The Kobayashi Maru Page 12

  "This is command school—" Sulu pitched his voice as a complaint, even though he smiled. "—not a construction company!"

  Tetsuo laughed, splashing his great-grandson with a generous handful of water. "I'm talking about birds, not machinery!"

  "You showed them to me at the zoo." Sulu returned to his swimming, angling his body to talk as he moved. "They all stood on one leg and stared at us. I bounced peanuts off their heads, and the zoo attendant made us leave."

  "You were a terrible child," Tetsuo conceded.

  "And you folded me a thousand of them out of the napkins from my seventeenth birthday party." Sulu smiled at the memory. "At least, you told me they were cranes—I thought they looked like ducks!"

  "Those are ducks," Tetsuo allowed dryly. "Whoever invented origami just thought cranes would sound more distinguished. You know why I folded you all those cranes?"

  "You thought I liked birds?"

  "No," Tetsuo told him. "It's because of a Japanese legend."

  Sulu rolled his eyes in mock disbelief. "Uh, oh—more Japanese philosophy!" It was a private joke between Sulu and the old man; like Sulu, Tetsuo was born of immigrants, grown old in California without ever having seen the Oriental sun.

  "Will you listen to me?" the old man complained. "I was just going to tell you that the old Japanese believed if you folded one thousand origami cranes—preferably while meditating—you could make a miracle happen."

  "Did you?"

  Tetsuo shrugged. "You got into the Academy, didn't you?"

  Sulu made a face, admitting that he'd walked straight into Poppy's verbal trap. "So what has this got to do with me and command school? Did you fold more cranes to make sure I wouldn't flunk out?"

  "I didn't think of it. I was actually going to talk to you about real cranes, not paper ones."

  "Okay," Sulu allowed. "I'm listening."

  "Do you know why they all stand on one leg?" Tetsuo asked him.

  Sulu shook his head. Then, realizing Tetsuo no doubt lost the motion in the waves, he added, "No, Poppy. Why?"

  "Because they're clumsy as hell," the old man replied. "Nature really blew it when it came to giving cranes virtues beyond their good looks, so whenever the birds put both legs on the ground, they trip over themselves."

  Sulu burst into laughter. "I thought you were going to tell me about biology!"

  "I am telling you about biology! Don't you think Nature is part of biology?"

  "Are you sure I'm not being exposed to Japanese philosophy?" Sulu asked, trying to contain his mirth.

  "I don't know any Japanese philosophy," Tetsuo snorted. "Are you going to be quiet and listen?"

  "Does this have something to do with why origami cranes look like ducks?" Sulu asked.

  "I said be quiet."

  Sulu slapped a pleasant, schooled expression on his features. "Okay."

  Apparently satisfied, Tetsuo settled back against the mast and went on. "In the hopes of fixing things up, Nature went through and gifted some cranes with the grace she left out of the others. Even the cranes don't know which ones—they can only find out by trying." Purple shadows played across his face as he angled his head to look down at Sulu. "Every crane has to have the courage to put both feet on the ground," he said seriously. "Take a few steps—find out the hard way if you can dance. A dancing crane is a very beautiful thing to see, but it's hell for the cranes that fail, because they have to look at the cranes all dancing and know what they might have been."

  Sulu didn't comment. Gulls cursed angrily above them, and, from not so far away, Sulu thought he heard the whooping of a lonely white crane.

  "We're just like the cranes, you and me," Tetsuo said finally, softly. "While everybody else is worrying about how to balance on that one safe leg, you and me are out seeing how far the other one will stretch. Even if you fall, you've got to remember that everybody really has two legs after all—even if you stumble, you can always get back up again."

  Sulu listened for the crane again, but heard nothing now except the gulls and the sleepy sea. "Does this mean you don't think I should worry about command school?"

  Tetsuo smiled down at him. "It means I don't think you should worry about command school. You'll do fine."

  He grinned in return and kicked a small spray of water over the prow of the sailor. "And you said you didn't know any philosophy!"

  Tetsuo shrugged and splashed water back at him. "I don't. I read that in a book a long, long time ago…"

  Returning the rented windsailor took longer than the commuter shuttle back from L.A.—by the time they reached Oakland, Sulu and Poppy were both still damp from their excursion. Leaving his great-grandfather in the foyer to discard his sandy shirt and footwear, Sulu kicked off his own shoes while padding into the kitchen to turn on the lights.

