He was drowning in sound. So many years of alien tongues--nasal, guttural, sibilant. The cacophony of language washed over him till he slid beneath its surface. He pressed tired fingers to his skull.
"Tomas. More sojyk?"
Itaka's blunt-muzzled face swam blurrily over him. Tomas squinted up through the pain in his head at the green teardrop of the sojyk bottle. He watched his own brown hand moving sluggishly along the bar towards the glass as if it belonged to someone else.
"No, I think not," the large Gai'ekian said. "You've had enough already, Lingster!"
The clicks and whistles of Itaka's language, almost as natural to Tomas now as Inglis itself had once been, hurt his ears tonight. He was barely aware of the Guild Monitor threading his way about the noisy bar with the sojyk, finding other customers among the lingsters and their would-be employers.
Tomas rubbed his eyes. He was breaking apart from the stress of a lifetime spent building tenuous bridges between alien concepts that had only one thing in common--neither could possibly occur in the other language. Sometimes the pressure was unbearable and a lingster's mind fragmented, caught in the malign vortex of interface. And despite the emergency protocols they learned at the very beginning, a few even perished, like Gerold, or later from grief, like Mitsuko. Lingsters were highly paid, especially on a non-Federation world like Gai'ek, trading post for a score of non-aligned planets and Federation renegades. But room and board and Guild fees consumed a lot of it. And sojyk that offered a brief release.
He rose shakily to his feet, wincing at the explosion in his skull as he moved. He had come to Gai'ek because of the rich rewards, but it had worn him out. Two days from now, his Guild contract on this world expired. He had served his time in the Guild; renewing here or anywhere else was his choice. Tomas had decided not to renew. In two days, the Kirenyi would lift off, not for far-away Earth--that was a half-remembered dream only--but for Shulam 5, a peaceful Federation world. He had saved enough for passage, and the high cost of having the computer link removed from his brain.
Across the room, a small-time freighter captain signalled Tomas to join him. A client, several years back, who had been in danger of losing his ship in a legal battle he would not have understood in his own language, he had never forgotten his gratitude to the lingster who took his part against Goliath and won. Tomas knew there were some things about the job he would miss.
The door of the bar shuddered and a Gai'ekian princeling thrust himself inside.
Then there were other things he knew he would not.
"Monitor!" The newcomer's voice thundered across the din.
Tomas clenched his jaw viciously to quell the spasm that even now, two years later, ran through him at the sound of that voice.
Itaka lumbered up, red eyes glinting at the prospect of another commission. "Princeling?"
"I need a lingster, a Terran."
)
