Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

  “Crushed his legs. Double amputation.” The doctor reattached the stylus to the notepad and replaced it in her pocket. “He may still be all right, though; I’ve talked to Doctor Kapusianyk at EarthMed Orbital and he feels Garth is a perfect candidate for regeneration therapy.”

  “Regeneration? They can regrow his legs?”

  “Well, it’s still experimental, but they’ve had some remarkable successes and they’re looking for subjects. Garth’s agreed to try it.” Dr. Chung smiled sadly. “What does he have to lose, after all?” She patted Kathryn’s shoulder. “You should try to get some sleep.”

  Kathryn, her mind racing, hardly heard her. “Doc tor Chung, could I get a computer terminal in here, please? I need to do some research.”

  “You should rest. I’m not sure it’s a good—”

  “Please, Doctor!” Her urgency almost brought on the coughing fit she’d successfully avoided until then. “It’s Translator business,” she managed to choke out. A Translator claiming Guild business, Kathryn knew, outranked even the captain of a Guildship.

  Dr. Chung stiffened. She obviously knew it, too, and didn’t care for being clubbed with it. Kathryn regretted that, but she had to find out a few things before Jarrikk arrived, and she had no idea how soon that might be. “Very well,” Dr. Chung said flatly. She went out, and returned a moment later with a small, thin-cased voice-activated terminal.

  “Thank you, Doctor Chung. I promise, I’ll be as quick as I can, and I’ll rest as soon as I’ve finished.” The doctor thawed enough to give her a small smile before going out.

  Kathryn opened the terminal and got to work.

  Jarrikk contemplated the knife. Two hand spans in length, it glittered coldly in the artificial light of his quarters. His breath fogged its silver blade as he held it close to his muzzle, but even so he caught a reflected glimpse of one red eye, staring back at him.

  He grasped the knife’s black, leather-wrapped hilt and swung it experimentally. Badly balanced, but then, it wasn’t meant for fighting, only for killing the one target he could hardly miss.

  He’d gotten it at the Temple of the Hunter of Worlds, where a silent priest had handed it over upon his request. No payment had been offered or required; providing such knives was just one of the many tasks the priests performed in the service of the Hunter. Without his empathic abilities, Jarrikk had been unable to tell if the priest had recognized him as the Translator who had been a part of the negotiations with the humans that had taken such an unexpectedly peaceful turn. He supposed it didn’t matter, but it did concern him that his decision to accept the Knife of the Hunter might call into question exactly what had happened in those negotiations.

  He’d been tempted to use the knife that very evening, but he had promised himself he would not until he had final word on Kathryn’s fate. She had been far more ill than he from the death of the symbiote; ironic, since he intended to die anyway, but she wanted to live.

  She wanted him to live, too; of course, but that was impossible. He had nothing to live for, and though, as he had found, a few other Flightless Ones still maintained their existence on S’sinndikk, mere existence didn’t interest him.

  “Nice knife,” said a voice from the archway, speaking Guildtalk, and Jarrikk spun reflexively, earning a twinge of pain from his crippled wing.

  A male human in a Translator’s uniform stepped into his quarters. “Is that any way to act?” the human said. “And here Kathryn seems to think you’re such a nice person—for a S’sinn.”

  Jarrikk set the knife carefully down on a table. “Who are you?”

  “Translator Jim Ornawka, at your service.” The human bowed slightly.

  This man figured prominently in Kathryn’s memories, Jarrikk recalled, though she had seemed ambivalent about him. And Karak had mentioned him, too. But Karak hadn’t said anything about him coming to S’sinndikk. In fact, he’d said Ornawka “was not suitable.” “Why are you here?”

  “To see you.”

  Jarrikk growled again, and rephrased the question. “Why are you on this planet?”

  “To see Kathryn.” Ornawka walked slowly around the room, examining the furniture and decorations, fingering each piece. “To make sure she was all right.” He paused by the censer, sniffed the pale blue smoke, then coughed, waving it out of his face.

  Jarrikk found it unsettling to face this human while still empathically blind. “Karak did not mention you.”

  “I’m not here officially. I’m on leave.”

  “You are in uniform.”

