This story appeared in Now Voyager 5
.They were next year's Nova Squadron, with that whole year to enjoy it. And he was their squadron commander.
When he had come to the Academy as a first-year cadet, a year or two older than most of his classmates but just as homesick, he'd felt like a misplaced person and even questioned his decision to join Starfleet. Here there was no life of the spirit that he could discern, and being cooped up in rooms was almost more than he could bear. When he'd summoned his wolf, she appeared agitated and distracted to the point where they could barely communicate, and there seemed to be no one else he could communicate with in this hive of concrete and glass. But over the three intervening years, all that had changed. Others--first his teachers and then his fellow cadets--began to look at him as though they saw something compelling that he himself had never seen in the mirror. And the constant Starfleet emphasis on esprit de corps and personal bonding had drawn him in just as it did the cadets who came from far more distant planets than Dorvan V. His roommate, Jake Cullen, was a cocky womanizer, the type he himself reflexively disliked. But proximity, tolerance for one another's weaknesses and respect for one another's strengths had triumphed over the countless arguments they'd had for almost as many different reasons, and until tonight he had believed that he and Jake were friends.
The five of them had been celebrating together all afternoon, higher on being Nova Squadron than they were on 20-proof canteen synthehol. He could not remember ever having laughed that much, even found himself clowning around as much as Jake did. The others had been as delighted as he was at the discovery that he could entertain them even more than they entertained him. And then Jake had dropped the words "Kolvoord Starburst" into the middle of their jubilation, and everything had exploded and gone to dust.
Now the spring sun was setting beyond the Golden Gate, and their golden day was over--because he himself had ended it with the words But five people died.
Slouched miserably in the chair with his feet on the desk, he gazed out the window as he listen to Jake pace back and forth across their dorm room behind him, adrenaline still flowing. How could this impasse have been avoided? Maybe if he had waited, said nothing this afternoon, let the celebration run its course--
"I just don't understand you, man!" Jake rounded on him from near the doorway. He reluctantly lowered his feet, rose, turned the chair and straddled it, now facing his roommate. "You were livin' it up too, having a ball just like the rest of us, and bam--all of a sudden you get that hard-ass look on your face and the party is over."
"Five people died doing what you want to do." It seemed to him that he had been saying it over and over like a mantra, but nobody had heard him yet. And apparently no one would. Their imaginations fired and their reality on a roll, the others had been as startled, and then as angry, as Jake had. Not as much by what he'd said, he realized now, as by how he'd said it, and when. Raining on all their parades at once....
"We'd have a whole year to practice." Jake's almost-black face looked faintly mottled with agitation, his dark eyes bright with anger. "With the team we've got, we'd have it aced in six months."
"You're talking about igniting plasma exhaust with five ships almost on top of each other." Keep your voice down, he told himself. Just keep it reasonable, and he'll understand. "There's a reason it was banned--"
"Man, we could light up the sky!"
"--all five of them died, Jake!"
"That was decades ago. Our proximity alarms are much more sensitive now. We could--"
"No way."
"Look, just think ab--."
"I. Said. No. Way."
Their gaze held, and then Jake looked down. He took another turn around the room, and then asked, with his back still turned, "You figuring on staying in tonight? 'Cause if you are, I'm outta here 'till curfew."
"Forget it." He rose, rotating head and shoulders to ease the tension in his neck, and moved into the sleeping area. From his top drawer, he took three small objects. One, a jar cover, went in the back pocket of his pants, the other two into the breast pocket of his T-shirt. Special treat for a special day. Too bad he hadn't bummed a few more. It was going to be long night.
Dusk was creeping across the common and up the dormitory lawns as he bounded down the stairs. As he stepped out of the dorm, he grimaced and allowed himself the instant gratification of smacking his palm hard against the door jam, then broke into a jog, heading across the common for the tall, narrow white tower between the campus and the Bridge.
Then, although it was almost dark, he noticed that Boothby was still digging away at one of his mini-gardens. Grinning a little for the first time in several hours, he swerved off the path and jogged on toward the flower bed--a slim figure in dark pants and a white T-shirt with "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" imprinted across the back of it.
