered evenly. “I will make the traditional pilgrimage—through the desert.”
She made no immediate answer, and Tuvok listened to the ragged wheeze of her breathing. She was old enough that the thin air on Vulcan was taking its toll, forcing the lungs to labor in order to get enough oxygen. The sound seemed to Tuvok like the breeze through the sails of some prehistoric sailing vessel, ruffling thick canvas sheets.
“The desert is dangerous,” she said finally, and Tuvok started to respond to that when she continued. “You know all about the physical dangers, of course. Heat, sun, animals . . .” She glanced sidelong at him. “I assume when you say ‘traditional pilgrimage’ you mean that you will take only the ritual belongings with you?”
He nodded curtly and she continued. “But there are other dangers, Tuvok. Dangers of the spirit, dangers of resolve. Those things are more perilous, and more damaging, than any lematya pride you might encounter.”
“I am prepared to do what is necessary,” he said simply, wishing to have this interview over with so he could begin to make preparations. But he knew he could not go without M’Fau’s blessing.
“I’m sure you are. But you don’t have any way of knowing what will be necessary, do you? Consequently, you can’t really be prepared. That is the point I am making.”
Tuvok stirred in his chair, wanting only to be done with it. “I can only prepare for what I am able to anticipate, and be ready for whatever else I may discover.”
A sudden strike, like a sand viper, and she was inside his thoughts.