  Ornawka laughed. “I wasn’t about to wander around S’sinndikk without identifying myself as a Translator.” Ornawka stopped in front of one of the wall-hangings. “Very nice work.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Kathryn sent me.”

  “She’s awake?”

  “Yes. And recovering nicely. Of course she asked about you, and I told her what the Guildship crew told me; that you had already recovered, and were asking for her.”

  “What did she say?”

  Ornawka picked up a corner of the tapestry and examined its weave, rubbing the cloth between thumb and forefinger. “She said she didn’t care. She doesn’t want to see you again.” He dropped the tapestry and carefully smoothed it. “I got the feeling she blames you for what happened to her.”

  Jarrikk felt as if a heavy weight had suddenly been tied around his neck. He turned back to the table, and picked up the knife again. “I will not trouble her,” he said, his back to Ornawka. “Please tell her I am pleased she has recovered, and I wish her well.”

  “Certainly.” Ornawka strode briskly toward the door. “Well, I’ve done as she asked. I’ll be going.”

  “Wait, please.” Ornawka stopped, and Jarrikk put down the knife, then reached up and took off the metal collar that identified him as a Translator. He held it out. “Please give this to her. To remember me by.”

  “I’m not sure she really wants to remember you,” Ornawka said. “But I’ll give it to her.” He took the collar. “Good-bye.”

  As Ornawka left, Jarrikk picked up the knife again. He had no reason to wait, after all. At the turn of the night, he would go to the Temple and make his sacrifice.

  But that was still several thousand beats away. The priests would say he should meditate until then, he supposed, but whenever he’d tried that as a child he’d always fallen asleep, and he didn’t want to sleep away his last few heartbeats.

  He put down the knife again, and crossed to his computer. Ornawka had made it clear Kathryn didn’t want to see him. Perhaps she had nothing left to say to him. But he still had things to say to her. After what they had shared and accomplished, he could not die without saying good-bye.

  “Translator Kathryn Bircher, Guildship Unity,” he began dictating. “At the turn of the night, I will make my way to the Temple for my sacrifice. Your friend Jim Ornawka has told me you do not wish to see me, but I hope you will accept this small intrusion. I would not leave without saying good-bye . . .”

  Kathryn’s research turned up tantalizing hints that her wild notion could work, but nothing concrete. So new were Earth’s links to the Commonwealth and its other races that very little Earth technology of any sort had yet been disseminated, much less highly experimental medical techniques like Dr. Kapusianyk’s. Yet, from her limited understanding, there seemed no reason it shouldn’t work. Human and S’sinn were both DNA-based life-forms, after all, and Dr. Kapusianyk’s work involved direct manipulation of DNA. And S’sinn scientists, like human scientists, had long since sequenced and deciphered their race’s entire genetic code. Dr. Kapusianyk should be able to access all the information he needed.

  If he would agree to do it.

  Jarrikk still hadn’t arrived, and local time was approaching midnight. Kathryn hoped that meant she had a few hours yet before he came to see her. She composed a letter to Dr. Kapusianyk explaining her idea and quickly fired it off via dimspace transmitter, praying his scientific intere
st would overcome any reluctance he might have to apply his technique to the hated S’sinn.

  She’d barely transmitted her message when the little terminal’s screen filled with the image of a young woman. “Sorry to bother you, Translator Bircher, but we’ve received a message for you. Normally we’d just hold it until morning and send it down to sickbay as hardcopy, but since you’re online, would you like it now?”

  Kathryn yawned. Her message sent to Earth, she felt as tired as the doctor obviously thought she should have felt all along, although her breathing had eased. “I don’t know. Is it urgent?”

  “It’s not flagged that way, no.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “From on-planet . . .” The young woman glanced down at something. “Translator Jarrikk.”

  Jarrikk! Kathryn sat up a little. “I’ll take it now.”

  “Sending . . . you’ve got it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The screen cleared; Kathryn pressed RECEIVE.

  Five minutes later she pulled the IV out of her arm, threw off the covers, and struggled to her feet while the scanner beside her bed screamed alarms. The room spun; she stumbled against her bedside table, sending her water pitcher and glass crashing to the hard white floor, and clutched at the scanner for support.

