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  For Matthew

  “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

  Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.”

  —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  This story takes place in 2399, after Jean-Luc Picard returns from the events on Coppelius (Star Trek: Picard—“Et in Arcadia Ego”), and just prior to his acceptance of the role of vice-chancellor at Starfleet Academy (Star Trek: Picard—“The Star Gazer”).

  PART 1 2399

  AFTER COPPELIUS

  1

  Lieutenant Commander Raffaela Musiker was a whole new woman. Clean, poised, ready for action. Ready for something new—although the jury was out on what that something new might be. But history—whether public or private—sometimes has its own designs. Lays traps for the unwary. Guides you back to places you thought you’d long since left behind. Raffi Musiker didn’t believe in fate, or destiny, but the upshot of this story is that they might well believe in you.

  Raffi was in France. In Paris. She’d been here once before, a lifetime ago, when she had been a completely different woman. Young, and in love, and not yet a wife or a mother. She wasn’t young now, nor was she a wife any longer, and she doubted the extent to which she had ever been a mother. But she was, at least, in love, and perhaps this was what allowed Paris to work its charms on her. Stepping out of the public transporter near the Gare du Nord, she clamped down her first impressions—of the pressing crowds, the noise, the crush—and allowed the city to spend the next couple of days ravishing her. Marveled at the light and the gardens. Felt the weight of history. Saw small trinkets she might get for a grandkid—if such a thing were ever to be allowed to enter this new life of hers—and instead picked up kitsch for Seven. A tiny Eiffel Tower. An “I ♥ Paris” T-shirt. Boxes of chocolate. She missed Seven, and wished she was here. At the Arc de Triomphe, she walked slowly around, counting off the twelve avenues that radiated outward, almost overcome by the choices that lay ahead. A whole new lease on life.

  What do I do now? What do I do next? Where the hell do I go…?

  She chose coffee and patisserie, and, for the moment at least, less drama. The whole point of coming on this trip was to make a decision, wasn’t it? About what to do next. About the person she was going to be, now that the old one didn’t exist any longer.

  On the morning of her third day in the city of light, Raffi picked up the flyer she was using for the rest of the trip and began her journey south and east toward La Barre. The summer had been hot and now, in September, the fields were looking yellow and tired. The harvest would soon begin. She arrived at the house midafternoon, stepping out of the cool scrubbed air of her all-new flyer to hit a wall of heat, the kind so heavy you might have thought someone was messing with the gravity. A woman was walking toward her: dark-haired and perhaps a little older than Raffi. Hard to guess, sometimes, with Romulans.

  “Hey,” said Raffi, uncertainly. They didn’t know each other well—although they knew a great deal about each other. Raffi knew that Laris had once been Tal Shiar. With JL, she had helped Laris escape them and get to Earth. Raffi knew, too (and perhaps this could be seen in the lines and shadows that were settling on the other woman’s face), that Laris was recently widowed.

  “Hello,” said Laris, folding her arms in front of her. “How was the trip?”

  “Fine,” said Raffi. “It’s hotter than I expected. I thought Europe was meant to be temperate. Know what I mean?”

  A small smile flickered over the other woman’s face. “It’ll rain tonight.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m sure. Let me take your bag.”

  Laris hoisted up the bag and led her inside.

  “Where’s JL?” said Raffi.

  “The lord of the manor,” said Laris, “is out with his dog. His—”

  “—damn dog,” said Raffi, with her.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Laris. “I love the beast. But I might wish he was self-cleaning.”

  “Robotics,” agreed Raffi. “Daystrom’s missing a trick there.”

  Laris’s smile almost became a laugh. Almost. A start. Something to build on.

  They went into the kitchen—a cool stone room that managed to combine rustic simplicity with an air of quiet and sustained age—and Raffi took a seat, as directed, at the table. She watched Laris move around. There was a slight hesitation to everything she did, an air of distraction, perhaps, or the habits arising from the presence of another.

  “Now where’d you put the damn tea strainer…” she muttered to herself. “Huh. I’d never have guessed.”

  Mint tea; refreshing in the heat. They sat at the kitchen table, trying to jump-start a conversation, until Raffi heard a clatter of claws on the flagstones outside the open door. The dog (Number One, if Raffi remembered correctly; oh, but how droll of you, JL) launched into the kitchen like a low-slung, short-haired, snub-nosed missile. Found his target, unerringly, and scrambled into Laris’s lap.

  “Great soft lump,” she said lovingly, scratching between his ears. “Daft old thing.” The creature’s tongue lolled out and he looked up at her in adoration.

  Footsteps on the path; a shadow in the doorway—and there was JL, stepping inside his family home, a whole new man these days. Raffi rose from her chair, and his face crinkled into a smile at the sight of her. Great soft lump, thought Raffi, moving over to greet him. Daft old thing.

