It took over half an hour, but they got to everyone. Van Horn himself handled the last one, which wasn't a burn but a badly broken leg. The patient, a lupar, was in great pain, but had refused to have the leg sawed off, which was the only thing gatón medicine could do for him.
Van Horn came up to the lupar, who had the leg-injury lupar and an older, female lupar in attendance. Quietly, he kneeled down and used the last of the neomorph in his kit to relieve some of the lupar's pain. It wasn't enough to knock him out, van Horn noticed. Well, people in pain can take more neomorph than a 'healthy' person. He reckoned that this was true of lupar as well. "How does that feel now?" He asked.
"Better," was the reply. The medicine hadn't quite taken the bite from the pain, but the relief on the face was evident, even to van Horn's human eyes. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it," van Horn said as he grabbed the newest trinket that was now coming in the most recent medikits: a portable X-ray imager that could resolve an X-ray in 3-D, as it had two radiation sources and a powerful computer. He set it up on its stand and carefully put the broken leg underneath the scanning area; painfully aware of the suffering this caused the lupar.
"What are you doing?" Asked the elder lupar female.
"I'm going to see how bad his leg is, miss-" Van Horn paused to hear her name.
"Farkas, Tiana Farkas."
Van Horn raised an eyebrow at that. Interesting name, VERY interesting. But he decided to concentrate at the matter at hand. "Are you related?"
"Yes, this is Kanu, my eldest son." She replied, and then looked up to the cane-bearing lupar. "And this is Mikula, my second-eldest. Perhaps you could take care of him next?"
"Mother, I'm sure he can wait until Kanu is taken care of." Mikula replied with some embarrassment over his mother's concern. The human, he noticed, stifled a grin carefully before replying. "I certainly can, madam. But now, could you please step back?"
She did so, standing up to move a pace backwards. Van Horn didn't bother because he was behind the shielded part of the emitters. He turned to the one called Kanu. "Now, this won't hurt, but I need you to stay as absolutely still as possible until I say you can move, alright?"
Kanu grunted. "I can assure you that it would be my pleasure to remain still."
"Good," said van Horn with a slight grin. "Now, here goes..." He pressed the button that caused the emitters to power up with an audible whine. A few short 'bzzt' sounds later, the whine stopped, and the legend "Image Recorded" light up on the emitter's console.
"Good, you can move now." Van Horn said as he connected the emitter part to the holographic interface. Before he thought about it, he punched up the power and soon had a holographic image of the X-ray, complete with broken bone and a background image of the rock underneath.
Audible gasps came from throughout the cavern, and van Horn realized his mistake. Damnit, I should've warned them. He decided to press on like nothing was wrong. "Well, it looks here that the bone is off-kilter by a good margin," he indicated to the lupar near him, sticking his finger in the light-image of Kanu's leg. "It's going to be quite painful to get it back in line."
"What in the name of the Great Maker is that?!" Mikula asked, finger pointing at the ethereal image hovering over Kanu. The latter simply froze, absolutely stunned at the appearance of the image, as was nearly everyone else.
Everyone, save Forbasa, that is. "That is fascinating. How does that work?"
Van Horn took a second to answer, as he pulled a special tool from his kit; a medicomp that could take data from various field devices and turn it into instructions for lay people to use. "To explain 'how' would take at least a week of explaining concepts that are currently beyond your ken." He said this as he plugged the medicomp in and it began to process the data. "It should suffice to say, for now, that it uses light itself to create an image. It's rather like painting a picture, but using light in air rather than paint on canvas." Van Horn knew that one area the gatón, at least, were advanced in was art, and that their paints and canvas techniques were almost as well developed as any human's.
Before Forbasa or anyone else could speak, the medicomp beeped. Since the holoprojector served as a hub, the image quickly split as the medicomp sent the directions to fix Kanu's leg. The image on the right showed the outlines of hands, and the image went through a cycle, showing exactly how the bone should be manipulated.
