Lost In Translation (22 page)

Eighteen steps ascended to the Place of Flightless Sacrifice, eighteen steps much higher and narrower than normal, forcing a painful, struggling climb on a flightless S'sinn, emphasizing his incompleteness and unworthiness. At last, however, muscles aching, he stood on the platform itself, circular, bounded by a railing carved in the shape of sharp, curving thorns, pointing inward. At the center of the platform, a small hole waited to drain his lifeblood into the river.

Jarrikk felt doubly glad he had not taken the knife from the priest on his homeworld when he'd first been injured. He had had many more years of purposeful life, true; but more importantly, this was where such things should be done, not in some sterile, windowless room, but here, in holy Kkirrikk'S'sinn, the most ancient city of his kind, in the place where so many others had made the same sacrifice and preserved the honor of the S'sinn.

He spread his wings as best he could and lifted up his hands in prayer to the Hunter, the knife pointed downward toward his breast, soon to be its final resting place.

 

Kathryn had commandeered one of
Unity
's small ground vehicles; she and Dr. Chung raced through the wet night along the slippery grass-covered lanes that were all S'sinndikk had for streets. Who needed good roads when the entire population had wings?

“Where are we going?” Dr. Chung demanded. “You still haven't explained any of this.”

“Translator Jarrikk plans to . . . suicide at midnight,” Kathryn said. The congestion in her lungs had intensified again since she'd left her bed; she had to stop frequently and gulp air. “I have to stop him.”

“Suicide? But why—”

“Because of . . . what happened to us. Because he is no longer a Translator. Because tradition demands it.” Kathryn pounded on the controls. “Can't this thing go faster?”

“I'm glad it can't.” Dr. Chung clutched at the dashboard for support as the car careened around a corner. “If it's S'sinn tradition, how can you talk him out of it?”

“He's only doing it because he's flightless,” Kathryn cried. “And he doesn't have to be! He can regain the use of his wings. Just like Garth—”

“Regeneration therapy? But that's never been tried on non-humans—”

“All the more reason to try it now. If we get the chance—there!” Kathryn braked the scooter to a stop. “Up there, that platform.”

“It's already past midnight.”

“I know!” Kathryn cried desperately. She flung open the door of the scooter and stumbled out, falling onto the grass. “Jarrikk!” she yelled, her voice echoing back from the stone wall of the Temple, but nobody responded.

Coughing, almost choking, she scrambled on her hands and knees up the tall, steep stairs, her heart pounding in her chest. Terrible waves of weakness crashed over her, turning her limbs to lead, but Dr. Chung, after a moment's hesitation, grabbed her under the arms and helped her climb the final few steps.

There was Jarrikk, standing with wings outspread, arms stretched out above him, hands clutching the hilt of a knife that glittered wickedly even in the dim, mist-diffused light from the city behind them.

She opened her mouth to scream at him, to tell him she was there, to stop him, but before she could utter a sound, his arms jerked down and the knife's glitter vanished as it plunged into his chest.

With a soft, moaning sigh, Jarrikk folded his wings and crumpled gently onto the ancient stones.

“No!”
Kathryn screamed, the sound echoing back from the walls of the Temple. Shaking off Dr. Chung's restraining hand, she clambered up the final awkward steps and dropped to her knees beside Jarrikk, whose eyes were closed and whose hand still gripped the knife buried to the hilt in his chest. A thin but widening trickle of blood flowed down his flank, onto the stone, and dropped soundlessly through the hole in the center of the platform to the slow-moving river below. Feeling as if a second knife had been driven into her own heart, Kathryn reached out and touched Jarrikk's damp fur—and felt the flutter of a heartbeat.

“Kathryn?” Dr. Chung called softly.

“He's not dead!” Kathryn yelled back in a sudden agony of hope. “Doctor Chung, hurry!”

The doctor scrambled to her side. “I don't have any training in S'sinn physiology—”

“Doctor, he's a Translator, he's dying, you've got to do something!” Kathryn reached out to touch the knife, but Chung stopped her.

“No. That could be all that's keeping him from bleeding to death. Leave it until we know what we're doing.”

