Or, Scenes From A Life Spent In A Coffee Shop

Suave molecules of Mocha stir up your blood…
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

Section One

The narrow little streets in the Old City were always crowded, no matter what the time or day or season, and Apollo, pushing his way through with many a polite "Excuse me", enjoyed the experience as much as any tourist would, despite it being his native element. 

Apollo loved the Old City.  He loved the way that the Kobolian Institute—known to everyone simply as The Kobolian—cast its immense shadow over the ancient, pedestrianised streets and alleys.  He loved every twisting street, every centuries-old building with marble frontage broken by balconies or by graceful statues in niches.  There was one building, just outside the Kobolian's imposing gates, whose door lintels were carved with a riot of a bas-relief of monkeys, snakes and birds.  He'd first discovered it as a child, on his first visit to the Kobolian with his father when he was eight, trying to match his father's longer stride and revelling in having Adama to himself for a day.  It was his birthday and he was being taken to see the dead bodies in the Mummy Gallery as the sort of treat, said his father, that Athena and Zac were too young to appreciate and today is just you and me.  He remembered that he'd stopped to stare at the door lintel and then, as on every one of the thousands of visits since, he trailed his fingers briefly over the round head and down the short curved beak of one particular bird in the jumble of wildlife; a crow, terribly lifelike, head tilted, intelligent eyes so beautifully carved into the marble that Apollo could swear that it was watching him.  When he was eight, he'd had to stretch up to reach it.  Nowadays, he didn't even break stride, his hand flickering out almost absently to rub the worn stone, but he never passed without offering this tactile greeting. 

It was his city, his Kobolian, his narrow streets and his crow.   

The Old City was filled with quaint little shops and cafés and restaurants, the sort of streets where the unwary could be tempted into parting with large amounts of his or her money for anything from antiquities to overpriced coffee and go away convinced they'd found treasure trove.  The Old City was all about atmosphere and age, sitting as it did with its feet so firmly in the Colonies' past: it was romantic and ancient and evocative, part shabby and very chic.

The Rameses' Coffee House, though, was just shabby.  Apollo loved it almost as much as he loved the crow.





He first came upon the coffee shop when he was a student, in his second secton at the Kobolian's prestigious School of Archaeology.

A decade of passionate interest in archaeology (his father had confessed, ruefully, that he hadn't realised what the birthday treat would let loose, otherwise he might just have taken Apollo to a movie instead) gave Apollo a bit of an edge both in school and shopping.  Pressed up against the (rather grimy) window of one of the antiquities sellers by the tourists jostling him on every side, he could at least tell the good from the bad.  The ushebti figurines in pale blue glass, for instance, evidently coveted by one visitor – a Gemonese, he thought, given the elaborate stiffened head-dress that had connected painfully with his own head more than once as they both tried to peer in at the same time – were all fakes except for the smallest and least distinguished, and of the many heart scarabs there, only two were worth buying.  The rest were genuine, but unexciting.  He particularly liked a greenstone scarab that had been set in a plain gold bezel sometime in the millennia after it was created.  Ninth or tenth dynasty, he thought and a perfect birthday gift for his mother, if he could find the right sort of chain to go with it.

Ten centons later, the scarab was in his pocket, carefully wrapped in tissue paper.  It had cost more than he really thought it was worth, but his mother would love it.  But being generous now meant that unless he could get to a bank, lunch would have to be cheap.

The Rameses' Coffee House looked cheap. 

It was in one of the many little streets that ran from the wider thoroughfare where the Kobolian sat.  Looking up the street to his left, Apollo could see the Kobolian's wall, topped with a cast-iron fence that shimmered faintly in the security field that was the Kobolian's real defence for the treasures within its walls.  The great marble dome loomed so large that it filled the sky, keeping the street in cool shade.  The coffee shop had a narrow frontage, sandwiched between a pastry shop on one side and an iconic electronics store on the other.  It needed a coat of paint.

Apollo crossed the road to peer in through the window.  The inside was shabby and also needed a coat of paint; whoever Rameses was, he didn't appear to hold with redecoration.  The seating area was full of big soft-looking chairs and mismatched little tables.  There were even a couple of threadbare sofas, whose springs were sagging but which looked like they would mould themselves very comfortingly, not to say clingingly, around the human form.  An elderly man stood behind the counter reading a newspaper, wreathed in steam from the big coffee machine in front of him.

Apollo pushed open the door and went inside.





Students of any breed are notoriously poor.  Their one common characteristic appears to be a complaint that while scholarships and grants keep body and soul together to allow the mind to study, there isn't a lot left over for little luxuries.  They seem to spend as much time trying to coax a few extra cubits out of an inadequate scholarship to give themselves a few treats, as they do studying. 

