Second Self Read online

  The word widow hung unhappily in the air. Raffi took the coffee cup and sipped the hot, bitter drink. Fortified, she said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good,” said JL. “Thank you.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” she added. But if there was one thing Raffi knew from her long history with Jean-Luc Picard, it was that he had an annoying habit of getting his own way.

  * * *

  She was still irritated with him by the time she went to bed. Sometimes, in his desire to fix matters, JL forgot that people had desires of their own. He saw that Elnor was lonely, that Raffi was uncertain of her future, and in his mind bringing them together at the Academy (under his benevolent watch, of course) elegantly solved both problems. Whether either of them had any desire to be at the Academy (or, indeed, under his eye) was immaterial. Raffi sighed and turned over in her bed. She was hot, and restless. It was several hours before sleep came.

  In the middle of the night, Raffi was woken by thunder. She got up and went over to the window. Lightning crackled on the hills ahead, great blue-white flashing lines, which, in this strange hour, seemed unearthly, more like the inscrutable signal of some mighty alien power than an entirely natural phenomenon. She watched the show, listening to the thunder draw nearer and nearer. It culminated in a great crash directly overhead, and then began its steady move away. Already the air felt fresher. She returned to her bed and let the steady fall of rain lull her back to sleep.

  In the morning, the sun had returned but was much softer. The world outside was washed clean. The house was very quiet; her hosts, presumably, were still in bed, or maybe even out already. Raffi went down into the kitchen. Number One, head on paws, perked up at her approach, jumping up and trotting out after her into the cool morning. They walked companionably together for an hour or so, the dog wandering on ahead every so often to sniff out areas of interest, then returning to lead her down some favored path. Raffi thought about the conversation of the previous night. This clear new day, the Academy didn’t seem such a ridiculous idea. This morning, everything felt possible. Maybe she did have something to teach. Maybe there was something—some expertise, some insight—that would benefit others at the start of their career. Right now, it was good simply to feel that there were options.

  Back at the house, Laris was up. There was coffee ready, and the welcome smell of bacon cooking. Soon enough they were feasting, and talking about the storm, and how much better the heat was today, and Raffi thought that it was good to be alive—but didn’t say so. After helping Laris to clear away, Raffi wandered through the house until she found the library. JL’s whole oeuvre was on a shelf. “This should be good,” Raffi muttered, choosing a history of the French Resistance during World War II. And it did turn out to be good: meticulously researched by JL and lucidly written. But of course JL would be an excellent historian. Of course.

  Midmorning, the man himself appeared at last, a padd tucked under his arm. He took the seat next to her, throwing the padd, with some exasperation, onto the table, and picking up the book that she had been reading. He flicked through this, before putting it back down again next to his padd.

  “It’s good,” she said. “You should think about taking up writing as a hobby.”

  “Thank you,” he said absently.

  So the smiles weren’t going to be easily won today. She wondered why she continued to try to earn them, but tried nonetheless. “Hey,” she said. “I remember that face. That face meant that people were making things difficult for you, and that meant that things were going to be made difficult for me.”

  “Well, I sincerely hope that I am not about to make my problems your problems…” He eyed her. “But perhaps you can help…”

  Oh hell, thought Raffi. I’m about to get suckered into something, aren’t I? She was right, although she didn’t know at that moment the extent to which she was right. “What’s going on?” she said, resigning herself to the immediate fate of providing a sounding board.

  “Would you run away,” he said, “if I said diplomacy?”

  “No. I’ve walked far enough today. But diplomacy is definitely not my thing,” she said. “Problem with the Romulans?”

  “Not the Romulans this time. Something worse.”

  “Worse than Romulans?”

  “Cardassians. Also—Bajorans.”

  “Ah,” said Raffi. “I guess, in combination, that could be worse than Romulans.” She clapped her hands together. “So. What’s going on?”

  “More fallout from the Occupation.”

  “Before my time,” said Raffi. She had graduated from the Academy after the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor had ended, going straight to a desk job at Romulan Affairs. This had kept her away from the front during the Dominion War. Her experience of Cardassians was mostly limited to one admittedly intense encounter after that war had ended. Her experience with Bajorans was slim to none. But she knew that Bajor had been a special interest of JL’s at some point or another. So many things had been a special interest of JL’s, at some point or another.

  “The Occupation of Bajor is increasingly before many people’s time,” said JL, his voice shifting into what Raffi thought of as lecture mode. Yeah, he was going to love the Academy. “But not quite consigned to history. Not yet. Not while some who were involved in those dreadful events are still alive. But this makes the situation complicated in other ways…”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s hear all about it.”

  “Very well,” he said with a smile. “How cognizant are you of current Bajoran-Cardassian relations?”

  “I’m guessing they’re somewhere between…” She waggled her hand. “Frosty and hostile?”

  JL gave a low laugh. “Concise and precise. Yes.”

  “And I’m guessing it’s something to do with the extraditions?”

  “Ah,” he said. “You are up to speed. I’m impressed.”

