Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

You defiled my Sacrifice. You made a mockery of my gift to the Hunter. This is how you care for me?

  I am human. I did not understand your Sacrifice.

  You understand now. Leave me. Let me complete my gift to the Hunter.

  I do not understand. Does the Hunter desire death?

  Death serves the Hunter. All things serve the Hunter.

  Then life also serves the Hunter.

  Useful life. I gave my usefulness to the Guild.

  Did that not serve the Hunter?

  All things serve the Hunter.

  Then live.

  I have lived too long already. I am flightless! Humans made me so!

  Then let humans change that. Fly again. Serve the Hunter again. Surely He prefers living servants to dead sacrifices.

  I have made my decision.

  But now you have new information. Make your decision again.

  I HAVE MADE MY DECISION!

  S’sinn pride. Does pride serve the Hunter?

  All things serve the Hunter.

  But what do you have to be proud about? You are flightless.

  I served as a Translator. Now I would make my Sacrifice!

  Still not much to be proud about. Service as a Translator for a handful of years, then death.

  It is all I can offer.

  It is not. Be the first Flightless One to regain flight. Find pride in blazing a trail for the others who have only been able to serve the Hunter by their deaths. Dedicate your new life to the service of the Hunter. Let those who follow dedicate theirs. Surely the gift of many new living servants is a greater gift to the Hunter than your death?

  You twist my thoughts! You come into my mind and twist my thoughts!

  Do I? Then come into mine . . .

  Rushing. A storm of emotions, memories, thoughts, a whirlwind of sensory information, the thunder of a living mind.

  The light changes, takes on a bluish tinge.

  See it all . . .

  You . . . do care. You . . . did not do this for the Commonwealth, or the Guild. You . . . did it for me.

  Yes. Yes!

  I . . . must . . . think . . .

  Think. Choose wisely . . . but the choice is still yours. It always has been.

  I . . .

  Darkness.

  Light.

  Kathryn opened her eyes and looked at Jarrikk, unconscious on the shikk, his forehead slick with the blood from her hand. She pulled it away. Her fingers trembled.

  “Ukkaddikk . . .” she whispered, turning toward the door . . . and then her knees buckled.

  Darkness.

  Chapter 15

  Kitillikk stood looking out over Kkirrik’S’sinn as the sun westered toward night. Days had passed since Ornawka had fouled her quarters with his presence, promising to strike soon against the Supreme Flight Leader. Days had passed, and nothing had happened. Time, place, and method—he’d said all three were chosen. “Twenty years hence, in her sleeping pit, of old age,” Kitillikk snarled out loud. What if his whole approach had been part of some Commonwealth scheme to uncover her plotting . . . ?

  But no. Her sources on Commonwealth Central had assured her that Jim Ornawka was as committed to his humans-first philosophy as she was to the honor of the S’sinn. She smiled, showing teeth, as she thought of her “sources.” They were far more than that, as the Commonwealth would discover when the time came to act, but they were also absolutely reliable, and she believed them without question. No, Ornawka was no spy; no doubt he was just being cautious.

  Besides, had he been a Commonwealth spy, she would already have been arrested. They would never have left her free to act as she had been acting since her arrival on S’sinndikk, meeting quietly with the powerful S’sinn of the Supreme Flight, sounding out which would back her claim when Akkanndikk fell, making promises, making bribes, doing whatever she had to to win support.

  She supposed in some ways she should be grateful that Ornawka delayed his strike: it had given her time to firm up some of that support. As she would be doing tonight.

  As if cued by her thoughts, Ukkarr appeared in the arch behind her. “Ikkilliss of the Supreme Flight is here to see you, Flight Leader.”

  “How very punctual of him.” She’d told him to come at sunset, and the sun had just touched the horizon. “Just this side of eager.”

  “I confess I am surprised he is here at all, Flight Leader. In the Supreme Flight no one has been more constant or vocal in support of Akkanndikk than Ikkilliss.”

  “There are ways and ways, Ukkarr. Please show him in to me. Then you will leave. Enjoy a night free from your duties.”

