The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek (17 page)

“Your paranoia’s showing.”

“Come on, Jo. This is Starfleet. In the good old days, they used to board people out of the military for psychological reasons. Frankly, I don’t see how a psychiatrist can serve two masters: Starfleet
and
the patient. You doctors have a lot of power ... don’t make faces. You know I’m right. Relieving people from duty, making recommendations on retention, or return to duty ... things haven’t changed that much. I’m
not sure I blame Halak; I wouldn’t feel free to spill my guts to a psychiatrist who I know is going to turn around and talk about what I just said with everybody else.”

“I don’t think Tyvan’s like that. Anyway, the idea’s worth a try. We both know what deep space can do to people.”

“I don’t remember that the early starships had any need for a psychiatrist.”

“Couldn’t prove that by Mac,” said Stern. “He’s got more than a couple of stories about crazy crewmen.”

It took Garrett a moment to place the reference. “Mac. You mean Leonard McCoy? Have you talked to him about Tyvan?”

“Yup. Mac and I go back a ways, you know that. Anyway, I called his office back at Starfleet Medical right before we picked up Tyvan. Know what he said? The scuttlebutt’s that Starfleet’s thinking about posting families together for deep space exploration.”

“Kids on a starship? Families? I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t make up the news. I just report it. It’s just a rumor, but the way Mac was talking? I think Tyvan’s an experiment. You put families aboard a ship, maybe there won’t be so many divorces, separations. People will be happier. ...”

Something must have changed in Garrett’s face because Stern stopped and looked chagrined. “Sony, Rachel. I have a big mouth.”

Garrett shook her head and retrieved her coffee. The mug was cold; a chalky scum oiled the surface. But she held onto the mug just to have something to do with her hands. “Don’t worry about it, Jo. I’m past the divorce. Really. Now, what do you want to tell me about Halak? What did you mean
if
he returns to duty?”

Stern looked as if she wanted to say something else but changed her mind. “Okay. It’s this: Do you understand, and I mean
precisely,
what Halak was doing on Farius Prime to begin with?”

Garrett frowned. “No. What someone does on R and R is his business. He said he was visiting an old family friend. That’s his right. Farius Prime isn’t proscribed, so he didn’t break any regulations by going. But you do have to question his judgment about taking Batra along.”

“No.” Stern screwed up her face in a frown of disagreement. “That was an accident, Rachel. Batra was a grown woman who made a choice. A bad one, as it turned out. You can’t blame Halak for that. What you
can
blame him for is his not being exactly helpful about filling in the gaps and the discrepancies.”

Garrett was alert to the change in Stern’s tone. “There’s a problem.”

“Yeah.” Stern laced her fingers together and leaned her forearms on her desk. “Rachel, his story doesn’t jibe. Not all of it, anyway.”

“Which part?”

“How about a lot of it? Right now, he’s sticking to it. He and Batra go to the bazaar, then they see this ... what’s her name ... this Dalal character. They have dinner. Then they’re on their way back to the spaceport when this Bolian and a goon jump them, force them into an aircar, and take them out to God knows where for God knows what. Wherever they’re going, there just happens to be a shuttle. Halak doesn’t know why or how; it’s just there. Then there’s a scuffle. The Bolian has a pulse gun; the goon has a knife. Halak gets knifed, but Batra manages to get the knife away from whomever’s got Halak and she stabs the Bolian, the one with the pulse gun. Then Batra’s killed, and then Halak shoots both the Bolian and the goon. Only ...”

“Only what?”

“Only there’s no ionized residue on Halak’s skin. There is on Batra’s, around the entry wound. But if Halak pulled the trigger on the Bolian and another goon, then there should be blowback. There isn’t.”

“Meaning he didn’t use the pulse gun.”

“Not damned likely. And if there
was
another goon, he remains a mystery because I can’t find a trace of
him
anywhere—no blood, no DNA, nothing. On the other hand, the blood on Halak’s clothing? Two types, his own and the Bolian’s.”

“He said that Batra stabbed the Bolian. If Halak struggled with the Bolian, he’d have the Bolian’s blood on his clothing. That jibes.”

“Rachel, Halak had that Bolian’s blood all
over
him—under his nails, in his hair, on his neck. His cheeks, for God’s sake. Not to mention bone and stuff that tests out as cerebral cortex. Bolian.”

