The first thing the vest said about Ke was that he wanted to leave. He had been in the room for fourteen seconds.
My employer smiled. An honest beginning, she called it.
Ke looked at the speaker attached to his chest. The skin along his throat changed from gray to a pale, moving green. The vest rendered this as reluctance. He said, through the ordinary vocal translator, that the room was too warm.
I adjusted the ventilation. I did not amend the first line of the transcript.
For the rest of the morning, I told myself I would correct the physiological glosses before certification. The vest was experimental. It combined selected skin regions with spoken language to infer the meanings human listeners otherwise missed. My employer had bought it because Ke's people communicated partly through chromatophores. She had bought my signature because the software company would not guarantee its conclusions.
We were negotiating for insulation panels grown in his workshops. Our habitat needed them before the old roofs lost another season of heat. He wanted a minimum price and permission to retain the growth medium used in manufacture. My employer wanted to buy the medium outright so we would not need his workshops again.
When she proposed this, a dark band crossed his neck.
The vest said: CONCERN AT LOSS OF NECESSITY.
My employer glanced at me. The phrase was useful. It made a claim about dependency sound like a confession.
At the break, Ke asked me to come into the adjoining room. He brought a cup of warm water and asked me to watch his skin while he drank. The dark band appeared. The vest offered three related interpretations: apprehension, concealment, resistance.
"The water changes the circulation," he said.
He showed me a region along his forearm where deliberate patterns could form independently. He repeated a simple greeting, then held the greeting while moving his fingers and changing the temperature of the cup against his throat.
The two systems overlapped, but they did not supply a candid statement beneath every word.
"Your equipment cannot separate them yet," he said.
I could have removed the physiological glosses. That would have invalidated the premium service my employer had presented to her board as protection against concealed motives. It would also have returned us to the difficult work of deciding whether an agreeable person intended to keep a promise.
I told Ke I would lower the confidence setting.
"Can I choose what it reads?"
"The full channel is part of the agreed procedure."
He had agreed to translation. The procedure defined translation more generously than he had understood.
In the afternoon, my employer offered a better panel price in exchange for the medium. Ke's throat darkened. This time I knew the ventilation had just cycled and he had set down a cold drink.
I entered fear of losing the agreement in the certified gloss.
My employer reduced the offer slightly.
I wish I could say I did not understand what the reduction meant. I understood it down to the fee I would receive if the negotiation closed that day. The habitat needed a roof; I needed another contract. There was plenty of room between those truths for me to fit what I was doing.
Ke asked for an hour to consult his workshops. The vest remained in the room. When he returned, he picked it up and examined the inner sensors before putting it on.
His next answer was accompanied by a steady blue. The software associated blue in that region with reassurance. I noticed he had altered his breathing, holding it for longer between phrases. The blue strengthened each time he did.
He had learned the sensor's simplest weakness from the same demonstration he had given me.
My employer relaxed. She accepted his proposal to license a sealed growth medium rather than acquire its formula. He would retain the cultivation process and charge for replenishment. The board had forbidden a dependent supply agreement; she believed the vest's reassuring stream established that the practical risk was negligible.
The spoken clauses were accurate. I translated every one faithfully. Nothing in them promised the confidence my glosses supplied.
Before signing, my employer asked whether I detected any unresolved reservation.
Ke took a measured breath. Blue remained beneath his throat.
I could have explained how he made it. That would have required me to explain the temperature test, my earlier entries and why I had not removed a channel I knew could produce false conclusions. She would have asked which of the concessions she had made since lunch depended on my invention.
I said the translation was complete.
Ke signed. He did not thank me for making the negotiation possible. He took the vest off carefully, placing it on the table with its sensors facing upward.
My employer asked for a copy of the certified emotional record to support the agreement before the board. I sent it.
After they left, I put a hand against my own neck. My pulse was rapid. The room felt too warm. I opened the transcript and watched the software convert those same conditions in Ke into the neat language of someone else's intentions.
At the bottom was the statement I had signed, confirming that no material uncertainty had been omitted.
