Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

  Outside the hatch, as Ornawka had said, supply boxes and parked lev-cars provided cover, and beyond them rose dark forest. Even when Jarrikk touched Kathryn again and once again staggered slightly under the impact of the vastly more powerful empathic sense they shared together, he could sense no one but his companions within five hundred spans. They crossed the silvery surface of the lev-line between two crate-piled cars, and plunged in among the trees.

  Ukkaddikk seemed confident of their goal, but the walk, first through the woods, stumbling over roots and pushing aside undergrowth, then over a mercifully narrow, muddy, plowed field where muck mixed with manure sucked at their feet and choked them with sour fumes, and finally through a seemingly endless waist-high crop of green fedra, drained Jarrikk dry. Kathryn supported him, and he could feel her soul-warming concern, and Dr. Chung soon joined her on the other side, but still his energy deserted him, and the almost-healed wound in his chest began to throb, a throbbing that grew into a stabbing pain—and if anyone should know what a stabbing pain felt like, Jarrikk thought half-deliriously, it was him.

  Dr. Chung played her medical scanner over his chest, frowned, and said something in her own language to Kathryn, who went up to talk to Ukkaddikk. Jarrikk couldn’t hear clearly through the pounding in his ears, but he thought she was asking how much farther they were going. He didn’t hear Ukkaddikk’s reply, either, but when Kathryn came back he sensed her relief.

  “We’re almost there,” she said in Guildtalk. “This field belongs to the Commonwealth sympathizer he expects to take us in. I hope he’s right about that part,” she added in a low voice to Dr. Chung.

  “He’d better be right about the first part,” Chung replied acidly. “Jarrikk will collapse if we go on much farther. And it hasn’t been all that long since you were bedridden, either. How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine,” Kathryn said, but Jarrikk knew she lied. He thought that from now on he would always know.

  Yet she continued to support him, and with her help and Dr. Chung’s he made it to the edge of a farmyard, and sagged gratefully against the wall of the house, an ancient structure made in the traditional fashion: a high circular dwelling tower atop ground-level rooms used for keeping animals. There might be a stair leading from the stables to the dwelling rooms, to make it easier to move large objects from one to the other, but the main entrance would be four or five spans above the ground, and Jarrikk, whose eyes had closed of their own free will, heard the rush of air as Ukkaddikk took wing to investigate.

  He also heard the crunch of boots on cobblestones and sensed Ornawka’s approach. “Is he dying?”

  “Of course not,” Kathryn snapped. “He’s perfectly all right. Just tired.”

  You’re lying again, Jarrikk thought dreamily, and slept.

  Karak, clad in the bulky watersuit he hated, slowly and heavily climbed the stone stairs to the Guildheart. Not all the weight he carried was in the form of water or the machinery to circulate and oxygenate it: a lot of it came from the news he had just received from two fronts.

  The other Councilors awaited him in the star-spangled room, one representative from each race except the humans, seated, sprawled, or entanked around the circular council table moved into the room for these meetings. It was a cross-section of a huge tree from the Swampworlders’ planet, in honor of their creation of the Translator symbiote. Pinpoint-sized lights embedded in its black, non-reflective surface created an almost perfect illusion of an impossible view of Commonwealth Space, the home stars of the various races given rather greater magnitude than justified by astronomical fact.

  Karak gravely greeted each of the Councilors, then took his place at the head of the table, not far from the light representing his own homeworld of Ithkar, and checked to make sure that the computerized translation system necessary for the non-Guildtalk-speaking races was activated. It was irony itself that the greatest Translators of the Guild could only talk to each other through a pidgin language and crude machines, but though the Swampworlders had been working on the problem for years, they had yet to devise a way to Link more than two minds at once. Three-way Linkages had been tried: the results were hidden deep in the Guild Hall, cared for by machines as their vegetative lives slipped away.

  Without formality, Karak made his report. “Kitil likk has firm control of S’sinndikk. There have been various attempted uprisings, but all have been crushed by the Army of the Hunter, commanded by Flight Leader Lakkassikk. Supreme Flight Leader Akkanndikk is still sequestered, supposedly in hospital, but no one seems to know exactly where or what her condition is.” He drew in an extra gillful of the suit’s stagnant-tasting water before continuing. “Worse: Kitillikk has announced that the assassination attempt was the work of a human Translator.”