On the whole, the students at the Kobolian fell into the same category as any other long-haired feckless youth who should be made to get a real job and stop sponging off the tax payer.  While it was an elite sort of place to study, entry was on ability rather than how much money daddy had in the bank, but the scholarships were not overgenerous.  The students lived hand to mouth on their grants and got evening jobs in bars to make ends meet.  Apollo was an exception,  He never thought about money because he'd never had to.  His daddy did have a lot of money in the bank—in fact, his daddy owned the bank—and Apollo always had as much of it as he wanted.  He wouldn't know a hand-to-mouth existence if it came up and bit him on the astrum.  So while the other students in his yahren contented themselves with lunching off the dry sandwiches and Lords-awful coffee from the tiny room in the basement that was all the austere Institute offered in the way of catering to its staff and students, Apollo escaped outside most days and went to the coffee shop.  It wasn't an extravagance, in his eyes; it was normal.

The coffee was the best Apollo had ever tasted, yet there were never very many patrons.  He'd push open the door and walk into the warm shop and breathe in the coffee-laden air, and ten to one but there'd only be him and the old man, who was indeed the eponymous Rameses, who would consent to put down his newspaper and give Apollo a cup of coffee.  In the centar that Apollo would sit there, sipping his coffee and reading his datapad–another reason for not eating with his fellow students was they sat in the basement room, and gossiped and did no work–only a few people would come in.  Despite being close to the Kobolian, the place was seldom busy.  People would glance through the plate glass windows and wrinkle their noses at the shabby interior, and continue on their way to one of the myriad other, more corporate, coffee shops in the area. 

"Is it always this quiet?" asked Apollo, on his third or fourth visit, when he went back to the counter for a second cup.

Old Mr Rameses looked at him over the top of the news-sheet and said he didn't want one of those modern places full of 'baristas' and with a shifting clientele of tourists.  He preferred to keep a customer base that was small and select.

"Oh, I like it like this," said Apollo, hastily, in case he'd given offence, and retired to the corner table in some confusion.  The old man looked at him once or twice before returning his attention to the news-sheet.

Apollo noticed that Old Mr Rameses didn't do very much to attract trade.  He had provided comfortable seating and most certainly served superlatively good coffee, but he drew the line at attractions or special offers.  He might draw a regular customer's attention to a new blend— although Here, try this was as much as could be expected in the way of marketing—but there was absolutely no chance of him holding a poetry reading or a folk-singing evening or anything community-minded to draw trade in.  Old Mr Rameses didn't hold with any of that, either, any more than he held with fresh paint.

Apollo had been coming to the coffee shop three or four times a secton for most of the semester before Old Mr Rameses acknowledged him with more than a grunt.  But one day Old Mr Rameses pushed a cup over the counter towards Apollo and said, "Full roast at 250 degrees.  It should taste quite sweet, with a lot more body than my old blend, more balanced especially in acidity, a bit more complex – what do you think?"

Apollo stared.  He didn’t have the faintest idea what the old man was talking about.  "I don’t know," he said.

The old man smiled.  "Taste it."

It was very good coffee and Apollo could say so sincerely.  There was a pleasing depth to it as it rolled in the mouth.

Old Mr Rameses laughed and nodded, gave Apollo a full cup of the new blend and, very kindly, sent him off to his usual corner to work.

After that Apollo was one of the elect.  He was given his very own mug, which was kept behind the counter and brought out by Old Mr Rameses with great ceremony as soon as the old man saw him step through the doorway and Old Mr Rameses always remembered which blend and roast Apollo liked best.

Apollo loved the place, especially because no-one seemed to realise what a gem it was.  Old Mr Rameses owned the best-kept secret in the whole of Caprica city, and Apollo wasn't going to be the man to ruin that.  He liked the quiet.  He spent many a lunchtime there when he was a student and even some long afternoons when he didn't need or want to spend the time in the Kobolian's library.  He could work just as well in the coffee shop, and it had the added advantage of Old Mr Rameses bustling quietly up to him every half centar or so and refreshing the mug of coffee beside his datapad or sharing cookies or a mushie from the pastry shop next door. 

There were other regular patrons; people that Apollo learned to nod a greeting to and, occasionally, trade real words with.  One of them he knew slightly: Sire Anton was one of his father's friends and political allies and now and again when Apollo was there, he would call in on his way to the Praesidium where he was something incredibly important in the Secretariat to the Council of The Twelve.  Apollo had never bothered working out exactly what, but he and Sire Anton usually had a few centons chat before the old man made his way out to do whatever it was he did.  He asked his father, when he remembered, what Sire Anton did.

