Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #8: Starfall Read online

  Jean-Luc’s heart leaped. Did his father know that he wanted to test again for Starfleet Academy? Was he saying that he would give his consent? His mouth was dry with anticipation.

  Maurice set down his wineglass. “I have agreed to buy the open lands to the east of the vineyards,” he said. “I’ve gone over them carefully, and the soil is right for a white grape. We’ve never had a Picard Blanc, but I’m convinced we could produce an excellent one. We will increase the vineyard’s size by nearly a third—and Jean-Luc, you will be in charge of all the new fields.”

  Jean-Luc choked. Beside him, Robert pushed his chair back and stood. “Father,” his older brother said, anger hot in his voice, “you never told me about this.”

  Maurice’s smile faded. “The opportunity arose suddenly,” he said, his voice cold.

  “But we were to be partners!” Robert said, his voice shrill with emotion. “I’ve worked this vineyard since I was ten—”

  “And you’ve done a good job,” Maurice said, a warning frown crossing his face. “But you won’t begrudge a little glory to your younger brother—”

  “Ha!” Robert scowled at Jean-Luc. “Begrudge a little glory! Father, when did he ever have anything but glory? He’s the one you boast of, the one you pamper and spoil, and—”

  “I won’t have this talk,” said Maurice, rising to his feet.

  Yvette was standing, too. “Now, stop, the two of you,” she said.

  Jean-Luc could stand it no longer. He shouted, “Quiet, everyone!” They fell silent, looking at him in astonishment. “Doesn’t it occur to anyone that I might have a word to say about all this?”

  “The little mouse roars,” said Robert bitterly. “Yes, tell us, Jean-Luc, in your wisdom, what is the perfect solution to this family disagreement?”

  Jean-Luc felt his face burning. He hated these scenes. “First,” he said, “I didn’t ask Father for any new lands. I’m not sure I want to be in charge of anything like that—at least, not doing things your way, Father.”

  Maurice looked puzzled. “My way?”

  “The old-fashioned way,” Jean-Luc said, his voice tired. “I’m sorry, Father, but I don’t want to—well, I—” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be a farmer at all! I want to go to Starfleet Academy and—”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Maurice bellowed angrily. “You ungrateful young fool!”

  “I’m not,” Jean-Luc protested. “I just want another chance to—”

  “You’ll get no other chances! Don’t you know when you’ve failed? You weren’t cut out to go gallivanting around in the stars. You have the vineyard, you have farming in your blood—what more do you want?”

  “I want what’s right for me!”

  “I’ll tell you what’s right for you!”

  The furious argument that followed sent Jean-Luc stalking to his room, back rigid, jaw clenched. He hurled himself onto his bed, his eyes burning, his throat painfully clenched against rising sobs. He told himself with fierce pride that he would not let himself cry.

  He fell asleep on the bed, fully clothed, and woke sometime late at night, aware that someone else was in the room. He began to sit up, but a cool hand pressed against his forehead.

  “Quiet, quiet,” his mother said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Jean-Luc lay back. His face seemed tight, and he could feel that tears had dried on his cheeks. “Oh, Mother,” he said miserably, “how will I ever live?”

  “You will find your own way,” Yvette replied at once. “Jean-Luc, tonight you surprised me.”

  “I know,” he groaned. “I honestly tried not to mention Starfleet, but—”

  “Oh, Starfleet,” she said, dismissing the idea. “No, you surprised me by how much you are like Robert and your father. Proud, strong, independent—or, to put it another way, pigheaded and stubborn. You’ve always been the quiet one, but I knew the Picard in you would come to the surface eventual1y.” She leaned close and kissed him on the forehead. “You get some sleep. I shouldn’t have come in.”

  “What will I do?” Jean-Luc asked as she rose from his bedside.

  Her voice came from the dark, firm and full of love: “Why, Jean-Luc, you will do what you must do. That, too, is the Picard in you.” The door opened and closed softly.