“But—”

“Go back to the car, call for help. I'll do what I can.”

Kathryn gulped a breath of much-needed air, said “Thank you,” and dashed for the car, adrenalin winning out over weakness—for the moment, at least. The communicator lit up at her touch. “Emergency!” she gasped. “Translator Jarrikk's hurt. We need medical help—someone trained to help S'sinn!” A fit of coughing shook her.

“Understood.” The comm operator on the Guildship sounded perfectly calm; Kathryn wanted to shake
him.
“Where are you?”

“The Temple—by the river,” Kathryn choked out between coughs.

“Activate your homing signal. It's the switch just in—right, got it. Help's on the way. Guildship
Unity
out.”

Kathryn fought down the coughing, took a few deep wheezing breaths, then crawled back out of the car. She started toward the platform, but froze as something huge and black swept low over her head, landed in front of her, and shrouded itself in leathery wings. Memories of her parents' deaths made her cringe back; then she straightened, angry at herself. “Who are you? What do you want?” she demanded in Guildtalk.

The S'sinn's eyes narrowed: it said something in its own harsh language. It wore a gold collar embossed with an intricate design, and the jeweled hilt of a dagger protruded from its leather belt. When Kathryn started forward again, it snapped open its wings and growled something indecipherable but unquestionably hostile. Kathryn stopped. “My friend's hurt! You've got to—”

The S'sinn's left arm swept down across its body to its belt and came back up holding the dagger. Kathryn's breath caught in her throat. She couldn't talk to the alien, couldn't even feel it empathically. Had they broken some religious taboo by coming here?

If they had, and this guardian or whatever it was felt so strongly about keeping Kathryn from approaching the platform, what would it do when it realized Dr. Chung was already on it, helping Jarrikk?

Kathryn hoped help wasn't far away.

The communicator in the car beeped. The S'sinn didn't move, but its eyes, glowing faintly red in the light from the car's interior, tracked Kathryn as she backed up to the vehicle, reached into it, and touched the controls. “Guildship
Unity,
” said the voice of the comm operator. “Translator Bircher, are you there?”

“Bircher here,” Kathryn said. “I hope you have good news.”

“There's a fully equipped human medical team en route from the
Unity
—but we've had a problem getting help from the S'sinn.”

“A problem? What kind of problem? There's a Translator dying out here!”

“Maybe they didn't understand Guildtalk very well, I don't know but . . .” The comm operator hesitated. “They refused to come. Translator, they said Jarrikk has been dead for years.”

“I'm sure that's exactly what they said,” Kathryn said bitterly. “And I've got my own little problem here. There's some kind of warrior-priest standing between me and Jarrikk, and she doesn't look friendly. Warn the medical team, and then forget trying to get a S'sinn doctor here—get that S'sinn Translator who's taken over the treaty negotiations. I don't think this whatever-she-is is going to let us anywhere near Jarrikk.”

“Yes, Translator.”

As Kathryn eased back out of the car, another S'sinn swept overhead so close the wind from its passage ruffled her hair. A third followed close behind. They wore dagger-belts and gold collars like the first, and looked no friendlier. Six red eyes watched Kathryn as she straightened up and faced them. “That's right,” she said softly. “You just keep watching me. I'm the one you're interested in.”

A short eternity passed, or maybe just a century or two, then lights swept over the scene as the medical van from the
Unity
pulled up. Without looking away from the S'sinn, Kathryn raised her hand in warning, and the personnel in the van took the hint and stayed put, though they kept their lights on, which suited Kathryn. The S'sinn were slightly—very slightly—less intimidating when she could see all of them and not just those glowing red eyes.

The standoff, long though it seemed, ended far too soon: Dr. Chung appeared on the platform, her face a pale blotch against the black sky behind the S'sinn, and called, “Kathryn!”

The S'sinn whirled as one: then two of them launched themselves at the platform, the blast of air from their wings driving Kathryn back against the cold, dew-misted metal of the car. “Doctor Chung, get down!” she screamed, as the third S'sinn, the one that had landed first, turned on her, dagger flashing in the headlights of the medical van.

