"And what happened then?"
Riker shrugged. "It all went downhill. The
ship; my life ... just ..." And again he
shrugged, this time a bit more fatalistically.
"Sometimes you just don't really appreciate how
key someone is to your world until they're gone. And
then, of course, it's too late."
They sat there for a few moments longer, and then
Wesley suddenly cocked his head slightly in that
gesture that Riker had come to know so well.
"Crusher here."
Riker didn't bother to stand by and watch
Captain Crusher have a conversation with thin air.
Instead he walked back into the other room where
Deanna's body lay in a perfectly
preserved state and rested a hand on the covering.
"I'm sorry, Imzadi," he said softly.
"I tried."
He heard Wesley's soft footfall, and
then the captain said, "I have to go. Sudden
groundquake on Cygnia III. Code One
disaster situation." He paused. "You're
welcome to come along, Admiral. There's ...
well, I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing here
for you except fairly unpleasant memories."
"That may very well be, Captain, but as I
mentioned to you, Lwaxana Troi's wishes in the
disposition of her things were quite specific. And
Lwaxana was always a tough woman to say no
to."
"All right, Admiral. Whatever you say."
Crusher paused. "It stopped raining. If you'd
like, I'll walk you back to the house before I go."
Riker nodded.
They walked out of the mausoleum together, their
feet squishing softly into the now spongelike
ground. The clouds were passing and hints of
sunlight were already streaming through. As they approached
the house, the admiral turned to Crusher and took
him by the shoulders.
"It's been a pleasure seeing you again,
Wes."
Crusher grimaced. "I just wish it could have been
under more pleasant circumstances."
"So do i. Maybe next time it will be."
Then, in a rather nonregulation but perfectly
understandable move, Riker embraced Crusher
firmly, patting him on the back. Then he
took a few steps back, and both of them, without
any intention of doing so, simultaneously tugged
on their respective uniform jackets,
straightening them. Each saw the other making the
gesture, and they both laughed.
"Good sailing, Captain Crusher. The
Hood is a good ship. I served on one of her
predecessors. Fortunately she has a fine
captain at the helm."
"Good luck in your future endeavors,
Admiral Riker. I hope you find happiness
... and some peace." Then Crusher tilted his head
and said, "Crusher to Hood. One to beam up."
Wesley Crusher's body shimmered out, and
Riker was alone.
He found the Holy Rings of Betazed. They
were, for no reason Riker could determine, in
Lwaxana's closet. He shrugged and put them
with the pile of other materials, trinkets, and
mementos that he was organizing in the living room.
Mr. Homn had vanished. There had been no
^w of explanation. No good-byes. When Riker
had returned to the mansion, Homn simply
wasn't there. It was as if he'd done his job
to its conclusion and, once having reached that conclusion,
had no reason to remain. And so he had left.
Left Riker with a huge pile of material to go
through.
Betazed had an excellent museum of
antiquities, and Lwaxana Troi's
collection was going to be a considerable and
valuable addition. Riker had made the
arrangements for it to be taken away, and they had
only asked that he go through everything first to remove
any possessions that might simply be considered
personal andof no interest to the general Betazed
public.
Lwaxana had left no family behind. The
furniture had already been cleared out, donated
to a local charity. All that were left were the
keepsakes that Riker was now sorting through.
Having gone through all the other rooms in the
house, he now approached the one he least looked
forward to: Deanna's.
He opened the door, and sure enough, it was what
he had anticipated. Lwaxana had left
everything exactly as it was, like a shrine to her
daughter. The room was decorated in large
splashes of purple, with various small statues
--the type that Deanna had liked to stare at for
hours on end.
And in Deanna's closet, he found a box.
It had a lock on it, but the lock wasn't
closed. Riker opened the lid, curious as to what
he would find.
He recognized everything that was in the box.
Everything had been perfectly preserved, no
matter how arcane or trivial. There was a
piece of vine from the Jalara Jungle. There was
the headband that she had been wearing at Chandra's
wedding. There was her study disk on "Human
Dysfunctions." There was ...
"Good lord." He reached down and picked up a
small but sharp rock. It had a discoloration on
it that was quite clearly blood. "She even kept
this."
He looked further and found the poem.
He read it over, separated by decades from the
youthful exuberance with which he'd penned it.
Phrases that he could remember sounding so clever
to himself when he'd come up with them now sounded trite,
facile. A kid who knew nothing, trying to sum
up in a few lines of poetry feelings that even
now, as an old man, he couldn't completely
frame for himself.
