9

Earth

There was a dreamlike quality to Christopher Pike’s adolescence. Could life really be this easy? Or had he earned this somehow, because of his past?

The possibility of living with his aunt and uncle in Argentina somehow never came up again after that first time. On his thirteenth birthday, along with a hand-tooled saddle and his first real cowboy boots, Charlie handed him an old-fashioned printed document rolled up with a ribbon in the form of a scroll. It was an offer of adoption. Chris couldn’t think of any reasons not to accept.

The following day he, Charlie, and Hobelia visited a lawyer in town and signed the document, and Chris kept his copy among his treasures. At first the name Christopher Pike struck him as odd but, trying it out in his mind and on his tongue, he found it suited him.

He did well in school. Because of the way Willa had taught him to investigate things from the time he was a little boy, learning came easily to him, and he was very popular in his new school. He was absorbed by the knowledge itself and didn’t care about the grades.

Nor did his learning limit itself to the classroom. Charlie taught him to live off the land, to acknowledge every creature who lived on it, to find water in the desert and food in seeming barren places, to sleep beneath the stars and know their names. Hobelia taught him to recognize that past, present, and future were not always distinct things, and that a wise man never dismissed his dreams.

His boundless energy found outlet in riding and showing Tango at as many local shows as he could manage, and somehow he found time to captain the school football team, and allow the local girls to worship him. The sight of the handsome young man with the lopsided grin riding up to school on the striking bay gelding who was true to his name, strutting and waltzing and sidestepping in place-as much a clown and a show-off as his master was quiet and thoughtful-was enough to turn any girl’s head.

He never got too deeply involved with any one girl; Charlie joked that he’d have needed a flyswatter to shoo the extra ones away if he had. And if once in a while a shadow fell across his face, and those dark eyebrows drew down in a frown and his gaze seemed very far away, if he was a little more serious than most young men his age-not quite standoffish, but reluctant to engage in the clowning and rough-housing of his peers-the story of how his mother had died before his eyes when he was very young would make the rounds, and those who knew him would cut him some slack.

Every so often when he thought about Willa-and he thought about her a lot-he recalled that overheard conversation in the kitchen and he wondered. Wondered if it had meant what he thought it meant at the time, wondered if he should mention it to Charlie.

What if Charlie and his mother had been having an affair? What if they hadn’t? It occurred to Chris a thousand times to ask, lead up to it in some subtle or not-so-subtle way, but he never did. What did it matter now, anyway?

During his growing up years, Charlie left on two more one-year voyages, and Chris and Hobelia ran the ranch. When Charlie came home, Chris pestered him for stories, filling in the blanks in his own mind around Charlie’s laconic version. The Starfleet uniform Chris had been given to wear when his own clothes were destroyed in the fire still hung in his closet, though it had been made for a smaller person, and he’d long since outgrown it. Like the adoption scroll, it was a talisman, a piece of the past that might give him a clue to the future.

Life was as close as any real thing could be to idyllic. How could he possibly give it up for what he needed to do next?

“What do you want, Chris?” Charlie asked him on the cusp of his senior year. The two men-Chris was taller than Charlie by now and nearly as broad in the shoulders, no longer a child by any definition-stood as they always did, chins resting on their folded arms, leaning on the top rail of the split-rail fence, savoring the evening with one eye on the horses.

“Want?” Chris pretended to be puzzled by the question. “I don’t want anything, Hoss. I’ve got everything right here.”

Charlie gave him a sideways look. “Say that again and convince me you mean it. You know what I’m talking about. College, travel, something else? I’ve never heard you talk with any enthusiasm about anything other than horses and girls, not necessarily in that order. It didn’t seem to be my business to press you on it, but there are some decisions to be made soon.”

“I know.”

“I’ve also seen you looking at the stars, wondering.”

Chris looked chagrined. “Okay, Hoss, you caught me. I’ve been thinking about joining Starfleet.”

“Have you, now?” Charlie feigned surprise. He’d noticed the application hovering on Chris’s computer screen for months now.

Chris nodded. “I want to see what’s out there. Can’t put it in any fancier words than that.”

Charlie suppressed a small smile. “Don’t know that you need to.”

Chris settled back down on the top rail with his chin on his folded arms, comfortable with the silence. Charlie squinted at the horizon, guessing what time it was. A finger to the wind told him tomorrow’s weather.

