Duplicity, chapter 3
by  ragpants
 

"Damn it!"

The pearl stud popped out of her fingers and went flying to land soundlessly somewhere on the carpet..

Janeway closed her eyes and took two deep, calming breaths.  She didn't have time for this; she was already late. Her headache had kept her awake until the early hours of the morning. Then she had overslept. She couldn't remember if she had ordered her alarm off at some point last night or if she hadn't set it in the first place. Either way, she hadn't waken until well after 0800, a good two hours later than normal. Now every little thing seemed to be conspiring to make her even later.

The earring was invisible against the cream colored carpet. And there had no auditory cue to help her guess where she ought to begin to look. Silently cursing  the necessity, she dropped to her hands and knees and began sweeping her hands over the rug, hoping she could find her missing earring by touch.
This was going to make her really late, but she did it anyway because that was what one *did* when one lost something. One looked for it and one found it.  It was the way she had been raised and that ethos had shaped who she was. She had been the dutiful daughter, the conscientious student, the model cadet, the exemplary young officer. And now? What was she trying to be now? The seamlessly interchangable administrator?  The docile wife?  Her hand faltered in its motion and she sat back on her heels in surprise. Where had that idea come from?

Before she could examine the thought further the comm panel at the far end of the bedroom buzzed.   It was, she thought with exasperation, probably Jayen calling to remind her that she was late for some meeting or another. She was going to ignore it, let the caller leave a message. But she couldn't and for same reason she couldn't just walk away with her earring lying lost on the floor.

"Audit," she called. The auditory channel dutifully opened so she could hear the message but didn't signal the sender that she was receiving.

"Kathryn, I was hoping you'd be here." It was Daniel's voice and there was a resignedly disappointed tone to it. " Jayen said you hadn't come in to the office and your personal communicator isn't turned on. I guess I'll just have to...."

Janeway scrambled to her feet, one hand automatically going up to smooth back any hair that might have come loose from her neat French roll while she was crawling around on the floor while the other brushed at her uniform front and sleeves to remove any lint she might have acquired.

"Open channel," she ordered.

When the channel opened, she was sitting, composed, at the comm center.

"Kathryn! You are there," Daniel crowed with delight.

Janeway made a small dismissive motion with her hands. "Just running a bit late, that's all."

Daniel's forehead furrowed as he studied her image. "Is everything all right? You look tired."

 Janeway quelled the urge to scrub at her face. It wouldn't do any good and it certainly wouldn't erase the fatigue lines. "I'm fine. Just had a bit of trouble sleeping."

The furrow in Daniel's brow eased from concern to sympathy. "I understand.  I can't sleep when you're out of town either," he confessed. " I'm sorry you had a bad night.  And I'm sorry I didn't have time to let you know about this trip ahead of time.  Truthfully, I only found out at the last minute myself."

 Guilt for her suspicions of last night and her own white lie prickled under Janeway's collar and her voice came out more brusquely than she intended. "No need to apologize. If there's anyone who understands about the necessity of traveling as part of the job..." Deliberately softening her tone, she changed topics. " And speaking of traveling, where are you? "

Daniel chuckled. "Aboard the Philadelphia and enjoying some of Starfleet's best 'perfectly correct' cordiality. I don't know who on the Council twisted arms to get the ship assigned to ferry me, but it  clearly wasn't the assignment they were expecting.  When I boarded, I swear  you could actually hear all the officers thinking 'Who is this civilian and what the hell is he doing rescheduling my ship?'"

 She must have looked some odd combination of appalled, disgusted and entirely  surprised because Daniel hurried on. "Just kidding, Kathryn...Well, mostly kidding. Everyone has been polite and quite helpful actually.  Captain invited Sobee and I..."

Sobee. Sobieslaw Praj. He was Daniel's law clerk this term, Janeway recalled. She had met him at the High Court's annual Midwinter's Night holiday party last December. She remembered him now: a serious young man with a brilliant mind and unremitting political ambitions. She wasn't surprised that he had somehow managed to get himself invited along on this trip.  She had met several young officers of the same type in her career in Starfleet and those types always seemed to find a way.

"...to mess--is that the right word?.."

Janeway inclined her head fractionally.

"...to mess with him last night. So please don't dress down the Captain over this."

Daniel turned to listen to someone addressing him outside the view of the camera. He nodded and held up one finger.

 "I have to go, Kathryn.  The communication officer tells me that this might be my last call for a while. Something about the Cherry Blossom Nebula and subspace interference. You probably know more about that than I would. So I'm going to be incommunicado. Probably a good thing too. I have 200 hours of testimony to review, not to mention familiarizing myself with Deslean legal procedure and case precedents before I arrive. I'll call you as soon as I can. Is there anything else?"

