Pathways - Jeri Taylor [74]
All of it sounded dreadful to B’Elanna. Battlefields? Shrines? She could relate to none of it. She knew her mother assumed that, after ten years of hearing the history, the myths, the legends, the stirring tales of valor, she was sufficiently inundated in the Klingon past to appreciate its present. Prabsa couldn’t know how completely her daughter had shut out her ceaseless teachings.
They were disgorged from the final shuttle flight into a vast spacedock thronged with people, all of whom seemed to be talking at the top of their voices. B’Elanna clung to her mother’s hand as they made their way through the crowds, her mother entering into the verbal fray right along with the rest.
“Move aside . . . we’re passing through . . . watch yourself, ghargh, your smelly feet are in the way.” Prabsa kept up this oral bombardment as they pushed and shoved their way across the huge floor of the docking area, hurling insults to anyone who was in their way, snarling with what B’Elanna assumed was feigned rage when people failed to move aside, and in general behaving as rudely as everyone else there.
B’Elanna was horrified. She had never seen people conduct themselves in this way, had never known these kinds of crowds, where people all shouted and reviled each other, where there were no rules of decorum, no manners. Her ears began to ring from the din, and her arm ached where her mother clutched it, dragging her through this mass of pulsing, chaotic Klingonhood.
Finally they were at the transport area, where once again her mother pulled her into a group that was ready to dematerialize, ignoring the shouted protests of the transport engineer and steadfastly planting herself and her daughter within the group. Prabsa and the engineer exchanged a volley of insults that made B’Elanna want to shrivel into herself for shame, but finally the man backed down and they were transported to the surface.
Things didn’t improve there. Crowds were everywhere on Qo’noS, a hurly-burly mass that never seemed to move in a discernible pattern or toward a common goal. The masses were swirling eddies of movement, here, there, anywhere, as though a common madness had struck them all and impelled them to move against any tide they encountered.
And they continued to yell. Even general conversation, B’Elanna realized, was conducted at an earsplitting level, often with loud guffaws of laughter punctuating the cacophony.
The edifices of Qo’noS were certainly imposing. The buildings all loomed large, and dark, ornately constructed and richly appointed, a dazzling display of architecture as an expression of national ideology: gazing at vaulting towers and pillared courtyards, one couldn’t escape the sense of haughty pride, of strident militancy, of reverence for ritual and tradition.
By the time they reached the home of B’Elanna’s maternal grandparents, she had a terrible headache. She longed for the quiet of her garden on Nessik, the call of a single bird the only sound to disturb a summer night. But inside the home, she found, things were as disorderly as everywhere else.
“Look at her!” bellowed her grandfather Torg, a huge, barrel-chested man with long, unkempt hair, and a full beard and mustache that seemed full of bits and pieces that B’Elanna didn’t want to identify. He leaned down and picked her up as easily as if she were a piece of cloth, lifting her high in the air above him. Her stomach quailed.
“She’s a little runt of a thing, isn’t she,” he continued, turning so that everyone in the crowded room could get a good look.
“She’s just a bit scrawny,” assessed a gray-haired woman as she scrutinized the child in the air. “A month of good Klingon food and she’ll fill out nicely.”
Suddenly, Torg tossed B’Elanna upward and she began to fall, her stomach clenching with fear before she felt herself caught from behind by another huge Klingon man. “I’m your uncle Kor,” he thundered, specks of spittle bursting from his mouth as he did. “You’ve got more family here than you can imagine.” He plopped her down on the floor, where she reeled slightly and tried