Karak stopped swimming. “No! Jarrikk, I apologize. I did not mean to shock you into questioning . . . some things are inviolate. The Oath is binding. You cannot lie under Programming. You need not doubt your most basic beliefs. But you must give up one small one. The Guild is not neutral in all political matters. Where the survival of the Commonwealth, and itself, is at stake, it cannot afford to be.”
Jarrikk nodded slowly. “I can accept that,” he said, feeling as though he’d just been through a minor earthquake and his world was just now settling back into place. “But in any event, I cannot help you now.”
“Not with Kitillikk, no, but in another matter, you can.” Karak reached for something out of camera range and light flickered in his face. “I have a new assignment for you. On S‘sinndikk.”
“The homeworld?” Jarrikk’s hearts pounded suddenly. “Translating?”
“Yes, and no.” Karak held up two manipulators, one high, one low. “Two levels, again. On one level, you will be Translating for a Hasshingu-Issk trade delegation hoping to sell environment-monitoring satellites to the S‘sinn government. On the other level, the Council of Masters has need for a reliable source of information on S’sinndikk. Our other S’sinn Translators are far-flung at the moment, and in view of the political situation, I cannot be as sure of their sympathies as I now am of yours.”
“You want me to spy on my own people?” Jarrikk said slowly. “But Kitillikk will suspect me . . .”
“Not spy. Simply observe. Gauge public opinion. Once the trade negotiations are finished—and one session may well be sufficient for that—take leave. Tour the planet. Listen to your people and your politicians, and report what you hear to me. That’s all.”
Jarrikk, in the throes of his new-found cynicism, had his doubts. But it sounded simple—and honorable—enough. And it would give him an opportunity to see S’sinndikk, as he had always longed to, at the Guild’s expense. “Very well,” he said.
In his water-filled compartment in the Guildhall, Karak looked from the screen from which Jarrikk’s face had just vanished to another screen showing a gray-muzzled female S’sinn. “It’s arranged. He will be where we need him to be.”
“You are certain he is the one? His past . . .”
“I remind you he contacted me with news of Kitillikk’s actions. And you saw, probably better than I did, how he reacted when he learned the Guild is not as politically pure as he’s always thought. He is the one.”
“Very well, Guildmaster. And the other?”
“Not until the formal agreement to negotiate is announced.”
“So late?”
“I deem it better that way.”
The S’sinn inclined her head. “I bow to your knowledge of your Flight, Guildmaster. I’ll contact you again after all is prepared.”
“Very well.” Once the vidscreen blanked, Karak waved a tentacle to generate the pressure wave that turned the communicator off, then looked back at the screen on which Jarrikk had appeared. “Time to test your wings, Flightless One,” he said, then snatched another silverfin from the water by his head and swam back to his sleeping hole.
Chapter 8
Kathryn regarded her standard-issue suitcase ruefully. Whatever Earth company the Guild had contracted to provide its human Translators with luggage had obviously been more concerned with aesthetics than practicality. Sure, the slim blue case looked terrific; trouble was, it only held about two changes of clothes, some toiletries, and a handful of datachips—and the datachips were pushing it.
She sighed. It didn’t seem like very much to take with her on her first off-planet mission, but she supposed she’d manage. The Guildship, after all, would be well-stocked with anything else she might need for her three-month stay on Inikri-Ossong, the Orrisian world that had suddenly discovered a taste for chocolate and wanted to find out if the human predilection for munching on Orrisian prejilli sticks matched it enough to form the basis for profitable trading.
The initial thrill of receiving her first assignment had been tempered somewhat by the less-than-thrilling nature of it, but trade held the Commonwealth together and the Guild of Translators served the Commonwealth. She supposed it was unavoidable that a great many assignments would deal with trade.
