by Ilsa J. Bick
“I mean that guilt is a wonderful thing. It’s so expected. We assume that someone who survives or has, perhaps, been indirectly responsible for the death of a loved one ought to feel guilty for being alive.”
“Oh, but I’m sure you see it differently.”
Tyvan heard the sarcasm and knew that he’d struck a nerve. “That’s right. I think that guilt is a wonderful weapon. Guilt is like a mantle you use to cloak yourself from contact with other people. Guilt is armor, just like your body there; and guilt, just like your body, lulls everyone into assuming that guilt explains everything, so they leave you alone. What’s the expression? Walking on eggshells, pussyfooting around. Guilt is a marvelous way of making sure that no one sees inside your soul, or knows the truth. And you’ve gone one better.”
“And how is that?” she asked, her tone not sarcastic now. She sounded like a scared little girl.
Tyvan leaned forward, careful not to crowd her. “Darya, you’ve let yourself stay this way so you can keep everyone else at bay. You know how, way back, on Earth, they used to condemn people who’d committed certain horrible crimes to death?”
Bat-Levi moved her head in a squealing, miniscule nod. “Capital punishment. That was abolished after the Bell Riots, three hundred years ago.”
“Right. I’ve studied that period in Earth’s history, and particularly the history of capital punishment.”
“Why? That’s so gruesome.”
“Not if you don’t understand the concept. We El-Aurians never practiced capital punishment. Killing someone as the ultimate punishment? Yes, I suppose there’s some justice to it: an eye for an eye, that sort of thing.”
Bat-Levi shook her head. “No, that’s wrong. See, I’m Jewish and ... well, culturally, really, but my uncle is a rabbi. He said that even the old rabbis, from way back, understood that a literal interpretation of that law helped no one. Taking out eyes, chopping off hands: The old joke was the ancient Middle East must have been filled with one-eyed cripples.”
“And how did they resolve the issue? I thought that the orthodox of your many religions were pretty rigid about these things.”
“Rigidity isn’t confined to Earth. But, to answer your question, the rabbis got together and decided on how to compensate people for loss, damages, things like that. So instead of losing your eye, you might pay what that eye was worth. There were only a few crimes that merited the death penalty. Murder was one of them, but all that finally died out on Earth centuries ago.”
Good, good, keep her talking, keep her working with you. “You have any theories on that?”
“On why capital punishment went away?” Bat-Levi thought. “I guess because dying isn’t the most awful thing that can happen to a person. Personally, I think ...”
“What?”
Bat-Levi gave him a frank look. “I think that the minute right before you die, when you know that this is it and there’s no going back, that’s got to be the worst.”
“Really? You think that knowing you’re about to die is worse than death, than not existing anymore?”
“Not if you believe in some religions. You have to take an afterlife on faith.”
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
Bat-Levi hesitated for an instant. “No, not in the Biblical sense, if that’s what you’re driving at. On the other hand, Jews don’t really believe in a heaven or hell.”
“What do they believe?”
“I can’t speak for every Jew, but I do know that devout Jews believe that your soul is really just a piece of God. You’re renting it for a little while, that’s all. In the end, when you die, your soul goes back to God. I guess you’d call it a kind of Oversoul.”
“So, no hell? No condemnation for eternity?” Tyvan sat back and laced his fingers over his middle, but he was acutely aware that their time, for this session anyway, was running out, and he wanted her back, like this, willing to work with him. “So how do people pay for their sins, in that religion?”
Bat-Levi gave a queer half-smile. “I guess it depends on your definition, doesn’t it? On what constitutes payment? Can I ask where this is going?”
“I was just thinking. We were talking about your nails, and then your body, and you mentioned guilt, and I ...” Tyvan shrugged and shook his head in a you-got-me gesture. “Well, I was just wondering how you were paying, that’s all.”
“Paying.”
“Right. For your brother Joshua,” he said, as if she needed additional information.
Bat-Levi made a tiny sound—a clicking noise in the back of her throat that Tyvan knew was not a servo but the sound a person would make when she’s trying not to cry. He waited her out. The clock ticked, tocked.