* * *
Cadet Kathryn Janeway had not realized that Julia Snowden was in her dorm room when she entered it. Her roommate, Alexandra, was sitting in the middle of the floor with tapes and class notes spread out all around her. Although it was Saturday, final exams for graduating cadets were the following week, and all of them were priming for the home stretch. Kathryn herself had been studying in the library all day, and she dropped down at the edge of the chaos with a sigh.
"Hi. You feel like going out for pizza or something?" A roar vaguely resembling music pounded down from the ceiling, and she frowned, running her hand across her forehead.
"Sounds good." Zan smiled wearily. "How's statistical mechanics?"
"It's been the pits since September, and it still is." She sighed again, shaking her hair back from her face. "I'm starved. You want to go right away?"
"Um, Julia's here." Zan jerked her head toward the closed bathroom door. "We thought we'd go eat in a little while." When Kathryn rose abruptly and headed for the bedroom, Zan went on coaxingly, "Kathryn, please come with us."
Pausing to squint up at the ceiling, Kathryn knocked briefly on the wall. "Carl?" No answer. "Jason?"
"Yo!" drifted through the pounding of drums.
"Keep it down, okay? Zan's got company."
"Yo!" The volume decreased abruptly.
"Thank you!" She sang the words out, smiling briefly, and then turned to face her roommate, no longer smiling. "You have got to be kidding."
"'Zan's got company,'" Zan quoted softly. There was a silence between them. "Do you have any idea what it would mean to me if the two of you could be friends?" Kathryn rolled her eyes and headed for the bedroom again. "What she did to you--that was almost four years ago. She's changed--"
"The hell she has!" Kathryn whirled, eyes flashing now, hair swirling around her shoulders. But before she could continue, Julia walked out of the bathroom.
"Kathryn! Hi!" Even to Zan, the greeting was too high-pitched, too over- enthusiastic to be completely genuine. Petite, blonde, startlingly pretty in her perfect, newly-refreshed make-up, Julia ambled toward Kathryn. "Studying hard?"
Leaning back against the door frame, Kathryn folded her arms across the chest of her sweatshirt. "Hi," she replied tonelessly. "Yes."
"Y'know, you're such an inspiration to all of us." Zan winced involuntarily. Funny that Julia never laid it on quite this thick with anybody but Kathryn. She was like a cat, unerringly picking out the one person in the room who abhors cats and leaping gleefully into that particular lap.
Kathryn bowed her head slightly, touched her loosely curled fingers to her mouth, and raised her head again, her gaze never wavering. "Julia," she asked softly, "what is it you want now?"
"Nothing!" Julia glanced suspiciously at Zan, who was looking guiltily at Kathryn. "What makes you think I want something?"
Kathryn smiled slightly. "I can't imagine."
Julia turned abruptly to Zan, dropping all pretense of civility toward Kathryn. "Are we going to grab a bite or not?"
"I guess--I don't think--"
"Don't let me keep you. 'Bye, Julia." Kathryn's gaze moved to Zan's, and again she smiled faintly, this time with regret, and shook her head slightly. It's okay, the blue eyes seemed to say. I don't understand you, but it's okay. Then she moved into the bedroom and closed the door half way, preserving her own privacy without shutting Zan out.
"Go downstairs and wait for me," Zan said quietly. "I want to talk to her for a minute."
"Why bother? There's no way she's going to--."
"Not about that. Go on. I'll catch up." When Julia had let herself out, Zan went into the bedroom where Kathryn was in the process of pulling her sweatshirt over her head, and sat down on her own bunk. "She wants you to study statistical mechanics with her sometime before the exam Monday."
"In your dreams, Alexandra!" Kathryn yanked the sweatshirt away from her hair and flung it on her bunk. "You can't think I'd fall for that again after all this time."
"She really has changed."
"Uh-huh. To know her is to love her, right?" Counting off on her fingers: "She's changed. She's fun to be with. She's smart. You've told me, okay?" The hands flew upward in exasperation.
"Kath, she's in over her head. She has to have stat mec to graduate and it isn't even part of her specialty. What will she DO if you don't help her?" Rummaging in a drawer, Kathryn made a semi-articulate sound that Zan could not quite hear. "What?"