  A piteous howling erupted in answer to Sulu's touch on the light panel; the young cadet cursed shortly and shouted at the plant across the kitchen from him: "Shut up, Filbert!"

  Long, fuzzy green tendrils snaked back across the countertop to curl about the meter-long pot as if they'd never strayed. Filbert emitted another wail of despair, and Sulu was forced to cross the kitchen in two hurried strides and clap a hand over the plant's flattened central trunk. Filbert whimpered and fell silent.

  "Has nobody fed you today?" Sulu asked, feeling immediately sorry for his harsh tone when the plant gently entwined his hand.

  Tetsuo snorted as he shambled into the kitchen and found himself a seat. "It can't answer you," he advised sagely. "And it'll eat your hand if you stand there much longer!"

  Sulu disengaged his hand with little effort. "You also said my iguana would eat Mom's parrot."

  "Didn't it?"

  "The parrot ate the iguana, Poppy!" Sulu ducked back into the pantry in search of one of Filbert's mice, but only found dried earthworm left over from his attempt to keep a carnivorous Rosserian ivy. "The Tellurian greencat ate the parrot," he continued upon returning. "That's why I gave it to George Temmu. Remember?"

  Tetsuo waved off the details as unimportant. "Did it eat his mother's parrot?"

  Sulu dumped a handful of earthworm down Filbert's open throat. "She didn't have a parrot."

  "Smart woman."

  Sulu dug into the container for another serving of worms, and nearly spilled it all over the floor when the viewer next to him chirped. Jerking his head up in surprise, he called, "Yes?" before even considering whether or not he wanted to answer.

  Whatever greetings he normally uttered leapt from his mind the instant he met Arthur Kobrine's stern and stormlike gaze over the viewer. "Where the hell have you two been?"

  Kobrine's harsh attitude caught Sulu completely unprepared. He glanced at Poppy, found no help there, and just shrugged stupidly. "Sailing," he said, feeding Filbert again. "Why?"

  "How are you doing, Doctor Kobrine?" Poppy called from the kitchen table.

  Kobrine shot a glance in that direction, but Sulu knew the angle of the viewer would keep him from seeing Poppy or the table. Sulu pushed Filbert to the back of the counter and stepped forward to turn the viewer slightly. "They've been waiting for you in radiochem since this morning," the neurosurgeon informed Tetsuo with ice in his tone. "They wanted me to send an orderly out for you."

  "I'm not a child," Tetsuo told him, with perhaps more force than Sulu thought necessary. The old man's hand found a paper napkin in the table's centerpiece, ripping it into tiny squares without apparent thought. "My great-grandson here's almost a starship pilot—we don't need you chasing around after us as if we were children."

  "Then act like an adult!" Kobrine shouted at him. "Act like you understand the responsibility you have, and stop dragging your great-grandson along as if he can keep you from getting in trouble!"

  Sulu felt fear's left-handed cousin start to stir inside his chest, and he pushed in front of the viewphone hastily. "Doctor Kobrine, we were just sailing!" he began, but Kobrine silenced him.

  "Ask your great-grandfather why he wasn't at the
hospital today."

  Sulu blinked at Kobrine, then looked over his shoulder at Tetsuo only to be confused by the old man's reluctance to meet his eyes. "What?"

  "Your great-grandfather skipped his therapy," Kobrine clarified. His voice was tight with anger and whatever emotion provoked parental lectures on "disappointment" and "duty."

  "If radiochem had hounded me—me, of all people!—one more time about how important these therapy sessions were, I'd have killed someone!"

  "Poppy…?"

  The old man reluctantly looked up from the crane he was patiently folding.

  "Is that right?" Sulu pressed. "You skipped your therapy?"

  Tetsuo made a face and shrugged an indefinite reply as his attention returned to folding. "What are you, Art?" he asked of the neurosurgeon on the screen. "A private detective now, too?"

  "I'm a doctor!" he exploded. "I'm supposed to make sure you do what's best for your health! Mister Inomata, I'm supposed to take care of you!"

  "What if I don't want to be taken care of?"

  Sulu crossed the kitchen to sit in the chair next to Poppy. "Why?" he asked, frightened. "Did you forget?"

