Текст книги "Well of Souls"

Автор книги: Ilsa J. Bick

Соавторы: Ilsa J. Bick
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

She had no idea what that rest would be. At the moment, she didn’t think it mattered.

Chapter 6

Staring into the blank screen that had held his mother’s face moments before, Jase Garrett wasn’t sure what to do next. Part of him wanted to scream. Sure, he’d met a couple of her crew and they were nice, but maybe that was because he was the captain’s kid. But when his mother started getting all reasonable, when she acted so grown-up and like she had to go take care of all these adults who were acting like kids, he just wanted to haul off and yell and scream and stamp his feet: I’m more important! I don’t care what you have to do, I don’t care how important you are because you should love memore than you love them, becauseI’m your kid, notthem !

He didn’t say any of that, of course, and his mother wasn’t a telepath, like his dad and his Nan, the one on Betazed. So that was kind of a relief because that meant he could scream in his head as much as he wanted and not have to worry about making his mother upset. But he meant what he’d said to her now. His dad was really angry, because his dad was really sad, just like him, and so part of him wanted to cry, too. Jase drew in a deep, tremulous breath, and felt that peculiar, itchy sting in his nose that warned him he’d do just that if he weren’t careful. He was twelve, nearly a man, and men didn’t cry, or miss their mothers. He had to be brave and pretend that these little things like his mother missing his birthday, or not calling for weeks, sometimes months at a time didn’t matter. The way his dad pretended. So crying wouldn’t be good for anybody. He lived with his dad now, all the time, and he didn’t want to make it hard for his dad because then his dad might not let him come with him on digs and stuff. His dad neededhim to be brave….

“It’s hard,” said Ven Kaldarren. His tone was gentle. “Sometimes being brave is acknowledging that you’re not.”

Jase looked over at his father, who was still standing just off to one side, opposite the viewscreen so Jase’s mother hadn’t been able to see him. “What?”

“Being brave isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“I don’t understand.” Jase balled a fist against one eye and scrubbed hard, but his fist came away wet. “Is that what happened with you and Mom?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, did you decide that you couldn’t be brave anymore?”

“In what way?”

Jase chewed on the inside of his lower lip. Words were so hard sometimes. He wished he could just thinkwhat he wanted, pretend that there was an invisible link between his brain and his father’s mind, the way a computer downloaded information.

“Well, waiting, I guess,” said Jase, and then it was as if an invisible spigot in his mind had turned on and the words came pouring out, like water. “Waiting for Mom to come home, I mean. It was, like, you could keep pretending that having her around didn’t matter, and so that’s how you were playing at being brave when what was really braver was being able to tell her that you couldn’t wait around anymore. It was braver to tell her you were sad and angry than it was to keep pretending it didn’t matter that she loved Starfleet more than she loved you.”

Jase saw Kaldarren’s eyes change and turn inward, as if his father were staring into a deep well somewhere inside. Jase felt a hitch in his chest.

“Sorry,” said Jase, quickly, wanting to make things better. He was so stupid. No wonder his parents got divorced, with such a dumb kid. Jase knew: He was the reason they fought. Before they divorced, they fought all the time over him, and after, they’d fought over where he was supposed to live. Not that it made any sense: There was no place on his mom’s ship for a kid. But Jase didn’t understand why his mom fought so hard about having him go live with her family on Earth instead of his dad’s on Betazed. She didn’t even likeher family. Well—Jase picked at a cuticle on his thumb—she didn’t like her mother.Actually, neither did Jase. Every time his mom’s mom looked at him, he figured he’d done something wrong, because her mouth was always so pinched and tight, like she’d been sucking lemons.

A shadow crossed Kaldarren’s face. “Sorry. What are you sorry about?”

Jase hunched one shoulder. “I dunno. Stupid stuff.”

“No, stop that. You’re not stupid.” Kaldarren walked over to the boy and put his hand on Jase’s shoulder. Jase felt his father’s hand tremble a little, and he wondered if maybe his father would cry after all.

“You’re not stupid,” said Kaldarren, his voice firm even if his hand was not. “Don’t ever say that about yourself. And don’t apologize for how you feel. Your feelings are yours, Jase, and they’re as important as anyone else’s. Your mother’s, mine,” he ran his thumb along the soft down on Jase’s cheek, “just as important. Both of us want what’s best for you.”

“If that’s true,” said Jase, “then why did you and Mom divorce? If you and Mom care so much about me, why aren’t you still married?” It was a question that had no answer. Jase knew it, but he asked anyway.