The two “practice” assignments she’d already undertaken, working with a seasoned Ithkarite Translator and even a Swampworlder in accurate simulations of past Translations, had been special cases; for simulations, they chose the most complex and interesting situations possible, negotiations relating to humanity’s initiation into the Commonwealth at the conclusion of the Human-S’sinn War. Obviously, such negotiations didn’t come along very often—and when they did, the Translator of choice was the most experienced, Jim Ornawka.
She envied him; he’d been back to Earth twice more for mysterious negotiations related to the Fairholm/ Kisradikk Incident, as it was beginning to be called in the Earth news services. Kathryn couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. So humans and S’sinn had tried to colonize the same planet at the same time, again. Surely all that had been settled when the Commonwealth ended the last war. Put up another station and let both of them have the world . . . although, to hear Jim tell it, there was no doubt the humans had been there first.
Anyway, it wasn’t worth arguing about, although Kathryn would have loved to have been involved in talks on the subject. It sure sounded more interesting than the relative worth of prejilli sticks and chocolate . . .
She went over to her dresser mirror to check her hair and uniform, patted at them unnecessarily for a few seconds, started to turn back to the bed, and stopped, caught by the glint of light on the jeweled eyes of the tiny ceramic cat, just five centimeters tall, that sat, its tail curled neatly around its feet, on one corner of the dresser. She caressed its glassy back with a finger. Jim had given it to her after his last trip to Earth. Since that night before her First Translation he had persistently pursued her. She’d kept her distance; since experiencing the true union of Translation, she’d told him, she’d put sex behind her. It was part of her old self. Besides, she’d also told him, she still hadn’t forgiven him for the manipulative way he’d gotten her into bed in the first place.
He apparently didn’t believe her, which probably wasn’t surprising, considering her pulse still quickened every time he walked into the room; there had been nights when it had been all she could do not to call him—and he’d always been able to read her feelings with ease.
“Thinking about me?” said a familiar voice from the open doorway. Kathryn’s head jerked up and her eyes met Jim’s in the mirror.
“Any reason why I should be?” she said as casually as she could. But she could feel her face flushing—not that Jim needed that tell-tale sign.
“You tell me.” Jim came into the room. “Close,” he said over his shoulder, and the door slid shut.
“Jim, I’ve got to get down to the spaceport . . .”
“Your ship doesn’t leave for two hours yet. I checked.” He crossed over to her and stood very close, the sandalwood scent of his favorite cologne filling her head with memories of their night together. Her heart pounded so hard she thought even he must be able to hear it.
“I like—” She cleared her throat. “I like to be early.” She brushed past him, went to the bed, and started to close the lid of the suitcase.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
She turned around to see him holding the little ceramic cat. “Limited space,” she said weakly. “You know how it is.”
“But don’t you want something to remember me by?” He set the cat down. “Of course, I could give you something even better.” He moved close again, and ran a finger down her arm. She shivered, and cursed her body’s weakness. “Something to remember humans by, when you’re out there all by yourself for three months with nothing but bird-aliens for company . . .”
She pulled away, disturbed. “Bird-aliens? You mean the Orrisians?”
“Whatever.”<
br />
“Then call them by name. The Oath says—”
“I know, I know, ‘I renounce all species ties . . .’ ” Jim leaned back against the dresser and picked up the cat again, tossing it from hand to hand. “Don’t be too quick to take those words to heart, Katy. ‘Species ties’ are going to be pretty important if this Fairholm business blows up.”
Shocked, she could only stare at him.
“Oh, don’t get all holier-than-thou.” He looked hard into her eyes. “If war comes, will you side with aliens against your own kind?”
“Jim, you’ve Translated with all these aliens, you’ve lived their lives and their thoughts! As Translators, they’re our kind, too!”
“Even S’sinn?”
She tried desperately to read him, then, and failed as always. But she knew her own reaction to that name had been nakedly obvious.
“Thought so.” Jim tossed her the cat, and she caught it automatically. “Take it with you. Remember what I said.” He went to the door. “Open.” He glanced back. “Have a nice trip.” He left.
