Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

  “Kitillikk has mustered the Fleet,” Pikkiro continued when the servant had left. “It gathers above us now. It launches tomorrow.”

  “What target?” Ukkaddikk asked, as Jarrikk stopped eating to translate what was being said into Guildtalk for the humans’ benefit. “Kisradikk?”

  “No. Kikks’sarr. Where the War began.”

  Of course, Jarrikk thought. Where Kitillikk suffered the indignity of seeing half the world that should have been hers given over to the humans by the Commonwealth.

  “We’ll have to start calling it the First War if she succeeds,” Ukkaddikk said grimly. “She must be stopped. The Fleet must be stopped. Now, Pikkiro. Now, tell us this plan.”

  Pikkiro nodded to his brother, who got up to close and bolt the door and the shutters on the windows, shutting out the dying light of the gray day and leaving the room lit only by the fire that blazed behind Pikkiro. “I know where the Supreme Flight Leader is,” he said in a low voice. “We must rescue her.”

  As Jarrikk repeated that for the humans, he caught a surprising flood of satisfaction from Kathryn, and looked at her. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew they were planning something!”

  Ornawka, as usual, was an empathic blank, but he absently rubbed his hand over the beamer at his belt.

  Pikkiro continued. “The priests have only supported Kitillikk because they believe Akkanndikk is really dead, and that Kitillikk has said she is alive only to keep the populace in line. That’s what Kitillikk has told them. But an acolyte in the Temple has told me that he has seen priests who are fanatical supporters of Kitillikk carrying food into the depths of the Temple, through a door that is used by no one else, and always locked. He also tells me that he has no doubt that if those priests found him spying on them, he would be killed, so he has made no attempt to find out what lies through that door.”

  “Then you’re not sure.”

  “As sure as we can hope to be. And if we are wrong, then all is lost, because if Akkanndikk is not there, either she really is dead, or at the very least we have no hope of finding her before the Fleet breaks orbit.”

  “The Temple,” Ukkaddikk said slowly. “A difficult place to sneak into. How can we hope to make this rescue?”

  “It will be all but deserted tomorrow. Every ship in the Fleet must receive the blessing of the Hunter before setting off to war, and Kitillikk is in a hurry. Every priest that can be spared will be pressed into that service.”

  Ukkaddikk looked at Jarrikk. “What do you think?”

  Jarrikk finished translating for the humans and turned to the other two S’sinn. “We must try,” he said quietly. “Or our escape from the Unity served no purpose—as did all our efforts to avert war.”

  Kathryn spoke up in Guildtalk. “We must try, or everything we’ve done here has been wasted,” and Jarrikk laughed to hear her echoing his words so closely, then had to quickly explain his amusement to her when she frowned at him.

  Ornawka didn’t smile at all. “Sounds like it’s a good thing I hung on to this,” he growled, and patted the beamer.

  Pikkiro’s plan, Kathryn judged as she listened to Jarrikk’s translation of it, was simplicity itself, though it promised to be more than a little uncomfortable. As a member of the Supreme Flight, Pikkiro had access to a private area of the Temple for meditation and worship. Ukkaddikk and Jarrikk could both enter as members of his entourage. The difficulty, obviously, lay in getting the humans inside. Pikkiro’s plan was to offer sacrifice to the Hunter and ask His blessing on the Fleet. He would bring in a large, living animal on a heavily decorated cart—and the humans would be hidden in the cart.

  Once inside, they need only find the door the informative acolyte had told Pikkiro about, rescue the Supreme Flight Leader, and then take her to the priests, who, Pikkiro seemed confident, would immediately call a halt to blessing the Fleet and demand that Kitillikk return.

  Kathryn wasn’t so sure, but she said nothing about her doubts. After all, what else could they do?

  So it was that, before dawn the next morning, she found herself flat on her back in pitch blackness, her right arm pressed tightly against Jim and her left against Dr. Chung, and her nose just a centimeter away from a false floor of rough wood that Pikkiro and Tillikko had built into a cart the night before. Above that, she knew, a jarrbukk contentedly munched fedra inside a gilded cage. The jarrbukk, a gorgeous golden hexaped, might have been taken intact from some ancient pastoral frieze if not for the incredible, eye-watering stench that accompanied it and had already thoroughly infiltrated their enclosed hiding space.