Adama laughed.  "Anton?  Oh, Anton exercises power," he said.

Apollo called him a cynic and forgot about it.  In the coffee shop, it didn't matter.  Apollo was very happy there, for yahrens.




Even when Apollo's student days were long behind him, he stayed with the coffee shop.  He stayed with the Kobolian, too, but now he taught for a few centars a secton, spending the rest of the days in research or curating some of the museum's artefacts and collections.  He was especially fond of, and expert in, mummies. 

"Mummies?" Old Mr Rameses said, raising an eyebrow when Apollo, barely twenty-one, had told him about the success of his doctorate dissertation.  Apollo was cock-a-hoop about the Kobolian authorities deciding to publish it and offering him a research and teaching position. 

"My dear boy, how exciting!" Sire Anton had stopped in for his usual (black, dissolves-the-spoon triple espresso) and was properly impressed, too.  "Your father told me you were doing very well.  He'll be very proud." 

"My students—"  And didn't that sound grand?  So grand that Apollo was forced to repeat it:  "My students will all have to call me Sire Apollo."

"You'll be a professor in no time," said Sire Anton.

Apollo was so gratified by the reverent attention that he bought everyone celebratory mushies from the pastry shop next door.

And: "Mummies?" Old Mr Rameses had said again, when, a few yahrens later, Apollo was appointed as Curator of the Early History Galleries, was indeed now Professor Apollo, and had told Old Mr Rameses (boasting, really) that archaeological institutions all over the Colonies were coming to him for advice.

"I'll have you know that I'm the foremost Colonial authority on mummification rites and methodology," said Apollo, grinning.  He was intensely proud of that since he was still only twenty-five but had two successful archaeological digs and three scholarly publications under his belt.  "I'm young, but I'm good."

All Old Mr Rameses did was roll his eyes and look curiously at the corner table where one of Apollo's fellow Institute members awaited him.  A rather older fellow member, although fashionably and youthfully dressed and one who looked askance at the shabby chairs and tables.

"That's Joss," said Apollo.  His face felt hot.

"Ah," said Old Mr Rameses, and looked thoughtful. 

To give him his due, Joss's gender didn't trouble the old man.  The age difference seemed to, though.  "You're only twenty five," Old Mr Rameses said, more than once, as if he thought Apollo couldn't remember his own age.

It surprised Apollo.  Oh, not the advice, since Old Mr Rameses was very good at handing that out, once you'd been a regular long enough to get more than a grunt out of him.  The affair surprised him.  Joss–Professor Josiah, to give him his formal title—seemed to see something in a lanky, gauche youth that Apollo couldn't see in himself.  Apollo was still at the stage where he walked quickly past mirrors and his reflection in shop windows to avoid catching a glimpse of his scrawny and over-tall self and he was at a loss to understand what Joss saw in him.  He definitely found it hard to believe that Joss wanted him, that Joss had been to one to start all of this; that working together on unwrapping an ordinary-seeming mummy, the excitement of finding a glorious set of solid gold amulets had Joss turning to him, to kiss him.  Apollo had stood there over Amthoth's millennia-old corpse, clutching a gold djed amulet, while Joss's hands, still in their protective gloves, had framed his face and Joss's mouth was on his, Joss's tongue ran against his lips, Joss was making little murmuring sounds of want and need.  It was astonishing that they'd managed to stop it there, and close up the laboratory and get themselves to Apollo's apartment on the other side of the park. 

Apollo took the coffees over to the table.  Joss looked up at him and smiled, and Apollo's face flamed until he thought he must glow with it. and something low in his gut twisted and uncurled, filling him with heat and want and a visceral memory of Joss's hard cock pushing up into him, filling him up, and stroking his prostate, once on the upstroke, once on the down.  And again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  And again …

Apollo smiled back and despite everything he'd ever thought about people who were over-affectionate in public, he leaned over the table and kissed Joss, right there, in front of everyone in the café.  He didn't remember ever being so happy.





The affair lasted, on and off (off being when one or other of them was off world on a dig), for a couple of yahrens.  Old Mr Rameses' coffee shop became one of their trysting places, Apollo having introduced Joss to the delights of good coffee in return for Joss introducing Apollo to the delights of good sex.

On the whole, Apollo rather thought that he'd got the best of that bargain.

Old Mr Rameses dispensed coffee and more unsolicited advice when it was all over a couple of yahrens later—he and Joss had got on well, surprisingly, given that Joss liked things to be bang up to date and fashionable and the coffee shop was, of course, neither.