  “You don’t get offers to rejoin Starfleet Intelligence if you’re not up to speed. And you know what I learned over the years? Just because something wasn’t in a box labeled ‘Romulans’ didn’t mean that it couldn’t blow up in Starfleet’s face.”

  “No.” He studied her thoughtfully. “People shouldn’t underestimate you, Raffi.”

  “I’ve been saying that for years. So. Extraditions for crimes committed during the Occupation. I thought they’d been happening—or is the problem that they’re stalled? Are the Cardassians refusing to hand someone over?”

  “It’s hard to tell.” He sighed. “On the whole, you’re right—the extraditions have been going slowly but smoothly. Considerably better than we might ever have expected. The new castellan is part Bajoran, you know. One of her grandmothers, it seems, had a liaison with a Cardassian officer. Consensual, I hasten to add.”

  “That will have helped smooth proceedings, I imagine.”

  “It has. And, to be fair to previous Cardassian leaders, the will to hand over the surviving perpetrators of the more egregious actions taken under the Occupation has been, on the whole, fairly consistent since the end of the Dominion War. I suppose making that a condition of continuing aid during the reconstruction didn’t do any harm.”

  “That would focus the mind,” Raffi agreed. The Cardassian Union had been all but annihilated by the end of the Dominion War, with over eight hundred million dead by the time the Dominion surrendered, and many more dying in the privation that followed. The numbers would have been vastly worse without Federation assistance during the aftermath. “What’s the sticking point?”

  “The Bajorans have requested the extradition of a specific individual.”

  “And the Cardassians are refusing?”

  “Not quite. The Cardassian government claims that the individual concerned is no longer within their space. Indeed, he seems to have disappeared entirely.”

  “Huh,” said Raffi.

  Picard pushed his padd over to her, and Raffi read the file with interest—and increasing alarm. The individual concerned
was high profile; had served in many roles for various Cardassian administrations both before and after the Dominion War; had even been ambassador to the Federation at one time. The details of his early years were very sketchy; so were the details of the last two or three years. For the previous nine months, there was nothing.

  “I can see how this might cause difficulties,” she said.

  “The Bajorans are furious.”

  “But they can’t think that the Cardassian government is behind this, can they?” she said. “The Cardassians wouldn’t risk a diplomatic incident over this guy, would they? He’s yesterday’s news. They can’t think the Cardassians would hide him—”

  “The Bajorans are increasingly indicating that they might come to this conclusion.”

  Raffi frowned down at the padd. Diplomacy. Always overcomplicated. But then, that was history all over. Complication upon complication, and the place where the Bajoran and Cardassian peoples intersected was surely one of the most tangled histories of them all. Raffi’s single experience of the fallout from that long and tragic past had been enough to last her a lifetime; she was not keen to revisit it.

  “I’m guessing Bajoran Intelligence is all over this?” she said.

  JL leaned over to open another file on the padd. “You’re guessing right. Here’s the latest from them. They think they’ve tracked some of his movements since he left Cardassia Prime.”

  Raffi read through the file. Near the end, she read that Bajoran Intelligence was certain that their target had boarded a transport en route to a Cardassian colony world. The name was one familiar to Raffi; one she had not thought of for many years. One she had gone to some trouble to forget. Ordeve. She felt suddenly sick, as if she had drawn unexpectedly close to a cliff edge, or a trap that was about to spring. JL was looking at her, very carefully.

  You bastard.

  Raffi cleared her throat. “I was stationed on Ordeve,” she said. “At the end of the Dominion War.”

  “I know,” said JL.

  “You know,” said Raffi. “Of course you damn well know. And you want me to go back there, don’t you?”

  “Raffi, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Oh, cut the crap, JL!” Raffi glared down at the file, made the text scroll until the information presented was nothing more than a blur. She tried to calm down. “I met him once, you know. Very briefly. When he was on Earth. But you know that too, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” he said. “You can assume that I’ve read your report from the time. Assume too that I’ve read the report from the inquiry afterward—”

  “We were all exonerated,” said Raffi.

  “Quite right,” he said. “But what those reports don’t tell me is your impressions of the place, Raffi. I know—from what I’ve read—that Ordeve had some odd effects on people stationed there—”

  “You know why?” said Raffi. “Because everyone there was doing a lot of drugs.”

  “Including you?”

  “Less than you might imagine,” she said.

  “Was that all it was?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No… Look, the whole place was strange. There were dreams…”

  “Dreams?”

  “I said that people were doing a lot of drugs. Look, JL, I don’t have happy memories of my time there.” But who had happy memories of that time? What made her different from anyone else?

  JL leaned back and folded his hands together. His professorial stance. “Tell me more about Ordeve.”

  “You said you’ve read the reports.”

  “Raffi.”

  She got up from her chair and walked across the room to the window. She stood, her back to him, hands folded behind her, staring at the garden beyond. Charming place. Did he water his own flowers?

  “Ordeve was an extrasolar Bajoran colony,” she said. “The Cardassians annexed it during the Occupation and settled there. The Romulans took the place during the Dominion War, but it returned to Cardassian jurisdiction shortly afterward, and has remained in their hands ever since—”

  “I know the history,” he interrupted gently. “I was asking for your impressions. Why you think this particular man might be drawn to this particular place.”

