Текст книги "Well of Souls"

Автор книги: Ilsa J. Bick

Соавторы: Ilsa J. Bick
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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Epilogue

“Darya, I’m so sorry I’m late,” said Tyvan, as he hustled into his office and tossed a pile of datadisks onto his desk before dropping into his chair. “I just couldn’t tear myself away from medical. It’s good luck we put in for repairs at Starbase 12 because there’s a child trauma specialist here working with that Naxeran boy, Pahl. So I stayed on, watched her work a bit and time passed and…why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s nice that even psychiatrists have problems. Anyway, it’s fine.”

“Then I’ll stop apologizing. You’re looking good, by the way.”

In the past, Bat-Levi would’ve felt self-conscious, as if Tyvan were trying to compensate in some oblique way for the very obvious fact that she didn’t lookvery good at all. But now Bat-Levi smiled. “Thanks. I feelgood. I think I know why.”

“Oh?”

“It was having to come front and center. When the captain made me XO, I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about what how I looked or what people thought every time I gave an order, or had to make a decision.”

“To put it bluntly, all eyes were on you.”

“And then some.” Bat-Levi exhaled a half-laugh. “It’s very strange how you said I wanted people to notice me but in a negative way. I was so angry with you, but you were right. I kept telling myself that I just wanted to be left alone, but the way I am…” She made a helpless gesture. “I can’t help but attract notice.”

“Do you know why?”

“Yeah. I think it’s something like, as bad as you feel, I feel ten times worse. And I just dare you to make something of it.”

Tyvan folded his hands over his lap. “And now?”

The left side of Bat-Levi’s mouth tugged into a wry grimace. “There are a lot of times I’d still rather hide in a closet than get out there and be with people. But when push comes to shove, it seems that here,at least…” She used her left hand—the one without nails—to gesture in an all-inclusive way. “On thisship, with thiscaptain and thiscrew, it doesn’t matter what I look like. What matters is that I do my job, and if I fail or succeed, it will be because of the way and how well, or poorly I do that job. How I look has nothing to do with it.”

“And when did you come to this conclusion?”

“Honestly?” and then Bat-Levi laughed again. “That’s dumb. Like I’m going to lie, right? When I was on the bridge, and the captain asked me what the hell I was doing, and when Kodell pissed me off.”

“Kodell was provocative?”

“Sort of. Not overtly, but he nagged me, and that made me mad. In retrospect, I understand now that he was pushing me to take a chance…hell, to do something downright dangerous.” Bat-Levi’s gaze skittered away, to a spot on the floor. “Kind of a dare, like, come on, it’s up to you, are you up for it, or not?”

“So you took the dare. Why?”

Because I like him, a lot.Aware, suddenly, that she felt uncharacteristically warm, Bat-Levi shook her head, shrugged. Gave a small, embarrassed laugh. She directed her answer to the floor. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He might as well have said he’d caught her out. She knew she was blushing– reallyblushing—but this time she met those brown eyes square on. “There are some things I want to keep private for now, even—or maybe especially—from you. It’s not that I’m angry, but…remember when you’re a kid and you discover something for the first time? Part of you is just busting with wanting to tell someone, but another private part wants to keep the secret either because you don’t quite believe it, or it just feels good to have something that’s totally yours and doesn’t belong to anyone else.”

“A delicious secret.”

Relieved, she nodded. “So we’ll just leave it at that about Kodell, okay?”

“Fair enough.” Tyvan laced his fingers over his middle, slouched down, and put out his long, slender legs. “And what about the captain? What happened with her?”

Bat-Levi smiled at the memory. “She got on the horn, told me to back off.”

“And you didn’t.”

“I knew I was right. No, that’s not quite true. I thoughtI was right, and the rest of the bridge crew—even Castillo, who probably thought I was certifiable—they did what I said.”

“Well, you could say they’re just professionals doing their jobs.”

