A companion piece to Suave Molecules

 

Part One

 

 

Coffee is the best thing to douse the sunrise with.  ~Drew Sirtors

Starbuck never expected to get passionate about coffee.

He's passionate about a lot of things, of course.  He's passionate about fast little fighters.  He's passionate about fast women too, and (just as often) fast men.  And cards.  Oh yes, he's passionate about cards.  There isn't much to beat building a complete Pyramid, complete with capstone, and see all those suckers' faces fall.  Man, but don't those cubits jingle when they become his!

But getting passionate about his coffee roaster?  Get a grip.





Thing is, he expects his life to change.  It stands to reason, doesn't it, when the bang on the head means his eyes are fracked up, that he'll lose the very fast fighters.  If you can't see to land on the deck, chances are that the military will try hard not to laugh in your face, hand you a gratuity and tell you to hop right on that shuttle back to Caprica and don't let the airlock door tap your arse on the way out.

And that's the way it goes down.  Doctor Salik shakes his head and sounds genuinely sorry when he tells Starbuck that it isn't likely that his eyesight can be improved.

"The headaches will wear off in time and you'll be fine for all normal things, Lieutenant," he says.  "Reading, writing, watching vids… no problem.  You'll need to wear glasses to begin with until your eyes settle and then you can switch to contacts, but they'll return your eyesight to just below average norms.  What you don’t have any more is perfect vision."

"So, not good enough to fly?"

"No," says Salik.  "I'm sorry, Starbuck.  But no."

It's like something's been cut away from him without an anaesthetic, but he expected it and he's braced for it.  Even so, flying is all he knows and just for a centon it's like that funny feeling you get when you’re falling asleep and a nerve fires in your leg, and you kick out and it's like you just fell off the bottom step of the stairs into a big hole.  Flying is all he ever wanted to do and the step he just fell off is a couple of light-yahrens high.  He just nods, though, and goes back to his quarters and waits for the summons to see the management.

Colonel Tigh is less outwardly sympathetic.  He's a gruff bastard on a good day—not something that Starbuck ever sees much of, since he seems to sour Tigh's days by just breathing—and he's no less gruff because he's telling his most troublesome pilot about the arrangements for Starbuck's release from service.  The amount of the gratuity's a nice surprise.  Tigh's deprecating cough and his Good luck, Starbuck are another surprise.  And sort of nice.

"Maybe now," says Commander Cain at Starbuck's leaving party, "I can run this ship without Starbuck whipping up half the crew into a hormonal frenzy." 

Starbuck smiles.  "Oh, I'll be missed," he agrees, and grins at the way the Commander turns puce.  He doesn't have to give a flying frack any more for staying on the Commander's good side.  If the man has one.

Next day, the girls on the Pegasus form a weeping guard of honour on the flightdeck as Starbuck heads for the shuttle to take him home.  Some of the boys weep with them.  Even the Commander's daughter looks sorry and disappointed.  That's nice, too, even if Starbuck has spent the last few sectars evading Sheba's all too obvious lures. 

But now Starbuck needs a job, a new career to replace the one that went belly up with his eyesight.  He likes people.  He likes coffee.  A new career that combines the two?  Well, that's a stroke of luck.  But there isn't any sentiment about it, no feeling that coffee is his— whadjacallit?  Calling.  That's it.  No, none of that.  Flying was his calling.  Coffee's just something he's going to do now he can't fly any more.

The little coffee shop in a side street in Caprica City's Old City is business, something to fill up the rest of his life and give him enough to live on.  So coffee becoming one of the great loves of his life, so much a part of him that he'd get as much of a kick out of blends and roasts as he'd used to get from a dog-fight and aerobatics?  Well, that takes him by surprise.  Most of his old squad mates will fall off their barstools when they hear and if he's really lucky, they'll break something. 





When Starbuck first inspects the coffee shop with the sales agent, all he bothers about is whether it ticks his boxes for location and potential. 

It does.

"Perfect location," the agent points out.

Starbuck nods.  "Yes."

"Excellent for the tourist trade," she adds.