  At least the journey would be a relatively short one: no more than four thousand beats, Pikkiro had said, which Jarrikk had explained meant between two and three hours. They planned to arrive at the Temple just as the priests’ shuttle left the spaceport, shortly after sunrise.

  The cart jerked and began to roll. One good thing about being so tightly packed into their hiding space, Kathryn reflected as they jounced out of the farmyard: it saved them from bouncing around as the unsprung cart transmitted every irregularity of the ground perfectly to their bodies. Above them the jarrbukk brayed harshly, obviously unhappy about this sudden change in its fortunes.

  Without even trying, Kathryn could sense Jarrikk, not five meters away, behind the cart and off to the right. Since their strange linking, he had never been so far away that she could not feel his presence at least a little bit in the back of her mind. But even with Jim closer to her than he had been since that night in his quarters in the Guildhall—centuries ago that seemed, now—she could not penetrate his shield. By contrast, she could read Dr. Chung’s emotional state—dominantly apprehension—easily.

  But it was Jim’s emotions she really wanted to be able to read, and if empathy couldn’t do it for her, she’d have to fall back on that poorest of all substitutes: words.

  She turned her head the little bit toward him she could, and whispered, so that Dr. Chung wouldn’t hear, “Jim, what’s wrong?”

  She felt his body stiffen. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’ve been . . . hostile. Ever since you made it back to Unity. Especially to Jarrikk and Ukkaddikk.”

  “S’sinn killed Matthews and Annette. I’m just having a little trouble being friendly right now.”

  “But Jarrikk and Ukkaddikk are Translators . . .”

  “They’re still S’sinn. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Kathryn turned her face upward again, remembering that conversation she’d had with Jim before she left the Guildhall, remembering how Jim had told her not to take the words of her Oath too much to heart, remembering how he’d said “species ties” were going to be important, and especially remembering his last question: “If war comes, will you side with aliens against your own kind?”

  And then she also remembered that one brief glimpse beneath Jim’s shields that she and Jarrikk had achieved in the maintenance room, the horrifying pleasure that had been Jim’s reaction to his killing of the guard, and despite the sweltering confines of the cart, she felt very cold.

  Jarrikk had never before worn the enfolding cloak of a Temple Penitent, and he found it uncomfortably warm and confining, even in the damp pre-dawn gloom. At the same time, he could appreciate its value as a disguise, especially when, after an hour’s easy walk along muddy but well-maintained roads, they saw ahead, in the growing twilight, a checkpoint guarded by two huge, firelance-toting Hunters. Two others circled overhead. “I’ll take care of this,” Pikkiro said. “Stop the cart.” He went ahead as Ukkaddikk calmed the two horned kaxxa that pulled the cart.

  Jarrikk sensed Kathryn’s questioning uneasiness at the halt, but dared not speak to her out loud. Instead, he tried to reach out telepathically, but with no success. That particular link still seemed to require touch. Still, she relaxed a little, and he hoped that at least some reassurance had seeped through.

  He couldn’t do anything about Dr. Chung’s equal uneasiness, and as for Ornawka . . .


  Pikkiro came back. “There are two more checkpoints between here and the Temple,” he said calmly, “but I’ve cleared us through both of them. It would appear I am still one of the most trusted members of the Supreme Flight.”

  “Not for much longer,” Ukkaddikk said dryly.

  “Only if we fail. If we succeed, my position will be stronger than ever with the true Supreme Flight Leader. Heek!” He chirped at the kaxxa, and they climbed up from their knees and started forward again.