“Which they wouldn’t if they didn’t have faith,” said Bat-Levi, “especially if the XO didn’t have faith in herself. You’re on the bridge, you can tell these things. So I was right there, up front where Kodell essentially told me I had to be. We make it, we don’t—it’s my call. No place to hide, no one else to blame and…”

Bat-Levi halted then. A wave of sadness washed over her, and she half-expected Tyvan to ask her what she was thinking, but he let the silence go. Bat-Levi shifted, crossed her right leg over her left, kept her eyes averted. (Another part of her mind remarked on the fact that Tyvan hadn’t commented on the obvious, but she ignored it for the time being. Maybe he’d notice, maybe he wouldn’t.)

Then Bat-Levi said, as if she hadn’t fallen silent, “And then I realized that I didn’t make Joshua’s choices for him. He’d made them. I told him not to go down into the pod, but he did it anyway and it was the wrong decision to make, and he died.”

Now her eyes sought Tyvan’s. Held. “Just like the captain and me. She argued, and then she got behind me, and I did what I thought was right. Kodell told me I had to make a decision, and I did. It was my decision, not his. Mine. If I made a mistake, there wouldn’t be anyone to blame but me. Oh, the captain might blame herself for putting me in charge, but she had faith that I’d make the right decisions. I just had to have faith in me.”

Tyvan gave her a frank look. “There’s only one thing I take issue with. You said Joshua made the wrongdecision, but it’s like I’ve always said. We have choices, but sometimes we don’t like the ones we have. So Joshua made adecision, Darya. You’ll never know if it was the wrong one because you’ll never know the alternative. Perhaps, in the end, his choice was best for you.”

Bat-Levi was silent. What could she say when she knew he was right? In the quiet, she heard the tick-tock of the pendulum clock, and she suddenly realized something.

“It’s been five sessions,” she said. “You’re supposed to make a recommendation now, aren’t you? About my being on probation?”

“I already have. In fact, I’ve given it to the captain, though I doubt she’s had much time to read it.”

She felt an unpleasant jolt of surprise and then wariness. My God, she’d been absolutely awfulto the man for the majority of their time together: a basket case, she thought grimly, and then considered that would be an expression she ought to quiz Glemoor about, if she got the chance. She watched as Tyvan twisted around in his chair, rummaged around a pile of datadisks, and then tweezed out one between his thumb and forefinger.

He offered it to Bat-Levi. “Would you like to read it?”

Her anxiety fluttered in her throat, like a trapped bird. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

“All right. I’ve recommended no further treatment or evaluation, and I’ve recommended that you stay on.”

Shock made Bat-Levi’s mouth drop. “But, but I missed sessions, I yelled…”

Tyvan held up a hand. “First of all, we’ve been kind of busy. Second, you made a choice. You took responsibility, and you told me where to get off. Good for you. I don’t need you to agree with me, Darya. I’m glad you feel better, but I don’t needyou to feel better, nor do I need you to have an operation, fix your scars, get a new face, pony up for the latest prostheses, or do anything you don’t want to do. All I want is for you to know whatyou’re doing, and why,and the rest is up to you, because it’s your life, Darya, not mine.”

She sat a moment, absorbing this. “So I don’t have to come back?”

“Not unless you want to.”

“Well,” she said. “I might, from time to time. Things come up. But you know something?”

“What?”

“Sometimes, I talk to you. In my head,” she added hastily. “I mean, I’m not nuts, I don’t hear voices. But sometimes, lately, I hear you making comments and, sometimes,” she gave him a lopsided smile, “I just tell you where to go.”

“Does this bother you?”

“It should, but it doesn’t. I’ve been arguing so much with myself for so long, it’s kind of nice to have someone new in there.”

Tyvan gave a delighted laugh. “I’ll probably go away eventually, when my opinion stops mattering so much.”

“Probably.” She paused, head cocked. “Does becoming obsolete bother you?”

“No. I’m not a crutch. My job is to become obsolete.”

They shared a brief moment of comfortable silence. Then Bat-Levi smiled, rose, and moved for the door.