  Ukkarr hesitated. “Flight Leader, is that wise? You have not won Ikkilliss to your side yet. If he should accuse you of plotting against the Supreme Flight Leader . . . he could have you arrested.”

  “He will not have me arrested,” Kitillikk growled. “He is not even here to discuss politics. Or at least that’s what he thinks.”

  Ukkarr blinked at her. “Flight Leader?”

  “Show him in, Ukkarr! Then leave! At once!” Kitillikk put wing-snap in her voice, and Ukkarr jerked to attention, then turned in a swirl of leather and hurried back into the apartment.

  Kitillikk looked back out over the city, calming herself. Ukkarr was invaluable as aide, bodyguard, military leader, and occasional enthusiastic lover, but he could also be annoyingly naive about some things. She doubted he would approve of her method of winning some of the male members of the Supreme Flight to her side, but as far as she was concerned, sex was just one more tool to use to build her future success. She would rule the S’sinn, and she would put up with the fumbling fingers and trembling wings and tiresome moaning and gasping of the oldest and most decrepit of the Supreme Flight if it meant they would vote for her when the succession became a question. She grinned. Ukkarr would be even more shocked if he knew that sometimes she hadn’t even had to fake her enjoyment of these political liaisons.

  Ikkilliss, for example, was a magnificent Hunter in the prime of his life . . . and a great believer in the new philosophy that it was the duty of leaders of the S’sinn to disperse their genetic material as widely as possible, improving the breed. Kitillikk rather thought that “new philosophy” was nothing more than a modern excuse for ancient vices, but it had made it easy for her to convince Ikkilliss to come tonight.

  “Flight Leader Kitillikk?” His voice was as smooth and powerful as the rest of him, and Kitillikk grinned another grin of pure, savage glee before smoothing her face and turning to graciously greet her prospective ally.

  This was one politician whose support she eagerly looked forward to firming up.

  After all, nobody said politics couldn’t be fun.

  Kathryn came out of her faint to find herself sitting in the chair beside Jarrikk’s shikk, Ukkaddikk and Dr. Chung both bending over her, Chung’s fingers busy bandaging her hand. She blinked at them. “Hello,” she ventured. “How’s Jarrikk?”

  “I’m surprised you care,” Chung snapped. “He did this, didn’t he? Is this the thanks you get for risking your life to save him?”

  “How are you, Translator Bircher?” asked Ukkaddikk. Kathryn sensed his question went deeper than her physical state.

  “It happened,” she replied. Chung glanced at her sharply, but kept working.

  Ukkaddikk drew in a quick breath. “As before?”

  “Different. He was conscious.” She looked straight into Ukkaddikk’s eyes. “We exchanged thoughts.”

  “Translation?”

  “Different. Stronger, but more focused. We carried on a conversation, first in his mind, then in mine.”

  She felt his sudden excitement. “Incredible!”

  “Yes.” It had been. Even better than the Translation union she’d thought she’d never feel again. She glanced at Jarrikk, and was surprised to see him staring at her. Ukkaddikk followed her gaze, and leaped to Jarrikk’s side. Jarrikk replied to his questions in short growls, but he did reply. And Kathryn no longer felt the same ha
tred and hostility from him. Now she sensed . . . confusion . . . uncertainty . . . and maybe, just maybe, a little . . . hope? She reached out her free hand to him and touched his shoulder, closing her eyes to try to read him better, and suddenly, with no warning at all, she was back in the white void with him.

  Impossi . . .

  . . . ssible . . .

  Telepathy!

  Telepathy!

  Kathryn’s eyes flew open. The white void vanished, but Jarrikk was still there inside her mind. Chung stared at her, and dimly Kathryn realized she’d clenched her wounded right hand into a fist, but even its throbbing didn’t break the connection. She met Jarrikk’s wide, startled eyes.

  “Incredible!” Ukkaddikk said. “I sense . . . I sense something . . . like a Translation bond, but . . .”

  He reached out, touched Jarrikk, and Kathryn gasped and stiffened as suddenly there were three of them in the Link. She could read Ukkaddikk’s emotional state stronger than ever before, but more than that, she knew exactly what he was thinking, could trace the pattern of his thoughts as he searched through memories of the studies he had made into mind-to-mind contact, could even retrieve those memories, she felt sure, if she tried hard enough . . .