"Pout." Still in her jeans, Kathryn floated a sleeveless, sky-blue tunic over her head, flipped her hair out from under it and, eyes dancing now, sat down on the bunk next to her friend and squeezed her arm. "Think of it, Zanny. We have the opportunity of a lifetime to assist Cadet Snowden in developing one of her special talents. With a little help, she'll be the best damn pouter in Starfleet--if she doesn't get canned first."
Zan did not smile. "We can't all measure up to your standards, you know. And Starfleet isn't the universe."
Her hand still on Zan's arm, Kathryn stared, the light dying out of her eyes. After a moment, she said, "This isn't about Starfleet. It's about me."
"Maybe. Like Julia said, you're an inspiration to all of us. But what are we to you? Children of lesser gods?" She patted Kathryn's hand, still resting on her arm. "She's waiting downstairs. Sure you don't want to come along?"
"No." Zan rose and moved toward the bedroom door. "Zan?" She turned. "Thanks. For inviting me."
After her roommate had left, Kathryn sat with her elbows in her knees and her hands covering her face for a few minutes. Then she sighed, rose, took a small paper cylinder and a smaller plastic cup from the drawer, bound her hair in a ponytail and left the dorm. Her appetite for food was spoiled for the time being, and she needed to get her thoughts together before she did any more studying.
* * *
Like most other venues where a large number of young people gather, the Academy was intermittently the site of a minor outbreak of drug use. The latest fad in that spring of 2353 was tobacco smoking. Since nicotine is not a hallucinogen, the powers that be satisfied themselves with prohibiting smoking campus-wide and turned a blind eye to the occasional minor infraction. Although almost no one bought cigarettes, many scrounged them, one or two at a time, from the few who did. And everyone who indulged knew where you could smoke without getting caught.
On her way there, Kathryn spied Boothby still digging under a tree even though it was almost dark. While still some distance away, she saw a jogger who had stopped to talk to him move on in the direction she was going. Even though she was walking rapidly, she thought the cadet in the dark pants and white T-shirt was too far away to hear when she called, "Hi, Boothby. Aren't you at it pretty late?"
She did not see the jogger look back briefly over his shoulder, and then continue on.
The old man had gone back to his work, but now he looked up, squinted at her, and smiled. "Evening, Katydid. Just finishing up here."
Moving closer, she sighed in irritation as much as amusement. "Are you teasing me?"
"Teasing?" His face was turned away, but she knew he was still smiling.
"I'm not an insect." She dropped to her knees and sat back on her heels near where he was still pulling weeds. "Why won't you tell me why you call me that?"
"It's how you walk," he said. When she gave a startled squeak, he grinned at her over his shoulder and then went on yanking at a particularly stubborn weed. "Katy DID." Yank. "Katy DOES." Another yank. "Katy WILL DO." The weed came out of the ground, spattering dirt over his already grimy overalls. "Well, enough for today." And he dusted off his hands and began heave himself to his feet.
Now amused rather than irritated, she rose, took his arm, and pulled. "You'll make me self-conscious."
"Fat chance." He pointed his finger at her nose. "Mark my words, young lady. Someday you'll be walking across the galaxy like that."
"Quadrant."
"I know what I meant."
The image was arresting, and she smiled a little dreamily until she realized that he was looking down at what she held in her other hand.
"That's two of you in one night," he growled, frowning now, all trace of teasing gone from his voice. "This stuff is poison. You kids are out of your minds."
"It's been a month or more, and it'll be another month or more before I do it again."
"Why do it at all?"
"Clears my head. Helps me think. Nicotine is a left-brain stimulant, you know."
"Do tell." He snorted. "Well, you're not the only one. Somebody right ahead of you tonight." An oddly uncharacteristic expression crossed his face; if it were anyone but Boothby, she would have called it affection. "Your...predecessor could use a little cheering up, by the way."
"I don't feel all that cheery myself."
"Could've fooled me."
On impulse, she put her arm around his shoulders and kissed his scratchy cheek. "G'night, Boothby, dear."
