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 word 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 and of 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—would always be with him. Always.
He clutched the headband even tighter and tried to remember a time when he felt no pain.
The Beginning
Eleven
Lieutenant William 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 R
iker 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 words 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 nodding, 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, and with 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 Will-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—would 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 overhauls which were past due anyway. Look at it this way—you’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.
Twelve
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—behind 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 he expects me to set up a reception. Lord…Grace!”
The last word was shouted, and for a moment Riker thought that Roper was loudly calling for divine intervention. But then the harried but determined young woman who had greeted Riker when he first arrived outside Roper’s office barreled in in response. She sidled past Riker, who had the distinct feeling that he had been thrown into the middle of carefully, but barely, controlled chaos.
“Grace,” Roper said, “get me Harras at the catering facility. I have to meet with him as soon as possible. Also with Counsel Head Timbor—”
“You just met with him yesterday,” Grace reminded him, sounding slightly confused.
“Yes, but I didn’t know about the Rigelian ambassador yesterday,” replied Roper in exasperation. “Utterly paranoid people. Never like to give anyone more than forty-eight hours’ notice. And he probably won’t even show up! Cancel at the last minute. Typical. Typical.”
Riker wasn’t sure precisely whom Roper was talking to—Grace, Riker, or himself…or some combination of the three.
“When’s the earliest I can see Harras? Tonight,” he said, answering his own question. “It has to be tonight.”
“You have the Xerx wedding tonight.”
Roper held his face in his hands. “Perfect. Just perfect.”
He was silent for a long moment, and Riker seized the break in the steady flow of conversation. “Mr. Roper? I’m Lieutenant Riker. I presume you were told about me?”
Roper stared at him through his fingers. “When was our appointment?”
“Appoint—?” Riker looked from Roper to the woman who’d been addressed as Grace. “Is anyone here expecting me?”
Grace said to her boss with a gentle, prodding tone, “Starfleet? Remember, Mark?”
Roper still looked blank for a moment, and then understanding flooded through his face. “Riker! William Riker!”
“Yes, sir,” said Riker with a sigh of relief.
“The new Starfleet liaison! My boy, please accept my apologies.” Roper circled around his desk and took Riker’s hand, pumping it furiously.
“I’m sorry if I came at a bad time.”
“Daytime is generally a bad time,” said Roper. “The second worst time is nighttime. Nevertheless, it’s good to have you aboard. As you can see by my perpetually discombobulated state, the more help we have here, the better.”
“Whatever I can do to help, sir.”
“Yes, well, the first thing you can do is take a load off.” Roper gestured to the chair opposite him. “And have patience with my natterings and ramblings. Would you like some coffee?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
Roper started to head for the door, but Grace stopped him. “It’s okay, Mark. I’ll get it.” She looked to Riker and said, “Cream?”
“Black.”
“Coming up.” She smiled and flashed two rows of clean white teeth at him before walking out.
Roper looked at Riker with what appeared to be newfound respect. “I admit, I’m impressed, Captain.”
Riker looked at him with mild confusion. “It’s ‘lieutenant.’ And why are you impressed, sir?”
“Because Grace has been my assistant for three years and she rarely sees fit to bring me coffee…and she never volunteers. But you—” Roper paused. “Have a way with the females, do you, Captain?”
A slow smile spread across Riker’s face. “Women seem to…appreciate me. Why do you keep calling me captain?”
“Starfleet forwarded me your file. Very impressive body of work. The word on you is that you’re an aggressive, hotshot, up-and-coming young officer, with a flair and aptitude for some of the finer points of diplomacy. The general poop—do you Starfleet types still use nautical terms like poop?”