  “I honestly have no idea why anyone would go there. It’s the middle of nowhere. And you certainly wouldn’t want to go back there.”

  “Because of the dreams?”

  The dreams had certainly been one thing, but there was more to Ordeve than that. There were the deaths and the losses; the bloodshed and secrets…

  “There was a reason that people were self-medicating,” said Raffi. “It was like we all knew that we were in a place where bad things had happened, over and over. And there we were, sitting targets for the Romulans. All we wanted was to get out before the next round of killings began.” She tried to collect herself. “The Romulans killed a lot of Cardassians after the ceasefire, you know. They were warming up to doing that on Ordeve.”

  “But they didn’t,” he said. “Those Cardassians must have been glad that Starfleet was there. That you were there.”

  “I guess.”

  “It must have been a terrifying experience, Raffi.”

  He wasn’t wrong. But the events of that mission were not all that had frightened her during her time on Ordeve. Something about the place had been—there was no other word for it—uncanny. “JL,” she said, “do you think that some places are cursed?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “No, I do not. I do not believe in the supernatural. I believe that the universe is ultimately explicable, but that we might not yet have found the language or the means by which it can be explained. But I am very interested that you describe the place in this way. What exactly do you mean?”

  “I mean… that sometimes it seems there are places with a history of violence that runs so deep that it’s like a wound that can never heal. That some trauma happened there, that keeps being repeated, over and over again. There are scars, that never go away…”

  “Traumatic experiences are often relived. Flashbacks. The harm is kept in an eternal present, and never integrated—”

  “Yes, that, but… I was fine before I went to Ordeve. It was the place that traumatized…” And had left her, wounded, in some way. Back near the start of her Starfleet career. Had anything gone right since?

  “I see,” said JL. He sat up straight, drawing a line beneath their conversation. “Thank you for telling me more, Raffi. I’m sorry to bring that time back.”

  She looked out over his land and wondered again what it would be like to be part of a history like this; to have a long connection to such a place. Raffi’s own attempts to build foundations had come crashing down years ago, and it was only in the last few months that she had come to believe that she might, still, create something solid, something lasting, something that might become a home. But when you saw what JL had here, you wondered whether it was worth the effort.

  “JL,” she said, “is this why you invited me here?”

  “What?” He sounded startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you know about this, about Ordeve, before you invited me here?”

  “Raffi, no, of course not—”

  “Only sometimes I think that people”—you—“see me more as a resource than as…” As someone in her own right. As someone with hopes and fears, desires and dreams. Sometimes Raffi felt as if these things were not allowed for someone like her. “As me. As Raffi. As myself.”

  She still had her back to him. She heard the creak of the chair as he stood up, and soft footsteps on the carpet as he approached. He put his hand very gently on her shoulder.

  “I swear to you,” he said, “that I had no idea about this when I invited you to visit. I wanted you to come—that’s why I asked! This file arrived very early this morning. When I saw Ordeve mentioned, I remembered it from your file. I know you are pondering what you want to do next. That a return to Starfleet Intelligence was under consideration. I t
hought that perhaps a mission like this might provide, shall we say… a test-drive. A way for you to see if intelligence work is still to your taste—”

  “To my taste?”

  “Raffi,” he said, “you must understand that you are in charge of your life now. Whatever happens next, the choices are for you to make. No—I did not invite you here to wine you and dine you and persuade you to take on a mission for me to Ordeve. But when I read the file, I thought it was something that you might like to consider—”

  “You’d be glad if I took this mission, though?”

  “I’d be glad that this mission was in the hands of someone like you.”

  “Nice save,” she said. “The question is—do I really want to go back to that damn place?”

  “ ‘The unexamined life,’ ” said JL portentously, “ ‘is not worth living.’ ”

  “Where do you get this stuff? In a Christmas cracker?”

  “I believe that’s commonly attributed to Socrates.”

  “Yeah? And how did things turn out for him?”

  He laughed and patted her arm. “You’ll go, then?”

  “You know I’ll go. How do you turn down a request from Admiral Vice-Chancellor Whatever-You-Are-Now Jean-Luc fecking Picard?”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Laris.”

  “Laris has got the measure of you.”

  “She does indeed.” JL gave a small, rather tight smile. “Thank you, Raffi, for agreeing even to consider this. Rest assured that you’ll have everything you need at your disposal.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait.”

  “And the offer to come to the Academy still stands.”

  “Oh please,” she said, “hand me the cup of hemlock now.”

  * * *

  Raffi took the dog for another walk. She was in the market for some unconditional love and Number One was happy to supply it. She stomped around the ancestral Picard lands, scowling at every damn ripening grape. She swore never to drink wine again, ever. She swore never to visit France again. As she trudged around, the dog running gamely alongside her, she realized that the most infuriating aspect of this whole damn thing was that JL was right. If she was going to return to Starfleet Intelligence, a mission like this would be a good way to find out whether she was still cut out for the work. Whether she wanted to drink from that well again.