Lost In Translation (23 page)

“Thank you,” she breathed. “I was afraid it was gone forever!”

“Now you can help.”

“How?”

“Hold Jarrikk's head. Will him to live.”

“But I'm—”
not a projective empath,
she wanted to say, but Ukkaddikk had already leaped from the platform, gliding down to the ambulance to prepare them to receive Jarrikk.

Kathryn crawled across the rain- and blood-slicked stones and lifted Jarrikk's head. It felt light, fragile, and frighteningly cold, and the fur behind his wolf-like ears was sticky with blood from a cut he must have suffered when he fell. Kathryn closed her eyes and tried to sense the tiny spark of life still flickering inside her friend, deep within, past the layers of darkness and pain. Somewhere . . .

There.
She could feel him, faint, oh-so-faint, like a candle at the bottom of a mineshaft guttering in an icy downdraft. She concentrated, pushed harder. She no longer felt the cold night air, no longer felt the stones of the platform bruising her knees, no longer felt anything but that faint presence, that last flicker of life. She folded her mind around it, cupped it, tried to shield it from the deadly wind howling through his damaged body.

Far away, like a distant shout, she felt messages from her own body, that both she and Jarrikk were being lifted, carried, that her hands still cradled his head. But she shut that out of her mind, concentrating on Jarrikk, on keeping him alive.

She drew closer and closer to the heart of his dim presence, and as she did so she began to feel new sensations—the messages of his body: no agony, only a terrifying numbness radiating from the wound in his chest, and the frantic, uneven spasming of his remaining heart. She turned to that sensation fiercely, trying to strengthen the beats, to smooth the rhythm—and slowly, slowly, she felt it working, felt his body respond, felt the frightening cold gripping him lessen somewhat. The flicker of life strengthened, steadied: and then, just for a moment, she felt Jarrikk's consciousness, dazed, lost, wondering, but definitely there. She sent him a wave of reassurance—then, suddenly, it all vanished, darkness crashing down on her.

She screamed, certain Jarrikk had died. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to jump up. Something stopped her, and she struggled against it for a moment before realizing Dr. Chung stood over her, gentle hands restraining her. “It's all right,” Dr. Chung said soothingly. “It's all right. They've taken Jarrikk into surgery. He's on life support.”

“He's alive?” Kathryn gasped. Her own heartbeat felt none too steady at that moment.

“He's alive.”

Kathryn looked around. She sat on the edge of her old bed in
Unity
's sickbay. “How did I get here?” she asked, amazed.

“Once you took hold of Jarrikk's head, you slipped into a kind of trance—you were practically catatonic. I wanted to try to bring you out of it, but Ukkaddikk touched both of you and said to leave you. We brought the two of you back here in the medvan, and just pulled your hands free of Jarrikk as the S'sinn medic took him into surgery.”

Kathryn looked at her hands. Jarrikk's blood had stained them with dark brown patches that flaked off as she clenched her fists, dusting the blue cloth of her Translator's uniform with rusty brown. “I don't even know what happened. I've never made a connection like that before . . . not even with the symbiote.”

“Ukkaddikk was certainly excited about it. He wants to talk to you as soon as you're able.”

“No,” Kathryn said instantly. “Not until we know about Jarrikk.”

“I'm glad you feel that way, because . . .” Dr. Chung held up the medical gown Kathryn had flung off earlier. “. . . as your doctor, I'm ordering you back to bed—the perfect place for you to wait.”

Kathryn started to protest, then thought better of it as the protest turned into a cough. When she'd mastered it, she said meekly, “You're the doctor, Doctor.”

“I am indeed,” Dr. Chung said briskly. “First, let's get you cleaned up . . .”

Kathryn waited until she'd washed and changed and Dr. Chung had taken her temperature and reconnected the monitors and pumped her arm full of drugs before asking the question foremost on her mind. “Doctor Chung, all of this effort tonight was pointless if we can't get regeneration therapy for Jarrikk. He'll just try to kill himself again.”

“I'm aware of that. I've sent my own recommendation to Doctor Kapusianyk as a follow-up to your message to him. I don't expect a problem. In fact, I wager they'll jump at the chance to try regeneration therapy on a non-human. Now get some sleep.” Dr. Chung went out, dimming the lights on her way.