"I'm sorry about Joss," he said, and added a dash of something spirituous to the coffee for added comfort.

"Yeah," said Apollo, who was sorry but surprisingly not broken-hearted.  The affair with Joss had just come to a natural end, he felt, but it wasn't every day of the secton that Old Mr Rameses offered alcoholic comfort.   "I am, too."

And then, of course, came Serina.





Apollo wasn't one for watching much TV.  Most of it was bland to the point of inanity and a relentless diet of soaps and game shows gave him mental indigestion.  He occasionally watched one of the financial programmes, usually just before he visited his parents so that he'd have something to talk about that interested his father, but Adama had begged him to stop.  Hearing his eldest son talk about triple witching and derivatives and account aggregation was, he said, too painful.  It reminded him only too vividly that he'd lost his heir to dead bodies and hieroglyphs, and was akin, he felt, to training puppies by rubbing their noses in it.  Apollo laughed and told him about the Late Saite Period practice of mummification with the internal organs intact, instead.  Adama said that was much better, thank you, and what did Apollo think of Caprica City's chances in the Inter-Colonial Triad Championships?

Apollo wasn't best pleased when the Dean called him into his office and told him that he was going to be filmed. 

"The Caprican Broadcasting Company intend to make a series of documentaries based on the History of the Kobolian Peoples," said the Dean, a gleam in his eye that Apollo, knowing the man too well, put down to the desire for a good PR opportunity rather than scholarly delight.

"What, all of it?  All sixty-seven volumes of it?"

"It will be a long series," said the Dean, complacent.  "It will obviously feature our collections and our scholarship heavily."

"Obviously," said Apollo.  "And you want them to interview me?"

"You're the best choice," said the Dean, as calm and as bland as the TV programming that Apollo so despised, and he affected not to notice that Apollo was aghast at the very idea.  "You are the Early History Galleries Curator, after all, and they want expert opinion to make it accurate."  He smiled.

"I'm the worst possible person to do this!"

"The Trustees consider that a programme that features the Kobolian in a good light can only be helpful when it comes to our funding position," said the Dean.  "it will attract more donors.  We need more funding, Apollo, if we're to continue supporting fieldwork at the level we do now.  You do want to go back to Carillon next season, don't you?"

That was so unsubtle that Apollo stared.  "I'll pay for my own fieldwork," he said, desperate, but the Dean was not to be moved.  Two days later Apollo was welcoming the production team for a preliminary talk, stiffly and with a smile he thought had to look as forced as he felt.

The production team turned out to be the producer, the presenter—one of CBC's top journalists—and the top journalist's four-yahren-old son.

"Sorry," said Serina, smiling.  "Don't ever be a single parent, Professor.  Childcare can become the most dominant thing in your life and when it fails you, there's really nothing you can do.  I'm sorry to bring Boxey, but really, he's no trouble."

She was even more beautiful in person than she was on screen, and Apollo held her hand for far longer than even he thought was necessary.

"I'm sure it's okay," he said.  At that centon he wouldn't have cared if Boxey had been hyperactive twins.

Boxey tugged on Apollo's pants' leg.  "Mama says you have bodies of dead people,"

Apollo admitted to one or two, sharing an indulgent smile with Boxey's mother, and explained that they'd been dead for a very, very long time.

Boxey's eyes grew very wide.  "Please, sir, can I see your bodies?"

"An archaeological laboratory is no place for little boys," demurred Apollo.

"It’s going to have to be, if we’re to get this programme done," said Serina, briskly, and before Apollo knew quite what was going on, he was showing them into the big laboratory in the basement that was his pride and joy and had instructed one of the porters to bring a mummy out of storage for them to look at.  Serina wasn't any less fascinated than Boxey, although the producer yawned through it all, and by the time they'd worked out the broad parameters for the programme, the producer wanted to be off to another appointment and Apollo was rather desperate for caffeine.

He told himself that it was only politeness that made him offer Serina a coffee, but he was over the moon when she said that she had more than enough time and would be delighted.  She tucked one hand through Apollo's arm and grasped Boxey securely with the other.

"Where shall we go?  The restaurant here?"

"No," said Apollo.  "I know this little coffee shop, outside…"





They married that same yahren, on Yule Eve, only three sectars after they met.

Apollo didn’t think that Old Mr Rameses disliked Serina, although he did make a point of saying that she, too, was several yahrens older than Apollo, just in case Apollo had missed the trend in his romantic entanglements.  The old man was a little reticent whenever Apollo brought her to the coffee shop; friendly enough but reserved.  But when Apollo brought Boxey as well, Old Mr Rameses surpassed himself in concocting hot chocolate variations for Boxey to sample. 