  “Raffi,” he said warmly, drawing her into an embrace, which she clumsily returned. “It is so very good to have you here at last.”

  “Nice to get here at last.”

  “Laris,” he said, eyeing the other woman anxiously. “All well?”

  “All’s well,” she said, almost impatiently. “Don’t fuss.”

  There was a moment’s awkward silence. Raffi put down her cup. “You know, JL,” she said, “I’ve been here almost an hour and I haven’t had a glass of wine.”

  * * *

  Wine was brought, along with cheese and bread. By some steady and well-established process, this refreshment turned into a bigger but unfussy evening meal, and Raffi had the quiet but undeniable pleasure of watching JL sharply instructed on the correct assembly of a green salad. They moved from the kitchen to an outside terrace that gave a view out across JL’s vineyards. His ancestral lands. Imagine living in a place with so much history, Raffi thought. History to which your own family was so deeply connected. There was plenty of wine now, although Raffi was careful to temper her intake. A new woman, remember. Clean, and dry enough. At the end of the meal came a crème brûlée that Raffi knew would live long in her memory. After this was finished, and contemplated, Laris stood u
p.

  “Oh well,” she said with a sigh. “Table won’t clear itself.”

  “Need some help?” said Raffi, making to rise from her chair.

  Laris, piling up plates, shook her head. “Number One’ll keep me company. You stay and catch up with his lordship.” And, with the dog trotting behind her, she went back into the kitchen. Raffi waited until she was out of earshot.

  “How is she doing?” she said.

  “Not well,” admitted JL. “She and Zhaban were together a long time. Sacrificed their lives in order to be together.”

  Raffi, whose own losses had—to a great extent—been self-inflicted, pondered what this might be like, to have lived so closely to someone, for almost the whole of one’s life, only to have that partnership suddenly and cruelly ended. “Jeez. There’s no justice, sometimes, is there?”

  “Not often,” said JL. “But we try.” He stretched in his seat. “I’m glad you found the time to come here, Raffi,” he said. “But am I right in saying that something is preying on your mind?”

  “I’m that easy to read?”

  “Only to me.”

  “Huh. Well, you’re kinda right. I’m trying to decide what to do next.”

  JL was picking at the bread. “I thought you were returning to Starfleet.”

  “Yes, that, but—it’s a big outfit.”

  “It is.”

  “And, to my astonishment, the offers have been… Well, not rolling in, not that, exactly, but there’ve been more of them than I expected.” Raffi held out her hands, as if weighing her options. “Daystrom asked me to consider a temporary transfer there. Join the Grand Tour, bringing the Good News about synthetics to all and sundry…” She trailed off. “I’m not sure.”

  “With the best will in the world, Raffi,” said JL, “I’m not entirely sure that public relations could be considered your forte.”

  “You and me both,” said Raffi. “Might be fun working with Agnes, though… Hey, don’t give me that look! I like Agnes, god help me. But—no. Not me.”

  “You said ‘offers,’ ” he prompted.

  “Yeah.”

  “One of them is causing you… What is it? Concern? Hesitation?”

  Raffi stared out. The fields were dark now, although she could see the lights in the houses of the nearby village. The heat was heavy. Weight of history. “Starfleet Intelligence has asked me to go back to my old job.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Romulan Affairs?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re considering it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem—I just don’t know! You say I’m not cut out for public relations, and—yes, you’re right. I know my strengths—and my weaknesses. I’m a great analyst. I size things up quickly, I make connections, I see what needs to be done, and I get it done. But…”

  “But you’re worried that going back into intelligence work will press the wrong buttons,” said JL. “You’re worried it makes you see things that might not be there. Makes you paranoid.”

  She leaned forward in her chair. These fears—these truths—were not easy to speak out loud, but how else would she be free of them? “Yes,” she said quietly. “You know, what’s unfair is that it didn’t matter, in so many ways, that I was right. There was this big conspiracy. It still cost me my health. It cost me…” Gabe. Jae. My little boy. My marriage. My old life. “Well, it cost me.”

  “And you’re worried what might happen if you drink from that well once again.”

  “You always put these things so prettily,” she said.

  “You know, Raffi, I spent a long time here—”

  “Sulking,” she said.

  “Sulking, yes; but also writing. I learned how to turn a pretty phrase. All alone in the hills, with only my thoughts and my books for company. Prospero, on his island.” JL smiled. “There are worse ways, I suppose, to spend one’s later life than sitting in peace, reflecting upon one’s past.”

  “What are you saying, JL? That I should go and write my memoirs? The world doesn’t want to know the lousy details of my lousy past—”

  “You know full well that I am saying nothing of the sort! But I agree that you are right to reflect on whether Starfleet Intelligence would be the best move for you.” He cleared his throat. “I had, in fact, heard that the offer was out there…”

  “Huh.” She narrowed her eyes. “Not much gets past you, does it?”