The Rameses Coffee Shop sits on one of the twisty little lanes in the Old City, right in the middle of biggest tourist destination on all of Caprica.  The Kobolian Museum and Archaeological Institute stands at the top of the street, its great marble dome looming up to block out half the sky.  The Caprican State Art Gallery is two streets over, with five theatres in the streets between.  The coffee shop shares the little street with an iconic electronics shop, a bakery, three antique shops and two of those fancy gift shops that sell cards and what Starbuck can only describe as fripperies.  The Lords alone knows who buys that sort of crap.  He watches a group of visitors clatter out of one of the shops with full bags – Sagittarians, from their flowing robes.  They scuttle past the coffee shop without going in.

"It's a bit shabby," he says.  It's the shabbiest shop front in the street.  The iconic electronics shop next to it is all white and chrome in comparison and looks rather embarrassed about its dilapidated neighbour.  "And the tourists don't appear to be trading."

"Development opportunity," says the agent, quickly.  She smiles.  "The coffee shop needs a little updating, as you know.  And, of course, that's reflected in the price."

Which is still an arm and a leg, despite being, as he knows, a good price for a business in the Old City.  He can afford a reasonably hefty down payment on the price for the coffee shop—Lady Luck was with him the night he managed to more than triple his gratuity on one turn of the cards—and he has financing in place for the rest.  He can just about afford it.

But a little updating?  That's sales agent speak for 'gut and rebuild'.  Inside is all dingy off-white paint and furniture that's seen better days.  It's scrupulously clean, though.  The old man behind the coffee machine on the counter is as dilapidated as his coffee shop, but his eyes are sharp and keen and he makes damn good coffee.  They talk for a few centons after the agent shows Starbuck over the building:  front end coffee shop, office and storeroom behind on the ground floor, small one-bedroom apartment on the first.  The back premises and the apartment can also be accessed from a small side door and a long hallway between the coffee-shop and the iconic electronics store.

Starbuck sits on one of the old armchairs.  Despite the sagging springs, it's surprisingly comfortable and Old Mr Rameses' coffee is superb.

"You'll need a new espresso machine," says Old Mr Rameses.  "I wouldn't want to mislead you about that.  I've had that machine a lot of yahrens."

Starbuck nods.  He hasn't missed how old that machine is.  "I thought I'd probably need a new one." 

The coffee grinders are fine, but that espresso machine is practically a museum piece.  A new one will eat a sizeable chunk out of what he has left after he makes the down payment.  If he decides to buy.

"Have you worked in a coffee shop?" asks Old Mr Rameses.

"I trained with the CCC," says Starbuck.  Old Mr Rameses looks like he's just bit on a wasp and the devil that's never far under Starbuck's skin prompts him to add: "They know their stuff."

Old Mr Rameses mutters something about soulless conglomerates.

"Oh yeah," says Starbuck.  "They're that all right.  I don't want to run anything like that myself, but their barista training can't be beat."

"They want this place," says Old Mr Rameses.

Starbuck frowns.  They'll pay premium price for it, too.  The CCC don't have a toehold in the Old City yet and they'll give a lot to get it.  "I can't match what they'll pay," he says, to forestall any negotiation.  He won't go higher than he's already arranged with the loans people at the Galactica Mutual Trust and Investment Bank.  He can't.  He's extended as far as he can already.

"I won't sell to those bas— to them."  And Old Mr Rameses looks proud and fierce.

"It's a good long lease," says the agent, striking in fast.  "The Galactica Bank owns the freehold.  They've agreed to the legal transfer of the lease to a nominee of Mister Rameses' choosing."

Starbuck almost laughs aloud.  The money he's borrowing from the Galactica will be going straight back into their coffers, then, and he'll still have to pay the interest.  Sweet.  He wishes he had the balls to come up with a system like that.  In his case, of course, someone would yell "fraud!" and it'll end in tears with him in jail.  Only huge financial institutions get away with crap like that and persuade everyone it's legal.

Old Mr Rameses studies Starbuck for a centon longer.  "The Galactica owns most of the Old City.  They’re pretty responsible landlords and like to keep the character of the place."