  Jarrikk kept his eyes down as they passed the Hunters, but he sensed no suspicion from them, only boredom. The same held true at the remaining two checkpoints. And then they were into the city, where the crowds seemed sparse, even for early morning. Normally the city bustled from dawn to dusk and from top to bottom, with carters and merchants hauling or hawking large or bulk wares on the ground, specialty merchants selling smaller personal or luxury items from the balconies and perches that thrust out at all levels of the city’s towers, and eating and drinking establishments thriving among the spires. But today only a few carts like their own and even fewer powered vehicles trundled along the grassy lanes, and no merchants seemed to be about at all. Nor did the restaurants and bars seem to be doing much business, those that weren’t shuttered. If there were S’sinn about, they were keeping a low profile and keeping quiet.

  “Kitillikk,” Pikkiro growled as they rolled down one empty lane past closed shop after closed shop. “She forbids assemblies of more than five S’sinn, forbids flights above a limited distance, forbids this, forbids that. She has strangled the city half-unconscious so she need not fear an uprising while she is off fighting her war. Then, when she has won, she will return and celebrate her victory by freeing her own populace, who will be so grateful to her, and so pleased that she has destroyed the hated humans, that they will flock to her side and her ascension to Supreme Flight Leader will be made permanent. At which time, no doubt, the true Supreme Flight Leader really will succumb to the injuries she suffered in the assassination attempt, just as the priests already think she has.”

  They could be right, Jarrikk thought as the black towers of the Temple rose in front of them. We could be on a fool’s errand.

  To their right rose the wingless statues guarding the Place of Flightless Sacrifice. Jarrikk ignored them. Ahead gaped the Hunter’s Maw, the main gate into the Temple courtyard. Normally the grassy space beyond would be crowded with worshippers and tourists from around the world and even off-planet, but today it was empty. They rolled into it beneath the impassive stone eyes of ancient High Priests, carved in holy poses atop the Temple walls.

  When Jarrikk had come into this courtyard as a tourist himself, before the peace conference with the humans, he had next mounted the twenty-nine well-worn black stone steps directly ahead that led into the main worship hall, the Hunter’s Heart, one of the few times in his life his flightlessness had gone unnoticed, since all S’sinn entered the Hunter’s Heart on foot. But Pikkiro led them instead to a closed gate in the courtyard’s left wall. He knocked, and after a few moments a small panel in the middle of the gate swung inward. The grizzled gatekeeper who looked out nodded to Pikkiro in recognition and unbolted the gate for them.

  Beyond stretched a long, narrow path of yellowing grass, hemmed in by black stone walls. At its end, the path turned sharply right, revealing another gate, smaller than the public one leading into the Hunter’s Heart but also far more ornate, its arch of black marble shot through with fiery red streaks. A blood-red flame burned in a torch at the arch’s peak.

  This time they had to open the gate themselves. “A sign of humility,” Pikkiro said. “Like walking up the stairs to the public gate. It also means we can enter without alerting anyone inside.”

  Apparently the S’sinn of the Supreme Flight didn’t like to carry humility to extremes: the finely balanced, well-oiled doors practically opened at the first touch of Pikkiro’s finger. They urged the kaxxa through the arch and into a large round worship chamber (though much smaller than the Hunter’s Heart), where more of the scarlet-burning torches struggled but failed to lift the gloom clinging to the dead-black walls. Pillars shaped like huge interlocking teeth encircled the chamber, and at its center reposed a round slab of dark red stone; reaching down from the ceiling above it, a clawed stone hand crooked its fingers to take what was offered.

  “Help me unload the jarrbukk and move the kaxxa out onto the grass,” Pikkiro said. “Then I will make the sacrifice while you free the humans.”

  From the change in the sound that penetrated their dark hiding place, Kathryn presumed they had entered the Temple, and it was with relief that she heard the jarrbukk’s hooves clattering above her as it was led from the cart, and with much greater relief that she gulped fresh air as the first of the planks disappeared from over their heads.

  The first thing she did when she could sit up was scratch her nose; then she climbed out of the cart, groaning, and turned to help Dr. Chung. She had hold of the doctor’s hand and was helping her from the cart when something screamed behind her and she almost pulled Dr. Chung down on top of her.