To his credit, Kaldarren didn’t try to provide a definitive answer. “We just aren’t, Jase. Things do change, and I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. It’s like growing up and realizing that you like a certain vegetable you hated when you were a child. Things change. People change. In the best of all possible worlds, people should be able to change and adapt to each other. That’s what marriage is supposed to be about.”

“Then how come you didn’t?”

Kaldarren inhaled a deep breath then let it out in a long sigh. “I wish I knew. I guess the best answer I can come up with is that, somewhere along the way, your mother and I lost sight of each other. You know that old Earth saying, out of sight, out of mind? It’s supposed to mean that when something’s not right in front of you all the time, you tend to forget about it. In a marriage, even when two people are apart, they should still be able to hold a picture of the other person in their head, so that the other person is always in sight, someone to be aware of and know is there.”

“So who lost sight of who?”

“Whom,” Kaldarren corrected, absently, then moved his hand to riffle his son’s black hair. “Sorry. Parents can be pretty annoying.”

Especially when all your problems are because of their problems.Quickly, Jase clamped down on that thought; he didn’t think his dad would read his mind, but he wasn’t quite sure. There had been times on Betazed, before the divorce, when he’d heard his dad’s voice in his head, only faintly like a dying echo. (Like the time Jase had come downstairs because he was certain his parents were fighting, only he found them sitting in the dark, at the kitchen table, the air alive with silent shouts in that terrible, black stillness. And the way Jase had peered around the doorjamb, his panicked thoughts– no, no, no, no, this is my fault, they wouldn’t fight if it weren’t for me!—tumbling like rocks down a mountain in an avalanche. Only then his father had peered through the gloom, as if he’d known Jase was there, and Jase remembered hearing his father’s voice in his head, quite distinctly: No, son, don’t do that to yourself; this isn’t your fault.)

Now, Jase shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Kaldarren’s left eyebrow twitched with skepticism. “Well, anyway, I guess you’d say we lost sight of each other. I don’t know who did it first, but the point is that it happened, and we’ve tried to learn from it and not lose sight of you. That’s why I was angry with your mother just now, because I think she slipped a little.”

She slipped a lot, thought Jase. A lota lot.

Kaldarren cocked his head to one side and fixed Jase with those eyes of his. “And I’m working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he continued. “But I’m sorry we’ve hurt you. I’m sorry for all the times you’ve been hurt and for all the times to come, in life, when you willbe hurt, by us or someone else. But I can’t pad the world’s corners for you, Jase. I wish I could, but I can’t. But we’ll…I’ll do my best not to let that happen again, but…I’m sorry, son.”

“Yeah,” said Jase, his lips wobbling. Now the tears did come. “Me, too.”

You hypocrite.Kaldarren stared at his reflection in the blank viewscreen, and he saw his lips curl with self-loathing. You’re a damned hypocrite.

Ven Kaldarren sat, alone. His son had left: to go for a walk, Jase said. Kaldarren let him escape. The ship (no name, no registry, the better to disappear with, my dear) was small, but Jase liked walking, and he’d done a lot of it when they lived on Betazed. Kaldarren remembered that when he and Rachel fought, Jason would leave and circle around a small lake close by the house. Kaldarren knew this lake—more of a large pond, really—and it had very blue water, alive with skating water bugs and fish that leapt after insects flitting over the water. In the center of the lake was an island carpeted with katarian emerald grass and feathered with tall rushes and frilled tassels. There were also trees on this very tiny island—Betazoid weeping willows, and strombolian firs that vibrated in the wind and produced a clear, clean melody, like bells.

Kaldarren suspected Jase enjoyed the lake because of a pair of flanarian birds that had staked out the island. The flanarians were a little like Earth’s Canadian geese, except their feathers were cobalt-blue, their faces starkly white like bald eagles, and their feet a bright ibis-orange. Flanarian birds, like geese and Vulcan mah-tor-pahlahs,mated for life, and this particular pair produced a new brood every year. Kaldarren had often sat on shore and watched as the parents tended their troublesome young, circling around in the water to pick up a straggler, or waiting for any that lagged behind.

“No one left behind,” Kaldarren whispered now. He sighed and felt his heart twist with remorse. “I’m sorry, Jase.”

Touching the boy while the air had been so charged with emotion had been a mistake, and a blessing. He’d felt Jase’s hurt flood through him like a sudden gush of scalding water. How sad his son was. Kaldarren’s heart tugged with pity. Physical contact always enhanced his telepathic abilities, and he knew what Jase did not: The boy’s empathic abilities were getting stronger. Eerie, sometimes, how on the mark the boy was, could be. What Jase had said to his mother, about Kaldarren’s anger and sorrow—it was uncannily accurate.