If by character, he means dilapidation, then he isn't far out.  Starbuck doesn't comment though, but sits back and lets everything soak in.  Old Mr Rameses talks about the business: average takings, suppliers, outgoings, profit.  Starbuck's seen the figures already and he and his financial adviser have been over them, but he still listens because Old Mr Rameses is bringing the business to life for him.  And while he listens and yes, asks the sort of intelligent questions that his military superiors thought him incapable of, a little part of him is absorbed in thinking about what he could do with the place.

It's a good sized front end with big bay windows on either side of the central door.  He can put a sofa in each window with a low table, have these half-decrepit armchairs reupholstered, and add a few wooden tables and chairs.  A couple of tables out on the pavement would be good as well, so long as he can get a licence for them from the local authority—it's one of the questions he needs to ask.  Anyway, a freshen-up and a lick of paint and the place will look very different, more inviting to the casual passer-by.

The first couple of sectars will be tough while he finds his feet, but the sort of coffee shop he likes to patronise himself will be taking the place of Old Mr Rameses' threadbare establishment.  

"Yes," he says, cutting through the agent's reiteration of most of Old Mr Rameses' points.  "I like it.  I'd be very interested in making an offer."

The agent's eyes almost have revolving cubit signs in them as she obviously calculates her sales bonus.  She beams.  Old Mr Rameses reddens, gives Starbuck another one of those assessing long looks and nods.  They shake hands on it, there and then.

And just like that, Starbuck's in the coffee business.





Old Mr Rameses celebrates by nipping into the bakery next door and coming back with the best little cakes that Starbuck's tasted in a long time.  The bakery has a very small front end and no room for tables and chairs.  Maybe he and the bakery owner can come to an agreement?  People like to eat with their coffee.

"I thought about that, but never got around to doing anything about it," says Old Mr Rameses when Starbuck mentions it.  "I'll introduce you to Boomer later on.  He's the baker.  Nice guy.  He's about your age, I'd say."

Starbuck looks around his newest, biggest ever gamble and smiles as he and Old Mr Rameses share another cup of coffee and agree on a secton's handover and a formal date for signing all the legal paperwork. 

This is going to work.  He's going to make it work.  The location really is ideal, and the agent's waffle about potential is spot on.  It's a perfect tourist trap, to be honest.  The tourists might not really know good coffee if their lives depend on it, but they'll be drained from their obligatory visit to the Kobolian for High Culture and in need of stimulants and restoratives.  Starbuck plans to stimulate them with caffeine and restore them with cupcakes. 

There'll be a lot to do and a lot to learn.  It'll very different being the owner of a business rather than just one of the drones churning out the Cylonic Coffee Company's wares.

He can build a good little business here.





Over that handover secton while Starbuck learns to run a business rather than just work an espresso machine, Old Mr Rameses is very careful to introduce Starbuck to the regulars.  He makes sure they know that Starbuck is all right, has his approval.

There's Sire Anton, for example, who’s something pretty high up and important in the government—not a politician, but in the Secretariat to the Council of the Twelve; the man who knows where all the political bodies are buried.  Starbuck says he can't remember how to genuflect, but the Sire is a kindly old man who seems unaffected by his greatness—he merely laughs, shakes Starbuck's hand and welcomes him to the Old City.  Then there's Madame Pearse, who owns an antique shop in the next street and who calls in every morning for a black filter coffee and Don't you dare offer me one of those new-fangled things with foam and milk, young man.  I only drink real coffee, thank you very much.  She doesn’t offer to shake hands and Starbuck's grateful, since he doesn't quite believe he'd get his back.  And there's Jolly, who's a discharged warrior just like Starbuck is, and looking for a job.  Starbuck offers the warrior's arm clasp to Jolly, and hires him. 

The only regular he doesn't meet is the one who appears to be Old Mr Rameses' favourite.  Professor Apollo from the Kobolian is away on an off-world dig but will be back in the autumn. 

"An archaeologist?  Don't tell me.  He's ninety, doddery and eccentric."

"Not quite that old." And Old Mr Rameses smiles. 

"Seventy, then.  I bet he keeps bones in his bedroom."

Old Mr Rameses' smile broadens.  "He's never mentioned them if he does.  He does have bodies in the basement, though, over at the Kobolian."

"Lovely," says Starbuck, and rolls his eyes.