“Okay then, thanks. But I’d better get dressed. The captain will have our hides if we’re late.” She hesitated then said, “By the way, you haven’t said anything.”

Tyvan’s brow furrowed. “About?”

In reply, Bat-Levi extended and flexed her left arm. Did it again, twice. Then she saw the confusion on Tyvan’s face clear.

“Wait,” he said. “Your servos. There’s no noise.”

Bat-Levi laughed hugely. “The ship’s not the only thing that needed repairs.”

“My God,” McCoy complained peevishly, “you’re as twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers.”

“Mac,” Stern flung over her shoulder as she palmed open her closet, “I told you before. I have to get moving, or I’m going to be late.”

“Making me dizzy, what you flitting back and forth like a bumblebee.”

“Then use audio next time, you don’t like the view,” said Stern, pawing first through her collection of uniforms, and then an array of more casual slacks and a few skirts. She made disgusted sounds. “Now where I did put that thing?”

“You could be better organized.”

“I’m a doctor,” she grumbled, “not a chambermaid. I could’ve sworn I put…ah!” Stern yanked out her dress tunic then dove back for her dress slacks. “Now if I can just find my boots…”

“My God, woman.” McCoy craned his neck as if he could see around the corner of the viewscreen, which he couldn’t. “Are you getting disrobed?”

“Listen to you.” Stern’s fingers fumbled with her belt buckle. “It’s not as if you haven’t seen this sort of thing before.”

“Only in an official capacity. But if you’re offering, come over here where…”

Stern stripped off her uniform tunic. “Watch it, Mac.”

“I’m not the one doing a striptease. Anyway, I thought you’d be interested.”

“I am.You just pick the damnedest times, that’s all.”

“Then why not hop on over, and we can visit? You owe me bourbon.”

“Mac, I’m at a starbase about a gazillion light years away. It’s not as if I’m next door. I’ll get back to Earth soon enough and then we can visit, have a couple drinks.”

“Don’t forget, you owe me an R and R. I aim to collect.”

“I haven’t, and you will.”

“Promises, promises.” McCoy still sounded miffed. “When are you shipping out?”

“Tomorrow.” Stern stepped first her right then her left foot into her dress uniform trousers and pulled. “Repairs are just about done. All we’re waiting on is that transfer shuttle.”

McCoy mmmed. “By the way, I heard a rumor that someone on your ship slipped a subcu transponder into that Halak fellow.”

Now it was Stern’s turn to mmm.She did so as she pulled her hair free of her standard ponytail and began pulling a brush through. Her hair crackled with static electricity and she made a mental note to talk to environmental engineering about adjusting the humidity in her quarters. Too damn dry. “That’s what they say.”

“You wouldn’t happen…”

“Mac,” Stern paused, brush in hand, “open channel.”

“Ah. Well, I hope our little talk about vitamins was helpful.”

Stern grinned at her mirror image. “Very. So what were you so hot to tell me?”

“Oh, nothing much. Only that the data your captain forwarded on to the folks here at Command? From that old tomb site? Looks mighty old. More than ancient: We’re talking thousands of years.”

“Wait a minute.” Stern turned until she was looking at McCoy, properly. “You’re a doctor, not a xenoarchaeologist. Why are you even involved with this?”

McCoy held up a hand. “Hold your horses; it’ll all come clear. Like I said, this place was old. We’re talking either pre-Hebitian, or the Hebitians are a hell of a lot older than even the Cardassians know.”

“Or claim.” Turning back to her holomirror, Stern touched the controls. The mirror shimmered, and then she was looking at the back of her head. She gathered her hair together in her left hand while her right stirred through an array of elastics. “They’re not exactly forthcoming. So you’re saying that the natives were Hebitians?”

“No, and we’re not entirely sure we’re talking Hebitian either, but that’s the working hypothesis. Anyway, this is where it gets pretty interesting. It looks like the natives were an entirely different species. Tomb drawings show two distinct types of people: the ones that were descendents of those Night Kings, and everybody else. So probably there was an indigenous population on the planet, but one that was very primitive by Hebitian standards. Now there’s always been a suspicion that at least some of the Hebitians were telepaths. Even the Cardassian legends talk about that a little. But I don’t think that, on the basis of what you and your captain saw, we can say that every Hebitian telepath was all sweetness and light.”

