Lost In Translation (9 page)

A chill went through him. Windowless? Doored? Only prisoners were kept in windowless rooms with doors. But he couldn't be a prisoner, could he?

Could he? For attacking a human?

Space is limited,
he told himself.
We must be fighting again. The hospital needs all its rooms for war injuries. Someone had to be put down here, and since I was unconscious . . .

But if space were that limited, there would be others with him in this large, echoing room, and there was no one; no one but himself.

Then the door opened.

The S'sinn who entered stopped when she saw Jarrikk looking at her, then nodded once and crossed to him. He stared at her with something approaching dread. He'd been expecting a healer, or, if he really were a prisoner, a Hunter; maybe even Kitillikk herself, eyes aflame with fury at his stupidity; but not this, not a female wearing a gold collar embossed with the jet-black outline of a S'sinn holding a glowing blue gem in its claws.

Not a priest!

“Jarrikk,” said the priest as she came to stand beside his shikk. “I am Iko.”

“Am I dying, Mother Iko?”

The priest stared into his eyes. “You are already dead, Jarrikk.”

One of his hearts skipped a beat, causing one blue globe to flash briefly red and beep a warning before resuming its pulsing at a much faster rate. “Mother?” Jarrikk said faintly.

“You were badly wounded, Jarrikk. The healers saved your life; they could not repair your wing. You are flightless.”

The heartglobe beeped another warning. The blackness he'd just escaped whirled around Jarrikk, threatening to engulf him again. Flightless!
Flightless!
No wonder the healers never spoke to him, no wonder he had been put in this windowless cell, no wonder he shared it with no other patients. Flightless? The healers should have slain him, should never have let him wake up. They had a duty to the Flock, a duty to the S'sinn, they had a duty to him! “Why do I still breathe?” he cried, and would have lunged up and flung himself at the wall to shatter his skull against it if not for the straps that restrained him.

“It was not our doing.” Disgust tinged Mother Iko's voice. “The incident you caused brought the Commonwealth meddlers diving in. They prevented us from avenging you. Then, after one of their Translators touched you to see if he could make sense of your ravings, they insisted that we keep you alive. They have monitored every step of your treatment. The healers have had no opportunity to uphold their oaths, Jarrikk. Nor have I. The Commonwealth has claimed you for itself.”

Jarrikk strained against the restraints once more. “Mother, you are here, we are alone, kill me, now, quickly! By the Hunter of Worlds, Mother, I beg you—”

The priest backed away. “I cannot, Jarrikk. The Hunter forgive me, I cannot.”

“You must! You swore an oath! Mother—”

Iko took a step forward, her hands reaching out toward him—

—and the door crashed inward, admitting two of the reptilian soldiers Jarrikk had seen the day of the Treaty, beamers aimed at the priest. Iko lowered her hands. “I'm sorry, Jarrikk. I truly am. But you are not of the S'sinn anymore.”

“Then I am nothing!” Jarrikk howled after her as she turned and fled.
“I am nothing!”

A new figure appeared in the door, a male S'sinn, wearing a silver collar bearing a triangle within a circle within a square, all set in blue stone. “Stop that,” he snapped. “Of course you are.” He nodded curtly to the reptilians, who went out, closing the door behind them.

“I am flightless!”

“So, you're flightless.” The S'sinn opened his wings and regarded them. “Most races are, you know. You don't see them swearing at their doctors because they kept them alive.”

“We are not ‘most races!' ” Jarrikk snarled. “We are S'sinn!”

“Yes, aren't we.” The stranger came over to Jarrikk's shikk. “There are more ways to fly than with wings, Jarrikk.” He put his hand on Jarrikk's head. “Do you feel that?”

“Of course I feel it,” Jarrikk snapped. “Who are you, anyway? Why don't you just go away?”

“And leave you contemplating creative ways to suicide? I don't think so.” The strange S'sinn continued to hold his hand to Jarrikk's head. “That's quite a block,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I never had anything half that strong. Of course, I didn't grow up in the broodhall . . . you'd have to have a strong shield with all those other S'sinn around . . .”