“And from that you infer ... what?”

“You ever take a good look at blood spatter? Well, I have. Did a bunch of forensics work when I was in training before I decided on going the deep space route. Now, blood oozes. It pools. It flows. And it spurts, but only if the heart’s still pumping. What the spatter pattern looks like depends on how the body’s positioned; how much you get on you depends on your relationship to the body. Now to get all that blood where it ended up, I figure the Bolian was lying on his back and Halak was on top, maybe straddling him.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“That he sure as hell didn’t stab the Bolian to death. You don’t get Bolian brains under your fingernails if you’re stabbing him.” Stern shrugged, rubbed her neck with her hand. “Jeez, Rachel, I dunno. All I know is that the evidence suggests that Halak didn’t use a pulse gun or a phaser, and he may not have used a knife. The evidence suggests that he bludgeoned the guy to death.”

“Could it be that things just happened too quickly? Mixed him up?”

“Sure. In fact, I’d say that would be par for the course. I’m no psychiatrist, but trauma’s funny. Either you rememb
er everything—how things smelled and tasted and even what clothes you were wearing—clear as a bell, or it’s all a jumble. So I’d be inclined to let it go except for a few other things. That wound, Rachel, the one on Halak’s back, and his left arm? They’re old.”

Garrett was startled. “Old? What do you mean?”

“I mean that he was stabbed all right, only it happened earlier and then the wounds dehisced, pulled apart, probably as a result of the fight with the Bolian. By the time I got to them, rudimentary epithelial regeneration had already begun. So I couldn’t close them right away. Tissues don’t heal as well, more chance of infection. I had to leave the wounds open, let them granulate in a bit, and then close them up. I did the second surgery on his back yesterday. Only when I tested the skin around his wounds, I found evidence of antimicrobial packs.”

“What?” Garrett was flabbergasted. “But then that would mean ...”

“He got knifed much earlier, and someone patched him up. Only the question is who? This Dalal?” Stern leaned in closer. “An interesting question, isn’t it? I’ll tell you something else. Halak lost a lot of blood, only where is it? There wasn’t enough soaked into his clothes, or pooled in that shuttle, to account for the way his intravascular volume was down. So he did his bleeding, only not in the shuttle.”

As astonishing as it was for her to think it, Garrett found what she thought even more incredible to say aloud. But she did anyway. “You think he’s lying.”

Stern hesitated. “God, I hate going that far, especially with a fellow officer, and I happen to like Halak quite a bit. Let’s just say I don’t think it’s so cut and dried, pardon the pun. There was undigested food in Batra’s stomach, so she had a meal before she died, and I have no doubt she was shot. Only she was pretty banged up, her jaw especially. But, Rachel, get this: she bruised. Her tongue was lacerated, like she bit herself. Only there were no clots, and the tissue was regenerating. If Halak’s correct in his sequence, she died before she had a chance to bruise, and there ought to have been blood clots in her mouth. There weren’t. And here’s a kicker: There are traces of an antiseptic salt in her mouth. Someone tended to her, too.”

Garrett sat very still, her headache forgotten, absorbing the implications of what Stern was saying. If Halak hadn’t outright lied, then he was omitting a great deal. But omissions were not, in and of themselves, crimes. Stern hadn’t found anything to contradict Halak’s assertion that he’d killed in self-defense, and no one on Farius Prime was even admitting to, or advertising that someone had misplaced a Bolian.

“You said there were a few things that didn’t jibe,” Garrett said. “The wounds, the blood spatter.”

Stern ticked the rest off on her fingers. “The amount of blood loss, and Batra’s bruises. The stuff in her mouth. And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

Stern’s eyes zeroed in on Garrett. “Dirt.”

His companel shrilled, and Tyvan jumped.

“Shouldn’t you answer that?” asked Bat-Levi.

“Oh, it can wait,” Tyvan lied. He knew who it was: Bulast, to remind him that Halak’s inquiry, delayed three days while Starfleet Intelligence rummaged around his ship and the commander mended, would begin in fifteen minutes.

“Oh,” was all Bat-Levi said, though the skin above her eyebrows furrowed in a slight frown. He read her meaning: Hails weren’t things an officer could afford to ignore.