“Amen to that.” Stern smoothed stray hairs back then keyed in for her holomirror to show alternate views: back, front, each side of her head. She twiddled with her ponytail, centering it snugly against the nape of her neck. “Rogue telepaths, right?”

“Or just common criminals. So how do you control a telepath gone sour? You can either kill him, and that doesn’t seem to have been the Hebitian style, or you can exile him somehow, put him on ice, like stasis only telepath-style. Here, they reduced their neural patterns somehow and put them into a containment field.”

“Like a genie in a bottle.”

“Only these genies got out. Probably an accident: one of these rogues figuring out that a person with a certain genetic makeup could act as a receptacle. So breed a select line of those people but make it mystical, like a state religion, and these rogues get their chance, now and again, to go free. Except you’d dilute the stock over time; happens when there’s a large population. And genetics is funny business. Too much inbreeding, you make the stock weak, and too much mixing with the rest of the gene pool and your chances of getting exactly what you want go down.”

“Makes sense.” Stern replaced her brush and then popped open another drawer and began affixing her pips to her uniform collar. “It would explain the need for the mask.”

“Yup. So here’s the kicker and where you have to use your imagination, take a couple leaps of faith here. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that these rogues were Hebitian and the Hebitians, as a species, were telepaths. Some were good; some were bad. The Cardassians say they’re descendants of the Hebitians. But Vulcans can’t mind-meld with Cardassians and there are no Cardassian telepaths. None. Zip. Not a one. Okay, your turn.”

“Oh, Mac, that’s a gimme.” Stern turned and ticked off her conclusions on her fingers. “It’s obvious. The Cardassians aren’tdescendants of the Hebitians, but they may have evolved parallelto the Hebitians. Only the Hebitians were the stronger, master race. The Cardassians revered the Hebitians, maybe not like gods, but they build up this religion around access to a higher spiritual Oversoul, Overmind, whatever you want to call it. You know those murals they have around Lakarian City?”

“That thing with wings and a Cardassian face, the one with tentacles?”

“That’s it. First of all, that creature hovers above the planet, like a sun god, just like what we saw. Second, those tentacles radiate down to the people on the planet and then through the people intothe planet. I think the official interpretation is that this refers to this Overmind, or something, binding the people together, anchoring them to the planet. Only what if that’s a reference to the Hebitians? To something down deep, in the planet, like what we found?”

“Interesting idea.” McCoy pulled thoughtfully at a wattle of flesh beneath his chin. “Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it, but it would answer why the Cardassians look on the Hebitians as gods. Go on.”

“Mac, don’t you get it? Those tentacles, they’re metaphorical references to the Hebitians’ telepathic capabilities. Over time, the Cardassians develop resistance to psi influence. The Hebitians lose control, and then, like all gods, they fall. Except for the Cardassians, it’s a disaster because the planet’s in chaos, and they’re still rebuilding, getting stronger. But here’s the real mystery.” Stern leaned on her knuckles and eyed McCoy through her viewscreen. “Mac, those telepaths on that planet, how did the hell did they get there? Who was smart enough to know how to capture their neural signatures in a magnetic containment field?”

McCoy pooched out his lips. “The Hebitians themselves?”

Stern ducked her head in agreement. “Or somebody equally, if not more advanced. And they had to be a spacefaring species, Mac. So who were they?”

“Beats me. Like all mysteries, just opens up more questions, stuff we can argue about over drinks. So.” He clapped his hands together, gave them a good scrub. “When you going to happen back my way?”

“Soon.” Stern straightened, tugged down on her tunic. “Sooner, if you give me a good mystery. You know I love a good mystery.”

“Will do.” Then McCoy pulled his face closer, squinted. “My God, woman, are you wearing lipstick?”

