The End, The Beginning
“Don’t you believe me?” Valerie
asked. She grinned, and cocked her head a little.
“It’s not that, it’s just, well,
hard to believe. Not something they teach you about in school.” Bernard smiled.
Valerie took wicked pleasure in eliciting incredulous reactions from people
about her ancestry. He took a drink of iced tea, and turned looked out the
restaurant window.
“You’ll see on the DNA screening,
Jonathan Archer is my great, great grandfather; I guarantee it.”
“Why…” he struggled “didn’t you tell
me before I mean, why the big secret?” he asked, jabbing a fork into one side
of a partly eaten piece of cheesecake.
“Before what? It’s not like I just
told you I’m descended from Stalin.”
Valerie enjoyed seeing Bernard squirm a little. Her famous heritage was indeed
her biggest secret. She never told people about her family until she was sure
there was no way around it. Either people didn’t believe her, or their opinion
changed of who she was the minute the words were out. “It doesn’t change who I
am, the person you know,” she added. She poked a fork on her side of the
cheesecake and manipulated a small bite into her mouth, savoring every molecule
and calorie.
“Well, I mean, I know your name is
Archer, but that’s not an uncommon name. And it’d have to be a continuous
paternal line for it to mean anything; it’s not something I would assume. I actually
never thought about it until just now.”
“You never thought about it?
Honestly?”
“Well, I think it might have crossed my mind once I
was at the academy.” He looked down at the table but she saw his fallacious
expression anyway.
“Okay, Bernard, so now you know. What do you think?”
she teased, flipping a lock of sandy hair out of her face, pulling the fork
slowly from her lips.
“Well…I think it’s great. Our kids
should be…well, I don’t know! But how did you keep it a secret so long? Why? We’ve
been going out three years.”
“Why do you keep asking why? Your
response is the perfect example of why. When we met at the academy I figured
you didn’t ask, so I didn’t offer. So many people ask me first off, especially
when I’m in uniform, if we’re related it’s like I don’t matter, only my great,
great, great, great…however many greats grandfather!” Valerie smiled faintly,
then turned and looked out the window at the same imaginary business Bernard
had been looking at.
Bernard looked at her directly, touching his hand
lightly to her cheek to turn her face away from the window and back to his. He
scooped up a small bite of their cheesecake and offered it to her on his fork.
She took the bite. Bernard waited.
“It’s not relevant. I wanted to make
my own way in Starfleet without his legacy dogging me everywhere, like it did
my father, my grandfather, and especially my great grandfather, Charles Christiaan
Archer. Children of legends, you know.”
She looked back at the remnants of their meal on the table. “Don’t you
want to know all about it now? That’s the customary response when it comes up. Great
Grandpa Charles was a great storyteller, and he recorded some great stories
about how his parents met”.
“Love, I only want you to tell me what you want to, and when you want to. Not an urgent matter…unless
you’re secretly a Borg, Android, Augment or Andorrian I can handle it. No kids
with surprise recessive antenna genes, right?” She hoped he was joking.
“Andorrian? Do I look blue to you?”
she laughed. Bernard reached across the table and took her hand in his. The
candle on the table flickered a bit.
“You’re eyes are blue. I know a little something about biology. No,
seriously, wasn’t Admiral Archer the ambassador to Andorria for a long time, or
was that some other planet?”
“Yes, yes, but Great Grandpa wasn’t
born on Andorria, he was born in space. Then he grew up on Earth.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Soft, modern music briefly filled the silence.
“I do know Jon Archer lived into his
100s – did you know him?”
“No, I barely even knew Great
Grandpa Charles. He died when I was just a couple years old. Somehow I remember
his big brown eyes and smile, but maybe that’s from holograms. I mean… how can
a baby remember so far back?”
The waitress appeared at their
table.
“Can I get you anything else?” She
held up a small thin pad with their order on it. She glanced at Bernard with a
smile.
“Two coffees,” Valerie answered,
“and another cheesecake.”