  . . . no, if they tried hard enough . . . she couldn’t direct it. The power, this amazing power, came from the bond between herself and Jarrikk. They could only wield it together . . . and Ukkaddikk?

  Ukkaddikk? she tried. No reply. No indication in his thoughts that he was aware of her—of them—at all.

  He cannot hear us. Jarrikk’s “voice.” We are reading his mind and he is unaware.

  Then he’s not part of the Link?

  No. The power comes from us, from our minds combined . . . maybe from changes that occurred when our symbiotes died. It is ours alone, Kathryn. Together, we are greater than one of us could ever be. We are something new.

  But what are we?

  Telepath. Not empath. Telepath.

  Telepathy between races is a myth . . .

  Not anymore. Not anymore!

  You’re fading.

  So are you.

  Tired . . .

  . . . so tired . . .

  “Unh.” Kathryn slumped in the chair, the room spinning around her and a buzzing in her ears. Chung took her pulse, lifted her eyelid. “I’m . . . all right, Doctor,” Kathryn said irritably. But she wasn’t. She felt nauseous, and tired . . . and scared.

  She looked at Jarrikk again. His eyes were closed and his bandaged chest rose and fell in great gasps. Ukkaddikk pulled back from him, frowning, and turned to her. “What happened? You must tell me.”

  “Not now,” Dr. Chung snapped. “She’s still my patient, and she’s going back to bed.” Ukkaddikk growled at her, but she ignored him, reaching up to the intercom above the shikk. “Nurse Altman, this is Doctor Chung. Please bring a wheelchair to Jarrikk’s room.”

  “Kathryn?” Ukkaddikk pleaded. But for once Kathryn was happy to let Dr. Chung cart her off to bed. She closed her eyes and kept them that way until the wheelchair arrived, then climbed gratefully into it . . . and all the time, she could feel a faint tendril of Jarrikk’s presence in the back of her mind.

  Before she talked to Ukkaddikk—before either she or Jarrikk let the Guild find out about what they had achieved—they had a lot of talking and thinking to do.

  Of course, now maybe that amounted to the same thing.

  Oh. There was one thing, though. “Doctor,” she said over her shoulder as the burly and bearded Nurse Altman pushed her toward the door, “you can take the restraints off Jarrikk.”

  “Are you sure? We still can’t be certain what his state of mind is . . .”

  “I can. Release him.” She stopped and had Altman turn her around. “Please, Doctor.”

  Chung looked at her, then at Ukkaddikk, who hesitated, then said, “Do it.”

  “Very well. I hope you’re right.”

  I am, Kathryn thought, but didn’t say it. Jarrikk knows he has other options now. He promised me he would consider them. She smiled a small, slightly dazed smile. “And I’d know if he were lying,” she murmured.

  “Translator?” Nurse Altman said.

  “Nothing, nurse.” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “Please take me back to bed.”

  “Translation bonding without the symbiote?” Karak floated in his quarters, staring at Ukkaddikk’s image. A school of silverfins gathered curiously in front of the screen; he flicked a manipulator at them irritably and they darted away. “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as I can be without having experienced it myself. Translator Bircher described it as being even deeper than the Translation bond, in fact.”

  “This must be studied! The Unity must bring them back to Commonwealth Central at once!”

  “It’s not that simple, Guildmaster. Officially, Jarrikk has not rescinded his decision to take the knife. And politically, the Guild’s position here might be strengthened more if he chooses to return to the Place of Flightless Sacrifice than if he chooses to live and leave the planet. The priests have been stirring up public sentiment against us for defiling a sacrifice to the Hunter of Worlds.”

  “I know all that,” Karak said impatiently. “And under other circumstances, I would reprimand Translator Bircher severely for interfering, however much I might secretly applaud her. But this changes everything. If we can eliminate the symbiote from Translation, we could revolutionize the process. No more need for electromagnetic shielding, no more time limits on Translation . . .”