Stern laughed out loud. “Mac, I toldyou. It’s a party.”

The doors opened to the ship’s arboretum, and Garrett stepped into the soft, sweet scent of roses and Asian lilies. The air of the arboretum was damper than the rest of the ship, and Garrett listened to the splash of water cascading over a tiny rock waterfall to a pool where the green discs of lily pads and Denebian watertrumpets floated. The sound of the water reminded her of Qadir’s riyad, and that made her think of Halak, and she wondered where he might be at the very moment.

Not now. With an effort, she tore her thoughts away from Halak. Later—she checked the time because she’d wanted everyone convened at 1900 on the dot—she had plenty of time to think about Halak later. Right now, she had to find Jase.

That didn’t take long. She wandered down a path that began with the spiny, squat desert wahmlatsthat studded Vulcan’s arid plateaus and ended in a small grotto of tropicals—bromeliads and orchids—native to Earth.

Jase slouched on a slate stone bench next to a tiny pool stippled with the stalks of musk-scented butterfly wands. He held a drawing pad in one hand, a pencil in another because, as he told his mother, he was a purist. A collection of Matrayan blueglows ducked and weaved over a profusion of wide, splayed petals of hot pink and deep purple.

“Can I sit down?” she asked.

Jase nodded without looking up. Garrett slid onto the stone bench, feeling how cool the rock was beneath her thighs. She cocked her head to study Jase’s drawing: the half-finished portrait of a man. Her heart squeezed. There was no mistaking the high cheekbones, the fall of that raven-colored hair.

She touched a finger to the drawing. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s not done,” said Jase. His voice was thick with unshed tears. “It’s only been two weeks, but I can’t remember his eyes. I try, but the more I try, the more he gets blurry, like I’m looking through fog.”

Garrett wanted to point out that they had pictures; there were archives and records. But she held her tongue. She was always in such a rush to fix things, provide false reassurances that everything would be all right. Sometimes the best thing was to allow space for pain. God knew she’d had her share of grieving before, and after the divorce. But at that last moment, when she’d knelt beside Ven Kaldarren, her grief had crashed through the barrier she thought she’d erected. Grief was still fresh in her heart, with anger at her own stupidity—her own stubbornness—not far behind.

She knew, too, that Jase had lost something infinitely precious: his father. Conceivably—though she couldn’t imagine it—she might come to love again. But Jase would never have another father, and there were experiences Jase had with Ven Kaldarren that Garrett wouldn’t ever be a part of because she simply hadn’t been there.

She ached to brush the boy’s hair from his forehead, but she wasn’t sure she should touch him just yet. In the two years since the divorce, how he’d grown. No longer a little boy but teetering on the brink of adolescence.

Time’s tricky that way. You’ve got your memories, but time flows all around you and you’re always thinking you have so much more time than you really have. Really, all you have, in the end, is time for regret.

That niggling little voice of conscience? Or was it her, accepting herself? Maybe, she conceded, it was both.

Jase traced the angle of his father’s jaw with one gray-smudged finger. “Do you remember what he looks like?”

Garrett inhaled the scent of wet earth and damp leaves. “Sometimes…no. And then sometimes, like here,” she nodded at the pond, the flowers, the blueglows, “I’ll smell something and then I’ll remember a picnic by Lake Cataria, what I wore, how your father made a joke and I spilled a glass of Potroian punch all over his shirt because I was laughing so hard.” And, so, why do I feel like crying?

“I can’t do that,” said Jase miserably. “I can’t think about him much without remembering what happened and how he looked when those things…”

Jase’s eyes pooled, but no tears came. “Why? Why didn’t they take me? Why Pahl and Dad? I felt them; I sawthem.”

Acting on impulse, Garrett put her arm around her son. She felt him stiffen, and for an insane moment, she thought that he was going to scream at her to get away; that she could never be like his father; that she’d left them both behind for her ship and people she loved better. She almost pulled away.