Have to watch that. He’s still just a little boy, and it’s up to me to protect him.

The thought made his stomach sour. What a self-serving hypocrite he was. If protecting Jase was his first priority, what was he doing with the boy on thisship?

No.Kaldarren walled off those thoughts, practiced a mental exercise of visualizing an airlock, in vacuum, and then shoving his secret thoughts in there: Telepathic Privacy 101. He couldn’t afford to think about these things around Jase. Jase might not be a telepath (or was he, could he be?), but Kaldarren worried that his secrets might leak around the edges for his son to pick up.

Or Rachel. She used to be very good at reading you, once, and you encouraged that, didn’t you? Much more intimate that way.Of course, such intimacy was normal between mates, and more so when one of them was a telepath, as if close proximity revealed new talents the nontelepathic partner had never been aware of. (How else to explain how long-term mates could finish each other’s sentences?) But seeing Garrett, even at a remove, always upset him. So many memories and feelings, and things past tangled with things in the present, like some crazy spider’s web. He wanted to hate her, just hateher, because pure, unadulterated hate would be so much simpler.

But you didn’t catch her in bed with another man. She was faithful in her way. You just figured out she was more in love with athing than with you.

And even if he hadfound her with a lover, would things have been different? Maybe: The idea of her body in another man’s arms made him ill. Yes, he’d hate her if that had happened, but he would love her still and so he did now. She was the only woman whose neck he’d love to break and whose lips he longed to press to his.

So why had he called? Just to torture himself? Her? Kaldarren rejected both, but he wondered all the same. Maybe it had been a mistake to call– look whatthat stirred up, threatening to drag her back to court—and, at the same time, he thought that perhaps he’d called because he wantedher to ask questions, maybe even stop him from following the course he was now. Rachel Garrett’s common sense was a universal constant, like the speed of light, and he could always count on her honesty in this, if not in everything else. (Except her emotions: She’d never been very good at staring her own emotions in the face, but Kaldarren allowed that everyone had a blind spot.) She was—what was that Earth expression?—sharp as a tack when it came to flaying an argument apart bit by bit. So maybe he’d called because he wanted her to talk him out of it; maybe he was hoping she’d ask why he was aboard an unregistered ship and just where was he going anyway….

Absolutely not.He gave his brain an irritated little slap. You hypocrite. And just what would you have said if she asked, hmmm? You wouldn’t have told the truth. Jase was right there, and the most you would have done was sidestep the issue, but Jase would know you were lying, and then he’d wonder why.

Truth to tell, Kaldarren wondered that himself—why? Why risk his reputation on something like this? For that matter, why risk his life? (No, he wasn’t really risking his life; he was being a little melodramatic, and that was because he was so stressed, all this secrecy, the little fact that they were—he was—about to come perilously close to breaking the law.)

So, why risk it? And why risk his son?What was he trying to prove, and to whom? That Garrett wasn’t the only one who went boldly off where only fools dared to go?

Ah, Rachel, I don’t know, and it’s too late.Kaldarren’s head sagged, and he rested the back of his head against his chair. He was so tired: of thinking, of disappointment. Better to think positively, he knew, and it was normal to have second thoughts, but he’d always known that his intuition was as strong a gift as telepathy.

And I’m committed, or maybe Ishould be committed, I don’t know. But it’s one of those irrevocable steps in life, like finding your lover in bed with someone else, or saying the worddivorce. Too late to turn back now.

And how complicated life had suddenly become.

Chapter 7

“You were lucky,” said Dalal, dipping a cloth into a basin of warm water and some sort of disinfectant. She was a tiny woman, swathed in a cream-colored chador. She had nut-brown skin and sharp black eyes set in a nest of wrinkles so deep they seemed etched with a diamond-edged stylus. Now, those eyes glittered at Batra, and the skin around Dalal’s mouth puckered into a scowl so the lines around her mouth knifed into her skin. “Both of you. Lucky to get away without new red necklaces, you catch my meaning.”

“Yes, I know,” said Batra. She knelt alongside a low divan in a back room of Dalal’s tiny apartment. Every now and again, the floor shivered as another ship departed the spaceport, and Batra heard the tinkle and clatter of glass and pottery as vibrations shuddered up her legs. The room was spare. Besides the divan, there was a low round wooden table, on which Dalal had placed a metal container of medical supplies, and two chairs: one in which Dalal sat as rigidly as if the chair were made of steel instead of some kind of wood, and a frayed, overstuffed armchair that was so old the middle sagged.