“Academy deadline’s not far away,” he offered finally.

“Starfleet Academy? I was thinking of enlisting. Don’t know that I’d qualify for the Academy.”

Charlie took off his slouch hat and whapped him playfully upside the head with it. “Now I know you’re fishing! Why wouldn’t you qualify? You’ve got excellent grades, natural leadership qualities, you’re in top physical condition. A few little things like that. Plus you did look damn good in the uniform, even as a kid.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Chris said with his lopsided grin.

“So- ?”

“So I don’t think there’s much use for a wrangler on a starship. I don’t have the engineering skills you have, and I’m okay at the sciences, but there’s no great passion for it. I don’t see that I have anything unique to offer.”

Charlie scratched one ear thoughtfully. “Then by process of elimination, there’s nothing left but the command track.”

“Oh, is that how it works?” Chris knew half of Charlie’s reasons for not staying in Starfleet had had to do with his resistance to authority.

“Well, don’t take my word for it,” Charlie demurred. “But they didn’t make you captain of the football team or student class president solely on the basis of your charm and good looks. You’re a leader, Chris. No avoiding it.”

“Maybe.”

“And- ?”

“And that’s what scares me. I guess I could handle running a department or something. Even leading a landing party under dangerous conditions is something I’d have to think hard about. But captaining a ship? A hundred or more people’s lives in my hands, out there in the middle of the unknown?” Chris frowned. “I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”

Charlie let that statement hang in the air unaddressed for a long moment. Finally he said, “It’s not your fault she died, Chris.”

Chris started as if he’d been slapped. “I know that! Where the hell did that come from?”

“Do you?” Charlie asked, unperturbed. “Do you really know that? Or do you still have some little shred of doubt that’s holding you back?”

“That’s got nothing to do with- “

“- with why you push yourself to be the best at everything you do, then duck out of the awards ceremonies and skip the homecoming parade? With why you’ve got everything going for you, but you’d rather enlist in Starfleet as a grunt and work your way up the hard way or not at all than apply for the Academy, knowing you’d get in in a heartbeat? Yeah, I think it has everything to do with it.”

A dozen angry retorts roiled through Chris’s mind, but he left them there. “It’s like you say, I do what I have to do to be able to sleep at night,” he said finally.

“Will you be able to sleep at night if you don’t fill out that application you’ve had up on your computer screen for a month or more?” Charlie asked quietly.

Chris’s cheeks flushed. “I’m just not sure I’ve got the right stuff.”

“Only one way to find out,” Charlie suggested.

“I guess so,” Chris acknowledged. “One thing, though… I don’t want you pulling any strings for me. Putting in a good word with Admiral Straczeskie or anything. You do know he’s an admiral now?”

“Seems to me I heard that,” Charlie acknowledged.

“Promise me you won’t say anything to him about me?”

“It’s not as if a rear admiral is going to be influenced by anything a transporter chief has to say…”

“… unless of course that transporter chief took a laser blast for him.”

Charlie sighed. “Okay, if that’s what you want. I promise I won’t say another word.”

It took Chris a moment to register what he’d just said.

“You didn’t- !” Chris started to sputter. “Damn it, Charlie…”

“If you apply, if you pass all the testing, Admiral Straczeskie will be the one to conduct your admission interview, that’s all. The rest is up to you.”

“As if he’d turn me down once I got that far!” Chris snorted.

Charlie rounded on him, a little annoyed. “He’d be out of his mind to turn you down, Christopher. If it’s what you want, you have every right to strive for it. And you’ll make it. I know you will, even without my help.” Charlie turned on his heel and headed back toward the house, his shadow long in the setting sun. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m finished talking about this.”

Christopher Pike applied for Starfleet Academy and, not surprisingly, aced most of the entrance exams. He went on to excel in all his classes. Math, sciences, languages, leadership, and first-contact skills came naturally to him, and the endurance tests and survival skills were a breeze for someone with his stamina and experience.

He did have one flaw, and that was an almost obsessive need to be perfect. He brooded over mistakes, went back and retested himself until he got as close to the highest score as possible. While it looked good on his academic record, it also made him his own worst enemy, and more than one of his examiners hesitated. Still, they gave him the benefit of the doubt, and ultimately he would graduate at the top of his class. More than one of his instructors remarked that if Earth could produce the ideal young Starfleet officer, Christopher Pike would be that officer.