There's no denying that CCC provides great training.  Old Mr Rameses gives him begrudging approval for his skills as a barista but is outraged (horrified?  pitying?) when he realises Starbuck is planning to buy his coffee ready roasted from a supplier.  Maybe he's all three, but outrage certainly wins the day. 

"No," says Old Mr Rameses with decision.  "You're not."

"I'll have to—"

"No, Starbuck."

"But I don't know how to work that thing back there—"

But the old man is already herding Starbuck into the back room.  "You'll learn," he says. 

"But—"

"No, Starbuck," repeats Old Mr Rameses, and Starbuck feels all too like a puppy in danger from a rolled up newspaper.  He puts his hand over his nose, just in case.  "This is important.  You want to be better than the CCC, don't you?"

Well, there's no arguing with that.  Protests are a waste of breath.  Starbuck laughs and gives himself up to the arcane mysteries of roasting green coffee beans.  It's fascinating.  It's science and art, all wrapped up together.  He's surprised to find how much it interests him.  Old Mr Rameses even delays his retirement for another secton until he's satisfied that Starbuck can handle it although, as he says, it'll take yahrens for Starbuck to be an artist with it.  Starbuck's content just to master the basics for now.

It astonishes him that so far he's never given the roaster a second glance, almost as though he's overlooked it so far.  Maybe his damaged eyesight is even worse than he realised, because the damn thing should be impossible to miss.  It fills half the back room with its brooding, massive bulk; a chunk of black cast iron, big as an asteroid, with brass hinges and decorative plates.  But despite its bulk, it's a thing of quirky beauty from its polished hopper at the top to the enamelled cooling tray at the bottom.  The best bit is the huge brass handle on the drop door: no plain knob but a phoenix, feathered head thrown back and wings unfurling to lift it from bright brassy flames. 

It's an ancient machine.  It looks like the kind of thing that has to be coaxed into life with kindling and prayer, and then works its way up to consume logs, entire trees and maybe the odd martyr.  It looks fuel-hungry and temperamental.  It's obsolete, really.  Any sensible man would have it taken out and use the space for storage, or something. 

Starbuck's never claimed to be sensible.

He's never used anything so archaic.  When he learned the basics of being a barista at the Cylonic Coffee Company, he was surrounded by bright chrome and the very latest technology.  Not that the CCC roasts beans on site in their cafés—they ship in beans roasted in some soulless industrial complex somewhere, instead—but everything in a CCC coffee shop is so new the paint is barely dry.  The CCC is all about polished steel and white plastic, and being bright and shiny.  The CCC would consign the roaster to the city dump without a micro-micron's hesitation.

Well, that just gives Starbuck one more reason to hate the CCC and its attempt to rule the world, other than disliking on general principles a company that would love to put him out of business altogether.

Because within a day or two, Starbuck understands why buying pre-roasted coffee from a supplier just will not do.  Not just intellectually understands, but viscerally and emotionally.  It's not the same.  It's the sign of the amateur.  It's the sign of someone who sees coffee as nothing more than a column of cubits and pennies in a ledger.  It's the sign of someone who doesn't really get coffee.

There is just nothing to touch pouring a sack of green beans into the hopper at the top and taking out gleaming, shiny brown roast beans from the cooling trays at the bottom.  He learns how to time the different roasts, from barely done to deepest, strongest dark brown.  He learns what to listen for, how to judge that the beans are ready, how to tell from the scent and colour when he can grasp the brass Phoenix to open the drop door, and drop the finished beans into the cooling tray.

It's deeply satisfying.  He loves it.  He loves the smell of roasting coffee and he loves learning a new skill.  Of course, he doesn't always get it right.

"No," says Old Mr Rameses, to Starbuck's first solo flight at the roaster controls.

And "God, no!" says Old Mr Rameses to the second go.

And, "Better," says Old Mr Rameses to the third and fourth.

And on the sixth try, the old man rolls the coffee around his mouth and spits it out into the sink.  Anyone would think he was tasting wine, not coffee.  But he purses his lips, takes a deep sniff at the aroma again and nods.  Starbuck's surprised at the glow of pride he gets.

