Lost In Translation (30 page)

“Two S'sinn days,” she said crisply. “Exactly. From now. Whatever time that translates to locally. You'll be ready?”

“Ready since the first day we got here,” the Hunter replied. “This planet takes its security for granted.”

“Not for long,” Kitillikk said. “Not for long. When you've accomplished your mission, report to me. I'll be on board the
Bloodfeud.
You have the coordinates.”

“Understood.”

Kitillikk broke the connection.
Revenge,
she thought. Glory to the Hunter; if the priests had it right, glory to her and to the S'sinn race, whatever. They would have revenge—on the humans, on the Translators, and on the Commonwealth.

She grinned savagely at her reflection in the dark screen of the transmitter, then went to find something to eat.

Dozing beside Jarrikk, Kathryn jerked fearfully awake as half a dozen S'sinn winged down from the dark sky to light in the farmyard, but the empathic resonances were, if not exactly friendly, at least non-threatening, and a moment later she recognized Ukkaddikk, who came over to her, ignoring Jim. “Jarrikk?”

Kathryn looked at Dr. Chung. “Asleep,” the doctor said. “Exhausted. He needs rest.”

“As do we all,” said Ukkaddikk. “These are friends. They will take us in.”

“Give them our thanks,” Kathryn said.

“I already have.” Ukkaddikk turned and said something to the other waiting S'sinn, two of whom moved forward and gathered up Jarrikk. He stirred, but did not wake, as they carried him inside toward the wooden stairs, past massive six-legged beasts that grumbled in deep, growling tones at having their slumber disturbed. Kathryn and the other humans followed on their own, with Ukkaddikk; one of the remaining S'sinn remained on the ground at the stable entrance, while the other two exchanged rapid-fire words, then leaped into the sky.

Kathryn found the muttering of the animals, and their warm, musty smell, oddly warm and comforting. The brief surge of adrenalin from the arrival of the S'sinn had already faded, and she yawned hugely.

The stairs led to an open cellar-type door that let them into a semi-circular kitchen. Two big arched windows looked out into darkness, and at a fireplace in the flat wall a gray-muzzled female S'sinn coaxed embers into flame with wood taken from a big pile to one side. She didn't look up as they passed by her into a smaller room that Kathryn judged to be a dining area, furnished with a chest-high table surrounded by well-worn shikks of blood-red wood. They trudged on over scarred floors of dark brown planks into a hallway with arches to the left and more stairs going up at the end; went up those stairs into a windowless, circular chamber with six arches opening off of it, and went through one of those arches into a room with a padded, shallow circular pit in its centre, into which the leading S'sinn lowered Jarrikk, who stirred and muttered, but still did not wake.

Ukkaddikk spoke softly to the S'sinn, who growled something in return and went out. “I have asked them to bring cushions for you to sleep on,” he told the humans.

“Thank you,” Kathryn and Dr. Chung replied together.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jim said. “But what happens next?”

“I suggest we discuss that in the morning.”

“I suggest we discuss it now.”

“In the morning.” Ukkaddikk spread his wings and dove out the window.

“I don't like this,” Jim said. “We don't really know what's going on here.”

“You can sense as well as I can that these S'sinn aren't hostile,” Kathryn said.

“And you can sense as well as I can that they're on edge. They're up to something.”

“Of course they're on edge. They're harboring fugitives.”

“There's more to it than that.” Jim sat down against the wall, arms folded, beamer cradled in the crook of his left elbow. “I'm keeping watch.”

“Suit yourself.” Kathryn yawned again. “As soon as they get back with those cushions—ah, here they are!”

Their S'sinn hosts entered with a stack of thin cushions like the ones in Jarrikk's sleeping pit, little more than pads, really, but better than bare wood. She nodded her thanks; the S'sinn exchanged glances and left. Kathryn and Dr. Chung spread the cushions and lay down on them, but tired though she was, Kathryn didn't sleep for several minutes.

Blast Jim for putting the thought in her head, but . . . these S'sinn
were
up to something. Something involving them. She'd have to ask Ukkaddikk . . .

In the morning.

 

Jarrikk woke to the sounds of falling rain and two S'sinn arguing. Not quite sure where he was, he blinked open gritty eyes and saw Ukkaddikk, framed by an arch-window filled with soggy gray sky. “. . . name won't protect you against Kitillikk's search.”

“She wouldn't dare!”

“She dared to move against the Supreme Flight Leader.”

Jarrikk looked from Ukkaddikk to the second S'sinn, someone he'd never seen before, but who wore the red-gold collar that bespoke a place in the Supreme Flight. “She thinks I support her,” the stranger said. “And Lakkassikk's army knows that. They will not search here.”

Jarrikk remembered now . . . fleeing the
Unity,
Ornawka shooting the guard in the back, the painful trudge across muddy fields, the ancient farmhouse. “But we can't stay here forever,” he said, his voice grating in his ears.

Both S'sinn looked down in surprise. “Good, you're awake!” Ukkaddikk said.

“How could I sleep with people arguing over my sleeping pit?”

“Translator Jarrikk, I am Pikkiro,” said the stranger. “We are honored by your presence.”

“I'm honored by your hospitality,” Jarrikk said. “And grateful. But, Ukkaddikk, I mean what I say. Even if Lakkassikk's Hunters do not find us here, we cannot stay. We have to try to stop Kitillikk.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” said Pikkiro. “Be cause I think I know how we can.”

“Not now,” Ukkaddikk said. “Later. When we are all as sure as you are that the search will pass us by. If we are taken, the less we know about the opposition to Kitillikk the better.”

Pikkiro bowed his head slightly. “Agreed. In any event, it is a discussion your human friends should also be a part of, and they still sleep. Tonight, over meat.” He looked at Jarrikk. “I am sorry we woke you. Please rest as long as you like.”

“I doubt we have that much time,” Jarrikk said. “But thank you.”

Pikkiro and Ukkaddikk left, arguing again, but in low voices. Jarrikk raised his head above the edge of the pit and looked around the room. Somebody had brought cushions for the three humans. Dr. Chung and Kathryn slept soundly, but Ornawka sat against the wall, cradling the beamer with which he'd killed the guard. Jarrikk exchanged a long, cold look with him, then settled back again. Outside the rain intensified, its steady patter soon lulling him back to sleep.

He felt almost like himself again that evening when all of them gathered in the dining room downstairs: Pikkiro, his brother Tillikk, Ukkaddikk, Jarrikk, Kathryn, Ornawka, and Dr. Chung. Pikkiro's prediction had proven correct: Lakkassikk's Hunters had accepted without question Pikkiro's assurance he had searched his land himself and found no fugitives. That gave them a little breathing space—but not much, Pikkiro said. He paused as the elderly female servant brought in platters of raw, fresh-killed meat for the S'sinn and (well-hiding the distaste that was clear in her mind) cooked meat for the humans. Salty lukka bread, tangy mukkuro cheese, and a selection of raw fruits and vegetables rounded out the repast, which Jarrikk fell to with a vengeance. The humans ate heartily, too, though they avoided looking at their more carnivorous companions.

“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.