Janeway debated momentarly. "Madaleine called."

Daniel frowned slightly in worry. "How is Maddy?"

"Fine. Worried about you."

Daniel searched his memory, but looked puzzled.

"You were supposed to meet Corinne,"  she prompted.

Daniel slapped his forehead. "I was supposed to meet Corrie for lunch yesterday. I completely forgot in the rush to leave. I was supposed to meet her and when I didn't show Corrie probably got worried and called her sister.  Tell Corrie I'm sorry. Tell her I promise to make it up to her when I get back. Tell her...tell her I'll take her to that place, the trattoria in Modena she likes so much....I have to go, Kathryn. Miss you....By the way" he said pointing toward her left ear, "did you know you're wearing only one earring?"

The transmission ended so abruptly that Janeway didn't have a chance to reply.

Stepping away from the comm unit, Janeway was arrested mid-motion by her reflection in the mirror above her bureau. She stared at the face as if uncertain she recognized herself. It was the same face had looked back at her for decades now, but it was different too.  It appeared less harried than it had been during her often deperate days in the Delta Quadrant, and the worrylines in the center of her forehead and at the edges of her mouth had softened. But the eyes were different. The blue gaze was as intense as ever, as shrewd, as intelligent, as observant, but there was remoteness in her eyes which hadn't been there five years ago. Or ten. Or even two. After a long moment, Janeway deliberately reached up and removed the unpartnered earring, laying it on her dresser. She retrieved her briefcase from beside the nightstand and tapped her communicator pin to request transport to her office in the Annex Building.

* * *

Jayen wasn't at her desk when Janeway finally made it up to the 14th floor--which was odd. In the four years since Janeway had taken tenancy at the OTA, she could count on one hand the number of times that Jayen had been absent, and each one of those has been requested and approved in advance. She couldn't remember a single time the woman had called in sick. There was rumor widely reported as fact making the rounds among the support staff that the P'Tweet's alien, avian physiology rendered her immune to all human diseases, in fact to all mammalian illnesses. It sounded reasonable to Janeway, but  her training had been in the physics.

It only added to Janeway's vague sense of strangeness when she noted that her customary three padds had been arrayed neatly across  Jayen's desk in reception. Janeway tucked her newsreader under her elbow and picked one padd at random. She thumbed it on. Her messages, ordered exactly how she preferred them.

Perhaps Jayen was here after all.

Janeway stacked her padds, and laying her newsreader atop the pile, headed into her office.

*  *  *

There was faint tap at her office door. Janeway attention flicked from the comm screen to the door and back. She smiled an apology to her step daughter. "I have to go, Corrine. There's someone at my door. Any messages for your father?.... No? Well, give Ari a hug for me, will you?"

Janeway ended the transmission.

"Come," she called towards the door.

Cmdr. Thompson poked her head in. "Your assistant wasn't at her desk," she said by way of apology for bypassing protocol.

Janeway waved her friend inside. "I know. I haven't seen her all day, " Janeway said with a hint of mild aggrievment."I've no idea where she's taken herself off to." Janeway busied herself the the task of shutting down her computer console.

Maggie moved toward the left side wall of the office. The viewscreen, on which most people set a realtime view of the outside of the building to give the illusion of a window, displayed a moving starfield. Maggie studied it carefully, frowning slightly.

"I know it's been a good decade or three since I sat in an astrogation class, but I don't recognize a single navigational reference point." She pursed her lips and leaned closer to the star spattered display,. "Is this the...Delta Quadrant?"

Janeway beamed as if she were a teacher whose slowest student had just  guessed the correct answer. "It is. " she affirmed, coming stand beside her friend. "It's the view from Voyager's Ready Room." She looked carefully at the display for a long moment. "This looks like the Gareeta Sector. Yes. That's right. See here." Janeway pointed to ordinary-looking star near the upper right side of the slowly-scrolling display. "That's the homesstar of the Thelk Plutocracy."

"You recorded it? Your view. For the whole trip?" Maggie sounded incredulous.

"No. Not enough data storage. I recreated it." At Maggie's look of incomprehension, Janeway explained,  "I wrote an algorithm that uses the star charts together with positional extracts from the navigation logs to extrapolate the view."  Janeway smiled proudly. "Not bad. It'll do."

"You know, most people, most normal people, who want a memento of their travels collect small things like coins of holostills. Only you, Kathryn, would have the temerity to collect an entire quadrant."

