Read Online Lost In Translation by Edward Willett - Free Book Online

ran out into the hall, yelling, “Mrs. Spencer! Mrs. Spencer! There’s an alien coming up the walk!”
    Other children ran after him, pounding down the stairs, their excited voices rising back up in a wash of sound that quit suddenly as Mrs. Spencer said something sharply. And then came a knock on the downstairs door.
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    Karak-kak-aka-ka-isss ar ?Ung!, Master of the Guild of Translators, 117th leader of the most respected organization in the Commonwealth, one of the most gifted and skilled empaths in the galaxy, tried to rearrange his tentacles into a non-chafing configuration inside the ridiculous humanoid-shaped watersuit he had to wear on Earth, and wondered if any of the froth-brained humans he could sense inside the orphanage would ever get around to opening the door.
    After a lot of scurrying noises transmitted clearly by the helmet’s exterior microphones, one of them finally did: a woman he took to be the Mrs. Spencer his research staff had informed him was the orphanage’s director. He rather towered over her, and could feel her fear (and more than a little disgust) as she looked up into his beaked, tentacle-encircled face. It was just as well, he thought, that she could only get a hint of it through the UV-shielding faceplate. “I’m here to look at Kathryn Bircher,” he said. Ithkarites were the only race in the Commonwealth whose mouth-parts were flexible and ears sensitive enough to allow them to learn the spoken languages of the three races—four, now that the humans had been added—of the Commonwealth that used sound to communicate. It was a skill very useful for running a multiracial organization such as the Guild. Karak wondered, however, if other Ithkarites’ mouthparts hurt as much as his did when he spoke a human language—and it didn’t seem to matter which one. He’d learned French, Mandarin, German, Spanish, Japanese, and this one they called English, and all of them involved serious strain to his vibratory muscles.
    â€œShe’s not well,” Mrs. Spencer said. “You’ll frighten her. Go away.”
    Karak stuck his three right motive/support limbs (encased in the watersuit, they looked like a single leg) into the door to keep her from closing it on him, then pushed it open with his top left manipulators, the tips of which, encased in the watersuit’s glove, gave him the semblance of a three-fingered hand. With his top right manipulators, he opened the carry-pouch on his belt and held out a piece of paper. “I’m afraid I must insist.”
    While she read the letter from the Director of the Government Services for War Orphans and Veterans’ Dependents, he stepped into the wood-paneled hallway and stared back at the wide-eyed children peering at him around the corner where the hallway entered the kitchen. They radiated only curiosity and shyness. He wondered how long it would be before Mrs. Spencer taught them her fear and disgust. And they would be the first generation of humans to grow up in the Commonwealth. It made his mission that much more urgent.
    Mrs. Spencer, lips tight, held out the paper. “Keep it,” Karak said. “It is for your records.” He looked around. “The child?”
    â€œThis way.” Mrs. Spencer tucked the letter into the pocket of her apron and led him up the stairs, which creaked alarmingly under the combined weight of him and the fifty liters of liquid circulating through the watersuit. She showed him into a bright, cheerful playroom. At the window, ignoring the toys all around her, sat a little blond-haired girl, staring out at the sky. “Katy,” said Mrs. Spencer. “There’s someth—some one here to see you.”
    Karak crossed the floor, its boards groaning under him, and touched Katy’s head with his gloved manipulators. Before he even reached her he knew what he would find; the touch confirmed it. She was an empath, all right—an