At the touch of her lips, the scratchy cheek smiled. "Take care, Katydid."
Half turning as she moved away, she made a playful, dismissing motion with one hand and then strode on toward the tower.
Looking after her, Boothby snorted again, murmured "Galaxy is what I meant, dammit," and began to pick up his garden tools, feeling around for them in the darkness.
* * *
The ladder to the roof of the tower was long and steep, rising almost at right angles to the floor far below. But she had always enjoyed the climb because of the view through the slotted windows in the structure's walls. The white cylinder was dimly lit within, but not enough to interfere with the view. To one side lay the Academy grounds, spread out like her own tiny world within a world, with San Francisco's thousands of lights beyond. To the other side she could see the Bridge, with Marin County in the distance, glittering only slightly less than the city itself. She paused to drink it in, thinking how the megalopolis looked like a star field brought to ground, and then continued her climb toward the trap door that led to the roof.
She was almost ready to pull herself up the last few rungs when she was suddenly overcome by memories--not long forgotten, for they were often with her, but of a long-ago time. The beloved female animal presence, familiar of her childhood, seemed to drift down from above, but not with recognition. It was as though she were being sounded, scented, checked out--
"Littlebit?" She whispered the name aloud before she could stop herself, and the presence vanished--now infinitely less real than the wisp of smoke that drifted across the trap door opening, between her and the stars.
Deeply shaken, she rested her forehead against the top rung of the ladder, trying to get her bearings. Littlebit was ten years dead, and yet for just a moment, it had been as though she--or something very like her--
Idiot.
Determined to throw off the eerie certainty that some large but benign animal had been, for a moment, very near the edge of the trap door, she climbed up the rest of the ladder and pulled herself out onto the tower's roof. It was not until she was sitting on the rim with her feet still dangling over the edge that she saw the cigarette eye glowing in the darkness and remembered that the lone jogger had preceded her here.
He was half sitting, half-reclining, with his shoulders propped up against the low wall that edged the roof. The top of the wall was above his head, and there was a small overhang on the inside, so most of him was in deep shadow. She could see clearly only the lower part of his pant legs and his feet, clad in what looked like soft boots. Even his white T-shirt was only a blur; she had the faint impression of dark hair, but it was impossible to see anything dark against the deeper darkness of the wall--only his cigarette, glowing in the shadows like a firefly held still in the hand. As she watched, he raised his hand; the eye grew larger as he inhaled, and then another cloud of smoke floated toward her.
"Is there someone else here too?" she blurted, and then put her hand to her mouth.
"Not now." Did she only imagine a tinge of regret in his voice?
"Oh. Well...." Steadying her hand with an effort, she pulled the cigarette she had brought with her from the pocket of her tunic and self-ignited it, inhaling deeply. "What does 'Not now' mean?" She thought she had seen dark eyes in the brief flare of the self-ignition, but she couldn't be sure.
"Who did you think was here?"
For a moment she was tempted to snap at him for answering her question with a question, but that would be pointless. "Sure you want to hear it?"
"That's up to you." But it seemed to her that his voice smiled in the shadows.
"I had this dog when I was a kid. We called her Littlebit, but it was a joke." She inhaled again, smiling, remembering. "She was an Alaskan husky. You know--." The cigarette between her first two fingers, she quickly sketched Littlebit's size in the air, the fiery eye leaving the illusion of a trail across the darkness. "They look sort of like wolves. When I was climbing up the ladder, I thought...."
With his cigarette half way to his mouth, he froze. Strange that a body at rest is never completely still, she thought vaguely--not until it goes stiff with tension.
"What did you see?" he demanded. It was only a whisper, but the demand was there.
"I didn't see anything." Come up here to think a few thoughts, and get caught up in some weird... "Look, can we talk about something else?" Or not talk at all?
There was a silence, but he was moving and smoking again. Finally he put his cigarette out, and she realize from the faint sound of scraping against the floor that he too had brought a small container to use as an ashtray. In all the times she had come here, no one else had ever thought to do that; although she could not see them in the dark, she knew from coming here in the daytime that the roof was always littered with butts.