Old Mr Rameses approved wholeheartedly of Boxey, at least.

"I see Professor Josiah now and again," said Old Mr Rameses a few days before the wedding.  "He doesn't look very well."

"He's just cross because the Dean's asked me to revise the early volumes of The History Of The Kobolian Peoples, and not him," was Apollo's diagnosis.  He was very adept at ignoring the other reason—Joss had been giving him some very hurt looks since Serina happened.

Old Mr Rameses just nodded and wished Apollo well.  He seemed genuinely glad that Apollo was so happy and was apparently touched to be invited to the wedding.  He gave them a state-of the-art home coffee maker as a present, of course, and promised to keep them supplied in some of his Special Roast.

Four days after their Fairy Tale Yuletide wedding, Serina was killed instantly when she crashed their hovercar into a delivery truck for a big global chain of coffee shops.  The irony didn't amuse Apollo, although it did cost him one wry grin.





Apollo didn't talk much about Serina, afterwards. 

The crash had left him with smashed right knee that even the best surgeons couldn't do much to repair, and he was lucky it wasn't worse.  He'd always walk with a limp, the doctors told him, but he could get around pretty well, really.  It was only on bad days that he had to use a cane.  And, mercifully, Boxey had been in the back seat and was unhurt.

It was two or three sectars before Apollo recovered enough to come back to the Kobolian and back to the coffee shop.  He learned early that Serina was right about the problem of childcare, and he often brought Boxey with him as he juggled his schedule at the Kobolian against Boxey's kindergarten centars.  The child was a favourite with both Old Mr Rameses and Sire Anton, who, semi-retired now, seemed to be spending almost as much time in the coffee shop as he spent at the Praesidium.  Both old men delighted in Boxey's company.  They even held a special treat for the child's fifth birthday.

"How are you, really, Apollo?" asked Sire Anton, after Old Mr Rameses had enticed Boxey out of earshot with the promise of little cakes from the pastry shop next door.

Apollo sipped at his coffee.  "Fine," he said.  "We're fine.  I'm coping and I think that Boxey's adjusting pretty well."

"Yes, he is.  But then, he's very young and the young forget quickly.  We older ones don't." 

Sire Anton's smooth voice faltered for a micron and Apollo remembered the politician had his own tragedies to deal with: a wife, daughter and infant grandson lost more than twenty-five yahrens earlier—Apollo couldn’t remember how, although he had a vague memory of his father talking about it sometime.  An accident?  A botched robbery?  A terrorist attack or something?  Whatever it was, the Sire's house in the Thorn Forest had been blown up.  Apollo understood why Sire Anton had a fondness for Boxey.  He must remind him of his own lost family.

But right then, "No," was all Apollo found to say.

Sire Anton patted his shoulder.  "It does get better, I promise you."

Apollo hoped it did.  "I feel more guilty, than anything else," he said.

"Because you survived?"

"Because everything didn't stop.  It's just going on."  Apollo stopped and shrugged. 

"It does that," said Sire Anton.  "You have to accept that, too."

Apollo wondered if he could or would.  In the meantime, he took what joy he could from having Boxey to love and care for, and right that centon, from Boxey's wholehearted enjoyment of a huge selection of mushies.  Old Mr Rameses looked slightly guilty when he met Apollo's gaze.  And well he might, thought Apollo later, discovering that the joys of fatherhood also involved holding your small son's head over the turboflush when the mushies made their inevitable disgusting reappearance.





Apollo never liked looking back on that first yahren on his own with Boxey.  He struggled hard in the first few sectars: missing Serina, raising Boxey, learning to adapt to disability.  Even archaeology failed him, that summer.  He decided against disrupting Boxey, who was settling down at last, by going back to the site on Carillon that he'd been excavating for the past three yahrens.  Instead he handed it over to Joss for the season.

"Temporarily," he said, firmly.  "Just this season, mind."

"It's very brave of you to let me play there," said Joss, consolingly.  His glance was bright-eyed and considering.  "Do you really want to do this?  How are you, really?"

"Coping.  As long as Boxey's all right, we'll manage.  He's happier now he knows he's staying with me permanently."

"The adoption went through all right then?"

"That's one advantage of having a father who retains the very best lawyers in the Colonies.  No trouble at all, thankfully."

"One baby sorted, then, and the other handed over to me for safe-keeping.  Don't worry, Apollo, I'll look after Carillon."

