From behind, a man’s voice said, “Hello.” The voice said, Hello, not Gunta.
Alex spun around, his right hand instinctively grasping the handle of his two-bladed axe.
Five people stood quietly at the top of the trail. They were people such as Alex had never seen in Kragdon-ah.
Chapter Thirty-EightVisitors
Alex’s mouth fell open. Standing before him were three men and two women. After so many years in Kragdon-ah, these people did not look right to him. He let his uninjured hand rest on his two-bladed axe.
The man who had spoken said, “Hello,” again with a slight smile. He was shorter than Alex, and appeared to be Asian. One of the women was less than five feet tall and had bright, copper-red hair. One of the men was dark-skinned, but different than what Alex had come to expect in Winten-ah. This man’s skin was much darker than the Winten-ah or any other tribe in Kragdon-ah. The second man was taller—perhaps an inch taller than Alex—and had a neatly trimmed beard. The second woman was tall and lithe, but tall in the twenty-first century definition—perhaps five foot eleven. This woman stared intently at Alex.
Alex moved Sanda-eh behind him. Monda-ak, who bristled at any stranger approaching, did not seem particularly interested in these four.
“You said ‘hello’ to me.”
“Is that what you heard? English, then? Then you are Alex Hawk,” the Asian man said. “You are who we seek.”
Alex nodded, and the man nodded back. That also set Alex back on his heels. Aside from Lanta-eh, who had made a passing attempt to learn the body language of the twenty-first century, no one had nodded at him in more than a decade.
“When you speak,” Alex observed, “your mouth doesn’t match your words. It’s like watching an old Kung Fu movie on late night television.”
“That was too many references for my translator to keep up with,” the man said. “But I think I understand what you mean. My lips move differently than the words you hear because it is translated from the language I am speaking to your own core language. This is the newest iteration of the translator. It has the ability to peek into your brain and find your most comfortable language.”
This was too much for Alex. He had been in the midst of an emotionally cleansing breakdown, when these four strangers appeared as if out of nowhere. Still, he resolved to hold on to his center. “I don’t care for things having a peek inside my brain. What language are you speaking?”
“You get used to it. Things looking inside your brain, I mean. Any concept of privacy, even in our own minds, was done away with long before I was born. I am speaking what you would think of as English as well, but it has undergone many changes over the centuries. If you tried to speak your English to someone born several thousand years before you, you would likely need a translator too. Language constantly evolves.”
Alex’s head was swimming, but he focused on the primary question at hand.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
The group smiled more broadly.
“I am Bista Lai.” He pointed to the Black man and said, “This is Limda Krastan.” He glanced at Alex, then asked, “Is the translator giving you understandable translations from your own experience for our names? I know they must sound foreign to you otherwise.”
“It isn’t, but I’ve now known a Doken-ak, Sekun-ak, Ganku-eh, and Senta-eh, so I think I can manage.”
“Mama!” Sanda-eh said, popping from behind Alex’s back when she heard Senta-eh’s name.
Alex stroked her hair and allowed her to come out into view. He sensed no danger from these people and had a hunch that if they had wanted to harm him, he couldn’t have stopped them. “Yes, that’s your mama,” Alex answered her, stroking her hair.
Bista smiled at her and said, “What a beautiful child!”
“Luckily, she drew more heavily from her mother,” Alex said, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice.
“Ahh. Yes, of course. Lanta-eh communicated this to us. We are very sorry.” He turned to the small, red-headed woman and said, “This is Marta Preyer. She is our empath, the person who communicated with Lanta-eh on our journey. The woman staring at you with such intent is Emily, with no last name. That was not her birth name, but it is the one she has chosen. Finally,” he said, pointing to the man with the beard, “that is Pandrick Masten.”
“You already know my name somehow, though the people of Kragdon-ah call me Manta-ak, not Alex Hawk. This is my daughter Sanda-eh, and my best friend Monda-ak. Your names don’t tell me anything about who you really are and where you come from.”
“It is a long story, and I will tell it to you, but the short answer is that we come from here. Or, more accurately, our ancestors did. We have come to help you. You and everyone we left behind on Earth.”
Bista turned to the man he had identified as Pandrick and said, “This is going to require some time. Can you set up a small camp here?” He turned to Alex. “Are there predators in this area?”
“This is Kragdon-ah. There are predators everywhere,” Alex answered. He considered telling them of godat-ta, but tucked that memory away for himself.
“Set us a small camp with a rejection field. That will do us.”
The bearded man nodded, slipped what looked like a stiff, shiny piece of paper out of a pack. A hologram field popped up above the stiff paper and he tapped away for a few moments.
And then there was a camp. A fire, seven comfortable camp chairs, even a coffee pot heating on a spit above the fire. A cast iron skillet that Alex absolutely recognized sat beside the fire.
“That’s...” Alex was at a loss for words.
“That’s from your memory. Somewhere in your long-ago, you remembered a camp that looked like this.”
“I wouldn’t