  That brought pandemonium, ear-piercing peeps from the Orrisians, a room-vibrating hum from the Aza, and a much-faster-than-usual burbling from the Swampworlder, all accompanied by an overwhelming surge of empathically felt outrage. But Karak wasn’t finished. “Translator Ursu and Ambassador Matthews are dead. Translators Jarrikk, Ukkaddikk, and Bircher we believe to be on board the Guildship Unity, which is trapped at S’sinndikk spaceport and surrounded by Hunters. Translator Ornawka’s whereabouts are unknown. We predict that Kitillikk will not wait long before attacking Unity. After that, the captured Translators will probably be subjected to a show trial, to build public support for the new regime, and then executed, probably as a send-off for the Hunter Fleet, which Kitillikk is rapidly mobilizing. We cannot be sure what her target will be.”

  Karak looked down at the star-studded tabletop. “I also have news from Earth. The pro-war Humanity First faction that was temporarily silenced by the apparent success of Matthews’ so-called peace mission has suddenly gained the ascendancy with his death at the claws of the S’sinn. The people of Earth are demanding immediate retaliation, and the Earth government is responding. Earth, too, is mobilizing its fleet.”

  “Can’t the Commonwealth stop this?” the computer said on behalf of the Orrisians. “The Hasshingu-Issk have ships that cowed both sides once before—”

  Karak raised his head again. “The Commonwealth is split along exactly the same fault lines as before Matthews’ mission. Commonwealth Central dares not intervene for fear of being seen to favor one side or the other. The governments of the other races are, in some instances, under severe pressure from their own people to uphold the illegal treaties they signed before the peace agreement was reached. Any move by the Commonwealth could topple some of those governments, and the Commonwealth would fall with them. The war that would destroy everything, including this Guild, would follow inevitably.”

  Silence. Finally the old Hasshingu-Issk Master, who had initiated Kathryn Bircher and so many other young Translators of all races, asked in his soft, hissing voice, “Then what does this Council do to stop it?”

  More silence followed, and as it deepened and remained unbroken, Karak turned and left the chamber.

  Kitillikk surveyed Kkirrik’S’sinn from the topmost spire of the Great Hall. There, from a round platform, she could see all of the city, and the countryside for thousands of spans in all directions. And all of it, she thought with great satisfaction, belonged to her: the riots quelled with club and firelance, her opponents driven underground (though she was still determined to root the last of them out), the priests receiving nothing but favorable omens from the Mouth of the Hunter. The old, weak order had been swept away. The days of glory were just begun: and Kitillikk, not one given to fancy, nevertheless allowed herself to imagine, just for a moment, that the statues of the great Supreme Flight Leaders from S’sinndikk’s bloody past gazed at her with satisfaction from the memorial towers all around her.

  Ukkarr came winging up toward her, circled the tower once below her as a gesture of respect, then flew up onto the platform. “News,” he said brusquely. “News that will not please you, Your Altitude.”

  What could fail to please me today? she thought magnanimously. S
ometimes Ukkarr was an old wor rier. “Tell me this news.”

  “Unity has opened its hatches to us.”

  Kitillikk almost laughed. “Why should this displease me, Ukkarr?”

  He said nothing, just gazed at her steadily, and suddenly she realized what his news really meant, and her good mood fell away as though it had never been. “Hunter’s spew! The Translators have escaped!”

  “We have searched the Unity. They are not there, and the crew willingly admits that they fled overnight through a maintenance tube.”

  “Which would have led them to the maintenance shop, which was guarded, of course?” Kitillikk said icily.

  “It was guarded. The guard is dead. A beamer wound in the back.”

  “One guard? Incompetence!” Kitillikk glared across the city to the spaceport. She had been planning to order the attack on the Unity for that evening. The escaped Translators could do her no real harm, but she did not appreciate the setback to her public relations plans. And there was still the matter of revenge. Revenge was a duty of every S’sinn, the priests said, but for Kitillikk, revenge against Jarrikk and Bircher and especially Ornawka was more than a duty—it would be a pleasure. “Find them,” she snarled. “They can’t have gone far. They’ll be hiding, probably in the countryside. Search every farm in the vicinity.”