Janeway's lips twitched as she decided whether she was more insulted or amused. Amused, she decided. She was going to spent the evening with this woman and insulted would make the night awkward. She'd had quite enough akwardness in the past 2 days.

Maggie  waggled her finger in the direction of Kathryn's desk. "Are you done yet?"

"All finished and button up," Janeway confirmed. "Let's go."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Maggie lifted an eyebrow and gave Janeway a stern overlooking. "We agreed. A night away from the shop. Please tell me you weren't planned to go out wearing your uniform."

 A warm tightness pulled across Janeway's cheeks. She hadn't remembered, nor hadn't she noticed until now that Maggie was wearing a definitely non-regulation pantsuit of deep riotous rose, which somehow managed not to look ridiculous on the woman's tall, buxomed and broad shouldered form.. "Of course I wasn't. Let me change."

Maggie sighed disappointment. "I knew you'd forget. Well, as long as you're going to be dialing up some civvies, Kathryn,  remember:  just because you're a grandma now, doesn't mean you have to dress like one!"

Maggie slipped out of the inner office door. "I"ll be waiting in reception when you're ready."

* * *

Maggie jiggled Janeway's elbow to indicate this was their stop on the underground transit.  A short flight of steps brought them to the surface in one of San Francisco's seedier neighborhoods.

"You're going to love this place, " Maggie was saying as she marched them down a street that was mostly occupied by ill-kept storefronts, "I've heard the food is really adventurous."

Those words nearly caused Janeway to fire retros and reverse course. "Food" and "adventurous" was not a combination she found congenial. Seven years of 'adventurous' meals in the Delta Quadrant had left  her with a permanent fondness for the homey and the familiar in dinner selections.

Maggie halted in front of their destination: an undistinguished storefront with a hand lettered sign that declared across a smudgy glass window, "Baciu's Fine Dining."  It looked unpromising and possibly unsanitary. Janeway was seized with a sudden urge to grab Maggie's arm and drag her bodily into the store next door, the one with the sign that proclaimed to stock "The good Word from every quadrant of the galaxy!" in search of a copy of _Parables Heard Under the Meeting Tree_., the Talaxian equivalent of the Bible. It wan't that she needed a copy; she had her own. Neelix had thoughtfully provided her one long ago at the first sign of her interest. But Maggie wouldn't know that and it would give Janeway a few moments to invent an excuse to derail dinner.

She had waited too long. Maggie was sailing through the restaurant's entry and she had no choice but to follow.
 

The meal turned out better than Janeway would have guessed. The interior had been scrubbed clean as was humanly possible, or perhaps more accurately as clean as was Threlkellianly possible, since the owners were of that species.  The food had been carefully prepared and, while exotic, was not been unpalatable, but rather interestlingly textured and spiced.  Janeway left the restaurant feeling relaxed and slightly exhiliarated like she had faced down some important test and passed with flying colors.  Maybe that had been her problem--she was working too hard, taking everthing too seriously. Maybe all she really needed was a chance to kick back and just be herself.

Even the weather seemed to match her mood. Yesterday's cold snap had lifted. The night was pleasantly cool without being the slightest damp or clammy and a light breeze was blowing in off the ocean.

 At the University's campus,  Maggie claimed the tickets at the window. She handed one over to Janeway who studied the printing on its face.  The lectures series was apparently an on-going one in the social sciences. Tonight's talk was on the discoveries  based on excavations on some planet that Janeway had never heard of by an adjunct professor at some university she had also never heard of. Anthroplogy really wasn't among her interests, but for tonight, for the sake of friendship, Janeway decided she could probably manage to sit through it.

They were just heading into Susslik Hall to claim their seats when the familiar chirp of a  Starfleet communicator issued from Maggie's pocket.

Janeway raised a questioning eyebrow and Maggie offered a faintly embarrassed shrug before turning away to answer her page.

 Even before Maggie returned with an excuse poised on her lips, Janeway knew that her friend wouldn't be attending the lecture tonight.   Janeway waved away Maggie's explanation. She knew only too well the exigencies and demands of Starfleet.

Janeway closed her eyes, considering. She could go home or she could stay. Nothing that demanded her immediate attention was awaiting her at home. The technical reviews that were pending her approval could be put off until tomorrow. Daniel wouldn't be calling. And she certainly had no interest in another conversation with Madaleine.

Hiking her pashmina higher onto her shoulder, Janeway set off to hear what Professor C. Delmer Watuema had to say about the alpha-3 civilization on Iguala
IV.