Imzadi Forever

by Peter David

  She giggled slightly at that. “Well, if you are drunk, at least you’re funny about it. Daddy sticks mostly to Synthehol when he drinks.”

  “Synthehol!” sniffed Riker. “That stuff’s for infants! You’ll never catch me drinking that Ferengii garbage.”

  He circled his room, taking slow and steady steps that were a bit exaggerated. Without any preamble, he turned to Wendy and said, “She wasn’t even that good-looking!”

  “Who?”

  “Her! Her…her nose was too long. And her mouth was too wide. And…and her cheekbones were too high. Frankly…she was ugly.”

  “Her who?”

  “Someone I knew. Or thought I knew.” He dropped down onto the edge of the bed and stared off into space for a moment. Wendy sat next to him, waiting for him to say something else.

  “You know,” he said after a time, “you get in your head this…this picture of the way you think things are going to go. And they never match up. Nothing ever turns out the way you think it’s going to.”

  “I know how that is.”

  He looked at her. “You do?”

  “Of course I do. Fate’s always kicking you in the teeth.”

  “But why me?”

  “Not just you.” She almost laughed at the persecuted look on his face. “Everyone. I’ve had my share of busted romances. And my dad—well, how do you think he took it when my mom died?”

  “Not well?”

  “Not well at all. He was wrecked up about it. But just because fate kicks you in the teeth doesn’t mean you have to grin and give him more targets. You fight back, that’s all. You just let him know that you’re not going to take it. You’re just not.”

  “She didn’t understand,” said Riker bleakly. “I thought she did, but she didn’t. She can’t see anything beyond this…this lousy little planet. A whole galaxy of opportunity, and she’s got her head buried in the sands of Betazed….”

  “Not me,” said Wendy firmly. “I’m not living out my life here, you can bet on that. Not on this overphilosophized ball of rock. Uh-uh.”

  “No?”

  “No. No attachments for me. No strings. I want my freedom,” Wendy said with fire in her voice. “Another year or two here, tops. Then I’m gone. Diplomatic corps, maybe. An attaché or something. Or who knows? Maybe I’ll just hitch. See the galaxy. Grab rides on star freighters, doing odd jobs for passage.”

  “No attachments.”

  “No strings.”

  He stared at her. “Has anyone told you,” he said, feeling an extremely pleasant buzz in his head, “how terrific you look?”

  She grinned. “Not for a long time.”

  “And”—he paused—“has anyone done anything about how terrific you look?”

  “Not for an even longer time.”

  He kissed her, feeling giddy. She was warm and supple against him. Undemanding. Yielding. Wanting nothing more from him than he was capable of giving.

  He broke from her for a moment. “What do you think of art?”

  “Boring.”

  “Thank God,” he said, and they sank down onto the bed.

  Lwaxana sat in her favorite chair in the study, reading and feeling totally relaxed. Deanna sat at a desk nearby, surrounded by texts for various psychology courses.

  “What are you studying, Little One?” Lwaxana called to her.

  Deanna did not respond.

  Lwaxana turned to look at her and saw that Deanna was staring off into space. Deanna, she tossed into her daughter’s head. Deanna looked up, and Lwaxana continued, What are you studying?

  “Oh.” Deanna looked blankly at the texts in front of her. She held one up. “Human dysfunctions.”

  “Well,” Lwaxana said with a faint smile, “we’ve certainly had our up-close-and-personal study of that for today, haven’t we.”

  “Mother, that’s not nice,” said Deanna tightly.

  “You know,” Lwaxana said with a thought, “you might be able to get some genuine use out of your extended contact with him—purely on a clinical basis. He’s a fascinating study in obsessive behavior, don’t you th—”

  Deanna rose from her chair and started across the study. “I’m going out.”

  Immediately Lwaxana frowned, getting up from her chair. She didn’t precisely block Deanna’s way, but Deanna was definitely going to have to go around her. “It’s late,” Lwaxana said.