  “I obey, Your Altitude. Will that be all?”

  “No. How stands the Fleet?”

  “Ready.”

  “Order them to the marshalling point. I will join them in two days with final instructions. And then, Ukkarr, then the humans will feel the full power of the S’sinn!”

  “Yes, Supreme Flight Leader.”

  “Go.”

  Ukkarr flung himself into space and swept away. Kitillikk took one more look around at the city in the gathering dusk, then descended into the depths of the tower, to the communications room. Most of the dimspace coordinates she had found preset in its transmitter matched those she now input: Akkanndikk had been talking to someone at Commonwealth Central, though not, she felt certain, the same someone she was about to contact.

  The screen filled only with static, no image of the S’sinn to whom she spoke, a function of the extremely narrow bandwidth of the dimspace channel they were using, intended to minimize the already vanishingly small chance it would be intercepted. But she knew well the voice that answered, having hand-picked this Hunter and all the others in his secret little group from the rather large delegation the former Supreme Flight Leader had sent to Commonwealth Central as part of the official diplomatic corps.

  “Two S’sinn days,” she said crisply. “Exactly. From now. Whatever time that translates to locally. You’ll be ready?”

  “Ready since the first day we got here,” the Hunter replied. “This planet takes its security for granted.”

  “Not for long,” Kitillikk said. “Not for long. When you’ve accomplished your mission, report to me. I’ll be on board the Bloodfeud. You have the coordinates.”

  “Understood.”

  Kitillikk broke the connection. Revenge, she thought. Glory to the Hunter; if the priests had it right, glory to her and to the S’sinn race, whatever. They would have revenge—on the humans, on the Translators, and on the Commonwealth.

  She grinned savagely at her reflection in the dark screen of the transmitter, then went to find something to eat.

  Chapter 18

  Dozing beside Jarrikk, Kathryn jerked fearfully awake as half a dozen S’sinn winged down from the dark sky to light in the farmyard, but the empathic resonances were, if not exactly friendly, at least non-threatening, and a moment later she recognized Ukkaddikk, who came over to her, ignoring Jim. “Jarrikk?”

  Kathryn looked at Dr. Chung. “Asleep,” the doctor said. “Exhausted. He needs rest.”

  “As do we all,” said Ukkaddikk. “These are friends. They will take us in.”

  “Give them our thanks,” Kathryn said.

  “I already have.” Ukkaddikk turned and said something to the other waiting S’sinn, two of whom moved forward and gathered up Jarrikk. He stirred, but did not wake, as they carried him inside toward the wooden stairs, past massive six-legged beasts that grumbled in deep, growling tones at having their slumber disturbed. Kathryn and the other humans followed on their own, with Ukkaddikk; one of the remaining S’sinn remained on the ground at the stable entrance, while the other two exchanged rapid-fire words, then leaped into the sky.

  Kathryn found the muttering of the animals, and their warm, musty smell, oddly warm and comforting. The brief surge of adrenalin from the arrival of the S’sinn had already faded, and she yawned hugely.

  The stairs led to an open cellar-type door that let them into a semi-circular kitchen. Two big arched windows looked out into darkness, and at a fireplace in the flat wall a gray-muzzled female S’sinn coaxed embers into flame with wood taken from a big pile to one side. She didn’t look up as they passed by her into a smaller room that Kathryn judged to be a dining area, furnished with a chest-high table surrounded by well-worn shikks of blood-red wood. They trudged on over scarred floors of dark brown planks into a hallway with arches to the left and more stairs going up at the end; went up those stairs into a windowless, circular chamber with six arches opening off of it, and went through one of those arches into a room with a padded, shallow circular pit in its centre, into which the leading S’sinn lowered Jarrikk, who stirred and muttered, but still did not wake.

  Ukkaddikk spoke softly to the S’sinn, who growled something in return and went out. “I have asked them to bring cushions for you to sleep on,” he told the humans.

  “Thank you,” Kathryn and Dr. Chung replied together.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Jim said. “But what happens next?”

  “I suggest we discuss that in the morning.”

  “I suggest we discuss it now.”

  “In the morning.” Ukkaddikk spread his wings and dove out the window.