  “Translator Bircher!” Dr. Chung burst into the room. “What are you doing?”

  “He’s going to kill himself!” Kathryn shouted. Coughing racked her. “I’ve got to stop him!” she wheezed out.

  “Stop who? You must go back to bed—”

  Kathryn threw off the doctor’s hands. “No! Don’t you understand, he’s going to kill himself!”

  “Translator Bircher—”

  Stifling the cough, ignoring the weakness that threatened to floor her, Kathryn drew herself up and drew a ragged breath. “Doctor Chung, this is a Guild emergency. I’m releasing myself from your care. Bring me my clothes!”

  “You’re in no condition—”

  “Guild emergency, Doctor!”

  Dr. Chung glared at her, then turned and strode to the wall beside Kathryn’s bed. “Open!” she snapped at the featureless white metal, which split apart to reveal a closet and Kathryn’s Translator uniform, neatly pressed. Kathryn pulled off the hospital gown and reached for the uniform. “I must formally protest, Translator,” Dr. Chung said, making no move to help. “Your well-being is my responsibility. You are endangering your health, possibly your life, by leaving my care.”

  “I’m not leaving it.” Her uniform seemed to be fighting her; she had to sit down on the bed and blink away purple spots before she could get her legs into it. “I want you to come with me.”

  “Come with you?” Dr. Chung stared at her, obviously caught off-guard yet again.

  “Come with me,” Kathryn said, zipping up her uniform and reaching for her boots. “And bring your medical kit.”

  “Translator, I insist—”

  “Please hurry, Doctor Chung!”

  The doctor glared an instant longer, then turned and dashed out. Kathryn finished with her boots and clung to the bed for a moment. The still-open terminal showed her the local time: about half an hour to midnight, or as Jarrikk called it, “the turn of the night.”

  Half an hour to stop Jarrikk’s suicide.

  “Doctor, we’re leaving now!” Kathryn shouted, and ran-staggered to the door.

  A thin, dank mist shrouded the grassy lanes that threaded through S’sinndikk, collecting in cold droplets on Jarrikk’s fur as he trudged toward the dark bulk of the Temple that crouched like some huge sleeping beast by the river. Its ancient architect, ever mindful of tradition, had thoughtfully provided a place, a ground-level platform overhanging the water, for sacrifices such as Jarrikk’s.

  He moved through deep silence, in solitude, the black-hilted knife carried loosely in his right hand. He felt at peace, at one with the thousands of Flightless Ones who had made this journey before, to turn at the end of their brief lifetimes and face the Pursuer who eventually caught everyone, the Hunter of Worlds, to be devoured by Him, to become part of Him, and therefore of the entire universe.

  He could smell the dank green scent of the river now, and hear it gurgling its slow way through the city: and there, dimly visible through the mist, stood the two giant statues of wingless S’sinn that marked the Place of Flightless Sacrifice. Despite the damp cold, Jarrikk’s mouth suddenly went dry; he lifted the knife and licked the moisture from its icy blade.

  Eighteen steps ascended to the Place of Flightless Sacrifice, eighteen steps much higher and narrower than normal, forcing a painful, struggling climb on a flightless S’sinn, emphasizing his incompleteness and unworthiness. At last, however, muscles aching, he stood on the platform itself, circular, bounded by a railing carved in the shape of sharp, curving thorns, pointing inward. At the center of the platform, a small hole waited to drain his lifeblood into the river.

  Jarrikk felt doubly glad he had not taken the knife from the priest on his homeworld when he’d first been injured. He had had many more years of purposeful life, true; but more importantly, this was where such things should be done, not in some sterile, windowless room, but here, in holy Kkirrikk’S’sinn, the most ancient city of his kind, in the place where so many others had made the same sacrifice and preserved the honor of the S’sinn.

  He spread his wings as best he could and lifted up his hands in prayer to the Hunter, the knife pointed downward toward his breast, soon to be its final resting place.

  Kathryn had commandeered one of Unity’s small ground vehicles; she and Dr. Chung raced through the wet night along the slippery grass-covered lanes that were all S’sinndikk had for streets. Who needed good roads when the entire population had wings?