Kathryn heard the van's doors open, heard the medical team rushing toward her, but she knew they couldn't reach her before the S'sinn did, and she crossed her arms over her face as the S'sinn lunged forward—

—and stopped, wings spread, dagger scant centimeters from Kathryn's throat, as an angry screech split the sky like fingernails dragged across metal amplified a thousandfold. The S'sinn's head jerked back and she stared up as two more S'sinn passed overhead, then she spun to face them, her right wing slapping into Kathryn's side, knocking her half-breathless to the ground. She scrambled up, helped by a frightened-looking young man from the medical van, then shoved him aside and dodged around the priest to see the new arrivals.

One S'sinn wore the collar of a Translator, the other—she almost sobbed with relief—a collar bearing the green circle of a Commonwealth medic. Behind them, she saw the two S'sinn who had flown at Dr. Chung returning to the ground, and on top of the platform, Chung reappeared. “Kathryn! What's happening?”

“I'm not sure. How's Jarrikk?”

“Alive. Stable, I think. But I can't be sure. I don't know enough—”

The S'sinn wearing the medic's collar slipped past Kathryn's attacker, who gave him one smoldering glance before returning to her argument with the Translator. “The injured one is on the platform?” the medic asked Kathryn in passable Guildtalk.

“Yes,” she replied. “A human doctor is with him.”

The doctor launched himself toward the platform, ignoring the outraged shrieks of the two S'sinn he flew over to get there. Kathryn saw Dr. Chung raise her arms reflexively, then relax when she saw the medical insignia—and plunge at once into animated conversation. The two medics bent over Jarrikk, disappearing from sight.

Kathryn turned her attention back to the argument between the Translator and the S'sinn who had attacked her, which seemed to be reaching a climax. Her attacker growled something, snapped an angry gesture at her underlings, whirled and gave Kathryn one more hate-filled glare, then disappeared in a blast of musk-scented air.

The S'sinn Translator approached Kathryn. “Greet ings, Translator Bircher,” he said. “I am Translator Ukkaddikk. I came at once when I received word, and fortunately the medic who accompanied me was nearby. We are old friends—as are Jarrikk and I.” He spoke Guildtalk far more fluidly than even Jarrikk.

“You know Jarrikk?” Kathryn said, then felt foolish. Of course the S'sinn Translators would know each other, just like all the human Translators knew each other.

But Ukkaddikk didn't seem to find her question odd. “Search those memories you retain from your Link with Jarrikk. I think you will find me there.”

Most shared memories faded quickly after the Link ended, but some of the strongest lingered. Kathryn closed her eyes, called up those images that had flashed through her mind when she and Jarrikk first Linked—and her eyes flew open again. “Of course, Ukkaddikk! You brought Jarrikk into the Guild.”

“I stopped him then from taking the Dagger of the Hunter. I hoped he had learned that in this new age there are new possibilities. But he has always had a thick skull.”

Kathryn smiled ruefully. “I know,” she said. “But so do I. We are . . .” She stopped. “We
were
a good team.”

“Perhaps you will be again. Let us see what the medic has to say.”

What the medic had to say was grim. Jarrikk had plunged the dagger into one of his two hearts. The other still beat, raggedly, keeping him alive, but blood loss and shock threatened to drive it into fibrillation at any moment, and it alone could not provide the necessary blood flow to his brain. If they did not get him connected to artificial life support within a matter of minutes, he would suffer irreparable brain damage. Yet moving him could kill him.

“We have no choice,” Ukkaddikk said, and Kathryn agreed. “We must move him.” He turned to Kathryn. “Have your personal empathic powers returned?”

“No.”

“No? But I sense . . .” So quickly Kathryn flinched, he reached out one hand and touched her left temple. He closed his eyes and cocked his head to one side momentarily—and suddenly Kathryn could sense him, warm and concerned, and the cool professionalism of the Commonwealth medics, and Dr. Chung's slightly flustered excitement, and the welter of emotions from the humans gathered by the medical van, and she gasped, feeling as if she'd been encased in a thick, deadening gel that had suddenly been flushed away.