Sleep?
Kathryn thought. How could she sleep when not a dozen meters away the medics fought to save Jarrikk's life? She closed her eyes, trying to remember her own part in that fight. What exactly had she done? It had been almost like Linking with the symbiote's help—almost, but different. Deeper. Had Jarrikk been conscious, she felt she might almost have been able to understand his thoughts, not just feel his feelings. But that shouldn't be possible without Link, and symbiote, and Programming.

Ukkaddikk had seemed to know something about it. She'd have to ask him.

Tomorrow. When Jarrikk was out of danger.

Her eyes still closed, she tried to reach out to him on the operating table . . . but all she accomplished was putting herself to sleep.

 

Kitillikk commiserated with the priest who brought her the news. Yes, it was a terrible thing when a Flightless One was prevented from dying an honorable death. Yes, she was appalled that the Commonwealth could interfere even in the worship of the Hunter of Worlds. No doubt He would rise up and take vengeance. “No doubt at all,” Kitillikk said as the priest took flight. She watched the Hunter's servant soar into the graying sky of morning, then dive toward the black bulk of the Temple, where no doubt the discussion of the night's events would rage for days.

That was the trouble with priests, and why she'd never been able to make much use of them, Kitillikk reflected as she stepped back through the arched windows into her quarters in a minor tower of the Hall of the Flock. They talked and talked and talked some more; they rarely acted. And when they did, they were quite unpredictable. One could never tell how they would interpret the Hunter's will.

She preferred to rely on her own will. Her goals required no interpretation, and she couldn't see how Jarrikk's continued survival would affect them, much though she would have enjoyed killing him herself that day in the Hall when peace had suddenly broken out, against all odds. With the odd symbiote technology of the Guild precluding any electronic recordings of exactly what had been said on that dais, she couldn't prove it, but she was convinced the Translators had somehow cheated, no doubt with the connivance of their spineless, limp-winged excuse for a Supreme Flight Leader.

No matter. There would soon be a new Supreme Flight Leader, and war between Earth and S'sinn, an end to the meddling of the Commonwealth and their thrice-cursed Guild of Translators, and well-deserved glory for the S'sinn—and herself. She grinned a savage grin and swept aside the beaded curtain that had hidden her other guest from the priest. He came out warily, and she grimaced as she caught a whiff of his scent. She'd have to sleep elsewhere; no doubt her sleeping chamber now reeked of him.

“So, human,” she said in Guildtalk, though the Commonwealth's pidgin always left a bad taste in her mouth. “You heard?”

“I do not understand your tongue.”

Of course not.
“Translator Jarrikk still lives. Your Translator Bircher saved him after he attempted to give himself to the Hunter—though I do not think he will thank her for it.”

The human's eyes narrowed and his mouth grew tight. “I am sorry Jarrikk did not die.”

“So am I. But there is time enough for that. We have a more important matter to discuss.” She settled herself on a shikk, fully aware he could not sit comfortably on anything in the room, and showed her teeth again. “A human and S'sinn working together have temporarily staved off this war. Ironic that a human and S'sinn will now work together to ensure that it comes about as originally intended.”

“For the destruction of the Commonwealth, I would work with the devil himself.”

“Appropriate, since I understand your human devil is supposed to look a lot like a S'sinn.” Kitillikk picked up a scarlet-hilted dagger from the table by the shikk and toyed with it idly, admiring the watery play of light on its silver blade. “Have you chosen your method?”

“Method, and time, and place.” The human showed his broad, flat teeth. “None of which I will tell you, of course.”

“Of course. Mutual distrust can only carry a relationship so far.” She held up the dagger and squinted down its length at the human's hideous hairless face. “But you realize your secrecy means I won't be able to help you escape.”

“I can look after myself.” More teeth. “I could kill you, now, after all, and no one would be the wiser.”

“Could you?” Kitillikk purred. A flick of her wrist, and the knife in her hand suddenly sprouted in the bloodwood floor a centimeter from the human's booted foot. The human didn't even flinch. “I am no coddled palace quisling, human. I am a S'sinn Hunter, and Flight Leader. You would do well to respect me.”