  Jean-Luc rose in the dark, changed his clothes, and opened the window. He stared out into a night full of brilliant starlight. He looked up at the stars for a long time, feeling a hopeless yearning. They were so far away. Between him and the stars lay the barriers of failure and a promise that he hated but must keep. The stars offered no help, just their cold, eternal, mocking light. At last, exhausted, he fell back into bed and into a deep sleep, dreaming himself onto the bridge of a starship.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The next day Jean-Luc used their home terminal, one of the few modem conveniences that Maurice grudgingly allowed the household. He requested a copy of the mathematics examination, printed it, and took it to his room. Odd how easy some of the questions appeared now. Frowning, Jean-Luc went through them the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper. He saw small errors that he had made, errors of carelessness and of exhaustion. If he had the test to take over again, he knew that he could pass it.

  Over the next few weeks he began to study, late at night, after the work on the farm had been done. Now that he had seen what the testing was like, he realized minor ways he had gone wrong. Without speaking to anyone about his project, Jean-Luc began to train himself, not the frantic last-minute cramming that had done him in, but a long, steady haul. It was like training for a race, done a little at a time. Although he had no plans to retest for Starfleet, somehow studying helped to ease his pain at failing. And distracted him from the fact that half a planet away, Starfleet Academy was beginning a new year … without him.

  Not that he neglected working on the vineyard. If anything, he plunged into that with even fiercer determination. Somehow, whenever he concentrated only on the farm chores that had to be done, he even pleased his father, for Jean-Luc was a hard worker, and he succeeded at everything he tried.

  Almost everything.

  At the bottom of his memory, like a bitter, rotten grape, was the sour memory of his biggest failure—practically his only failure. When he was working or studying, he rarely thought of it. When he was idle, the memory burned in him. So he tried running away from it. In high school Jean-Luc had been a track star and a marathon runner. For a month or two after graduation he fell out of training, but one morning in September, almost out of his mind with boredom, he put on his running shoes.

  That day he did a hard five kilometers, running all out until he was ready to fall over from weariness. Even so, that night, like every night, he hit the books again, learning about Cochrane physics and temporal distortion, about inertia fields and astronavigation. As he was falling asleep, the thought came to him that the preparation had to be for something.

  He knew then that he was going to reapply to the Academy.

  He suspected the rage that Maurice would show when he learned of his son’s decision. Should he tell his father? No, he decided on the very edge of sleep. Right now they were all happy, or reasonably happy. There was no reason to spoil that by telling about his plans.

  Not yet, anyway. Not just yet.

  Beginning the next morning he ran every day, all through winter, and now into a bright but cool May. Before reporting to the fields, he left the vineyard at dawn, ran all the way to LaBarre and now was almost back, pacing himself for the last long hill. Physically he felt wonderful—if only his problems had been physical, he thought, he would have nothing to regret, nothing to complain about.

  He saw Robert sitting on the stone wall ahead and to his right, and he had a quick flash of déjà vu, that creepy feeling that he was reliving a moment. Then he remembered that this was the very place where Robert had greeted him last summer on his return from his testing.

  Robert hopped lightly off the wall and dropped into st
ep beside Jean-Luc, loping along easily, although he was long out of practice as a runner. “I got my answer from Father at last,” Robert told Jean-Luc, pleasure in his voice. “He said yes at breakfast this morning.”

  “Oh?” gasped Jean-Luc. “Then you’re going off-world?”

  “To Alkalurops Beta Two,” Robert confirmed. “At the end of the summer. I’ll spend a whole year there learning about their growing techniques.”

  “Lucky for you they don’t use machinery.” Jean-Luc was really too winded to talk, but he didn’t want to show any weakness to his older brother. They came in sight of the chateau, and Jean-Luc slowed to a walk. He needed to cool down and to do his stretching exercises.

  Robert hadn’t run far enough to trouble with that, but he walked alongside anyway. “Lucky for me you are so indispensable,” he muttered, his voice now irritable.

  “Father doesn’t need me at all with you around.”

