The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek by Ilsa J. Bick

things. You tell the truth, but only to a certain point. I feel it,” she bunched a fist over her heart, “right here.”
    “You have something specific in mind?”
    “Yes, I do. Why are we here?” Batra tapped a nail upon their table with a tiny click. “And why didn’t you want me with you?”
    Halak blew out. “Damn, but you’re persistent.”
    “Yes. So answer the question.”
    “All right.” Halak took a pull of his drink, liking the way it burned a track down to his stomach before spreading out along his belly like fingers of liquid fire. “I’ll tell you what. I answer your question and you answer mine. Deal?”
    She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Okay. You first.”
    He put his hands on the table and laced his fingers together. “I’m here to see an old friend. Her name is Dalal. Dalal took care of me on Vendrak IV.”
    “Where you were born. This was after your parents died?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Is she one of your relatives?”
    “No. Just an old family friend. Actually, she used to work for my father.”
    “As what?”
    Halak shrugged. “Housekeeper, secretary, nanny ... you name it. My mother died first ... you know that, of course. From Denebian fever.”
    “I know. But you never really talked about how that happened.”
    “How does anyone get Denebian fever?” Halak put both hands around his drink but didn’t lift his glass. “Not enough food, terrible living conditions. We didn’t have it all that great, not until my father found steady work. But she got sick before he could and then she died. I was ten.”
    Batra’s eyes were full of sympathy. “That’s so awful.”
    Halak tried a smile that didn’t quite work. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” (Of course, he couldn’t really describe to her what it was like to watch his mother shrivel away bit by bit. And what she said to his father when she thought Halak couldn’t hear: I’ll never see my children grow up ...)
    He closed down the memory. “After that, my father ... he was never the same. For one thing, he just didn’t have a lot of time for me. At first, I thought it was because of my mother, but he’d never really been there. Always gone on business. A ... what’s the old saying?” Halak snapped his fingers. “A fly by night. That’s it.”
    Batra’s brows met in a frown. “Fly by night?”
    “Yeah, it’s an old nautical expression. This big sail,” Halak held his arms apart, gestured with his hands, “and you could rig it and forget it. But what it really means is someone who’s only interested in a quick profit. That was my father. Always some scheme. Except nothing panned out, not until ...” His voice trailed away.
    “Until what?”
    “Oh.” Halak blinked, refocused. “Until he got involved in some business ... I was too young to know exactly what.”
    “And then?”
    “A couple of things. One, he was gone for long, long stretches of time. Longer than before, but by that time, Dalal was there and she made sure I had food, clothes on my back. She even worked at trying to get me to go to school.”
    “How did she do?”
    “ Well, except school.” Halak sighed, finger-combed his hair. “I was a pain in the ass. Always in trouble. I started stealing. Little things at first—you know, food, I was always good at stealing food, maybe because I always felt hungry, even when I had plenty to eat.”
    “I don’t think a kid forgets going hungry.”
    “No, but I think I did it to get back at my father. See, he took up with another woman not long after Dalal came to live with us, and this woman moved in. I never liked her much, and not just because she wasn’t my mother. You know, she tried to get me to call her Mom, must have been a hundred times. A thousand. I never could, and looking back on it, I think she did her best to make me like her. But I didn’t. Sort of a willful type of hate, if you know what I mean. Dalal didn’t like her either, but I never knew if that wasn’t just