"You're on your own now, son," says Old Mr Rameses.  "I've got a flight to the Gemonese Gold Coast in six centars.  You can drive me to the spaceport."





At first Starbuck thinks about calling it Phoenix, because his pretty, stylish new coffee shop is rising from the ashes of Old Mr Rameses' dilapidated and shabby premises.  The name nods towards the big coffee roaster in the back room as well, of course, and that's a pleasing thought.  But in the end, he lets vanity rule the day.  So many people—captains, colonels, commanders—have told him that he'll never amount to anything, that he's too much of a maverick, that he's too Starbuckian to make anything of himself.  When he was still in the Services, of course, he had to listen to those denigrating comments and stand to attention, keeping his face carefully blank.  Starbuck was famous for doing insolence seeping from every pore while still being by-the-book polite and attentive to his senior officers.  He had a lot of practice at it.  Now he doesn't have to take that crap from anyone.

The whole interior is repainted over a secton-end, while the chairs are being reupholstered and the new espresso machine installed.  Starbuck, who's come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement with Boomer about baked goods, adds a big glass-fronted display cabinet and a new countertop.  The coffee grinders get a steam clean and polished to within an inch of their lives.

Last of all, the signmakers arrive with the new shop facia.  When they've finished putting it up, Starbuck stands on the other side of the road remembering every cruddy senior officer he's had to be respectful of, and every contemptuous assessment he's ever had to suffer through.  He takes huge delight in stiffening into attention and saluting the name above the door.

Starbucks.





It's a pity that the signwriter is grammatically challenged. 





Creating the perfect roast beans and blending them until he finds the ideal mix for a coffee that will be uniquely his, is the most satisfying thing that Starbuck has ever done, bar flying.  He spends the summer learning the business and building it up.  He's happiest when he's closed the coffee shop for the evening and he can spend centars experimenting, crouched over the cooling tray and watching the shiny dark-roast beans rotate in the cooling air jets.

Boomer takes to wandering over when his afternoon relief arrives.  He starts work at some gawd-awful time of day, getting up to make his bread and cakes while the rest of the world still sleeps.  The upside is he's always free by noon and some evenings, when his girlfriend isn't around, he wanders in for a beer and to watch the coffee-roasting process.

"That smells nutty," he says, one time, making himself useful by opening the beer.

"I added some hazelnut.  Old Mister Rameses had this book on flavoured coffees hidden away and I thought there might be a market for them."  Starbuck takes the beer and glugs half of it down.  It's damned hot, stuck in the Old City at the height of summer.  He crosses to the air-conditioning control panel and helps it on its way with a quick thump.  One day, when he can afford it, he'll put in a new system.  "I've got a smaller roaster coming in a day or two.  This one's too big for experimenting with, really.  I can't afford to waste pounds of beans if I get it wrong."

He pats the big Phoenix roaster, as if to console it for his perfidy.

Boomer looks into the middle distance.  Maybe he's seeing visions, or something.  Or maybe getting up at three in the morning to slave over hot ovens has addled his brain.  "Hazelnut," he says.  "Mmn."

The next day he brings in tiny little cupcakes, covered in swirls of hazelnut-flavoured icing, each one with a scattering of chopped nuts on the top as decoration.  They smell as nutty and as fresh as the coffee and naturally they sell like… well, like hot cakes.

This place is going to work out just fine.





Starbuck decides he likes the missing apostrophe. 

He doesn't bother to do anything about it.  It acts as a sort of serendipitous marketing ploy, given the number of people who come in to tell him about it.  Why they assume he hasn’t noticed is beyond him, but he laughs and is cheerful and most of them love the coffee and the cakes and stay for a while.  Some come back.  It's ironic that it's a positive despite being an absence.  Marketing is a wonderful thing, he decides.  Maybe apostrophe abuse is his unique selling point?

Whatever.  He's too busy to care, working the coffee shop twelve centars a day and playing with his coffee roaster every chance he gets.





Starbucks is starting to make headway.