"I'm sorry." Pulling one leg up out of the trap door, she rested her elbow on her drawn up knee and ran her fingers across her forehead. Then, realizing for the first time that the faint illumination from the ladder well enabled him to see her even though she could not see him, she looked directly into the darkness where she knew his face would be. "Boothby said you needed cheering up. Can I help?" Silence. "I talked to him right after you--"
"I know. I saw you."
She frowned. "It was pretty dark."
"I could see your hair," he said. Then, before she could think of an answer that made sense: "Did he tell you why?"
"Why? Oh--why you needed--no. No, he didn't. You know he'd never violate a confidence." Then she realized that his question had been without tension, almost idle.
"Did you ever hear anybody around here talk about trying the Kolvoord Starburst again?" he asked. This too seemed like an idle question, asked to make conversation. But there was an edge to it somehow....
The Kolvoord Starburst?
"God, NO!" Abruptly, she realized that her cigarette was almost burning one of her fingers, and she ground it out in the container she had brought with her. "They were all killed!"
"Yeah." He was silent again, lighting up another cigarette, and she realized that that part of the conversation had ended. It was as though something had been validated, and he was ready to move on. "What did you say when Boothby told you I needed cheering up?"
"That I didn't feel very cheery tonight."
"Okay," he said. "Your turn." Again it seemed that the shadows were smiling.
"I have a friend. My best friend." She pulled both knees up now and rested her chin on them. "My roommate. She's caught in the middle and she wants me to help her, and I want to help her, but I can't."
"Between what and what?"
"Between me and--" She realized suddenly that no names had been exchanged, and decided in that moment that no names would be. It was the anonymity of their situation that was making it possible for them to talk this way, and Julia was well known on campus, having participated in virtually every extra-curricular activity she was permitted. "And someone she grew up with. Elementary school, high school, that whole bit. It's a GBS situation." She knew that no one at the Academy would have to have GBS explained to him. The Good Buddy Syndrome had been the downfall of more than one bright, talented cadet who was emotionally bound to another, less promising one--always covering, always making excuses, expending quantities of energy on keeping the other afloat. Zan was going to make it through in spite of her attachment to Julia, but there were times when it had been a near thing. "She--my roommate's GB and I can't stand each other."
"Why?"
It was an obvious question, but the answer was one that she had always had trouble telling anyone about. Only her parents and Zan... "Can I bum a cigarette?" she asked, turning her gaze to the stars.
"I'm out," he said softly, regretfully. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay." She sighed deeply, resting her chin on her hands once more. "Back in first year, I thought...this person and I were friends. She's real good at..." Bullshitting. Not necessary. No point. "I was pretty gullible, and when she asked me to help her get ready for our physics test, I said I would. She gave me a list of questions, very specific questions. She said they were things she needed help on, and asked me to write out the answers for her so she could study them. I did it." She could hear her voice getting unsteady; even the memory still did that to her. "When we all brought up the test on our screens, it was--it was the same list of questions, word for word. She hadn't even changed the sequence. I looked over at her, and the answers I'd written out for her were in a window on her screen." Funny. After almost four years, the pain of Julia's betrayal of her trust could still bring tears to her eyes. "I let her play me for a fool."
She waited for the first question that everyone--her parents, Zan--had asked when she told them: How could Julia have gotten the test questions beforehand? And prepared to give the same answer she had given them: How the hell do I know? That's not what MATTERS.
But the question never came. Instead, she realized that he was silently holding something out to her. A firefly held in hand.
Rising, she walked across the roof and dropped down next to him, her back against the roof's encircling wall. She couldn't see him any better than she could before, could barely see her own hand as she took the cigarette from his fingers, inhaled deeply, and returned it.
"Thank you." She knew the smoke must be curling upward over her head, but she couldn't see that either. "I can't forgive her. I want to, for Z--for my friend's sake, but I can't."
"For starters," he answered softly, "you could try forgiving yourself."
She almost said, "For what?" But she had answered that question: I let her play me for a fool.
The cigarette's eye moved toward her again, and she took another drag, her eyes again on the stars. "I suppose." She could not internalize the idea yet; she was suddenly very tired, and she had a great deal of work to do before she could sleep tonight. It was time to go, and for the second time that evening, a cigarette was burning down to her fingers. "Thanks. I'm afraid I killed it."