Stop running. You ran from Ven, and now you’re trying to run from him. You’re so ready to be rejected you’ll do the rejecting first.

She squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. She thought back to the mind-cry she’d heard—Ven, calling—how strong that momentary connection had been. Fading now. Receding into memory.

“All I doknow is that, for a brief instant, I heard your dad calling. Up here.” She tapped her left temple. “Inside.”

“Yeah,” said Jase. “Me, too. Only it went both ways. Dad never talked to me that way. Said I needed my privacy. But sometimes he leaked.”

“Leaked. Thoughts?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I could hear him and Nan yelling, only not in words. You know? The air got,” he cupped his hands, “heavy. So I figured out how to make my head go gray. Like the way the sky looks just before it rains.”

An empath…or something more.Garrett felt an electric thrill tingle through her limbs. She wasn’t sure if it was from apprehension or excitement, and then decided it was a little of both. She’d always known Jase might inherit some of his father’s abilities. But what Jase described was so eerily close to telepathy, she wondered if she should have Stern, or maybe Tyvan, spend some time with Jase, maybe test him.

No. She reined in her natural desire to try to find an answer, close a loop. She had to let this go for now. The important thing now was to be here for her son, to be with him, and to let him talk about his father, and what would happen next.

“What’s going to happen next?” asked Jase, suddenly.

“What?” Garrett felt the way she had when her mother caught her climbing on the roof when Garrett was a little girl (and wasn’t thata whole other story). “Well, I’ve talked to your Nan on Betazed. We all think it would be better for you to live there.”

Jase looked solemn. “Does it matter what I think?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’d like to stay here. I know I can’t,” he added quickly, “but I’d like to. I love you, Mom.”

Garrett put both arms around her son. No resistance this time. She felt the tension melt from his limbs as if he were flowing into her and becoming one. It was the way she remembered he’d been as a baby: a little ball of fury until she’d taken him in her arms and soothed him back to sleep.

“Oh, Mom.” He pressed his hot face against her neck and she felt the wet of his tears on her skin. “Mom, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m…”

“No, quiet,” she whispered, tears burning on her cheeks. “It’s all right; it’s all right for you to have been angry. I understand. I love you, Jase. I’ll always love you. And who knows? Maybe, someday, I’ll be able to take you with me, and we’ll live together on a starship and travel to places so far away that the light of where we’ve been won’t have time to catch up.”

She hugged him close. “Someday,” she said, and believed it.

In the turbolift, Castillo glanced at his chronometer, saw the time, and knew that Garrett was going to eat him for breakfast. He was going to be so late it wasn’t even funny. (Not that Castillo understood the origin of that expression. Where was the humor in being late? Maybe Glemoor could explain it.) It wasn’t his fault, either: the people over at transfer, the ones from Starfleet Command, theywere the ones insisting on forms being voice-printed three times over. Chain of custody, they called it. Figured. The first time the captain wanted Castillo at an official function—had specifically requestedhe show up, in dress uniform, on time—and here he was going to be late, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Other than a few pleasantries, they’d exchanged not two paragraphs on the ride over in the shuttlecraft. And now the turbolift seemed to be taking forever. Castillo fidgeted, staring in that blank, abstracted way at the flashing indicators just above the doors that he always did when riding in a turbolift with a complete stranger. Only he wasn’t with a stranger. They simply didn’t know to what to say to one another.

Then Halak spoke. “Any idea why they wanted the inquiry on Starbase 12 rather than the Enterprise?”

Careful. He’d been briefed on what to say. Castillo spoke to the indicator lights. “They don’t tell me why they do anything.”

“Mmm-hmmm.” A pause. “But you’ll be there.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re in dress. So I figured you were going to sit in. Observe?”

Castillo hiked one shoulder. “Maybe.” Then because he couldn’t stand the feeling he was having—the way he heard Tyvan’s voice in his head, telling him he couldn’t keep running from himself forever and would have to have more courage than he thought he possessed—Castillo said, “Stop.”

The turbolift jerked to a halt.