The human bowed slightly. “Oh, I do, Flight Leader, I do. As I respect those who guard the Supreme Flight Leader. But you must also give me
my
due. Akkanndikk will still die, and I will escape—and there will be no doubt in anyone's mind that a human assassinated her. Kathryn Bircher is no longer a Translator. Nor is Jarrikk, even if he still lives. The peace plan they have Translated will vanish like a dream, like smoke in a hurricane. War will come . . .”

“And I will lead the Hunters as Supreme Flight Leader!” Kitillikk breathed, wanting to shout it but not quite daring to: not yet.

“I must go.” The human went to the arch that led into the corridor where Ukkarr stood watch. “I will not see you again. But the deed will be done soon; I promise you that.” He pulled the hood of his black cloak over his black-furred head, and slipped out.

Kitillikk waited, held it in as long as she could, then laughed, a roaring sound of pure triumph that brought Ukkarr dashing into the room, wings spread and weapon drawn. He pulled up short at the sight of her, and holstered his fireblade with a bemused look.

“A human, Ukkarr,” Kitillikk said. “A human is going to help make me Supreme Flight Leader!”

“I . . . don't see the humor, Flight Leader.”

“Me, Ukkarr! The fools actually want this war, and they want me leading the Hunters against them. And I—I will wipe them from this galaxy as though they never existed, starting with their Translators, starting with Translator Jim Ornawka, who is going to assassinate the Supreme Flight Leader and hasten my ascension! It is a joke of cosmic proportions, Ukkarr!”

Ukkarr smiled, but barely, and that sent Kitillikk off again into fresh paroxysms of merriment.

Poor old Ukkarr,
she thought.
He never did have a sense of humor.

The cold, the damp, the acidlike, icy burning of the knife plunging into his chest, the impact of his body on the old stones, and then the growing numbness . . . these things Jarrikk remembered, and that was wrong.

It was wrong, because he shouldn't be remembering anything at all.

He felt the padded slats of a shikk beneath him where there should only have been cold, wet, stone, and when he opened his eyes—
he opened his eyes!
—he saw a white metal ceiling where there should have been only black sky.

The S'sinn built nothing out of metal but their spaceships.

Where was he?

Why was he alive?

Slowly he turned his head, fighting stiffness and a grating, throbbing pain. A small metal room. To his right, a door. To his left . . . medical monitors. Not S'sinn technology—Commonwealth.

A ship. He was on board a Commonwealth ship . . . the
Dikari?
No, the
Dikari
was long gone . . . the
Unity.
It had to be the
Unity.

Who had brought him here? Why hadn't they let him die?

Anger woke, matching its heat to the warm throb of pain in his chest, which matched the beat of his hearts.
Karak.
After all he had said about letting Jarrikk choose his own path, he had ordered the Guild to step in, ordered them not to let Jarrikk die. Politics or propaganda. He wanted Jarrikk as a figurehead, a hero to inspire other Translators, or promote the new Earth-S'sinndikk treaty . . . whatever. It didn't matter. Two levels to everything, Karak had said, the ideal and the pragmatic, and Ithkar's Great Swimmer forbid the Guild should choose the higher path when there was so much to be gained on the lower. The Great Swimmer forbid the Guild should let honor interfere with politics.

Jarrikk wouldn't let it happen. He didn't belong to Karak, and he no longer belonged to the Guild: he belonged to the Hunter of Souls, and he intended to join Him.

He pulled at the constraints, but they held firm. Frustrated, he subsided and glared at the white ceiling. Sooner or later they would have to release him. Sooner or later, he would give himself to the Hunter, and complete his sacrifice.

And the Hunter did not stipulate
how
a Flightless One should die . . .

He would wait.

 

Six days after the night by the Temple, Kathryn, still recuperating in sickbay, woke to the good news that Jarrikk was awake—and the bad news that all he did was stare at the ceiling. He wouldn't speak to Dr. Chung, to a nurse, or even to Ukkaddikk, who brought Kathryn the word as she ate breakfast.