The hail cut the air again.

“One second,” said Tyvan. Nothing was more important than being with Bat-Levi right now; he was sure the captain would see it that way. Still, since his chair—black leather, high-backed—squatted in front of his desk, he faced the unenviable task of hoisting himself around in his seat to grope for the audio cutoff: an undignified posture for an officer, he reflected, so it was good he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony. Tyvan rummaged around and killed the audio in mid-bleat. “No, I shouldn’t answer that,” he said, dropping back. “You came by to see me. Something must be wrong.”

“Wrong?” said Bat-Levi. The horizontal furrows above her eyebrows deepened, and her eyes narrowed, as if she worried that she’d made a mistake, or thought this was some sort of test. “Why do you say that? This is when I’m scheduled to see you. Session four. You schedule, I come. Simple as that.”

So she didn’t know. She had no idea. Very interesting. When Bat-Levi had shown up at his office door twenty minutes before, Tyvan had to contain his surprise, especially given the fact that he had to be very
elsewhere
in short order. He’d been about to put her off and ask why she was here, now, didn’t she realize what day it was, but then caught a glimpse of the unmistakable shine of unshed tears in her overly bright black eyes. And then he’d understood and he’d kept his mouth shut, let her come into his office, her servos squalling, and get herself settled. She hadn’t been angry, thank heaven, or even distantly polite; she’d seemed tired and wrung out, and her movements were slower, as if she carried some greater weight than her prosthetics.

Tyvan decided to handle the issue with as much tact as he could. He didn’t want to risk embarrassing her, and then having her shut down.
Please, no, not a repeat of last time, please.

“Well, Darya,” he began, “the reason is ... today isn’t one of your regularly scheduled days.”

He saw confusion flicker across her features. “What? It’s
not?”

“No. Your appointment isn’t until 1330 tomorrow.” When Bat-Levi didn’t respond, Tyvan added, “So I just assumed that you’d come by because something’s wrong. Is there something you want to talk about? Halak, perhaps, or Anisar Batra? She was a good friend of yours, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Bat-Levi, though her voice was faint and the response automatic. Her eyes had a faraway look as if she were taking a mental inventory. Tyvan waited.

“I’m sorry,” Bat-Levi said at last. She made a move to get up. “I ... I don’t know why I ...”

Tyvan waved her back without moving from his seat. “Sit. I have nothing going on right now.”
(Well, not much, just a little inquiry and a formal report.)

She did, again automatically, that confused, surprised look still on her face. They said nothing for a few moments. Tyvan listened to the tick-tock of his clock and prayed, fervently, that Garrett would be satisfied with taking out only a small piece of his hide.

Bat-Levi licked her lips. “Isn’t Freud the one who said that there’s no such thing as forgetting?”

“Not in so many words, and not about everything. Actually, Talok of Vulcan went one step further. He wrote that normal people can’t forget what they already know. All things being equal, if a person forgets something, it’s to serve some deeper purpose for the unconscious mind. Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m here, now, when I shouldn’t be.” Her eyes slid to the floor and then back to his. “And as you’ve said, I’ve seen a lot of psychiatrists, so I don’t think this is an accident.”

“What do you think it is?”

Her gaze was steady, but he heard a slight tremor in her voice. “I think it’s one of two things. Either I told myself I had to be here at this time so it would seem more like
your
idea than mine ...”

“Or?” Tyvan prompted, though he was impressed. She was right. She had spent a lot of time in the patient’s chair, long enough to do a good piece of self-analysis without any help from him.

She lifted her chin, pulling her straighter. Her scar gleamed a bright pink in the overhead lights. “Or I have something really important to tell you, and it can’t wait. Or maybe both.”

“I agree,” said Tyvan. His manner was still calm, but inside he felt a shock of excitement. “Where would you like to start?”

He saw from the look in her eyes that she was still debating about whether or not to flee. Then she reeled in a deep and tremulous breath then let it out, as if steeling herself. “Look, I’ll be honest with you. I owe you an apology for the way I behaved last time.”

She paused a half-beat, as if to give Tyvan an opening. Tyvan made no move to agree or disagree.

“I think it’s safe to say that I don’t like being here,” Bat-Levi resumed, “and I don’t really enjoy you, per se. I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s the way it is. I know that I don’t have to like you. It’s not your job to have me like you.”