  “I think I’m a little old for a curfew, Mother.”

  “Maybe. But not too old to exercise common sense. You’re going to see him, and don’t bother trying to lie to me.”

  “It was too abrupt, Mother. It—”

  Lwaxana raised a stern finger. “It was exactly as abrupt as it needed to be. It’s what you both needed. Simply dragging things out would have done neither of you any good. It’s over. It’s finished. That’s it. Now go back and study.”

  “Mother, I don’t want to. I can’t. I—”

  I don’t care what you want, Lwaxana’s voice echoed sharply in Deanna’s head for emphasis. Do as I tell you!

  Deanna took a step back, a physical reaction to the mental rebuffing. Then her eyes narrowed, her fingers rolled up into tightly clenched fists.

  “You don’t, do you,” said Deanna carefully. “You don’t care what I want.”

  “I care about what’s best for you—”

  And with such force that it seemed as if the air molecules crackled, Deanna hurtled a blistering, NO YOU DON’T, MOTHER! right at Lwaxana.

  Lwaxana staggered, paling under her makeup. “How dare you think at me that way! To imply that I—”

  “I’m not implying it, Mother! I’m saying it outright!” For a moment Deanna felt as if her courage were going to falter, and then she realized that if she’d been able to face up to the fear that had pervaded her in the jungle, then this should be easy in comparison.

  It all burst from her at once. “For years, Mother—for years—while you’ve done whatever you wanted, wherever and whenever you wanted, you’ve told me what I’m supposed to do, what I have to do. And you keep telling me it’s for me, all me. But it’s not for me, Mother! It’s for you! It’s to satisfy your needs and your desires and your decisions. You’ve never asked me whether I care about any of these so-called responsibilities! You’ve never cared! You just…just assumed that I would embrace them because they were important to you. Well, they’re not important to me, Mother! I’m sorry! I don’t want to hold the sacred chalice! It’s all yours! Make wind chimes of the Holy Rings for all I care!”

  “Deanna—!” Words could not begin to express the shock flooding through Lwaxana. “I’d have sooner died than talk to my mother this way!”

  Deanna didn’t stop. She was afraid that if she did stop, she’d never have the nerve to start again. “I want my own priorities, Mother!” She thudded her fists against her own bosom for emphasis. “I want to make my decisions! My choices! Not yours. Not hundreds of years worth of tradition. Mine! I’m entitled to that! Every single thing I’ve done, I’ve done because you’ve made that decision for me! So when do I get a chance, Mother? When do I get to make decisions about careers and opportunities and marriages? When?”

  “When you have a daughter! Just the same way that I did!”

  Deanna gaped at her mother, appalled. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  Lwaxana was silent.

  “I cannot believe that you said that,” repeated Deanna. “Generation after generation, women not being allowed to think for themselves…perpetuating that pattern, child after child…” Deanna drew herself up. “It stops here, Mother.”

  “It’s that Riker,” Lwaxana said angrily. “He put these thoughts in your mind.”

  “No, Mother. The thoughts were always there. I just never had the nerve to say them. And what’s worst of all is, you knew they were there. You must have known. You knew that I was unhappy, and that didn’t stop you from doing whatever you pleased with my life, counting on my obedience and ‘dutiful daughter’ mind-set.”


  “I knew that when you were older, you’d understand—”

  “Well, you were wrong, Mother.”

  Deanna walked around Lwaxana and headed for the door. Her mother turned and called out, “You’d take him over me!”

  Deanna spun and shouted back defiantly, “Yes!”

  “You can’t do this! You have studies…duties…a destiny!”

  “I want to be with him, Mother! I was wrong to let you intimidate me into submission again. I was wrong to let him just walk away. We can’t go back to the way it used to be, Mother. It’s not going to happen. It would be a lie, and I won’t live a lie!”

  Lwaxana placed her hands on her hips and said sarcastically, “And what are you going to do? Quit your studies?”

  “Probably.”