Kathryn stared after him, then realized she had a death-grip on the little ceramic cat and opened her hand to look at it. It seemed to wink at her condescendingly, and in sudden anger she threw it at the wall, smashing it into shards and powder. From the wreckage, the two eyes still glittered. She turned her back on them, slammed the suitcase shut, and left the room that had been her home for more than half her life without even looking back. I’m better than that, she thought. I meant my Oath.
And if Jim Ornawka thought he’d ever lay a hand on her again . . .
Even for the speedy Guildship Senti-or-noss the journey to Inikri-Ossong was a three-jump trip, with two ship days—each about thirty-two hours long—between jumps for recharging, plus a day on either end for maneuvering around the planets. More than one hundred ninety hours in all, Kathryn had figured before she left, and just past the halfway point, she found herself thoroughly bored with her first mission before she’d even properly begun it. Translators served not only to Translate but also to advise negotiators, when asked, and she was fed up to her eyebrows with reading about the principal exports of Inikri-Ossong, and especially fed up with prejilli sticks and chocolate. Given a choice between starving and eating either, she would have had to think long and hard.
She sat in front of her computer terminal, idly scrolling through information she’d already read twice, occasionally sipping from a hot cup of iss, a sweet Orrisian concoction that gratefully neither tasted nor smelled at all like chocolate or prejilli, when suddenly the screen blanked, turned bright red, then displayed blazing yellow Guildtalk script: “URGENT MESSAGE INCOMING FROM COMMONWEALTH CENTRAL. STAND BY.”
“Sure thing,” Kathryn said. She leaned back, stretched, and was in the middle of a yawn when the screen cleared to reveal Karak’s tentacled, beaked face. “What’s up, oh mighty Guildmaster?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone your current assignment,” Karak said. His dolphinish voice wasn’t much good at inflection, and of course her empathic ability was useless over a dimspace communicator. She couldn’t tell his mood.
Wondering, not for the first time, how non-empathic humans ever communicated anything, she said, “All right by me. I take it you’ve got something more urgent for me to do?”
“I do. Extremely urgent. Full briefing materials are already being uploaded into the Senti-or-noss’ computer, but the salient points are these: you are ordered to proceed at once to S’sinndikk, where you will Translate for Earth Ambassador Carlton Matthews as he and the Supreme Flight Leader of the S’sinn attempt to negotiate a way out of the Fairholm/Kisradikk impasse.”
Kathryn felt as if he’d slugged her. “Me? On . . . S’sinndikk? But that means . . .”
“Translating with a S’sinn,” Karak said. “I am aware of your history, Translator Bircher, and I know that I have previously told you that your first Translation with a S’sinn would happen only in the Guildhall under my personal supervision. This, however, is an emergency. The humans have issued an ultimatum to the S’sinn to leave Fairholm or face attack. The S’sinn have countered with their own ultimatum. Both sides, in defiance of Commonwealth Law, have established military alliances with other races. Should either race fire on the other, war, engulfing and destroying the Commonwealth, is almost inevitable.”
Kathryn swallowed. “This isn’t exactly explaining why you chose me.”
“Necessity, Translator. Necessity. The Commonwealth, too, is under an ultimatum. Both sides have agreed to these last-minute talks, but both insist that they happen before the ultimatum expires. You are the only suitable human Translator close enough to S’sinndikk to make it there in time. Therefore, you will have to do the job.” He glanced to one side. “Briefing upload is complete. Good luck, Translator. I have every confidence in you.”
As Karak disappeared and the briefing information filled her screen, Kathryn was glad for a moment she hadn’t been able to read Karak’s emotions.
This way, she could only guess that that last comment had been a lie.
Once again, Karak turned from speaking with one of his Translators to face the image of the gray-muzzled S’sinn. “I do not like misleading her,” he said. “She has suffered much already.”
“It is necessary. You and I are both agreed on that.”
“Yes. But it still does not please me.”