  “That isn’t true,” Jean-Luc snapped. “You can do everything I do. You even like it.”

  “Tell him that,” Robert said moodily.

  “I have.” Jean-Luc almost added, “Soon he’ll have to do without both of us,” but he had not yet applied for retesting, and he knew that speaking of it to Robert would be the same as telling Maurice. He kept quiet. For a few minutes they walked silently, and then Jean-Luc halted to stretch his leg muscles. He felt the old familiar glow that running always gave him, the feeling of health and ease. Robert leaned against a fence, arms crossed, staring at him.

  “Well,” Jean-Luc said, “at last you get to do something you’ve wanted.”

  Robert nodded but did not smile. “That’s true. You know, when I graduated from high school, Father promised that I could go to college anywhere I wanted. But first, he said, I had to work on the vineyard because you were still in school and he couldn’t be short-handed. Well, I waited for three years, and then you graduated. And now it’s taken me most of another year to talk him into keeping his promise.”

  “Alkalurops Beta Two is a planet, not a college,” Jean-Luc pointed out. He was doing toe touches, and his hair kept flopping into his eyes. He had grown careless about keeping it trimmed.

  “I know that,” returned Robert. “But it’s an educational planet.”

  Jean-Luc merely grunted. He knew that Alkalurops Beta II was a sparsely populated colony world, home to a human population of only five million. A very few Vulcans lived there, too, in one small community, and a sprinkling of other aliens owned businesses in the larger towns. But the planet was almost entirely an agricultural paradise, growing quintotriticale, other grains, and a bewildering variety of fruits and vegetables, some native to the planet, others imported from Earth and elsewhere. The land masses of the planet, its distance from its sun—everything came together to make the world ideal for those who loved the land and the things it produced. Robert was right. He would learn lots of things from his year on Alkalurops Beta II.

  “I want you to know something,” Robert said as Jean-Luc finished his exercises. “This is something I’ve had my heart set on for a long time.”

  Jean-Luc stared at his brother. The morning light was full in Robert’s face, and with a shock, Jean-Luc noticed that Robert’s hair was thinning. His scalp glowed through the sparse hair at the crown of his head. The light and shadows on Robert’s face made him look far older than twenty, made him look a lot like Maurice. “I know you’ve been waiting for the chance,” Jean-Luc said. “I wish you well. Truly.”

  “Thank you, little brother,” Robert said. He smiled, and the illusion of age dropped away. He was himself again, the big brother who had taught Jean-Luc how to swim, who had cheered him on in fencing matches and debate contests. “I know you won’t do anything to spoil my chance.”

  Jean-Luc felt puzzled. “What? Of course I won’t, but what makes you think that I could spoil your chance? Father promised you that you could go.”

  Robert gave him an ironic smile. “Yes, he did. He would change his mind, though, if you should talk of leaving. I’d never get away then.”

  Jean-Luc felt an icy shiver of premonition. “What are you asking me to do, Robert?”

  Robert looked away. “To forget about Starfleet Academy,” he said in a low voice. “For this year, anyway.”

  Jean-Luc bit his lip. He had said nothing about the Academy for months, and he certainly had kept his studies a complete secret. “Does it still show?” he asked.

  “What? That you want to be in Starfleet? You can’t disguise that, Jean-Luc. Only wait a year—that’s all I’m asking. Wait just one more year before you ask Father’s permission to test again.”

  A whole year! The nine months since last summer seemed almost endless to Jean-Luc. How could he promise to wait for another year? He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Robert. I know how much this means to you, but—”

  Robert’s face flushed red with anger. “Sometimes I hate you,” he snarled, and he turned and strode off.

  Jean-Luc sighed. He loved his brother, but there were times when the two couldn’t stand each other. Yet there were so many good times, so many long days in the vineyard, so many refreshing swims in the river, so much joking and laughter—it was all too confusing. He didn’t know if—

  “Jean-Luc!” The familiar voice broke into his thoughts, made him look up sharply.