"Just don't you dare find anything," muttered Apollo.

Joss jeered, kissed his cheek with his usual affection and departed, leaving Apollo fretting about giving up a site that he knew in his bones was going to be crucially important to understanding their history.  There were some annoying gaps in the mummy record that Apollo might be tempted to sell Boxey into slavery to find, and he was convinced Carillon would give him at least some of the answers.  He was meanly glad when Joss didn't find anything of any great significance.  Apollo knew it was there.  He just wanted to find it for himself.

"I know it's there too," said Joss, rather crossly when he and his students got back in the autumn.  He and Apollo had fallen back into the habit of lunching every secton at the coffee house, under Old Mr Rameses' paternal eye, and he sipped at Old Mr Rameses Special Blend as if it were his last comfort.  "But not a sign of anything worthwhile did I find, other than more potsherds than you could shake a stick at.  I'm going to be spending the entire winter classifying the darn things.  The least you can do is help out."

"I don't think I will, thanks," said Apollo.  "I don’t like potsherds much.  Very boring things, they are."  He smiled.  "But I'll have a copy of your report when you've done it, Joss.  It all adds to the sum of human knowledge."

Joss' reply had even Old Mr Rameses laughing and the three of them spent a pleasant centar trying to demonstrate Joss's suggestion with two mushies, a sugar carton and half a choco-cookie. 

They failed, but it made Apollo laugh out loud.  Old Mr Rameses beamed at him.

Apollo took Boxey to his parents for Yule, and if he was very quiet on Yule Eve and very, very quiet four days later, his family gave him the space he and Boxey needed to remember Serina.  Then everyone rallied round and pretended that he wasn't turning into a socially-retarded recluse with, said his brother Zac, an unhealthy interest in bones.

Apollo liked bones.  They had no capacity to rend at the heartstrings.  There was something to be said for being inert, after all.





Apollo had already learned something of the transitory nature of life, so really he should have been prepared to accept that not everything could stay the same forever. 

The following spring, Old Mr Rameses started to look a little anxious, a little stressed.  In fact, as spring warmed into early summer, he looked more and more morose.  Old Mr Rameses didn't confided what was worrying him, and (frankly) Apollo didn't have the first idea how to go about asking without causing offence, but there was obviously something seriously wrong.  Apollo was a little concerned about the old man's health and he fretted about it (mildly) all summer while he and Boxey were on Carillon. 

Joss hadn't demurred about handing the excavation back – "Enjoy the potsherds," he said, waving them off.  Apollo reflected with some satisfaction that Joss would have to eat his words when, after shifting the site a hundred metres to the left, Apollo proved it was the site of the capital of the one of the greatest of the twentieth dynasty pharaohs who led the long Exodus from Kobol by finding the Pharaoh's tomb and a mummy cache of incredible richness. 

This?  This was winning the archaeological jackpot.  Apollo was in heaven.

Boxey enjoyed the dig as much as Apollo did.  He liked pretending to be a real archaeologist and patiently (and correctly) excavated an ancient rubbish heap under the amused tuition of Apollo's students, showing what Apollo considered to be a promising interest in the bones that he himself liked so much.  Boxey took his part of the supervisory duties seriously, lording it over the students like a miniature tyrant.  

A constant litany of "Daddy said to dig over there, not here." and "You aren't doing that very quickly, are you?" and "That's not right.  Daddy showed me how to do it.", all accompanied by a hard stare, had Apollo's students and the extra helpers sent out to help by a delighted Kobolian begging their professor for mercy.

Luckily Carillon was mainly wide open space where a six-yahren-old and the daggit his besotted grandmother had given him could run for centars without bothering anyone except a few large bugs, and Boxey (and a constantly barking Muffit) took full advantage of it.  It has to be admitted that his father encouraged him to run.  He was very bossy, actually, and it is entirely possible to have too much supervision.

Apollo and Boxey sent occasional emails to friends and family, including Old Mr Rameses, and got cheerful replies.  So it was a shock, and a disagreeable one, to walk into the coffee shop on the first day of the autumn term, and find everything changed and Old Mr Rameses gone.





There were fewer armchairs and only one sofa (and those reupholstered and plush), more little round tables with wooden dining chairs, a big new glass fronted case full of pastries, cookies, little cakes and mushies, a large new coffee-making machine that steamed gently and a completely new menu written up on blackboards behind the counter.  Apollo suspected the place had been painted.  He also suspected that the stranger behind the counter had something to do with it.