Finally, Bat-Levi cleared her throat. “You have an idea about that.”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. You see, I think you’re right. I think that dying isn’t the worst punishment sometimes. You said it yourself: It’s that awful, terrible instant before, when you know and you’re more frightened than you thought you could ever be and still be alive. Don’t you humans have the expression scared to death? Except this is just plain scared. Pure, unadulterated, searing terror: imagining the possibilities, facing that everything you ever believed in may be a lie and that there’s simply nothing but blackness, darkness. Something you can’t even compare to sleep because at least when you sleep, you dream.”
“What does that have to do with me? I’m not going to die.”
“But you’ve tried.”
“I mean I’m not now. Trying, that is.”
“No?”
“No, I’m sitting right here. I’m alive. I’m back at work. I’m living.”
“Precisely. You’re alive, Darya, but that’s not the same as living. You’re alive, but that’s because you’ve condemned yourself to life.”
“No,” said Bat-Levi, swallowing hard, “no, I don’t want to hear this.”
Tyvan pushed on, knowing that time was running out but not wanting to lose the moment. Careful, careful, not too fast, give her space, give her time. “Your brother is dead, and you’re going to make sure everyone knows that you were responsible. You want people to look at you and see a monster. Only you’re hiding in there ...”
“I’m not a coward,” said Bat-Levi. She clenched her fists, and Tyvan was reasonably sure that her left hand—the one without nails—could probably rip his heart right out. “I am not a coward. Suicide is the coward’s way. I’m alive.”
“And you think that makes you brave? You think that parading around your guilt is bravery? No, Darya, no, it takes more bravery to dare to be happy again, to leave your guilt behind. It’s braver to live than simply be alive.”
Bat-Levi’s laugh was bitter, almost a snarl. “You’re like all the other doctors, shaking their heads and tsk-tsking over poor, benighted Darya Bat-Levi. Such a beautiful woman, and now look at her.”
“This has nothing to do with beauty. This has to do with parading your inner ugliness. I’m not suggesting that you run out and change. I want you to understand your choices. So let’s look at the facts. You refused evacuation to Starfleet Medical. You refused every single reconstructive surgery, every offer of synthetic skin grafts. Ten years have passed, and even though better, more lifelike prostheses are available, you have those.” He indicated her artificial legs and left arm. “You limp, and you don’t need to. You have scars you don’t need to keep. You wrap yourself in guilt you don’t require, because it’s easier.”
“Don’t tell me what I need!” The words erupted from Bat-Levi’s throat in a hoarse shout. Spit frothed at the corners of her mouth, and the cords bulged in her neck. “Do you think I want to live like this? Do you think I enjoy looking like a freak? Do you?”
“Yes, Darya,” Tyvan began, but then there was a soft ding as their session time ran out, and his heart sank.
Bat-Levi heard the sound, too. “That’s it.” She jerked herself from her chair, pushing back on the cushions until she tottered to her f
eet, her prosthetics protesting. She stood, swayed, pulled her body around for the door. “I’m done, I’m out of here.”
“Darya.” Tyvan was on his feet, cursing himself for his timing which was rotten, rotten, he should have paid closer attention to the time, what an idiot! “Darya, wait, I don’t want you to leave like this ...”
“But I do.” Bat-Levi glanced back, her face contorted into a mask of rage and grief. “I do, and I will. It’s my life, Doctor, and I will do with it as I please. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be back, but when it’s my time and not a second before. For now, write whatever you have to, say whatever you want, but I’ve put in my time, and there’s no regulation in the universe that says I have to sit here one second more.”
“Darya, please,” Tyvan said, but she had turned aside and was through the door. Her servos squealed, the door hissed, and then she was gone.
Tyvan let out his breath in an explosive sigh. “Great,” he said to the air, to no one in particular. Sinking back into his chair, he propped the points of his elbows upon his knees and held his forehead with both hands. “Good job, Tyvan, you idiot, bravo. That was perfect timing, just perfect.”