  Louis, of course, laughing, husky Louis Blanchard, hopping out of his sleek silver aircar. He had landed expertly, so quietly that Jean-Luc hadn’t even noticed his approach. Louis came bouncing over to him, energy in every step, a beaming smile on his face. “What, running again?”

  “You should try it,” Jean-Luc said, grinning at the overflowing good spirits of his best friend. “You’re going to get fat riding around in that machine all the time.”

  Louis slapped his flat stomach. “Me? Impossible! I’m in better shape than ever.” Louis had also been a runner in high school, though his specialty was sprints rather than distance running. That was typical of him—he had boundless energy for short bursts, but he found it hard to stick with something like a long project or a marathon run. “Hey, I’ve come to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “Right now the only opportunity I want is to shower and change clothes,” Jean-Luc returned. “Come on in, though. Have you had breakfast? Of course you have. You’re always up with the dawn. Well, you can have a cup of chocolate while I eat, and then you can tell me about this wonderful opportunity.”

  Jean-Luc hurried through his shower. His father was already out in the vineyard, and he supposed that Robert was there, too. He wouldn’t be expected or needed for a while—the vines required little attention at this time of year. It would be later, with the autumn harvest, that the work would stretch into twelve and fourteen hour days. He prepared himself a light breakfast, a croissant and hot, dark chocolate, and sat with Louis at the table.

  “Now,” he said, “what’s your news? Have you finally decided what your college major will be?”

  Louis grinned. He was a dark-haired young man the same age as Jean-Luc, slightly shorter, slightly more heavily built. “Now, now,” he said. “It isn’t unusual for a student to spend his first year in general studies. I’m still casting about for my life’s work,” Louis had a wonderful mind, and he could have gone to any university on or off Earth, but he settled for a year at the local campus of the European University. Unlike Jean-Luc, Louis had no clear idea of what he wanted to be or study. He sipped his chocolate and said, “I’m beginning to think that hydroponics is my field.”

  Jean-Luc laughed. “And last week it was xenobiology, and the month before it was linguistics.”

  “No, this time I’m serious,” Louis insisted.

  Jean-Luc shook his head. “Really, Louis, growing food without soil is incredibly important to colony worlds and to deep space stations, but isn’t it rather, well, boring?”

  “Ha,” Louis retorted. “You and your dirt-grubbing farmboy ways! Why, there are all sorts of challenges and opportu
nities in the field. Did you know that…”

  For the next ten minutes Louis lectured him on botany, growth coefficients, and ecology. At last Jean-Luc raised his hands in mock surrender. “Enough!” he pleaded. “Louis, that’s all very well for you, but what about the opportunity you were going to give me? I haven’t heard anything about that yet!”

  “Oh,” Louis said. “Right. Sorry. Well, do you know what Medlab-One is?”

  Jean-Luc rolled his eyes. “Would it happen to be an experimental undersea colony on the floor of the Mediterranean?” he asked sarcastically. “The place where scientists are studying ways to establish human colonies on worlds that are all ocean? Or is there some other Medlab-One I haven’t heard about?”

  “All right, all right,” said Louis. “So you know about Medlab. I’ll bet you didn’t know this, though: It includes a self-contained university, with degree-granting privileges and everything. Every summer Medlab has orientation sessions for prospective students who want to learn more about their techniques and methods. And I’ve asked them to save two spots, beginning two weeks from Monday. One for you and one for me. What do you say to a week’s Mediterranean vacation?”

  Jean-Luc couldn’t help himself. He burst into laughter. Louis looked hurt. “S-sorry, Louis,” Jean-Luc gasped at last. “I was just thinking of your, ah, skill at swimming, and—and it seemed so funny that—” he dissolved into laughter again.

  Louis sniffed. “Some people don’t take to the water,” he observed.

  Jean-Luc wiped his eyes with his napkin. “No,” he said, “they certainly don’t. What did Coach Deitz compare your crawl stroke to? ‘A hippopotamus with a stomachache,’ wasn’t it? Louis, you can hardly swim!”