Lost In Translation (14 page)

But it couldn't be done this way. It couldn't be done by drawing the entire Commonwealth into war, a war that would destroy it, and with it the Guild that served it—the Guild that had carried him past his first death, his death as a S'sinn. He couldn't allow it!

To Yvekkarr's apparent relief, he started walking again. He had felt Kitillikk's momentary fear when he mentioned the Supreme Flight Leader. She had overstepped her authority, he felt certain, to make this play for power. It made her vulnerable. He would report to Karak as soon as he returned to the
Dikari,
and . . .

He stopped short, ignoring the exasperation he felt from Yvekkarr. “There are Translators who put their home-worlds above some empty oath to your precious Guild,” Kitillikk had said. And Karak was Ithkarite . . .

And with that thought, that worm of distrust, though he put it aside as firmly as he could, it occurred to him that the damage done to Guild and Commonwealth might already be past anyone's repairing.

 

As the door closed behind the crippled Translator, Ukkarr growled. “You wasted your generosity on that one, Flight Leader.”

“Did I?” Kitillikk stretched her wings languorously. “I'm not so sure.”

“But he refused you!”

“He performed his task well this evening. As for the rest . . . one can never tell what fruit such plantings will yield.” She stretched out her hand, admiring the glistening black claws against the background of the chamber's red-stained stone. “More important than whether he agreed to help us or not was to firmly establish his views. In the game to come, Translator Jarrikk will be an important piece. I had to know if he was mine or my opponent's. Had he been mine—and he may yet be—I would have known how to play him. Should he prove to belong to my opponent, I know how to counter him.” She clenched her hand suddenly. “Either way, he is trapped in the game—and he cannot escape.” Kitillikk leaped to her feet. “Things are moving quickly, Ukkarr!” She moved closer to him, ran her hands through the thick fur of his body, her hearts beginning to pound. “Can you keep up?”

“Always, Flight Leader.” Ukkarr bared his teeth. “Always.”

“Then catch me!” Kitillikk threw open the door, ran down the corridor, and flung herself into the cool morning air, and as she heard the beat of Ukkarr's wings rising fast behind her, she laughed.
This is my advantage,
she thought.
This is my edge. The Supreme Flight Leader has grown old, and complacent. She belongs to the Commonwealth, not to the S'sinn. This is what it is to be S'sinn! Let passion rule! What does the Supreme Flight Leader know of passion: for sex, for power, for revenge?

“I'm coming!” she screamed at the sky, at the stars beyond it, at distant S'sinndikk and even more distant Earth; then Ukkarr caught her and she forgot all her ambition in the ancient skydance of the S'sinn.

Sometimes it was best to concentrate on one passion at a time.

 

Jarrikk stood in his quarters aboard the
Dikari,
facing the vidwall, which displayed a life-sized image of Karak floating naked in the waters of his own quarters in the Guildhall. Free of the watersuit and its exoskeleton, his shape was not bipedal at all; his almost globular, iridescent body, from which writhed six locomotive tentacles and six manipulators, moved through the water with boneless grace, gill-slits pulsating below the fringe of feeding-tentacles that encircled his beak. It seemed odd to hear perfect home-planet S'sinn emerging from that alien mouth. “Your news, while distressing, is not unexpected,” Karak said. “The Guild has been aware for some time of the other treaties you mention. Two Translators have been expelled from the Guild for their part in arranging them. Other Translators must have been involved, too, of course, but as yet we have not identified them.”

Jarrikk felt a chill. “Master, I—”

“No need to fear, Translator; the two in question were actively involved in the process, not used unknowingly by the perpetrators, as you were. In both instances, we discovered the treaty through other sources and confronted them with the facts. I regret to say they were unrepentant.” One of the tentacles at the top of his head snatched a tiny silver fish from the water. It passed from tentacle to tentacle to his beak, which snapped once, devouring it.

“Flight Leader Kitillikk wanted me to join her conspiracy,” Jarrikk said. “I refused.”

“I almost wish you hadn't. It would have been useful to have a spy within the S'sinn war party. I don't suppose you could convince her you've changed your mind—”

“I do not think so,” Jarrikk said stiffly, while several dearly-held notions of the Guild's political purity came crashing down.

“You're shocked, aren't you?” Karak said. Not for the first time in dealing with the Guildmaster, Jarrikk wondered if maybe the Swampworlders
had
perfected a method of transmitting emotions over long distances, after all. “The Guild exists on two levels, Jarrikk, like everything else. On one level, we are an ideal, an ideal of neutrality and cooperation among species. On another level, we are a huge organization with two goals: serving the Commonwealth, and surviving. At the upper level, you can afford to be above all the political maneuvering the Seven Races can muster, which is quite a lot. At the lower, you cannot.”

“But such a spy . . . could not survive his first Translation with a Translator sympathetic to the other side,” Jarrikk said slowly. “Unless . . .” With all the other shocks he'd been given, who was to say this couldn't be true, as well? “Unless it
is
possible to lie under Programming!”

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.

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?”