  “Not much. More positively, this means that I’ve also been thinking about what might suit you now.”

  “Thinking of little old me?” Raffi put her hand to her chest. “JL! I’m touched! No, truly!”

  “Hmm. You know that I’m heading to the Academy.”

  “I heard,” she said. “Vice-chancellor. I guess that the titles you’ve not held are few and far between. Might as well collect them all.” Mischief bubbled up inside her. “Hey, is there a special hat? A really good hat?”

  “It’s a magnificent hat,” he said, with measured dignity, “which—if I have been correctly informed—I shall be required to both don and doff periodically, and with great ceremony.”

  “There’ll be some pretty decent dinners too.”

  “Banquets, I dare say,” he agreed.

  “Lots of people looking up at you in awe and admiration—”

  “Sounds ideal for me, doesn’t it?”

  “Sounds made for you,” said Raffi. “But enough about you. You said you’d been thinking about me.”

  “I have. I do. Why not come with me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come with me,” he said, again, and yet not, to her, more intelligibly.

  “What?” she said. “To the Academy?”

  “To the Academy.”

  “To… JL, that’s a really terrible idea. I mean, beyond bad, even for you.”

  “Why, Raffi?” He seemed genuinely curious. “Why does it seem so?”

  Raffi thought back to her own time at the Academy. She’d enjoyed it, she guessed, although the rules and regulations had been tiresome, and often circumvented. Story of her life. “Well, for one thing—what would I do at the Academy?”

  “Teach, I should imagine,” he said. “That being the purpose of the place.”

  “JL, seriously? Me? Shaping young minds? With my track record? The mother of the century?”

  “Raffi, you were a good mother—”

  “Oh no. No. Let’s not rewrite history. I was a terrible mother. I was a disastrous mother.”

  “You were a good mother when you were there. You loved him. Love him—”

  “Yeah, the problem was that I wasn’t there. And even when I was there, my mind was elsewhere. I was too busy chasing conspiracy theories—”

  “Theories which turned out to be true.”

  “And doing nothing approximating mothering, which begs the question why you think I would be any use as a teacher of young kids.”

  “Being a teacher is not the same as being a mother—”

  “I mean, what exactly would I teach them? How to rub superior officers the wrong way? How to mouth off at exactly the wrong moment?”

  “You could teach them endurance,” he said quietly. “Honesty. Integrity—”

  “You’re drunk, JL. Get real.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, and she was starting to think that he was. Misguided, perhaps, but serious. “Raffi, I believe you would find teaching at the Academy a truly satisfying and revelatory experience.”

  “Oh, I see what’s happening here,” she said. “You think this would put some demons to rest, huh? Am I right?”

  “It might do that, but that’s not the reason I’m making the suggestion. Quite the contrary. Raffi, have you considered that as you make your decision about what to do next, you would do better thinking less about setting your past straight, and more about the shape you would like your future to take?”

  This, Raffi had to concede, was pretty good advice. But—the Academy? She shook her head. “I suppose there are worse
ideas. Jaunting around with Jurati, for one…” She frowned. “Hey, isn’t Elnor enrolling?”

  “Elnor?” JL reached for his glass of wine.

  No eye contact? A yellow alert sounded in Raffi’s head. “Yeah, Elnor,” she said. “Isn’t he heading to the Academy next semester?”

  “He’s considering that option, yes.”

  That yellow alert rang more loudly. “JL, is that why you want me there?”

  “What?” He looked up from his glass at her.

  “Because you want someone to babysit Elnor?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No,” he said. “Anyway, he’s not made a decision yet as to whether or not he’s going—”

  “But if he does, it would be helpful if I was there.” Raffi shook her head. “While you’re busy doffing your hat and eating your fancy dinners—”

  “Raffi! It’s not like that!”

  “You know, I think the Academy could be a great move,” she said. “For Elnor.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said JL with a sigh. “Absolute candor does not win many friends.”

  “No, but he needs to find them.”

  “Friends?”

  “Friends. People. Anyone he can call his own.”

  “You mean a crew?” said JL.

  “That’s a revealing insight into how your mind works, Admiral Picard. But I guess what I meant was—a family.”

  “Like a mother,” said JL, his eyes twinkling at her over his glass.

  “That boy,” said Raffi firmly, “has surely had enough of older women ordering him around.”

  Laris came out, bringing coffee, and sat back down in her chair. As JL poured, she looked at Raffi. “Long face,” said Laris. “I’m guessing he’s asked you about the Academy.”

  “Yeah,” said Raffi. “And I told him why it’s a bad idea.”

  “Huh,” said Laris. “You think it is a bad idea?”

  “Yep,” said Raffi. “Why—don’t you?”

  Laris shrugged. “If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that life can throw some unexpected curveballs. You never know where you’re heading next. What you’re about to become.”