"This is terrible. I can't believe I wrote
this." And then he picked up the headband, fingering it.
"And I can't believe you liked it. I can't
believe you--"
He was surprised to find that his face was wet.
He wiped the tears with the headband and felt
the softness of it against his face and started to cry
harder.
He had thought he'd finished with the grief.
He'd thought he'd been able to move on. But there,
sitting on the floor of a room once belonging to a
young, vital woman, he realized that he had never
moved on. Never put it behind him. His entire
life reeked of unfinished business. And he would
never be able to finish it. There had been so much he
had wanted to say--and would never be able to because time had
outsped him before he'd even fully grasped the
notion that he was in a race.
It was never going to get better. Despite
all his accomplishments, his great failure--the
failure that everyone had told him he'd had no
reason for shouldering--wd always be with him. Alw.
He clutched the headband even tighter and tried
to remember a time when he felt no pain.
THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER 11
Lieutenant Will
iam t. Riker punched
the bulkhead and managed to bruise his hand rather
badly. The bulkhead, for its part, didn't
seem to care all that much.
He stared once more, with utter hatred, at the
packed suitcase that sat in the middle of his bed,
as if angry the thing even existed. "This really
stinks," he informed the case, and went on to add,
"I can't believe you're doing this." The
suitcase showed as much interest in Riker's anger
as had the bulkhead.
"Lieutenant Riker to the bridge," came his
captain's voice through his communicator.
He tapped it with his hand, which made it feel
sore all over again: "On my way." He cast
one last angry glance at the suitcase and the
bulkhead, which had obviously conspired to make his
life just that much more miserable, before heading out the door
and up to the bridge.
He drummed impatiently on the railing
grip of the turbolift. Everything about the ship
seemed slow and frustrating. For that
matter, everything about his life seemed slow and
frustrating. He had places to go, a career
to forge ... and the fates had conspired to slow that
career to an agonizing, frustrating crawl.
The 'lift door opened out onto the cramped
bridge of the Fortuna, and Riker stepped out.
He nodded a brisk acknowledgment to Captain
Lansing and took his place at the survey station.
Lansing, middle-aged and content with the
relatively low point in the pecking order that he
had reached in his career, swiveled in his chair
to face Riker. "I thought you might want to know,
Lieutenant, that we'll be arriving at Betazed
in ..." Lansing paused and glanced at the
helmsman.
"Twenty-seven minutes," said the helmsman.
Riker noticed that everyone on the bridge
seemed to be staring at him.
"And we thought that you might want to spend your
last half hour aboard our vessel with our
small but sturdy bridge crew," continued
Lansing.
Riker frowned. "That's very kind of you, sir."
Lansing rose, drawing his portly frame out
of the command chair. "You did make it quite clear that you
did not want any sort of going-away
function."
"Yes, sir. And I appreciate your
honoring my request."
"You know the wonderful thing about being in command,
Mr. Riker?" Without waiting for Riker
to respond, Lansing continued, "You get
to ignore the wishes of your junior officers
whenever it suits you. Mr. Li, if you don't
mind."
Navigator Kathy Li rose from her chair
and brought her hands around. Riker saw that she was
holding something, and he fought down a grin when he
saw what it was: a large cupcake with a sparking
candle lodged serenely in the top. And the ^ws So
Long, Cupcake--Li's nickname for him--
were scrawled across the top of it in pink icing.
Captain Lansing said, "Computer. Run
"Riker Farewell Program One-A."'"
The bridge was promptly filled with the sound of
Dixieland music, and now Riker laughed out loud
in spite of himself.
Over the music, Lansing called out, "We
decided to compromise, Mr. Riker--a
send-off, but with a very proscribed time
limit, namely twenty-seven--excuse me,
twenty-six now--minutes."
Riker made the round of the bridge crew,
shaking hands and laughing and no.ing, accepting with good
grace their best wishes for his new assignment.
Kathy Li kissed him rather passionately--they had
made some minor effort to be discreet over their
relationship while serving together. They had, of
course, fooled absolutely no one, andwith his
imminent departure she saw no need
to pussyfoot around. They broke for air and she
patted him on the face. "It's been a lot of
laughs, cupcake."
"No more than that?" he said mischievously.
She looked at him, feigning total
astonishment. "More than that? With W-the-Thrill,
I-never-Met-a-Woman-I-Didn't-Like
Riker? Oh, come on, Lieutenant. You
wouldn't want more than that. Doesn't fit in with
your game plan."
