Pathways - Jeri Taylor [63]
It was titled The Bounty Trilogy.
A small, undignified squeak emitted from Harry’s mouth and the woman looked up curiously. “That’s the book I need!” he all but shouted. “I’ve been looking for two hours.”
She eyed him dispassionately. “I’ve been looking for this book for years,” she retorted, closing it and starting to move away.
“Wait, wait, please, you don’t understand. I need that book. My instructor ordered me to find it, and I can’t tell him I failed.”
She gave him a cold look. “You Starfleet people are so arrogant,” she said with spirit. “You think you’re superior to everyone else, that you deserve to be treated like royalty.” She turned away again.
“No, don’t go, please. Please.” She stopped and turned slowly back to him, as though something in his voice had reached her. Harry felt like a babbling, inarticulate child. “It’s not that way at all. I’ve got this commander, Nimembeh, and he makes my life miserable but I’ve got to do what he says or leave the Academy. And he said to get that book. I didn’t think I’d ever find it—what are the odds you’d want it, too?—and I’m begging you to let me have it.”
His sincerity and his desperateness had caught her attention. Her dark eyes dropped to the book and then lifted again to Harry. “My father had this book,” she said softly. “He read it to me before I could read for myself. He said there were lessons in it that would stay with me forever. I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Then he died, and all his books were given to a museum. As I got older, I remembered what he’d said, and I started looking for it.”
Harry stared at her. What she had said moved him tremendously, and suddenly her need to have the book eclipsed his own. He’d just have to deal with Nimembeh. He gave her a wan smile. “Then you should have it.” Then he could think of absolutely nothing else to say, and so he turned away from her and started down the aisle.
“Wait,” she said. He turned back, and was startled once more by her ethereal beauty. “Maybe we could compromise,” she said, her voice velvet in the dusty room. “You could take it so your instructor would be satisfied. And when you’re done with it, you can return it to me.”
Harry’s gratitude was immense. This beautiful creature was also generous! He looked at her, falling in love in that instant, and took a breath to thank her.
And began sneezing.
She had laughed, and they’d left the bookstore together, walking for hours in the fresh spring day, talking and talking, exploring each other with all the eagerness and energy of young love. He learned that her name was Libby Lattimore, that she studied art, that she loved cats, that she ate an orange every day, that her mother was a noted author who lived in England and that they talked frequently, and that she’d dated some Starfleet cadets and found them arrogant and full of themselves and had promised to avoid them in the future.
And she did remember him from the music festival.
Harry found her fascinating. He loved the sound of her laughter, which was rich and throaty. He loved the way her nose turned slightly sideways at the tip, the way her dark hair bounced as she walked. He loved her sensitivity, her caring, her sweet nature.
He loved everything about her.
But when he returned to his room that night, holding the ancient copy of The Bounty Trilogy in his hands, he found he didn’t want to tell George about her. How could he do justice to this wonderfully unique person? He was afraid he’d sound foolish, puppy-like, the victim of an adolescent infatuation. He wanted George, his best friend, to meet Libby and to see for himself how special she was.
“Want to visit an art gallery with me?” he inquired casually of George, who had been studying calculus, a subject with which he struggled.
“Sure,” replied George, agreeable as ever. “What’s the show?”
“Paintings,” said Harry.
“Paintings? As in two-dimensional canvases coated with oil-based pigments?”
“That’s right.”
George looked at him with a dubious expression.