“What,” Batra had to form the words carefully because of the swelling in her mouth and along her jaw, “what about Samir?”

“What about him? You can see for yourself, can’t you? You’ve got eyes.” The old woman’s fierce face was almost displeased, and Batra thought Dalal was just itching to give her and Halak a good tongue-lashing. Dalal was out of luck, though; Halak was unconscious. He’d passed out as Batra had hauled him up the last two steps onto a landing on the tenement’s third floor. Too late, she’d discovered when she’d pushed her way into the building that the lift was broken. So they’d been forced to climb, and the pain had done him in.

They’d stretched him out on his stomach, so Dalal would have an easier time tending to his wounds. Now Batra looked at his half-naked body. He looked as defenseless as a little boy. Dalal had cut his tunic away before going to work, and Batra picked out familiar scars. In the past, she hadn’t thought much about them, but in light of what had happened and what he’d told her, those scars took on new meaning.

Probably a story behind every one.

Batra turned her gaze to the old woman. “He’s been unconscious for nearly an hour.”

“Better for me.” Dalal harrumphed, sponging away the last bit of Halak’s dried blood from his back. Dalal had already bandaged Halak’s left arm; a white bandage was twisted around his bicep, and Batra saw that an irregular rust-colored flower of blood, black around the edges, had bloomed on the bandage.

Dalal wrung water and disinfectant out from the cloth. The liquid in the white-enameled basin had turned a deep copper, and she motioned at Batra. “There, go empty that and refill it. You know where the kettle is.”

Pushing to her feet, Batra retrieved the basin and then turned aside and went down the hall, toward the front of the apartment, turning right into a small kitchen that didn’t have a replicator but did have a tiny stove and round tandoor oven whose interior was ceramic tile.

My God, what’s going on here?Batra leaned against the metal rim of Dalal’s sink and stared dully at the water—colored copper because of Halak’s blood. I don’t understand any of this.

Her muscles ached, and a twinge of pain flitted along the left side of her mouth. She had a bruise there, she knew. When she’d washed her hands in Dalal’s miniscule bathroom, she’d inspected a fist-sized, purple-black bruise staining her right cheek down to the angle of her jaw. Her tongue was sore but not too deeply cut; Dalal had already examined it, then ordered her to rinse out with warm water and some sort of medicinal salt that made the inside of Batra’s mouth feel as if it had caught on fire. Clearly, the old woman knew a few things about medicine.

Batra swirled the dirty water into a sink and then tipped out hot water that Dalal had boiled in a kettle into the basin. Steam billowed up in clouds, and Batra leaned forward, letting the moist warm air caress her battered face. The steam was soothing. She was aware, all too keenly, of how close a call they’d had, and she still wasn’t sure if she’d heard Halak correctly. What had he said?

Let her go. She’s not part of…she doesn’tknow.

Know what?Batra felt the metal basin warm under her fingers. This wasn’t just a robbery; we were targeted, and Samir knows why.

And was this the man who’d asked to marry her? What she’d said was that marriages weren’t made in Starfleet so they should wait, but she’d lied. (She was such a liar; she knew exactly why she wanted to put him off.) She knew now what she should’vesaid: Before, or after the funeral, darling?

Batra felt a ball of hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat, and she swallowed back, hard. Who was she to chastise him, anyway? She wasn’t telling him the whole truth; she didn’t have the guts to tell him what Stern had said.

(Batra had known the instant the ship’s chief medical officer Dr. Stern had come into the room. I’m afraid the news isn’t good, Lieutenant. About you having children, I mean.)

Secrets. Batra scooped up the basin. There were too many secrets: hers, his. She padded noiselessly down the hall on a thin carpet of an exotic kilin design, practically the only sign of luxury in the otherwise drab and dingy little apartment. Batra’s feet were bare; Dalal had taken Batra’s ruined sandals and promised others before they left. The carpet was soft against her battered soles and Batra paused a moment, enjoying the sensation.

Ahead, in the back room, she heard Dalal’s voice, low but very clear: “…might as well take out an advert, the two of you traipsing around like that. Why’d you bring her?”

Then, Halak, his voice weak: “She followed me. I don’t know how.”

Batra froze.

Dalal again: “You trust her?”

“To a certain point.” A pause. “I don’t know what she would do.”

