Read The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek for Free Online

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