"Are you saying the good lieutenant isn't the
type to commit to one woman?" said Lansing in
mock horror.
"I'm really enjoying discussing my
psychological profile in a public forum,"
Riker said.
As if Riker hadn't even spoken, Li said
cheerfully, "Remember the old days of space
travel, Captain? Where every single article had
to be carefully measured and accounted for because of fuel
consumption? If you had weight that you didn't
allow for, it could cost the early astronauts their
lives. Well"--she squeezed Riker's
shoulder--?the lieutenant operates on the same
principle. A real, solid romance--true
love and everything--wd amount to additional weight in
his travels through space. Our Mr. Riker
doesn't like to deal with excess baggage."
Riker looked at her. "Kathy, are you mad
at me?"
She blinked in surprise. "No. Not at
all. I just know how you are. Or am I wrong?"
He thought about it and said, "No, you're
probably right."
"See there?" said Lansing. "Mr. Li is
probably right. And that is good enough for me. Mr.
Riker, do you have any final things you'd like to say
before you embark on your new and exciting
assignment?"
Science Officer Sara Paul was
going around from person to person, holding a bottle
of champagne. Glasses had been produced and
she was filling each of them up about halfway.
"Anything I'd like to say? Truthfully?"
"The truth is preferred aboard the science
exploration vessel Fortuna," said Lansing.
Riker stared at his cupcake. "Well ...
to be honest ... I wish I weren't leaving."
This caused a fairly surprised reaction from
the others. "But Lieutenant," said Lansing,
"being promoted to first officer on the Hood ...
it's a sizable step up. And--"
"If I were going to the Hood, sir, I'd be
ecstatic. But I'm not. I'm going to be cooling
my heels planetside for the next few months.
I could be far more use remaining on the Fortuna."
"Lieutenant," said Lansing understandingly,
"it's an unfortunate piece of luck, I'll
admit. But let's try being unselfish, shall we?
We can just thank the stars that the Hood is still in
one piece. From what I've heard, those
Sindareen raiders gave her quite a shellacking.
It's a testament to the Hood, her
capabilities and her crew, that she not only
survived the sneak attack but destroyed the
raiders. Still, she's going to be in dry dock for the
next two to three months, undergoing repairs and
overha
uls which were past due anyway. Look at
it this way--y'll be getting a ship that's better
than new."
"But to be planetside ..." Riker shook his
head ruefully. "I feel like I'll lose my
space legs. The timing is so lousy."
"True enough," admitted Lansing. "But what
are we supposed to do? Your transfer to the
Hood was arranged a month ago. Who
expected a Sindareen attack on her? And the
same time your transfer was arranged, so was the
transfer of your replacement. We rendezvous with
him in eighteen hours. We don't need the both
of you here, and when the vacancy in the Betazed
embassy opened up--"
"So why not let him stew on Betazed for a
few months?" said Riker, hoping he wasn't
sounding too whiny.
"Because Starfleet wanted the more experienced
officer there, Lieutenant, and that's you. Face
it, Mr. Riker ... you're just too popular.
Everyone wants you."
Riker shook his head. "It's been
years since I've been planetside for more than
seventy-two hours."
"You'll get the hang of it," said Lansing
consolingly. Then he raised his glass. "Lt.
William t. Riker: Here's wishing you all the
success in the galaxy, and hoping for a great and
glorious future. To your future."
"To your future," chorused the crew of the
Fortuna.
Riker nodded and smiled. "To the future," he
said, and drank the champagne.
CHAPTER 12
Riker's first view of Mark Roper, the man
who headed the Federation embassy of Betazed, was
what would become a fairly typical view of
him--bbh his desk, looking utterly besieged.
Roper, for his part, didn't seem to notice
Riker at all.
Roper was heavyset, with graying hair and a
thick, red nose that God seemed to have slapped
on one day while He was in one of His more puckish
moods. Roper had two computer screens on his
desk and was going from one to the other, tapping notes
into a small padd in front of him and muttering
to himself much of the time.
Riker cleared his throat. Roper glanced up
at him, nodded briskly in acknowledgment, and then
promptly, and rather obviously, forgot Riker was
standing there. Instead Roper continued with his work, saying
things like, "Unbelievable. Can't expect me
to be everywhere. They want me to ...? That's
two conflicting appointments. Now the
Rigelian ambassador wants to come through? And