  She spun to see the jarrbukk drop to its knees, blood from its slit throat pouring down over the red altar. Its eyes glazed, its tail twitched spasmodically, then it fell on its side and lay still. Behind it, Pikkiro held aloft a curved, bloodstained blade, and shouted something to the giant clawed hand descending from ceiling. Kathryn felt his fervor and devotion, and it terrified, thrilled, and troubled her all at once. The knowledge they would face that same fanatical devotion in the priests who held Akkanndikk captive terrified her; the sheer, blazing heat of the emotion that filled Pikkiro thrilled her—and the realization that she no longer believed in anything with that kind of fervor troubled her. Once, maybe, she had given the Guild such devotion: no longer. And she wasn’t even sure if that were good or bad.

  “Barbaric,” Jim muttered, then drew his beamer and turned away, surveying the encircling giant teeth as though expecting hostile S’sinn to pop out from behind them at any moment. Dr. Chung, on the other hand, seemed more fascinated than horrified.

  “A sacrifice to the Hunter,” the doctor breathed. “I’ve read about it, but no offworlder has ever been allowed to see the ceremony performed. Next should come the flame . . .”

  “Flame?” Kathryn looked back at the altar. Pikkiro had backed away, wiping the blood from the knife on a clean white cloth, which he then threw onto the animal’s carcass. As the cloth touched it, the carcass burst into flames. Kathryn’s ears popped and a powerful breeze tugged at her clothes. The flames, smoke, and sparks raced up into the Hand of the Hunter. In seconds, all trace of the jarrbukk had vanished, leaving the altar clean and blank as before.

  Kathryn looked at Jarrikk. “Impressive,” she said. He half-spread his wings in a S’sinn shrug.

  Pikkiro came back to them. “I have asked the Hunter’s favor on our mission. Let us begin it.” He tossed the sheathed sacrificial knife down into the cart, and in its place drew out a long black firelance. Jarrikk and Ukkaddikk pulled firelances from the cart as well; they had left their Commonwealth beamers at the farm. Kathryn checked the hilt of her own beamer to make sure the weapon was fully charged, but did not draw it from its holster.

  Pikkiro silently held out an extra lance to Dr. Chung, but she refused.

  Behind the altar, an open arch led out of the worship chamber. Pikkiro took them through it into a long, dark corridor, punctuated by other arches at regular intervals. Only their footsteps on the well-worn stone floor broke the deathly silence that otherwise gripped the Temple, as though it had been abandoned for a thousand years. Kathryn glanced through each of the arches they passed, but always saw the same thing: a dark, empty stone chamber, unrelieved even by windows.

  “Penitence chambers,” Jarrikk explained before she even asked him. “The priests consider it good to occasionally shut themselves away from the sky and meditate on their service to the Hunter.”

  They came to a rising flight of
stairs, down which poured daylight. Pikkiro climbed them cautiously, looked around, then motioned for the others to follow. They emerged into a grassy courtyard surrounded by towers and walls, filled with gaping black arches glaring down at them. They stood there in plain sight for an agonizingly long time, while Pikkiro slowly turned in place, but at last he gestured and pointed to a ground-level arch almost directly opposite the stairs they’d just ascended, and they scurried into it like roaches surprised by a midnight light.

  This corridor ran for a much shorter distance before ending in a door. Pikkiro said something, and Jarrikk translated for the humans. “Beyond this door is the base of the Great Tower,” he said. “Supreme Flight Leader Akkanndikk, if she is here, is being held in a chamber beneath the Tower. Across from this door is another door, beneath a flight of stairs. That door leads to Akkanndikk’s prison. Pikkiro does not expect to find guards on this level; the strength of this chamber as a prison is that it has been unused for so long its existence is all but forgotten. But he admits he is not positive, so he asks that you have your weapons ready.”

  “My weapon’s been ready since we left the Unity,” Jim said.

  “We noticed,” Kathryn said. “But I don’t sense anybody except us. The chamber must be empty.” Nevertheless, she drew her own beamer for the first time. It felt awkward and unpleasant in her hand. She wondered if she could actually bring herself to fire the thing, and hoped fervently she wasn’t about to find out.