  “I’m not so sure of that. They seemed exhausted when they finished, and they were only linked for seconds.”

  “That’s why we need more study. Jarrikk cannot be allowed the luxury of choosing for himself whether or not to take the knife, Ukkaddikk. He must return to Commonwealth Central. As Guildmaster, I order it.”

  Ukkaddikk replied only after a longish pause. “I’m not sure ordering Jarrikk is the best way to gain his cooperation at this point in time, Guildmaster.”

  “Explain.”

  “I sense . . . doubts. In his hearts and Translator Bircher’s. They seem to feel they have been manipulated by the Guild—manipulated to come together here and do what they did. I think, to a certain extent, they both feel betrayed.”

  “Nonsense,” Karak said, but he said it uncomfortably. The Guild Council had known exactly what it was doing. He and Akkanndikk had both known exactly what they were doing. They had manipulated the two young Translators, played on their loyalty to the Guild to obtain the necessary results. But surely that same loyalty would help them understand . . .

  “Perhaps,” Ukkaddikk said. “But that is the way they feel. And Kathryn, I think, feels that the Guild was too willing to let Jarrikk die after he was no longer of any use as a Translator. You know how humans are always so quick to judge the actions of other races by their own moral standards.”

  In this case, a standard Karak shared. But he had a duty to seek what was best for the Guild and the Commonwealth, not for specific individuals. And that duty still drove him. “However they feel, they must return to Commonwealth Central,” he said slowly. “But perhaps we can convince them of the necessity without putting it in terms of an order. Tell them that there are still strong factions on both Earth and S’sin ndikk clamoring for repudiation of the treaty, that the Guild fears for their safety and the safety of the humans with them on the Unity, and that the Unity has therefore been ordered to return to Commonwealth Central and I hope they will come with it. Leave them the appearance, at least, of having a choice—but, Ukkaddikk, I am counting on you to insure that the ‘choice’ they make is the correct one.”

  “There is also the matter of the experimental regeneration technique the humans are anxious to try on Jarrikk, Guildmaster. If he is to make the right choice, that procedure must still be carried out.”

  “It will be, it will be,” Karak said irritably. “But this new linkage takes precedence. I’ll look into having this human doctor tran
sfer his equipment to Commonwealth Central—I’m sure the Commonwealth medical college will want to observe the procedure in any event. None of that need concern you. Just get the pair of them off that planet as soon as you can and safely on their way here.”

  “Yes, Guildmaster Karak. Ukkaddikk out.”

  Karak waved a manipulator to kill the transmitter, then snagged one of the curious silverfins, bit it in two, and gulped down the head. There was a lot of truth in what he had just told Ukkaddikk, he reflected. The Humanity First party on Earth and the faction led by Kitillikk on S’sinndikk were still fighting to have the agreement overthrown. Akkanndikk seemed confident she could manage the situation on S’sinndikk and the Earth government seemed equally confident, but Karak did not share their confidence.

  All it would take at this point is one small rupture in the wall we have built against the current for war, he thought. One tiny crack, and we’ll all be swept into the ocean depths.

  All he could really do was pray to the Great Swimmer that the wall held firm.

  He let the tail of the silverfin settle to the floor for the scuttlers to eat, and swam back to his sleeping cave.

  With a hundred thousand others, Kitillikk roosted near the Temple. Unlike most of those others, no one crowded her, thanks to Ukkarr, who even when weap onless, as now, could intimidate most lesser S’sinn.

  Like everyone else, Kitillikk gazed skyward, toward the topmost Temple tower, where three S’sinn circled on artificial thermals generated by heating vents in the Temple roof. Kitillikk kept her expression carefully neutral, but deep in her throat she growled. “Look at her,” she muttered to Ukkarr. “How dare she!”

  The “she” in question was the Supreme Flight Leader, circling in formation with her Left and Right Wings. The thousands gathered below and the millions more watching on planet-wide vidcast had come to celebrate the most holy day in the worship of the Hunter of Worlds, the day when the Supreme Flight Leader symbolically brought, to feed the Hunter, the blood of all the Hunters who had died in the previous year.