Halak turned, eyebrows raised. “Ensign? Is there something wrong?”

“No,” said Castillo. He licked his lips. Tyvan’s voice again: Getting started will be the hard part.“Yes.”

He filled his lungs, blew out. “Commander, I have to tell you something.”

“About what?”

Castillo was already regretting this (go away, Tyvan, just go away!),but he pushed on. “About what happened with Ani. Everything that happened, it was my fault.”

Halak’s brow creased. “Yourfault. How?”

“I…well, you know, we were close. Before you came.” When Halak just nodded, he continued, “And then you showed up and I could tell that Ani, she’d fallen hard. I was jealous, but I got over that. At least, I thought I had. People change their minds all the time, and…”

Castillo looked away for a moment, dreading what he knew he had to say. Sucked in a breath and continued. “Anyway, I would watch the two of you, and she looked so damned happy, I couldn’t stand it. I thought all kinds of things. Crazy stuff now that I look back on it, but pretty awful stuff.”

“I can imagine.” Halak’s voice was quiet. “You’re not the only one who’s ever been jealous.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I’d gotten past that. And then Ani came to talk to me. This was about a week before she died. We were still close after she took up with you, and we’d talk. We were friends.” Castillo wondered if he sounded too defensive then thought to hell with it.

“I know that. I never held it against you.” Halak paused. “What did she say?”

“She said she was having second thoughts. I wasn’t sure what about; she’d gone to see Stern. She wouldn’t tell me what Stern said, but whatever it was, she was pretty upset.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, Ensign. Ani’s dead, and…we’ll just never know. Dr. Stern won’t tell us, and it’s more than likely that, after the inquiry today…”

Halak broke off, and Castillo thought he’d just let this pass, but Halak squared his shoulders and said, “After the inquiry today, I doubt very much that I’ll ever serve with Dr. Stern, or anyone else from the Enterprise,ever again.”

Castillo knew something about that but judged that now was not the time. He had to finish this.

“Ani talked about wanting to break it off with you.” Castillo closed his eyes, remembering the surge of elation he’d felt, the sheer joy that maybe Anisar Batra might be his after all. “But then you took off, and she was beside herself. Whatever was bothering her, she didn’t want to wait until the two of you got to Betazed.”

“All right,” said Halak, puzzled. “But I still don’t understand…”

“I told her where you’d gone,” Castillo blurted. “I told her that you were on your way to Farius Prime.”

Halak was stunned. “You?But how did youknow?”

This was the hard part, Castillo knew. Best just to admit it and go on. What had Tyvan said? He can’t hate you anymore than you loathe yourself.“I was on the bridge when Bulast patched that call through to you. I used my bridge access code to break into his communications archives and pull up the message. Then I gave the information to Ani. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t have gone, and she’d still be alive.”

For a moment, Halak said nothing. Then he let out a very soft breath, almost a sigh. “Yes, that’s true, isn’t it? I guess it also means that I’d be dead instead.”

“Sir?”

“There’d have been no one there to save my life, twice over. Ensign, why did you do it?” Halak’s voice trembled, and Castillo thought that although the commander appeared calm, he probably wasn’t.

I sure wouldn’t be; I’d be aching to take a swing.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Castillo heard his shame and pushed on. “I wanted her to break it off with you, and I was willing to do just about anything to speed that along. So I told her, and now she’s dead, and that wasn’t supposed to happen.” Castillo closed his eyes. Had to steel himself before he could look Halak in the eye again. “There was a time when I wanted you dead, Commander. I didn’t care how—a shuttle accident, a transporter failure. Anything. So when everyone blamed you for Ani’s death, I did, too. I was happy to. And when they took you away, part of me was glad because I wanted revenge, and part of me was ashamed that I was glad because the only revenge I ended up taking was on myself, really. And on Ani: She was a victim, too. I know now that I was wrong, not just because of everything that’s happened since but because I spent a lot of time thinking about how I’d let my jealousy turn me into the type of man who didn’t deserve the love of a woman like Ani.”