Old Mr Rameses had to be over seventy.  He was round shouldered from yahrens of stooping over the coffee machines, what hair he had was sparse and iron-grey, and only his mother would have thought he was more than homely.  The young man in his place was as far from Old Mr Rameses as you could get and still be talking about the same species.

Even in his distraction, Apollo noticed that the stranger was tall and well-made.  Apollo got a general impression of a sort of golden glow that probably owed its impact to a wealth of wheat-gold hair and bronzed skin.  But this was lost in an overall realisation that the stranger was just… there.  In Old Mr Rameses' spot.  Not grunting, not looking over the sports pages in the news-sheets, but smiling and greeting Apollo as if the stranger had every right to be there.  Right there, where Old Mr Rameses should be.

"Where's Mister Rameses?" demanded Apollo, cutting ruthlessly through the pleasant-toned greeting and using one of the stares Boxey had taught him.

The stranger pushed his glasses up from the end of his nose and peered at Apollo through the lenses.  "Retired?" he offered.

"Retired?" repeated Apollo.  "What do you mean, retired?  Why?  Is he ill?"

The stranger—who had to be about Apollo's own age, he realised—blinked.  "No, he just retired."

Apollo stared until the stranger started to grin.  "Who are you?"

The stranger pointed to his name badge.  "It's written up outside, too," he said, helpfully.  "I don't know how you missed it coming in."

Apollo glared, turned on his heel and marched out of the coffee shop to stand on the pavement and stare up at the café's new fascia.  He wasn't sure how he'd missed it either.  He marched back inside, ignoring the smile on the stranger's face and checked the name plate to be sure of his facts. 

"There's an apostrophe missing," he said.  "Outside, I mean.  It's missing."

"I don't like apostrophes," said Starbuck.  He smoothed down his dark green apron, his smile broadening.

"You can’t have a missing apostrophe!"

"Well," said Starbuck.  "It's not like it says Starbuck's Coffee Shop, or anything as mundane as that." — And Apollo bridled, because he'd thought that at least Rameses' Coffee House had been properly descriptive and unambiguous.  — "I thought it looked more eye-catching just as Starbucks.  It's more likely to attract the passing trade.  Just think how many people will come in out of curiosity and to correct my grammar, and stay because I make damn good coffee."

"Mister Rameses," said Apollo, "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," said Apollo.  He looked away quickly to hide the little stab the name gave him.  The Cylonic Coffee Company was the biggest global café chain in the Colonies.  It had been a Cylonic Coffee Company truck that had run into Serina.  Well, if he was honest, Serina had run into the Cylonic Coffee Company, but it was all the same in the end.  She was still gone.

"The CCC wanted to buy this place," explained Starbuck.

"He'd have hated that," conceded Apollo.  "He always says that the CCC is the worst of the big conglomerates.  He says they're soulless and they sell crap coffee.  The best you can say about them is that you can walk into any one of their coffee shops and it'll be a clone of every other one, so at least you know what to expect."

"They're everywhere you turn around, these days," agreed Starbuck, amiably enough.  "Every street corner, every town square.  I think they’re trying to take over the entire world."  He rubbed at his nose and looked thoughtful.  "They're pretty ruthless, you know, at invading neighbourhoods and they were pushing him hard.  This is a prime site close to the Kobolian, and they wanted it badly."

"I went into one of their places once," said Apollo.  He didn’t say that it had been a few sectons after Serina's death, when he was still trying to make sense of it all.  He still wasn't sure what he'd thought going into a CCC coffee shop would achieve.  "Mister Rameses was right.  It was nothing like here.  It was all metallic walls and metal furniture, and there was this enormous coffee machine thing, twice the size of yours, all shiny chrome and steam and rows of flashing red lights."

"I know.  Still, you can't fault their customer service.  It's damned good and all their baristas are keen and really pay attention to the customer.  They're trained to say that stupid catchphrase of theirs every time, you know.  'I'll have a double shot latte,' says the customer and they have to say 'By your command,' like they're a lot of little robots or something." Starbuck grinned, and Apollo, now the first shock was over, realised that it was quite an attractive grin and more welcoming than Old Mr Rameses' grunt.  "I won't be saying that here, by the way."

"Lords, I hope not!" 

"Actually, their training is pretty good, even if I did choke on the catchphrase.  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.  It's a risk, but I always did like taking chances."

"You were a warrior?"

"A pilot, until my eyes got so bad I almost shot up my own ship."  Starbuck sighed, pushed his spectacles back up to the top of his nose. and the smile faded.  Apollo felt a sudden desire to pat his arm in comfort, the way he might pat Boxey's.  "How about you?  You obviously know Mister Rameses but I haven't seen you here before today." 

