Pathways - Jeri Taylor [73]
“We’re going to have a party,” Prabsa said. “Invite all your classmates. We’ll go to the lake. You have to show them that you won’t be intimidated.”
A party? Terror rose in B’Elanna with astonishing swiftness. She couldn’t imagine anything worse. Didn’t her mother realize that human children wanted nothing to do with her? How could she invite them to an outing at the lake? No one would come.
Her mother stood up. “Just let me know how many to plan for. And you can choose the menu.”
Prabsa reached over and gently removed the scarf from B’Elanna’s head, then brushed her hair up and away from her forehead. “You’re such a beautiful girl,” she murmured. “You mustn’t cover yourself up.”
And then she was gone. B’Elanna clutched Gato tightly to her chest, ridden with despair. She wasn’t going to risk further humiliation by trying to arrange this awful party. She just wouldn’t do it.
But she knew it wouldn’t matter. Her mother would then take over, issuing invitations through the parents, who would be too polite to refuse, and so the event would take place, an agonizing afternoon in which everyone would pretend they were having a good time, the human children desperately eager to get away from them so they could snicker and gossip about the Klingon women: the friendless, belligerent child and the overbearing mother, whom they surely found the ugliest creatures they’d ever seen.
The first thing she noticed about Qo’noS, the Klingon homeworld, was the noise, and it was the noise that continued to assault her during the entire time of their visit. From the time they arrived, she longed for the quiet of Nessik.
The Terran colony at Nessik was, for all the loneliness it imposed on her, a serene and orderly place. Houses were clustered in beautifully landscaped parks which were tended by those who enjoyed gardening, and those people seemed beset with a kind of genial competition, each trying to make his or her assigned section the most abundant, the most breathtakingly lush. Each walkway, each path, was immaculately maintained, and animal life of every kind abounded.
These idyllic surroundings lent an atmosphere of harmony and tranquillity. Walking through these parks, one could hear the call of songbirds, or the distant sound of children playing, but that was all. There was an ineffable stillness that permeated Nessik, a calming aura that quieted the mind.
This was an assessment that B’Elanna could never have made until her visit to the Klingon homeworld at the age of ten, when her mother decided that it was time she come face-to-face with her heritage, and booked transport from Runii to Minis Prime, where they were able to procure space on a freighter bound for Gostak, which was just inside the confines of the Klingon Empire, and were then able to find a shuttle that would take them to Qo’noS.
It was a long, wretched journey, and B’Elanna hated every minute of it. She had never traveled in space, and it left her faintly nauseated. Their accommodations were never more than spartan, at best, because her mother foolishly abjured her right to take Starfleet ships, and procured only civilian transportation. The food was uneven and their fellow travelers a rough lot of polyglot species.
All during the flights, Prabsa had extolled the wonders of Qo’noS, telling B’Elanna rapturous stories of the things she would see: historical battle sites, splendid cultural centers, natural wonders that defied description. She chattered on and on, B’Elanna by habit tuning her out for long stretches, about the richness, the diversity, of Klingon society. Prabsa herself hadn’t been back to Qo’noS for over ten years, and she was all but giddy with anticipation, sleeping little, nibbling at her food, and babbling endlessly about home.
“We’ll go to the shrine of Kahless first,” Prabsa said in one of a myriad of itineraries she concocted and then threw out. “That’s obligatory, and it sets the proper atmosphere for everything else. Or maybe the battlefield at Mithrak should come first, so you’ll have an understanding of the context Kahless sprang from.