I'd better do this before they - or I - lose nerve. He turned towards Kanu. "My friend, this will hurt, and I'm not sure if I can give you any more medicine for the pain so soon."
Kanu simply nodded slowly. "I understand, but I've been in greater pain since that piece of a house fell on me." He stopped, and simply looked at the human. Van Horn saw the determination in his eyes. He put his hands on the lupar's leg and with the instructions still cycling on the hologram he maneuvered the bone pieces.
"AUGH!" The quick scream of pain startled everyone save van Horn, who had known it would come and steeled himself so that he wouldn't screw up. He felt the bone set into place as the diagram told him it would, and he pulled his hands back, only to hold them up again when the elder lupar tried to again kneel next to her son. "Madam, please, I need to take another image to make sure it's all right."
She nodded and stepped back again, while van Horn put the medicomp behind the shielded part of the X-ray scanner and again had it power up and take a series of scans. A few seconds later, the previous dual image was replaced by a single one that at first seemed to be a combination of the first two. It took a second to realize that the image was indeed a new one, and it showed the bone perfectly set.
Working quickly, van Horn reached inside the medikit for a plastic splint and set it onto the lupar's leg. Hmm, it is pretty badly broken... "Miss, Alexis, was it?" He asked as he turned towards the young female gatón.
She nodded at his words. "Could you bring over the one you're carrying? I want to double-splint this to make sure it'll stay straight."
Alexis wordlessly brought the case near the human, wary as she was of the light-image. Yet she smelled nothing wrong, and heard nothing but the low hum of the power sources that the human couldn't hear. The noises weren't terrible, just different, so she came close, handing the case to the human.
Van Horn opened the case, quickly extracting the second splint on the other side of Kanu's leg, and soon had them both tied tightly together. He could see another grimace of pain from the lupar, but it must've been far less than the bone setting. "There, I think we're done."
Kanu looked up to the human. "Thank you."
"It was no problem, really. The equipment did all the work, I just followed instructions." Van Horn replied with a slight smile. That reminds me. He quickly repacked the instruments, though the medical scanner was dead, since it only had enough power for two scans. The holoprojector was also nearly out, and he shut that down too, so he could save the battery.
The natives stood back as he got up, though Tiana went to kneel by her son. "You should try to eat something, even if it's just soup or broth. The sooner you get nutrition in you, the sooner you'll heal," said van Horn. With that, he turned towards Mikula. "You want to be next?"
Mikula felt not a bit unsure. This human had done good things for the others in the cave, and especially his brother. Yet, there was a strangeness about him that still made the lupar uneasy.
Alexis saw Mikula vacillating, and decided to give a bit of a nudge. "Mikula, you've been walking on that leg for a while now, perhaps you should sit down?"
He looked over at Alexis, and saw the concern in her eyes. He sighed. "Yes, I suppose you're right." He turned towards van Horn. "If you would be so kind, I could use some help."
Van Horn nodded, and simply indicated a stalagmite that had been broken off to make a seat. Mikula walked over to it and sat down, as everybody else in the cave went back to doing his or her normal duties, somehow realizing that the greatest show was over. Earl and Alexis followed and came to kneel on the floor next to Mikula.
Van Horn took the second medikit that he had gotten from Alexis a few minutes ago and set it down. Before he opened it, he decided to examine the wound. Noticing the pants had been cut up their length to allow the bandages to be replaced easily, he quickly exposed the area of concern.
The human turned toward Alexis. "Now, please pay attention, miss, since I may not be able to do this the next time it needs to be done." She nodded, and van Horn loosened the threads that fastened the bandages to the wound and peeled them back, showing him something he'd never thought he'd have to see.
"Damn," he cursed in English, since the first language anyone learns is usually the one a person curses in. He looked up. "You were lucky, do you know that?"
Mikula nodded. "I have told myself that ever since the night I was injured."