"I work at the Kobolian," said Apollo.  "I've been off world.  I've just got back from a dig."

"Then you must be Professor Apollo," said Starbuck, with that big grin again, and Apollo noticed how the corners of his bright blue eyes crinkled up when he smiled.  Starbuck brushed back a swathe of hair that Apollo noticed again was both very thick and surprisingly gold, and reached under the counter to pull out Apollo's mug.  "Mister Rameses told me all about you.  Now, I know what you normally have but won't you try one of the new drinks I'm working on?  I’d like your opinion."

Apollo peered at the blackboards, astonished by the strange drinks listed there.  What in Hades was a white chocolate mocha with whipped cream like, other than unbearably sickly?  Unwilling, suddenly, to hurt Starbuck's feelings about it, he passed hurriedly over the drinks to focus on another puzzle.  "What's the short, tall, grande, venti thing about?"

"Sizes," said Starbuck, promptly.  "Same sort of thing as the apostrophe, or the lack thereof.  People will remember the funny names for sizes and they'll tell other people, who'll remember when they're passing and they'll come in to see what that is all about.  Viral marketing, Professor.  That's what the game's about."

Apollo looked around the quiet, empty shop.  The virus wasn't working yet, then.  Not infectious enough, probably. 

"It’s early days, yet," said Starbuck, doing a bit of mind-reading.  "I've only been open a secton.  So, what can I get you?"

"I'll just have my latte," said Apollo. 

"Why not try the Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream?  On the house, as a once only introductory offer.  Would you like a muffin to go with that?"

"A Muffit?" repeated Apollo, thinking that one daggit in the family was quite enough, thank you. 

Starbuck blinked at him,  "No.  A muffin." He waved a hand at the glass-fronted display.  "I've come to an arrangement with the pastry shop next door, to sell some of their lines in here.  Boomer has just started making these little cakes.  He calls them muffins.  They're great.  He's going to try some cup-cakes next."

"Boomer?"

"The manager next door.  He's a damn good pastry chef and baker.  The skinny ginger muffins are my favourites.  You'll like them,"

"Mmn," said Apollo, feeling that he was being helplessly dragged along in Starbuck's wake and didn't have a hope in hell of working out what was going on, except that a Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream and a skinny ginger muffin were obviously about to feature heavily in his immediate future.  He could only hope that the skinniness of the muffin somehow cancelled out the whipped cream, although he had his doubts.  He watched as his Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream was efficiently blended and assembled and wondered what in Hades Old Mr Rameses had let his customers in for.




The Dark Berry Mocha Frappucino Blended Coffee with Whipped Cream wasn't bad, actually.  It was pretty damn good, in fact, and the muffin was to die for.

Apollo decided he wasn't giving up on the coffee shop yet.  Over the next couple of days he traded emails with Old Mr Rameses, who was apparently sunning himself in a Gemonese Gold Coast resort on the proceeds of the sale to Starbuck.  He was relieved at the cheerful tone of the emails, even when he scolded the old man for sneaking off without a word to his friends.

I hated what was happening, Apollo, wrote Old Mr Rameses by return.  I know the place had to change, or the CCC would roll right over me, but I really didn't have the heart to do it myself.  Starbuck has the right idea – he'll make a few changes to bring the place up to date, but he won’t turn it into anything like the Cylonic chain.  He's a good boy.

Reassured by this endorsement, Apollo went back and claimed his usual armchair in the corner, now without the loose spring that could, most painfully and without warning, prod a man in the lower back.  Apollo, perversely, found himself regretting the loss of the spring.  He collected his coffee from Starbuck, propped the datapad on the little table in front of him and tried to work, but found his attention wandering back to Starbuck.  The new owner appeared to be a sociable soul.  He dealt with the group of four or five customers who came in after Apollo and within a centon had them charmed and laughing as he explained the unusual drinks on offer.  They didn't rush out, but took over another corner of the coffee shop to work their way through the pastries and try what Starbuck called his tasting menu of different coffees.

The place was busier, there was no doubt about that.  But it still had atmosphere and the almost homey feel, and Apollo allowed himself to relax.  He'd been too flustered at their first meeting to really take Starbuck in beyond the general impression of golden glowing, but now he realised that the new owner was a very good looking, very charming young man .  In purely aesthetic terms, he was a definite improvement on Old Mr Rameses.

Once when he looked up from his datapad and some problems about the early migration patterns in the First Wave from Kobol, Starbuck had sent another happy customer to a table to sample the coffee and cakes and was watching Apollo with a grin on his face. 

Apollo grinned back.