He's lucky that he got going at the start of the summer and he has the high tourist season to make his mark with.  It's tough to begin with—dear Lords, it's tough—and for the first couple of sectons Starbuck lives on his own coffee and the remnants of the baked goods each day.  But word starts to get about, the coffee shop is often bustling with customers and then there's enough going into the safe each day so that he can easily cover Jolly's pay and make the payments on the mortgage he had to take out to buy the lease, the business and the goodwill.  More than that.  There's enough now that he has cubits enough at the end of the secton to put some away for winter, when business will be slower.

All of his experimentation is paying off, and his flavoured coffees are doing so well that he starts packaging them.  It turns out to be a nice, profitable little sideline.  The other sidelines, the muffins and cupcakes that Boomer makes for the coffee shop, are wonderful.  The cupcakes are seriously decorative, each one a work of art.  Starbuck doesn't know whether to sell them, eat them or donate them to the Caprican Art Gallery two streets over.  The customers love the cakes too, exclaiming over the swirls of chocolate icing, or vanilla or icing coloured pink and yellow and even blue, set with edible roses and rainbow sprinkles.  One chocolate version is stuffed with fudge and marshmallow, towers a good three inches high and contains enough sugar to power the national grid.  Starbuck loves that one: it has him bouncing around on a sugar high for centars after. 





Starbuck's settling in.  He likes being his own boss.  He has good neighbours and is becoming fast friends with Boomer.  He likes his regulars—well, with a slight reservation about Madam Pearse, who shows no sign yet of succumbing to the considerable amounts of charm that Starbuck expends on her, but he likes Sire Anton and Jolly.  He's almost forgotten about Professor Apollo, but he assumes that the old man will appear at some point, along with a few even older bones.  More important than the increase in casual trade, the number of regulars starts to increase.  That's the sign that he's getting it right – that the coffee is good, Boomer's baked goods are delicious and that the whole ambience of the coffee shop is hitting the target.  People are coming back for more. 

By the end of the summer, he's relaxing about the whole thing and mentally thumbing his nose at all the captains, colonels, and commanders in his past.

He's happy.

Then, one day, just as the summer draws to an end, the door opens and a very beautiful man limps in.





Thing is, it doesn't start propitiously.

Starbuck's a bit dazed to begin with.  He's not often knocked for six on first impressions and sheer good looks alone, but this guy is drop-dead gorgeous.  He's about Starbuck's own height and age, but as dark as Starbuck is fair.  Thick black hair frames a face with prominent cheekbones and a strong chin.  A beautiful face.  A face that has Starbuck beginning to smile a welcome and prepare all his flags, all the better for flying them. 

Until he clocks the fact that the green eyes in that beautiful face are glaring at him with suspicion and that rather nice, full-lipped mouth is opening to voice a demand to be told where Old Mr Rameses is.  The man looks stunned when Starbuck tells him that the old man's retired and the conversation goes downhill from there.

"Who are you?" he demands.

Starbuck points to his nametag.  It's pretty damn obvious, after all.  "The new owner.  My name's up outside as well.  I don't know how you missed it."  He keeps his tone light and even manages not to sound sarcastic.  Green-Eyed-and-Beautiful glares at him some more and limps outside to take a look at the new shop-front before coming back to challenge Starbuck about his grammatical shortcomings.  Green-Eyed-and-Beautiful, it appears, doesn't approve of missing apostrophes. 

"Oh, I don't mind it," says Starbuck.  He lets his smile broaden.

"You can’t have a missing apostrophe!"

Starbuck likes the way that indignation makes those green eyes sparkle.  "I kinda thought it looked more eye-catching just as Starbucks.  It brings in the passing trade.  A lot of people come in out of curiosity and to correct my grammar, and stay because I make damn good coffee."

"Mister Rameses," says Green-Eyed-and-Beautiful, "didn't bother with attracting the passing trade."

"Which is why he almost went bust and why he was almost bought out by the Cylonic Coffee Company."

"Oh," says Green-Eyed-and-Beautiful.  His mouth twists in a way that's both angry and sad, as if Starbuck's said something that jabs at an old wound.  "He wouldn't have liked that."

What was that about?  Old Mr Rameses had acted like it was a fate worse than death, too.  CCC's a coffee company, not an invasion of Corellian bed lice. 

"They're on a roll to have a coffee shop on every street corner, but their training is second to none.  I did my basic barista training with them, you see, when I decided to blow my demob gratuity to buy Mister Rameses out, and here I am."