He sat then and listened to the ticking of his clock and thought long and hard about life and cycles and time.
Chapter 3
Perfect timing. Commander Samir al-Halak dragged his forearm across his face, mopping away sweat with the sleeve of a camel-colored tunic that was open at his throat and showed off the olive color of his skin. Just perfect. Somebody, please, tell me, what was I thinking when I detoured to Farius Prime? I could’ve been swimming in Lake Cataria. Ani and I could be making love, right now, in the grass under a cool night sky. So what in God’s name was I thinking?
Halak hadn’t wanted to come to Farius Prime at all. His plan had been to spend his R and R with his lover, Anisar Batra; their plan had been to leave Enterprise together and go to Betazed. He and Batra had planned the trip for weeks; she’d coordinated her leave with Enterprise’s other paleogeneticist, and he’d gone to Garrett with his request for R and R a good month before. Their plan had not included a detour to the Maltabra City bazaar on Farius Prime, and the plan most certainly had not involved coming to Maltabra in high summer, when the weather was more miserable than usual and the air so humid Halak felt as if he were pushing through soggy gauze curtains. That the plan had changed—that he’d snuck off the ship early and that Batra had, somehow, tracked him to Farius Prime and was dogging his heels at this very moment—just made Halak hate everything about Farius Prime more than he already did.
The central bazaar of Maltabra City stretched for two kilometers in every direction, so there was no way around it: precisely what the city’s planners had in mind. The bazaar was always packed, and the air heavy with the mingled aromas of sweat, mint tea, rancid broiled kabobs that had sat for so long under a hot afternoon sun that the vendor had more bluebottle flies and Terellian swarmmogs than customers. An occasional breeze carried a metallic odor of salt and wet aluminum from the Galldean Sea, six kilometers due east. There was the overlapping babble of humans and humanoids and assorted aliens all shouting in different languages and at the top of their lungs; the whispered exchanges of drug dealers looking to score; the pleas of their clientele, desperate for a hit of that planet’s prime commodity, red ice. And there were colors: the brilliant turquoise sky and the searing white of sand and stone so bright Halak blinked back tears, and the customers, who ran the gamut of the “naturals”—Orions in their native green and the sky-blue of the Andorians—to more ambitious (and audacious) body dyes, fur, or scales.
Halak dodged around a Katangan merchant haggling with a jade-green Orion man about the cost of a liter of alpha-currant nectar—“But at that price, you’re asking me to take food from my children’s mouths, no, no, what do you take me for?”—and planted his right foot squarely into a stack of beaten copper pans spread on an indigo blanket. The pans belonged to a wizened Bilanan woman (from the northern continent, so she had seven facial knobs, not four) wrapped in a blood-red caftan with gold embroidery. The stack collapsed with a resounding crash, and Halak staggered, felt his ankle twist, and then a bolt of pain rocket to his knee.
“Here now!” the Bilanan said, outraged. Even her facial knobs quivered. “There’s people trying to make an honest living!”
“Sorry,” said Halak, not really meaning it but just wanting to make the woman be quiet. Digging into a leather pouch he wore around his waist, he tossed the Bilanan a few coins. “That covers it, right?”
“Don’t you think that makes everything all rosy,” said the woman, snatching up the coins. Reeling in a leather cord that dangled around her neck, she dragged a pouch from some nether region of her caftan, dropped in the coins, closed the purse tight by tugging at the cord with her teeth, and let the pouch fall back into the folds of her garment—and so quickly the money was gone before Halak blinked. “Don’t you go thinking ...”
Halak didn’t stay to hear the rest. Hobbling away from the woman, he elbowed his way deeper into the crowd, his right ankle complaining with every step.
Behind, he heard Batra say, “Samir, you’re limping.”
“It’s nothing.”
“But don’t you think you ought to take it easy?”
“No,” said Halak, throwing the word over his shoulder. “I don’t think. And right now I don’t want to know what you think either.”
Instantly, he was overcome with remorse. He stopped, turned, and looked down at his companion. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I didn’t ask you to come, I didn’t want ...”