  “Marry him?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just go with him, be happy to be near him. When he ships out for his next assignment, I’ll try to sign on. Some sort of job, I don’t care what. Chief cook and bottle washer—it doesn’t matter as long as we’re together.”

  “You on a starship?” Lwaxana said, appalled. “A beautiful, free creature like you, cooped up in a ship for years? Millions of light-years away from home? It’s insanity!”

  “I’ve thought about Starfleet for years. A life of adventure, of experiencing minds and philosophies beyond what I have here. But I never really considered it as an option. Now, though, I understand. There’s a galaxy of possibilities out there—even for a daughter of the Fifth House, if she simply has the nerve to take them. And who knows? Maybe I won’t join Starfleet. Maybe I’ll go back to geology. Maybe I’ll paint myself blue and become a naked dancing girl in the Zetli system. But whatever I do, it will be my choice, not yours.”

  Deanna headed for the door, and in her head she heard, If you go out that door, don’t come back.

  Deanna went out the door.

  Thirty

  Deanna entered the embassy, which was quiet since it was after hours. But she stumbled upon several security men, whom she remembered from having met them in the jungle at the rendezvous point.

  “Evening, miss,” said Sommers, nodding slightly.

  “Hello. I’m…I’m here to see Lieutenant Riker.”

  “Yes, miss. I’m sure you are,” Sommers said. “You know the way?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He waved her past and Deanna disappeared down the hall. Sommers whistled softly to himself. “The officers get all the women.”

  Deanna went straight to Riker’s quarters, her heart pounding. She had envisioned what he would say, what he would do. He was going to be so proud of her. The way that she had stood up to her mother, the way that she had taken control of her life. He would congratulate her, he would be thrilled at her love for him, he would take her in his arms…

  She walked into his quarters and stopped dead in her tracks.

  The room was only partly lit, but she could see Riker was lying in bed, naked. His uniform was tossed in several places around the room. He was asleep…and curled around the naked form of a woman whom Deanna immediately recognized as Wendy Roper.

  Deanna made no sound, but her mind screamed in embarrassment and mortification.

  It was more than enough to awaken Riker.

  He sat up, confused and disoriented. He also sat up much too quickly because he was solidly hung over, and for a moment he thought his head was going to ricochet across the room. He sputtered uncomprehendingly…and then he saw Deanna, standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall light.

  It took him a moment to reach the full realization that this wasn’t a dream, or for that matter, a nightmare. “Deanna?” he said in a voice that sounded distant and ill.

  She wanted to run shrieking down the hallway, but there was no way that she was going to retreat in that manner. “My apologies, Lieutenant. I seem to have come at a bad time. Perhaps if I’d called ahead, you might have been able to fit me into your schedule.”

  Her tone made Riker’s hair hurt. “Deanna,” he said again, and started forward. But his coordination was way off and instead he crashed to the floor.

  The noise awakened the stone-cold-sober Wendy, who sat up in confusion and looked around. She saw Deanna, blinked in mild chagrin, and pulled the blanket around herself.

  “Deanna,” Riker began again. He grabbed at his uniform and started to pull it on.

  “How nice. You have a thorough command of my name,” she said, her arms folded.

  “This isn’t what it seems.” Then Riker looked at Wendy, and the rumpled bed, and back to Deanna. “All right, it is what it seems. But I…you said you didn’t want to see me anymore. You said we were finished and—”

  “And it had been less than twenty-four hours since you’d had female companionship, so naturally you got over me. In fact, not only did you get over me, you practically vaulted over me,” Deanna said, her voice getting louder.

  Riker made shushing noises, which only prompted her to raise her voice more. “Are you afraid someone will hear?” she demanded.

  “No,” he whispered. “It’s just…my head hurts.”

  “I’m sorry about your head,” she said, not sounding remotely sorry. “I won’t burden it further.”

  She spun on her heel and walked away. Riker, his uniform disheveled, nevertheless ran after her. He caught up with her halfway down the hallway and spun her around.