“A great many things do not please me, Karak. But we deal with the universe on its terms, not our own.” The S’sinn female glanced to one side, then back at the screen. “So. We have set something in flight, you and I. Let us hope it flies true. Farewell, Guildmaster.”
The screen blanked, and Karak floated silently for a long moment, remembering the strange, silent little girl he had brought from Earth.
He hoped she would forgive him.
Two ship-days later the Senti-or-noss arrived at S’sinndikk, and rendezvoused with the Earth Planetary Government diplomatic ship Geneva. As she watched the docking maneuver on a vidscreen in the crew lounge, Kathryn’s attention was less on the swelling teardrop shape of the Geneva than on the vast blue-green curve of the planet below. So beautiful, so peaceful-looking, so Earth-like: hard to believe it could be the homeworld of the demons of her childhood, the winged monsters who had murdered her parents . . .
Her breath caught in her throat. So much anger, so much buried hatred; she could feel it inside her, infusing all of her emotions. How could she Translate with a S’sinn—and under such conditions, with war threatening again?
Yet, how could she not? Karak had said she was the only Translator available. Had there been another, she was quite certain he would not have chosen her. He knew her inner emotional landscape as well as anyone who had not Linked with her, and possibly even better than some who had: his own unaugmented empathic abilities, she’d been told, were easily the equal of what most ordinary Translators managed under full Programming.
He knew her fear of the S’sinn, but he had sent her anyway. She really must be the Commonwealth’s last hope. Which means you have no choice, she thought bleakly. No choice but another war. Remember what the last one cost. Remember what it cost you.
Yet the thought of landing on S’sinndikk, of being surrounded by S’sinn, of Linking with one, mind to mind, feeling that hateful alien presence in her very soul . . . terrified her. She picked up her cup of iss from the low table beside the backless stool on which she sat, then set it down again abruptly when she saw how much her hand shook. Get a grip, Katy, she scolded herself. This Ambassador Matthews you’re about to meet is going to expect a cool, calm professional. Whatever you feel inside, at least look the part.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the calming exercises she had learned in the Guildhall, visualizing her emotions as her own tangled hair which she had to brush, slowly and carefully, into shining smoothness.
When the time came to transfer to the Geneva, she walked calmly through the docking tunnel, her slim blue suitcase
in one hand and her silver Translator’s case in the other, and nodded gravely to the man who greeted her in the lock.
“Translator Bircher?” he said. She pegged him at about fifty Earth years, with steel-gray hair, eyes to match, and the kind of fashionably pale, never-touched-by-ultraviolet skin that could only be obtained artificially. He wore an impeccable black business one-piece with the Earth Planetary Government symbol, a slim blue crescent, stitched neatly over his left breast pocket. He was, in fact, the very model of a modern elder statesman, and she would have found his appearance immensely comforting if not for the utter lack of compassion or concern beneath that carefully cultured surface. All she could feel from him was an eager, almost bloodthirsty desire to accomplish . . . something.
So he’s dedicated, she told herself. That’s good. “Ambassador Matthews?”
“At your service.” He somehow managed to convey the impression of clicking his heels together without actually doing it. “We will be undocking at once and landing within six hours. In the meantime, may I offer you some refreshment?”
“That’s very kind of you.” He took her arm and led her graciously out of the lock and down richly appointed corridors complete with dark wood paneling, thick red carpets, marble sculptures in little wall niches, and the occasional oil painting. A faint hint of lilac suffused the air. Kathryn felt as if she’d stepped into a historical romance, just like she had when Jim had prepared that dinner for her the night before First Translation . . .
Hmmm. And maybe this is just another kind of seduction.
They ended their tour in a neo-Victorian lounge that made Kathryn appreciate the benefits of traveling in a human-crewed ship; she’d been a giant aboard the Orrisian ship and it felt good to sit in a proper, if overstuffed, human chair and accept (from a white-coated steward, no less) a proper human drink: coffee, in a Wedgwood cup. “We have a fine selection of wines, too, my dear,” Matthews said.
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