  "I didn't forget." He seemed offended by the suggestion. He flicked the limp paper crane across the table; it skittered over the edge and out of sight. "It makes me sick," he admitted. "It makes me feel all sunburned, and I figured I'd be getting enough sun as it was." Casting an angry look at Kobrine across the kitchen, he complained, "Being a day late can't make that much difference when you're my age!"

  "But after the treatments, you feel better for the rest of the week, don't you?" Kobrine insisted.

  When Tetsuo didn't respond immediately, Sulu pressed, "Don't you?"

  The old man sighed and started on another square of paper. "For two, maybe three days at the end. Before then my head hurts, and my skin hurts, and sometimes I can barely stand. I go to the bathroom all the time…" He paused in his folding, running a hand through Sulu's close-cropped black hair with a smile that nearly made the young man cry. "I wanted to go windsailing with you today! You're going to be gone to command school tomorrow, and I might not get to see you…" He swallowed whatever he'd intended to say. "It'll be a long time," he finished. "I didn't want to be throwing up the whole time we were together!"

  "It's only across the Bay," Sulu scolded gently. "I'll visit—"

  "When they let you!"

  Sulu smiled and tousled Tetsuo's thinning hair in kind. "This is Starfleet, Poppy, not jail!"

  "I just wanted to go with you," Tetsuo said again.

  "Well, you're coming in here now. I'm sending a volunteer to get you." Kobrine gestured at someone off-screen; the doctor's expression made Sulu suddenly want to remind him that Tetsuo was old, not stupid. He exchanged long-suffering looks with Tetsuo instead, and accepted the half-completed crane his great-grandfather passed him.

  "I could bring him in," Sulu volunteered.

  Kobrine scowled and shook his head. "Your great-grandfather says you're leaving tomorrow. I don't want to disrupt your schedule any more than it already has been." He seemed to notice Tetsuo's half-clad state for the first time, and added, "Take your great-grandfather upstairs and get him dressed. Someone will be there in about fifteen minutes."

  "I'll bet he was a brat when he was little, too," Tetsuo intimated when he and Sulu were halfway up the stairs.

  Sulu smothered his laughter, and hugged Tetsuo soundly. "They'll assign me soon," he promised, wishing tomorrow wasn't hurrying upon them so fast. "It'll be on one of the big starships, Poppy, you'll see!…I want you to be there when it happens! I want you with me when I go!"

  Tetsuo held onto Sulu longer than the young man expected. "I love you," he whispered warmly in Sulu's ear. "And I'll always be with you… always!"

  When he finally broke the hug, Sulu saw that they had crushed the little half-finished crane.

  Sulu pressed back into his aircar seat as the Pacific Ocean caught a great sheet of sunlight and threw it up at the aircar. He squinted his eyes shut against the light, marveling at the people milling about the landing field below him.

  Out of the whole galaxy—billions of people!—only a thousand of us are here! The thought made Sulu's stomach crawl up into his windpipe again, and he looked back at the command school landing pad in the hopes that studying the ground would smother some of the panic he felt building inside.

  The aircar ahead of them was a commercial transit; no one held up the six cadets who exited with long and tearful goodbyes. Sulu's little aircar landed without having to wait for a window.

  "Well, this is it…" Sulu's hand was cold and trembling when he closed it on the handle of his carryall. His door was open, his right foot touching the warm landing pad; he missed home already, and was irrationally afraid he might never see his family again. Especially Tetsuo. He knew the old man wanted to drop him off today, but the treatments made him so ill, and Sulu didn't feel he had the right to bring him.

  "Excuse me, sir," a polite, computer voice interrupted his thoughts. "We are delaying on a private-access pad."

  Embarrassment stung his cheeks momentarily. "Sorry," he murmured, feeling stupid. "Thank you. I'm out." The door closed without a sound, and the aircar climbed into the sunny, salty-smelling air, leaving Sulu alone.

  It was a good morning. Sulu tried to distract himself with that knowledge as he headed for the main building, turning his back on the aircar now landing. It was already warm, and uncharacteristically clear for late-summer San Francisco. A hood of mist along the crest of Mount Tam blushed pinkly in the early morning sun, and the Golden Gate Bridge swept across the Bay like a daring ballerina. The bridge's delicate silhouette reminded Sulu of Poppy's dancing cranes. Thinking of his great-grandfather somehow cheered him and hurt him at the same time; he didn't want to leave him behind, but didn't want to be a peg-legged swamp crane either. Grasping for some distant rapport with Tetsuo, Sulu tucked one foot behind the other, hoping to unobtrusively test Poppy's theory of one-footed confidence before leaving these wide open spaces.