  “Where are we going?” Dr. Chung demanded. “You still haven’t explained any of this.”

  “Translator Jarrikk plans to . . . suicide at midnight,” Kathryn said. The congestion in her lungs had intensified again since she’d left her bed; she had to stop frequently and gulp air. “I have to stop him.”

  “Suicide? But why—”

  “Because of . . . what happened to us. Because he is no longer a Translator. Because tradition demands it.” Kathryn pounded on the controls. “Can’t this thing go faster?”

  “I’m glad it can’t.” Dr. Chung clutched at the dashboard for support as the car careened around a corner. “If it’s S’sinn tradition, how can you talk him out of it?”

  “He’s only doing it because he’s flightless,” Kathryn cried. “And he doesn’t have to be! He can regain the use of his wings. Just like Garth—”

  “Regeneration therapy? But that’s never been tried on non-humans—”

  “All the more reason to try it now. If we get the chance—there!” Kathryn braked the scooter to a stop. “Up there, that platform.”

  “It’s already past midnight.”

  “I know!” Kathryn cried desperately. She flung open the door of the scooter and stumbled out, falling onto the grass. “Jarrikk!” she yelled, her voice echoing back from the stone wall of the Temple, but nobody responded.

  Coughing, almost choking, she scrambled on her hands and knees up the tall, steep stairs, her heart pounding in her chest. Terrible waves of weakness crashed over her, turning her limbs to lead, but Dr. Chung, after a moment’s hesitation, grabbed her under the arms and helped her climb the final few steps.

  There was Jarrikk, standing with wings outspread, arms stretched out above him, hands clutching the hilt of a knife that glittered wickedly even in the dim, mist-diffused light from the city behind them.

  She opened her mouth to scream at him, to tell him she was there, to stop him, but before she could utter a sound, his arms jerked down and the knife’s glitter vanished as it plunged into his chest.

  With a soft, moaning sigh, Jarrikk folded his wings and crumpled gently onto the ancient stones.

  Chapter 13

  “No!” Kathryn screamed, t
he sound echoing back from the walls of the Temple. Shaking off Dr. Chung’s restraining hand, she clambered up the final awkward steps and dropped to her knees beside Jarrikk, whose eyes were closed and whose hand still gripped the knife buried to the hilt in his chest. A thin but widening trickle of blood flowed down his flank, onto the stone, and dropped soundlessly through the hole in the center of the platform to the slow-moving river below. Feeling as if a second knife had been driven into her own heart, Kathryn reached out and touched Jarrikk’s damp fur—and felt the flutter of a heartbeat.

  “Kathryn?” Dr. Chung called softly.

  “He’s not dead!” Kathryn yelled back in a sudden agony of hope. “Doctor Chung, hurry!”

  The doctor scrambled to her side. “I don’t have any training in S’sinn physiology—”

  “Doctor, he’s a Translator, he’s dying, you’ve got to do something!” Kathryn reached out to touch the knife, but Chung stopped her.

  “No. That could be all that’s keeping him from bleeding to death. Leave it until we know what we’re doing.”

  “But—”

  “Go back to the car, call for help. I’ll do what I can.”

  Kathryn gulped a breath of much-needed air, said “Thank you,” and dashed for the car, adrenalin winning out over weakness—for the moment, at least. The communicator lit up at her touch. “Emergency!” she gasped. “Translator Jarrikk’s hurt. We need medical help—someone trained to help S’sinn!” A fit of coughing shook her.

  “Understood.” The comm operator on the Guildship sounded perfectly calm; Kathryn wanted to shake him. “Where are you?”

  “The Temple—by the river,” Kathryn choked out between coughs.

  “Activate your homing signal. It’s the switch just in—right, got it. Help’s on the way. Guildship Unity out.”

  Kathryn fought down the coughing, took a few deep wheezing breaths, then crawled back out of the car. She started toward the platform, but froze as something huge and black swept low over her head, landed in front of her, and shrouded itself in leathery wings. Memories of her parents’ deaths made her cringe back; then she straightened, angry at herself. “Who are you? What do you want?” she demanded in Guildtalk.