“Well, that’s just too bad,” said Batra, her voice sounding a little watery. “That’s just too damned bad. How dare you treat me that way? Only cowards bully.”
Halak bit back a reply. She was right, and, not for the first time, he marveled that she was the only woman he knew who could make him feel as if he were about ten years old. It wasn’t that she was very imposing. Anisar Batra was a tiny woman, with a long shock of shimmering raven-black hair that she wore up when she was aboard ship, and almond-shaped eyes the color of chocolate. Normally, those eyes held nothing but love. (Sometimes she got a little annoyed with him, and then they seemed to shoot phaser beams, set to kill. All right, maybe that was when she was a lot annoyed. What she saw in him was anyone’s guess. Halak knew he wasn’t particularly handsome or tall. In fact, he had the compact build of a well-muscled wrestler, something that came in handy when a man had a temper, and Halak had a temper. On the other hand, they’d been lovers for six months, and Halak didn’t intimidate her in the slightest. It was one of the things he loved about her.)
But he didn’t want to fight with her, and Halak saw that her eyes were liquid with unshed tears of surprise and hurt. But she was good and blistered, too; her copper-colored skin was turning a shade the near side of maroon.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, chastened. “It’s just that you don’t understand.”
“Don’t I? Well then,” Batra said, folding her arms over an emerald-green, short-sleeved choli that showed off her trim waist and a sparkling garnet tucked in her navel, “maybe you’ll just explain it to me.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
Batra gave a breathy laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “Oh, no? Let me refresh your memory, Commander. What I recall was that we—emphasis on the we—made plans to take our R and R together,” she said this very distinctly, as if she were speaking Vulcan to a Klingon tourist who hadn’t the foggiest. “As I recall, we had no intention of setting one toe on Farius Prime, much less traipsing around a dusty bazaar, under a hot sun. We said Lake Cataria. Betazed? That ring a bell?”
“I’m not stupid, Ani.” Halak scooped a hand through his crop of close-cut black curls and blew out. “I was going to meet you on Betazed sooner or later.”
Batra arched one black eyebrow, her left. “Emphasis on later, I’m sure. We were supposed to leave together. We were supposed to be having that se
rious talk two people who supposedly love each other usually have when they’re trying to decide if they can stand each other’s company for the long haul.”
“I can stand your company, Ani.” Halak’s lips twitched, and he tried not to smile. (God, no, then he’d get a lecture about how he wasn’t taking her seriously.) “You’re just a pain in the neck.”
She didn’t smile. “Yes, I am your particular little pain, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. So you want to explain why you’ve been looking to ditch me ever since I showed up at Starbase 5?”
“Because I wasn’t expecting you. And how did you find me, anyway? I didn’t leave word where I was going.”
“Woman’s intuition.”
Halak barked a laugh that sounded as if he’d cracked a dry branch over his knee. “Farius Prime is the first place a woman thinks about? Come on, Ani, that’s no answer, and you know it. How did you find out?”
Batra licked her lips, and for an instant, it crossed Halak’s mind that she might be getting ready to lie.
“Well, I just did,” she said, tersely. She mopped her forehead with the back of one hand. “Look, it’s too hot to stand here, arguing. What difference does it make, anyway, and especially now? I’m here, I’m hot, I’m thirsty, and my mouth has so much sand my teeth are getting a nice buff and shine. I think it’s high time we get someplace cool, and I buy you a drink. Don’t you agree?”
“No.” His ankle was killing him. “I don’t want a drink. I just want to ...”
“Good,” said Batra, linking her arm through his. She pulled him toward the nearest café. “I’m parched.”
They made Halak check his phaser at the door. Batra’s eyebrows headed for her hairline when she saw the weapon.
“Personal carry. No regulation against that.” Halak gave a half-shrug. “You never know.”
She didn’t reply. They ordered then drank in silence, and Halak had almost finished with his second Saurian brandy when Batra said, “Penny for your thoughts.”
Halak shook his head. “They’re not worth that much.”