“As I recall, a teacher once told me that if patients liked me, I wasn’t doing my job,” said Tyvan, and he meant that. Patients became anxious when a psychiatrist confronted them with the need for change. No one liked change, and the people who wanted to avoid
change
avoided
him,
and in the close quarters of a ship, other people, not his patients, avoided him by association. (Of course, this meant that when he did his job well, he was lonely a great deal. How many people who’d confided their deepest fears and wildest fantasies had paled when he walked into a room? More than he could count: He knew that instant of wild animal panic that sparked in a patient’s eyes too well. It didn’t matter if the encounter was on the street, in a shuttle terminal, aboard ship; a patient’s reactions were, usually, the same. That flicker of surprise followed by fear that was replaced by an uneasy civility:
How are you, Doctor? Good to see you.
Smiles that were all teeth and too wide, gestures that were too animated. They were all lying, of course. No one was happy to see him outside the office.)

As if reading his thoughts, Bat-Levi said, “Then I’d think you’d be a pretty lonely man. Ships are roomier than they used to be but not
that
roomy.”

“Maybe,” said Tyvan, not wanting to stray too far. His problems were his problems, not hers. “Is this about Anisar Batra?”

“Yes and no. I’ve been thinking about what you said: about guilt and responsibility. I’ll be honest about Ani. She was my friend, and I can’t imagine how Halak’s going to be able to look at himself in the mirror again. Halak’s got to live with this now every day of his life. I’ll bet that not a day has gone by when he hasn’t rehashed everything in his mind, wondered where he went wrong, what he could have done differently.” Bat-Levi moved her head from side to side, the movement stuttering as if her neck were made of gears that weren’t meshing properly. The right corner of her mouth was taut, twisting her mouth into a grimace. “Every morning he’s alive is another morning she isn’t.”

“Do you think he got her killed?”

“Yes, I do. He may not have meant it to happen ... no, that’s stupid; I
know
he didn’t want anything like that to happen to Ani. But it did, and he’s got to feel some responsibility.”

Tyvan shook his head. “That’s not what I asked.
Feeling
responsible isn’t the same as
being
responsible. I asked if he got her killed. You said he did. So you must think he could have done something to prevent it.”

“That’s like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head on a pin. He could have sent her away.”

“But Batra was an adult. Don’t you think that was up to her to make a choice?”

“Adults don’t always know the answers. You don’t expose the people you love to danger, and if you see danger and don’t do something about it, then it’s only right, it’s only just that you should live with your guilt every day of your life. I know it isn’t fair, but life isn’t fair. You do something like that, you should pay.”

“Even if what happened was an accident?”

Bat-Levi made an irritable gesture with her good hand: a flick of the wrist. “A lot of the things that people call accidents can be prevented, and Halak should’ve known. Farius Prime isn’t exactly sugar and spice. What the hell was he thinking? He was careless, and now,” her voice thickened and her eyes welled, “now Ani’s dead.”

“I imagine Halak feels pretty terrible.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Have you asked him?”

Bat-Levi wet her lips. “No. Halak, he’s hard to get to know. Like there’s this hard shell all around him, and you know he’d like you to break through only ...”

“Only what?” Tyvan prompted when she didn’t continue.

“Nothing.” And then her watery gaze jerked away.

Tyvan decided to risk it. “I think you just lied to me.”

Bat-Levi’s eyes arced back, and Tyvan saw that they sparked with anger. The small muscles of her cheeks danced. A single tear tracked down the scar over her right cheek, but she made no move to wipe it away. Tyvan waited.

“I hate you,” said Bat-Levi. Her chin quivered, and another tear slid to join the first. “You know, I really hate you.”

Tyvan nodded.

Bat-Levi drew in a shuddery breath, used her good hand to smear away tears. “Well, you got me, didn’t you?”

“What did I get, Darya?”

“I’m talking about Halak, but ... I’m talking about me. That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked then continued, without waiting for a reply, “That’s why I came a day early. This is all about me, my armor, my guilt. This is all about Joshua.”

Her eyes tracked left, to the floor. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. The clock ticked.

“Well,” said Bat-Levi, and then she looked Tyvan full in the face. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’ll tell me,” said Tyvan, simply.