Didn't grow up in the broodhall?
Jarrikk stared up at the stranger. “Who are you?” he repeated.

“Quiet,” the other said softly. “I've almost got . . . there!”

And with a kind of soundless click, the windowless room seemed suddenly to flood with light, as though open to the sky in every direction. Jarrikk could feel—
feel
—the other S'sinn's mixture of amusement and concern and exasperation, could faintly sense the strange bored intensity of the reptilian soldiers outside his door, could pick up other echoes of emotions from other S'sinn from who-knew-where—but most aston ishingly of all, he could feel, really feel, himself, could identify the layers of grief and anger and lust for revenge that colored every thought and action, could almost see the new layer of astonishment and wonder building on top of that, dissolving some of it away—

—dissolving, for example, a little of the wish for, the expectation of, death.

“Ah, I see you feel it now,” said the other S'sinn.

“I don't—I don't understand . . .”

“You will.” The other S'sinn spread his wings again and made an exaggerated court curtsey normally reserved for the Supreme Flight Leader. “Allow me to present myself. I am Ukkaddikk, of the Guild of Translators.”

“Guild of—”

“Translators,” Ukkaddikk finished helpfully. “Don't try to take it all in at once,” he added, unnecessarily, since Jarrikk was hardly taking anything in at all at that moment, weariness having suddenly washed over him like a bank of gray fog. “Plenty of time. The rest of your life, in fact—which, I'm happy to say, now looks like it should be a long one.” He went to the door. “Rest. We'll talk more later, and I'll explain.”

He went out, and Jarrikk marveled at the fading sense of satisfaction he sensed from the retreating Translator. Flightless . . . it was still his duty to die, of course, nothing could change that . . .

. . . but the thought trailed him down into sleep that since they insisted on keeping him alive, it couldn't hurt to hear what this Translator had to say, and to explore this strange new sense.

He'd live.
For a while, anyway.

 

“A Translator?” Kitillikk stared at Mother Iko. “You're certain?”

“I heard two of the Commonwealth monsters talking, Flight Leader,” Iko said. “He is a Translator. Or he will be. He has the gift.”

“So that is why they would not let us honor him!” Kitillikk went to the window and looked out over the city, the walls of its ugly buildings almost beautiful in the golden light of the setting sun. A single bright star already shone in the eastern sky. “Ukkarr.”

“Flight Leader?” He came out of the shadows to her side.

“It would be a useful thing to have a Translator in our service, would it not?”

“It would,” Ukkarr said. “But they swear an oath . . .”

“Jarrikk has already sworn an oath—to me. I think he will be little inclined to break it in favor of the oath of the Translators, which I understand requires a promise to treat all races equally.” She ran a claw delicately along the windowsill. “Not when he learns that that promise includes humans.”

Ukkarr showed his teeth in amusement. “I'm sure you are right, Flight Leader. What action should I take?”

“Arrange for me to visit Jarrikk. He may be confused about his duty. I must explain to him his responsibility to uphold the Commonwealth Treaty.”

“I go, Flight Leader.” Ukkarr sprang out the window and away.

“Now, Mother Iko . . .” Kitillikk turned back toward the priest—but she, too, was gone. “Leave it alone, priest,” Kitillikk growled to the empty room. “Leave it alone!”

“The Commonwealth Treaty,” Ukkaddikk began, looking out the window of Jarrikk's new room. At his insistence, Jarrikk had been moved upstairs into a chamber with huge arched windows that overlooked a landscaped courtyard with lots of trees and flowers and a delicate fountain that must have been shipped directly from S'sinndikk; there'd been little time for that kind of art on Kikks'sarr. Jarrikk had thought he wanted the window; now he wasn't so sure, as a youngflight soared overhead and he thought again of his slain brothers and his own useless wings. He was in no mood to listen to a lecture on the Commonwealth Treaty, but it seemed Ukkaddikk intended to give him one, nevertheless.