  “I don’t like this,” Jim said. “We don’t really know what’s going on here.”

  “You can sense as well as I can that these S’sinn aren’t hostile,” Kathryn said.

  “And you can sense as well as I can that they’re on edge. They’re up to something.”

  “Of course they’re on edge. They’re harboring fugitives.”

  “There’s more to it than that.” Jim sat down against the wall, arms folded, beamer cradled in the crook of his left elbow. “I’m keeping watch.”

  “Suit yourself.” Kathryn yawned again. “As soon as they get back with those cushions—ah, here they are!”

  Their S’sinn hosts entered with a stack of thin cushions like the ones in Jarrikk’s sleeping pit, little more than pads, really, but better than bare wood. She nodded her thanks; the S’sinn exchanged glances and left. Kathryn and Dr. Chung spread the cushions and lay down on them, but tired though she was, Kathryn didn’t sleep for several minutes.

  Blast Jim for putting the thought in her head, but . . . these S’sinn were up to something. Something involving them. She’d have to ask Ukkaddikk . . .

  In the morning.

  Jarrikk woke to the sounds of falling rain and two S’sinn arguing. Not quite sure where he was, he blinked open gritty eyes and saw Ukkaddikk, framed by an arch-window filled with soggy gray sky. “. . . name won’t protect you against Kitillikk’s search.”

  “She wouldn’t dare!”

  “She dared to move against the Supreme Flight Leader.”

  Jarrikk looked from Ukkaddikk to the second S’sinn, someone he’d never seen before, but who wore the red-gold collar that bespoke a place in the Supreme Flight. “She thinks I support her,” the stranger said. “And Lakkassikk’s army knows that. They will not search here.”

  Jarrikk remembered now . . . fleeing the Unity, Ornawka shooting the guard in the back, the painful trudge across muddy fields, the ancient farmhouse. “But we can’t stay here forever,” he said, his voice grating in his ears.

  Both S’sinn looked down in surprise. �
�Good, you’re awake!” Ukkaddikk said.

  “How could I sleep with people arguing over my sleeping pit?”

  “Translator Jarrikk, I am Pikkiro,” said the stranger. “We are honored by your presence.”

  “I’m honored by your hospitality,” Jarrikk said. “And grateful. But, Ukkaddikk, I mean what I say. Even if Lakkassikk’s Hunters do not find us here, we cannot stay. We have to try to stop Kitillikk.”

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” said Pikkiro. “Be cause I think I know how we can.”

  “Not now,” Ukkaddikk said. “Later. When we are all as sure as you are that the search will pass us by. If we are taken, the less we know about the opposition to Kitillikk the better.”

  Pikkiro bowed his head slightly. “Agreed. In any event, it is a discussion your human friends should also be a part of, and they still sleep. Tonight, over meat.” He looked at Jarrikk. “I am sorry we woke you. Please rest as long as you like.”

  “I doubt we have that much time,” Jarrikk said. “But thank you.”

  Pikkiro and Ukkaddikk left, arguing again, but in low voices. Jarrikk raised his head above the edge of the pit and looked around the room. Somebody had brought cushions for the three humans. Dr. Chung and Kathryn slept soundly, but Ornawka sat against the wall, cradling the beamer with which he’d killed the guard. Jarrikk exchanged a long, cold look with him, then settled back again. Outside the rain intensified, its steady patter soon lulling him back to sleep.

  He felt almost like himself again that evening when all of them gathered in the dining room downstairs: Pikkiro, his brother Tillikk, Ukkaddikk, Jarrikk, Kathryn, Ornawka, and Dr. Chung. Pikkiro’s prediction had proven correct: Lakkassikk’s Hunters had accepted without question Pikkiro’s assurance he had searched his land himself and found no fugitives. That gave them a little breathing space—but not much, Pikkiro said. He paused as the elderly female servant brought in platters of raw, fresh-killed meat for the S’sinn and (well-hiding the distaste that was clear in her mind) cooked meat for the humans. Salty lukka bread, tangy mukkuro cheese, and a selection of raw fruits and vegetables rounded out the repast, which Jarrikk fell to with a vengeance. The humans ate heartily, too, though they avoided looking at their more carnivorous companions.