"You were a warrior?"

"A pilot, until my eyes got so bad I almost shot up my own ship."  Starbuck sighs, pushing his spectacles back up to the top of his nose.  Some days not being able to fly is a pain that eats at his gut.  It's getting better, but it's still there.  "How about you?  You obviously know Mister Rameses but I haven't seen you here before today." 

"I work at the Kobolian," says Green-Eyed-and-Beautiful.  "I've been off world.  I've just got back from a dig."

It's like a bell going off.  The ninety-yahren-old doddery archaeologist disappears into the realms of the unregretted and unlamented.  This is the modern face of an ancient craft.  This is what your up-to-date archaeology professor looks like.  And it's a very attractive look indeed.  Starbuck likes it.

"Then you must be Professor Apollo," says Starbuck, and turns on the charm and the smile.  He reaches under the counter to pull out the special mug that had Professor Apollo's name on it.  "Mister Rameses told me all about you."

The professor blinks.

"Well, not all about you, since he didn't... I mean, he didn't tell me where I got my guesses wrong, but..."  Lords, but he's babbling!  He pulls himself together.  "Now, I know what you normally have because Old Mister Rameses made certain to tell me that, but won't you try one of the new drinks I'm working on?  I’d like your opinion."

The professor stares at him, and Starbuck turns on the charm full blast. 

"On the house, of course," he adds.

The hostility fades.  The professor gives Starbuck an uncertain smile.  It lights up his face, making him look less sombre and definitely less like the nonagenarian eccentric that Starbuck had pictured.  Starbuck's heart rate increases and they chat while Starbuck makes the professor's drink.  It's not about anything much, about some of the changes Starbuck's made, mostly.  Nothing significant or world changing.  It's the most enjoyable few centons that Starbuck's had for sectars.  By the time the professor wanders over to a corner table to drink his Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream instead of his usual latte and eat one of Boomer's stem ginger muffins, Starbuck feels like he's glowing. 

Every now and again, the professor looks up from the datapad he's working on.  He's looking friendlier and he says the Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream is pretty good.  Starbuck knows that, but it's nice to have his opinion confirmed by an academic.  Gives it more validity somehow.

When Starbuck gets a micron between serving a whole slew of tourists from Aries who need stimulants and restoratives, he grins at the professor.  A warmth floods through him when he gets a smile back. 





The professor seems to get over the loss of Old Mr Rameses pretty quickly.  He comes back a couple of days later and there's no trace of the suspicion and hostility.  He must just not like surprises.

Or has been in contact and been reassured.  "He's on the Gemon Gold Coast," says the professor when he arrives.  "He says he's having a great time and he hopes you're getting on all right."

"Just peachy," says Starbuck, grinning.  He must look like an idiot, but he doesn't give a damn.  "What can we tempt you with today?"

The professor insists on his latte but does take one of Boomer's creations with him to the corner table he seems to prefer.  He has a datapad with him, of course, and is soon lost in it.  He grins when Starbuck takes him a refill, and waves the datapad at him.

"This is Jorgensen's paper on the Third Migratory Wave," he says.

"Is that right?"  The datapad screen is covered in corrections in red font.  Starbuck catches a glimpse of "Moron!" scribbled in one margin.  "Is that proper academic language?"

"Peer review," explains the professor, with dignity.  "I'm allowed to be critical."

"And I thought you intellectuals were all about higher thought and being."

"Not when it comes to dissing a rival."  The professor returns to surveying the datapad.  " Besides, the man's an idiot and wrong in about ten different ways.  He wouldn't recognise a Saite mummy if it had him by the throat."

Starbuck's still laughing when he gets back to the counter.  Academics.  They're really quite competitive, then.

"Oh, he's back is he?," says Jolly, who's just arrived to help with the lunchtime rush and asks why Starbuck is sniggering.  "I remember seeing him around earlier in the yahren.  He was pretty friendly with Old Mister Rameses."  Jolly frowns.  "He's something at the Kobolian, isn't he?"

"Archaeology professor."

"That's it.  He comes in here a lot, from what I remember.  Brings his kid, too, at least two or three times a secton."