  He swayed ever so slightly, and bumped into someone behind him.

  "Hey! What are you, a no-zee who doesn't know how to walk?"

  Sulu botched regaining his footing, and stumbled another few steps before completing his turn. The woman with whom he collided pushed him upright, and demanded acerbically, "Let me guess—you don't speak English either?"

  Sulu thought that must be a joke, her own accent was so pronounced. He smiled and extended a hand. "Ah, no—I mean, no, I don't not speak English. My name's Sulu."

  She furrowed her brow distrustfully, but accepted his handshake. "You just don't speak English well?"

  Sulu fell into step beside her to join the migration toward the main building. "I'm from right around here, actually—I was born in San Francisco!" When she volunteered no reply, he prompted, "I don't think I caught your name…"

  "Maria Theresa Perez-Salazar," she admitted after a considered pause. Her gold-brown hair was pulled so severely toward the crown of her skull, Sulu found it somewhat amazing she could draw her face down into the expression of displeasure it now wore. He opted not to comment on that, but thought he'd have to watch her to see if her demeanor ever changed. "My friends call me Maté."

  Sulu also decided she didn't necessarily consider him among that privileged circle. "I take it you're not from around here?"

  Perez-Salazar tilted her chin infinitesimally higher, but her expression was etched in titanium. "I'm from Mexico City—I attended the Academy in Tempe."

  "You speak English very well."

  He'd hoped it would be a compliment—since she seemed as preoccupied with proper English as a high school teacher—but Perez-Salazar only snapped him a cold, lizardine look and reproved, "Of course! Mexico is a very civilized state!"

  When she lengthened her stride to outdistance him, Sulu didn't try to keep pace. "Starfleet's finest," he muttered toward her back. "Wow…"

  He managed to cultivate two more succe
ssful conversations in the line leading into the main building, one with an Australian who'd lived on Earth for his entire life. Another with a Human who'd never been to Earth before. It was an interesting comparison of cultures and intellect. He and the Australian were exchanging opinions on the West Coast's best windsailing spots when Sulu's turn at the admission's station came up. The lieutenant on duty had to hail him three times before he realized she was speaking to him.

  He swung about guiltily. "I'm sorry, sir—I was talking."

  The small lieutenant smiled and pushed a square of coded tape across the counter at him. "I noticed. Here—you'll need this to find your bag once you get to the billets."

  "I thought a computer would be doing this," Sulu admitted as he hefted his carryall onto the counter.

  "You'll see enough machines the rest of the time you're here," the lieutenant assured him. "We try to keep things as personal and low-key as we can the first day." The bag disappeared behind the counter. "Around me and to your left, Cadet. You'll be issued your uniform and an agenda for the day. Good luck!"

  For the next three hours, Sulu barely had time to blurt out thanks for the instructions and orders he was given, much less converse with the other cadets. He lost the Australian shortly after relinquishing his bag, but Maté Perez-Salazar seemed to cling to his peripheral vision like a berm-runner on an illegal hyperjump. Once he'd changed, logged in, been issued a counselor, a billet number, a class schedule, a bloc, carried about and delivered numerous medical records on himself, identified himself for more computer systems than he'd ever have dreamed, and tried to explain to an indifferent liaison officer that he wasn't Das Res-Pamudan from Isrando-on-Sheshwar, he was pushed down a long, windowless hall and told to "go straight, then left, then left, wait in Sunside until a monitor comes—Next!" It was a long, perplexing walk, indeed.

  He was perhaps two-thirds of the way to Sunside—studiously mirroring the route indicated on his handsize datex screen—before he considered that anywhere called "Sunside" was perhaps not a preferable place to be. All his imagination could conjure was lurid, molten still shots of Mercury's daylight half; he wondered why anyone would go there, much less name a meeting room after the place. A punishment cubicle, perhaps? "Here at Starfleet's command school, we believe no raw potential should go undeveloped. For example, impressive disciplinary results can be obtained through the use of pain."