Do?Batra’s fingers tightened around the basin. Do aboutwhat?

“What does she know?” Halak must’ve responded with some gesture because Dalal continued, her voice angry, “That’s no answer, boy. They knewwhere to find you.”

“What do you want me to say, Dalal? Ani knows what they all know. As for finding me…all they had to do was check the passenger manifest.”

“Which they wouldn’t knowto check less’n they were tipped off somehow.”

“And you don’t think they keep tabs on you?”

“None of your lip. They’ve no cause to bother me.”

“Just your being alive is reason enough to…” Halak’s voice dropped, and Batra strained to hear. She caught the last part. “…anyway, if not for Ani…”

“You’d be dead.” Dalal made an impatient, old woman sound. “Your Starfleet’s made you careless, coming here the way you did. Where are your wits?”

“Dalal, I came.”Halak sounded very weary. “You called. I came. So why don’t you finish bandaging me up and then…”

Batra heard a rustle of clothing, a slight grunt as Dalal got to her feet. “Where isthat girl with the water?” Dalal’s voice was coming closer to the hall, and Batra heard the shushof the woman’s slippers. “She should…”

Quickly, Batra covered the last few meters to the room just as Dalal shuffled into the hall. “Sorry,” she said, giving the old woman a tight smile, and the basin. “I waited until it had cooled down a little. It was scalding hot.”

She made a show of peering around the woman’s shoulders. “Is he awake yet?”

“Just now,” said Dalal, with an abrupt jerk of her head. Her lips were set in a thin, suspicious line, and Batra saw the woman’s black gaze drift to Batra’s bare feet.

“Oh, good,” said Batra, hurrying past. She crossed to Halak’s side and dropped to her knees. Her hands reached for his left, and their fingers laced. “How are you?”

Halak was still on his stomach, the cloth Dalal used to clean him draped over his skin, covering the wound. His color was off; he looked ashen and worn. But when he saw Batra, his lips curled into a tired smile. “I should ask the same of you,” he said. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” said Batra, knowing he was right. Her long black hair was matted with blood and mud. Her new pantaloons were ruined. She knew she’d never get them clean, and she wasn’t really sure she would ever wear them again even if she could. Long scratches scored the skin of her waist, where one of the men had fumbled for her pouch; from his nails, she guessed.

“No,” said Halak. “Thank you.If it hadn’t been for you…”

“Samir.” She felt tears sting the back of her eyelids. Her resolve not to question him crumbled. “Samir, who were those men? You acted as if you knew them.”

“No,” he said, and his voice carried conviction. “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

Her heart sank. She watched his face to see if there was anything that gave away the lie but saw nothing. Or, maybe, technically, he was telling the truth—he’d never seen them.

“But I heard you,” she said. “Why else would they attack us?”

“Money.”

“No, that’s too simple. You rob someone, you don’t stick around to bully them. And they talkedto you, I heard…”

Dalal cut in. “That’s enough of that.” She squared the basin on the small side table then opened the metal box containing bandages and other medical supplies. “We have enough to worry about without you plaguing him with unnecessary questions.”

“Unneces—”

“Ani.” Halak squeezed her hand. “Dalal’s just a crabby old woman used to bossing people around.”

“Crabby.” Dalal’s withered fingers stirred the box’s contents then plucked out a selection of antimicrobial packs and pressure rolls. “Can’t see that my bossing you around did you any good.”

“Of course, it did. I’m in Starfleet, aren’t I?”

“Exactly what I said.” Dalal’s eyes drilled Batra. “You going to help, or just sit there?”

“Of course, I’ll help,” said Batra. Did the old woman think a little blood bothered her? “Tell me what you want me to do.”

Dalal directed her to open three of the antimicrobial packs and to stand ready with a pressure roll. Halak’s skin flinched when Dalal removed the wet cloth from his back. The old woman had packed the wound with coagulant gauze, and she fished this out now, teasing an end free then pulling out the long bloody ribbon.

“It’s bad,” she said, by way of commentary. “I can’t see that it cut any deeper than the muscle, but I’m no doctor. You’ll need a good one, though, to piece this skin back together. Use those fancy autosutures they’ve got. Muscle’s cut clean through, and that’ll take special equipment. You get this taken care of when you get back to your ship.”

“What about a hospital here?” Batra asked. She saw that Halak’s features had twisted, and his skin jumped with every pull of the gauze ribbon. A tear leaked from the corner of his left eye. He pressed his forehead into the divan, burying his face, and said nothing.