  “You said—” he began.

  “I know what I said. And would you like to know what I said to my mother? I told her I’d been wrong to toss you away. That it was time for me to find my own path. And that I wanted that path to be with you.” Hot tears welled in her eyes and she fought them down. “But I foolishly assumed that you wanted that as well.”

  “I do—”

  “No, you don’t. I crawled out on a limb for you, and you chopped it off behind me.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t thinking straight, and Wendy showed up, and—”

  “And it was an opportunity.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it didn’t really mean anything.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how do I know,” she said icily, “that our time together didn’t fall into the same categories?”

  He took her by the shoulders. “You know that it didn’t.”

  “I thought I knew that. But now I’m not sure. And what’s worse, you’re not sure either. Will…I thought we had something special. The physical and the spiritual. But for me, one hinges on the other. For you, it doesn’t. And I don’t think that’s ever going to change for you.”

  Riker felt something slipping away from him, something very important—more important than he could have guessed—and suddenly, desperately, he wanted to save it. “I can change,” he said. “I can—”

  “Not overnight. Maybe someday, but maybe not ever. It may be, for you, something that can only come with maturity. I can’t hinge my life on maybes. Because you’re going to go away and I have to make decisions, and I can’t base those decisions on uncertainties.”

  For a moment he bristled. “You sound so damned holier-than-thou. How do you know how it’s going to be for you? Maybe as you mature, you’ll change. Maybe you’ll decide that you don’t have to be heels over head in love in order to be intimate with someone. Maybe you’ll discover that the physical side can have its own rewards, now that you’ve allowed yourself to experience it.”

  “Perhaps,” she said evenly. “But there’s one thing of which I’m reasonably sure at this point.”

  “Oh, really? What?”

  “That you’re not going to be there to find out.”

  He tried to think of a response to that, but before he could, she put a hand to his cheek and said, sounding not angry, but simply sad, “I’m sorry, Will. I just don’t think there’s a future for us.”

  And she turned and walked away.

  Riker stood there, unmoving, watching her go. Wanting to say something, but unable to. Perhaps it was the drink
still buzzing in his head, or perhaps there simply were no words…or even thoughts.

  He turned and there was Sergeant Tang, leaning against a wall and regarding him thoughtfully.

  “You were right to let her go, sir,” said Tang. “Mark me, there’s a twinkling star for every broken heart that a Starfleet man leaves—”

  “Shut up, Tang,” said Riker, and walked past him, heading back to his quarters.

  Tang, unruffled, merely nodded. “Shutting up, sir. All part of the service.”

  Deanna Troi peeked into the study, sensing that her mother was still there.

  Lwaxana was staring at a small holograph. She said nothing to Deanna, but Deanna sensed that her mother was not mentally wishing her to stay away. Tentatively, she entered the study and peered over her mother’s shoulder.

  “That’s Grandmother, isn’t it,” said Deanna.

  Lwaxana merely nodded.

  There was a long silence, and then Deanna said, “I just came to get some of my things.”

  Her mother stared at the holograph for a time longer and then said, “You know…when I said that if you went out the door, you couldn’t return…the words sounded familiar somehow. I racked my brain trying to remember where I’d heard them.”

  “And did you?”

  “Mm-hmm. My mother”—Lwaxana waved the holograph slightly—“said it to me. When I told her I wanted to marry your father.”

  “She had her own plans for you?”

  “Of course. Just as you are promised to Wyatt, I was promised to…what was his name?” She paused, and then remembered. “Stahly. That was it. But when we were of the proper age, we met for the first time, and…well, things just didn’t…work out.”

  Deanna hunkered down next to her mother, fascinated. Lwaxana had never spoken of this before. “Why not? Didn’t you like each other?”

  “Oh, we got on quite well. I liked him, he liked me. But…I knew moments after we were introduced that it was hopeless. For one thing…he was in love with someone else.”

  “Another woman?”

  Lwaxana looked at her bleakly. “Another man.”