He took the cigarette back in silence, but she sensed he was smiling again as he ground it out and she rose, moving back toward the trap door. Two rungs down, she paused and smiled wistfully back into the darkness. "I won't be able to recognize you if I see you."
"I guess not." Now he was enjoying himself, the bastard.
"Be that way." In spite of herself, she gave a grin back -- his was infectious, even the dark -- and dropped down the ladder and out of his sight.
* * *
He remained motionless until he could no longer hear her steps on the ladder. If she were to see and recognize him in the two weeks before she graduated, she might ask someone who he was. Once she knew his name, she might learn that he was next year's Nova Squadron commander, and it wouldn't take her half a second to figure out who had been talking about the Kolvoord Starburst. He could not risk placing his people in jeopardy--especially not when what he and they had been talking about was never going to happen.
Finally he moved across the roof, swung himself down, and began a slow and thoughtful descent.
He had known who she was all along. Everybody knew who Kathryn Janeway was. But their paths had never crossed because they were in different years and had different specialties: she a scientist, he a pilot and future conn officer. When Boothby had said, "Ah--here comes Katydid, full speed ahead," he had glanced in her direction but felt no wish to encounter her; he was still under the cloud of his altercation with Jake. Starting to move away, he was surprised when Boothby suddenly held up his hand as though struck by an inspiration. "Hold on there, son. Want to meet her?" Something about the idea obviously delighted the old man.
Declining, he had gone on his way, only looking back once. But the spirits of his ancestors had had other ideas.... He sighed, shook his head once as though to clear it, and continued his descent down the ladder. She'd obviously come here for the same reason he had; there was nothing fateful about it, and nothing very spiritual about some of the images that had crossed his mind as she'd perched on the edge of the trap door, faintly illuminated from below, in that blue-as-her-eyes tunic that revealed nothing yet somehow everything. Animated. Sparkling with intelligence and energy. Always moving; hardly ever still. Made you wonder how she might move in--
He stopped, clunked his head lightly against the rung opposite his forehead, and half-aloud echoed Jake's words to him earlier: "Oh, man, I don't understand you!" Trouble was, he understood himself only too well--that, and other words, heard much longer ago than tonight and now coming back to him unbidden. As a class assignment, he had once listened to all of James T. Kirk's supplemental logs from Kirk's first five-year mission on the original Enterprise, and a fragment came to him now--words Kirk had spoken to the dangerously powerful adolescent named Charlie who had come aboard from the Antares:
"Then I told him, 'There are some things you can have and some things you can't have....'"
Putting both hands on one rung of the ladder and straightening his arms, he swing himself slowly back and forth a few times, glancing over his shoulder at the long drop to reality far below--long way to fall if you didn't watch your step--and grinned sheepishly. "Down, Charlie. Down, boy." Then he went on with his descent, his thoughts taking a much more serious turn.
How she had sensed the presence of his wolf he had no idea; there was no precedent, and just remembering made the hair rise a little on the back of his neck and along his arms. He had not expected the drug in the cigarette to trigger a vision, since it had never done that to him before. But it had been only a vision; his animal guide could not possibly be present to anyone but himself.... That would be fuel enough for a number of future meditations.
Or not. He sighed. Chances were he would never see Kathryn Janeway again in the real--even though now she sat perched on the rim of his life like a star to steer by.
That image pleased him immeasurably--because it was a safe one, he thought.
At normal ceiling height, he hooked his feet around the sides of the ladder and slid the rest of the way down, landing lightly and bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. Someone had understood--instantly, and without his having to explain at all. Jake would probably sulk and fume for a couple of days, but he could handle that now. He drew a deep breath, let it out, and stretched his cramped muscles. Then, leaping up to brush the top of the doorway with his fingertips as he passed through it, he bounded out into the night.
She was still visible, if barely, striding away at what Boothby had called "full speed ahead," the ponytail bouncing. Inexplicably, he laughed aloud, murmured, "Not to worry, Katydid. I'll recognize you," and set off jogging back to where he had left the rest of his life.