"Oh."  Something just under Starbuck's ribs curls and aches. 

"It was before my time," says Jolly.  "But I heard Old Mister Rameses talking about it with Sire Anton.  He married that TV presenter, Sally or Sarah or something, a couple of yahrens ago.  She was killed a few days later in a hovercar crash.  The kid's hers, I think, but the professor kept him."

"Oh."  Starbuck rubs the place where the curling thing is uncoiling, slow and languorous and still heavy.  Maybe he's sickening for something?  He felt all right this morning.   He can’t get sick that quickly, can he?  He gives an experimental cough, to see if it's something serious, but he has to force it.  Must have been something he ate. 

His bewildered ruminations are interrupted by a clear, cut-glass accented voice.

"My dearest boy!  When did you get back?"

Starbuck looks up, startled.  Sire Anton is crossing the room to the professor's corner, both hands outstretched.  The old man is beaming and the professor jumps up, looking just as pleased.  Starbuck watches the reunion for a centon or two.

"I'm going to take a break," he says and makes himself a coffee with practised speed.  He grabs one of Boomer's more elaborate cupcakes, one bedecked with vanilla icing and a marzipan strawberry, that oozes strawberry sauce when bitten into (he's in serious need of energy) and chooses a table close to where Sire Anton and the professor are catching up.  He has a datapad tuned to one of the news channels and stares at the sports headlines.  It's good cover, but no-one had better ask him for the score for any of the matches.

"Dad and Mama are fine, thank you," the professor is saying.  "And Boxey... you won't believe this, sir, but Boxey's started school.  The Caprican education system may never recover from the shock."  The professor laughs and Starbuck smiles at his datapad screen because that's a nice sound to hear for the first time.  It'll be good to hear it often.  "I think he's going to be impervious to instruction, somehow, unless they teach him maths by counting bones.  He's got a thing about bones."

"He enjoyed the dig, then.  I thought he would."

"He loved it.  He especially loved bossing my students and the digging teams.  He's shaping up to be the meanest six-yahren-old tyrant in history." 

Sire Anton laughs.  "Well, I hope you had a successful season."

The professor smiles such a bright, incandescent smile that Starbuck's breath hitches.  The man is beautiful when he's cross about apostrophes.  He's glorious when he's happy.  "I can't tell you much here.  But yes.  I found such wonderful, wonderful things.  There'll be a proper announcement and an exhibition next yahren.  Before then, come into the Kobolian and I'll show you some of it.  You'll have to swear on pain of death to keep it quiet, of course."

Starbuck tunes out the details.  He's really not all that interested in Saite mummies, whatever they are and the professor might as well be speaking in tongues for all the sense he's making about mummies and caches and something or things called shabtis, and other odd words that sound like tet and de-jed.  But he has a nice voice, a light tenor with a little hesitation in it sometimes, like the remnants of an old stammer.

Starbuck likes listening to it.





Boomer is interested that the archaeology professor's turned up at last.  Well, sort of, Starbuck thinks.  All right then, not really interested but it fills up a conversational corner while Boomer roots out another bottle of beer and Starbuck tries out a more intense hazelnut hit with his new roast. 

"Do you just call him the professor?"

"We've only had two short conversations, Boomer.  We aren't on first name terms yet."

"And I had you pinned as a fast worker.  What have you found out about him so far, then?"

"Not much.  He's our age, so he must have been made a professor really young.  He has to be pretty smart, right?  His wife's dead.  Same car crash that gave him that limp.  He has a kid who's her son, not his.  Sire Anton likes him, a lot."

"A lot?"

"He was here yesterday when the professor came in.  He called him his dearest boy and—"

"His what?" demands Boomer, and waggles his eyebrows in a way that makes Starbuck want to strangle him.  Or laugh.  Or something.

"In a very grandfatherly fashion," he says, rather severe.  "They sat in the corner and talked mummies."  Damn it, but he's going to have to take an interest in ancient history if he's going to keep up.  He says as much.

"Why do you want to keep up?" asks Boomer.

Starbuck stares at him, floored by the question.  Why ever wouldn't he want to?

"Right," says Boomer, and smirks.

Starbuck has no idea what Boomer means by it.