“The Commonwealth is based on the fortunate fact that the Swampworlders communicate with each other telepathically and empathically,” Ukkaddikk continued. “When the Hasshingu-Issk—the reptilian race whose soldiers I think you've seen—landed on the Swampworld, the Swampworlders—”

“—captured one that had some natural empathic ability and turned him into the first Translator,” Jarrikk finished. “I have had some education, Ukkaddikk. I know the history of the Translators. The Swampworlders, masters of genetic engineering, mutated a symbiotic lifeform native to their planet into a universal nervous system interface that allows telepathic communication between two empaths from any sentient races.”

“Well, any that we've come across so far.”

“Even humans?”

“Oh, yes—in fact, it took very little work to adapt the interface to humans. According to the Swampworlders, they're very much like us.”

Jarrikk growled.

Ukkaddikk half-spread his wings. “I suppose I can't blame you for that. But you'll get over it. You'll have to, if you're going to be a Translator.”

“I don't understand that, either,” Jarrikk complained. “If I have this natural empathic ability, how come I never knew anything about it until you touched my head yesterday?”

“You grew up in a broodhall,” said Ukkaddikk. “Hundreds of other S'sinn surrounding you all the time. You were born with the empathic ability, but your brain shut out the signals it received, the spillover of emotion from all those other brains all around it. It built shields in self-defense. It took a projective empath—me—to break through. But you feel it now, don't you?”

Yes, he still felt it; had already become used to it, to feeling Ukkaddikk's eagerness and the stolid, bored watchfulness of the Hasshingu-Issk soldiers, just on the edge of his awareness. Sensitivity faded quickly with distance, but doubled or tripled when somebody touched him.

Which meant that he had felt full-force the way the apprentice healers who had moved him to his new room that morning had despised him for still being alive. “How can I ever be a Translator?” he asked, remembering that. “No S'sinn will let a Flightless One speak for them!”

Ukkaddikk came over to his shikk. “They will have no choice. They will need a S'sinn Translator, and you will be provided by the Guild. They can refuse your services, but if so, they forfeit the right to ever again be provided with a Translator. No one in government or business can risk that.”

“That won't stop them from despising me. No S'sinn will ever look on me as anything but a freak, an embarrassment.”
And I will never look at them without envy and bitterness.

“Do your job properly, and respect will follow.”

“You are not flightless,” Jarrikk snapped. “You cannot know.”

“Neither can you. You are the first. Perhaps, if you succeed in this, others who have lost flight will find that they can still serve the Flock. Perhaps, if you succeed, you will save the lives of Flightless Ones to follow.”

Jarrikk turned his face to the window. A lone S'sinn passed high overhead, momentarily silhouetted against a snowy cloud. “Perhaps they will not thank me for it,” he murmured. He closed his eyes, and after a moment heard Ukkaddikk slip out, thinking him asleep.

In another moment, Ukkaddikk would have been right.

Jarrikk woke in confusion, jerked from deep sleep by—something. It took him a moment to realize his new sense had awakened him, to realize that the stolid presence of the Hasshingu-Issk soldiers beyond the beaded curtain of the entrance arch had vanished, and that a new presence approached, hard, determined, deeply impassioned—

The beads clattered aside. Mother Iko swept into the room, wings half-spread, a military-issue stunner in her left hand and a long silver dagger with a black hilt in her right. “Damn the Commonwealth to Flightless Hell!” she shouted, her fanatical devotion roaring in Jarrikk's head like a hot red fire. She tossed the stunner aside and quickly unbuckled the restraints that still held him to the shikk, then pulled him upright. He almost screamed from the agony, and the heartglobe flashed brilliant red and started to beep frantically. “I've come to help you!” Iko cried. “Their treaty means nothing in the eyes of the Hunter of Worlds!” She pressed the silver dagger into his hand. “Now, Jarrikk! Now you can be free!”