“Wouldn’t be good for him,” said Dalal, in a tone that said the matter was closed. Dalal sprayed a dermal anesthetic over the wound, and then together they laid the three antimicrobial pads along Halak’s left flank. Then Dalal had Batra help Halak sit up so she could pass the pressure roll around Halak’s middle.

“That should keep you,” said Dalal, binding the pressure roll in place with an autoseal. “That anesthetic spray will last about five hours. After that, it’s going to hurt like the dickens. And don’t make too many sudden moves, or else you’ll rip that right open again.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Halak. His face had more color, but there were dark smudges under his eyes, like bruises. When he moved, he splinted his left side, not moving the muscles much. Gingerly, he reached around and worked a kink in his left shoulder with his right palm. “I don’t suppose you have any clothes.”

“No trousers your size, but I’ll wash what you’ve got, and I might have another tunic you can use,” said Dalal. She turned and seemed to really see Batra for the first time. “I’ll probably have something for you, too. No fancy britches or chadors, though.”

“Whatever you have is fine.”

“Well then, get yourself cleaned up. You know where the bathroom is.” Dalal made that harrumphing, old-woman sound again. “Frankly, I’m surprised you weren’t jumped long before. That costume practically screams tourist.Wouldn’t survive long here, I can tell you that.”

Batra felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Dalal,” Halak began.

“No, Samir, it’s all right,” said Batra. Pushing to her feet, she squared her shoulders and glared down at the little woman. “You’re right, Dalal. My clothes do scream tourist,but that’s what I am, and I’m not ashamed of that. I serve in Starfleet, and I’m not ashamed of that either. I’m not an addict. I don’t live in a slum. I haven’t known the type of poverty that exists here, but I’ll tell you something: simply surviving is nothing to be proud of. You survive, Dalal, but you lock your door and screen your windows. Your neighbors all survive, but not one of them came to help us. Survival isn’t so hard, you know. It’s being compassionate that is. It’s remembering that those are people dying out there—human or not—and helping someone takes more courage than hiding or simply surviving. Frankly, this planet’s the ass end of the galaxy, and you can keep it.”

She stopped talking, not because she didn’t have more to say but because she knew she’d said too much. She was breathing hard, and the heat in her neck let her know that her color must be close to mahogany.

Dalal didn’t say anything. She sat, her hands folded, her wrinkled visage as still as cut stone.

It was Halak who broke the silence. “Well, Dalal?”

There was another beat-pause, and then Dalal snorted, a horsey sound. “Got a mouth on her. Bring you nothing but trouble, Samir, mark my word.”

She rose, pulling herself to her full height of one and a third meters, meaning the crown of her head just brushed Batra’s chin. Tilting her head back, she pinned Batra with another of those glares.

“Get washed up,” she said. “I’ll bring you clothes. Then I expect the two of you are hungry. I know I am. Anyway, it’ll be safer for you to leave well after dark. Won’t attract as much attention that way.” And with that, Dalal shuffled out.

Batra expelled her breath in a laugh. “Was that a test? I feel like I just passed a test.”

“Probably,” Halak said.

When she stepped out of the shower, Batra saw that Dalal had left her a pile of clothes: a V-necked copper-colored tunic, a pair of off-white pyjama pants with button ankle cuffs, and black, thick-soled slippers. The shower made her feel almost human again, and the clothes gave her a lift. She dressed, knotted her long hair, still wet, into a thick, black braid, and followed her nose.

The meal was simple: fresh-baked khbouz markouk done in Dalal’s tandoor; whipped minted yogurt with chunks of crisp, fresh-cut Morellian cucumber; piping hot Kalo root stew; and cinnamon-spiced Yridian tea. She and Dalal sat cross-legged on a brightly colored linen cloth spread upon the floor before the divan, their backs propped by firm orange and rust-colored bolsters while Halak reclined on the divan, his back and left side supported by large, fluffy pillows. He ate from a smaller plate she’d prepared and placed upon the small round table, within easy reach.

A transport rumbled overhead. The building shook. They ate in silence for several minutes, using their fingers.

“Well,” said Halak. He tore off a bit of thin, brown-speckled khbouz markouk and used it to spoon up a mouthful of stew. “I don’t know when I’ve had a better meal, Dalal.”

Dalal grunted. She folded a piece of bread into her mouth and chewed. “Replicator food. It’s a wonder you have any meat left on you, boy. Anyway, I suspect that anything tastes good after being cooped up in a can, warping from planet to planet.”