"Well, that's good," Van Horn, replied with another slight smile. "But what I mean is not only did the bullet go right through, but it also missed the bone and the femoral artery, otherwise you'd have bled to death in minutes."
Although the words bullet and femoral artery didn't translate, Mikula understood what they referred to. "Then I count myself doubly lucky."
Van Horn grunted as he went to work, spraying the wound with some anti-bacterial agent. "Yip!" Was the reply from Mikula, as the sting of the spray caused him to startle.
"Oh, sorry. I forgot about warning you. I am sorry."
Mikula shook his head. "It's alright, I was just surprised."
Van Horn just nodded, and went back to work. He put away the anti-bacterial, and pulled out another spray. This time, he remembered to warn the lupar. "This will sting even more, but it will numb the area and let me work on it without causing you more pain." Mikula nodded and braced himself as van Horn sprayed the anesthetic onto both the entry and exit wounds.
Mikula grunted a bit and grimaced, but this time the pain did disappear. He opened his eyes and looked down to see the human bringing out some clean white cloth. Then the human looked up at Mikula again. "I need to clean the wound of some of the excess scab material. This isn't going to be pretty, so you might want to look away."
Mikula just shook his head, not trusting his voice. He had seen blood and dead bodies before, some earlier in the day, but to see his own body worked on gave him a creepy feeling.
Van Horn went to work quickly, moving with sure strokes to remove some of the nastiest stuff that would prevent healing and create a horrible scar, not to mention an opportunity for infection. That the wound hadn't been infected spoke well of the care he had been given, and van Horn commented on this as he finished cleaning the wound out.
Alexis beamed a bit. "The shaman treated it at first, but he let me handle it as soon as he was sure that it could be taken care of easily."
"Then I asked the right person to watch, then," van Horn said with a smile. He tossed the dirty gauze into the empty bin of the medikit he had used up earlier, and was using as a trash receptacle. Reaching into the fresh kit, he brought out the entire set of four butterfly bandages, and quickly fastened them over the wound, closing it up far more effectively than it had been.
Alexis was amazed at the things the human put on Mikula's leg. "What are those?""They're called 'butterfly' bandages. Mainly, they have a... stretchable part in the middle, so that they pull the wound together, as you just saw." Van Horn brought out the last of the gauze and thoroughly sprayed it with the anti-bacterial spray before putting it over the lupar's leg. "This part is mainly just to make doubly sure that the wound is protected. However, I'd stay off it until it heals a bit."
"So everyone tells me," Mikula said, with his lopsided grin returning. His humor was coming back now that his leg hurt less and seemed to be even better taken care of than earlier. "It makes one think that all you need to be a doctor is to repeat the words from a book." He winked to let his two companions know that he was in jest.
Van Horn laughed at that, which surprised several people in the cave. Not only was it unusual to hear in a setting like that, but also a human laugh more resembled a series of short barks, rather than the panting laugh of the Lupar and Gatón. Van Horn stopped and looked sheepish when he realized that the place wasn't quite in tune with his laugh. "Sorry, but this time you caught me off-guard."
He got up and closed the now empty kit, noticing that it wasn't the only one, as a half dozen other expended kits, all of which had been used to help the injured, sat nearby. Realizing that he was very tired, he checked his watch and was surprised to find that only an hour had passed, even though it had felt like all day. "I think I'm going to go take the trash out. If you two will excuse me?" The two natives nodded and van Horn gathered up the used kits and walked out of the cave.
Outside, he saw a few lupar and gatón lounging in the grassy area outside of the cave. Shade came from the trees overhead, which formed a canopy that let only the occasional shaft of light in, and cast a green glow to the ground. Several of the natives turned and looked at him warily, yet not with suspicion. They knew he had been helping, as unbeknownst to van Horn, a steady stream of people had cycled through the cave to see the stranger at work. The light show had, predictably, been told to everyone who hadn't seen it, and they now considered the human powerful, if a bit strange.
Van Horn decided to take the kits and lock them in the scout car until he could spread the word that the waste in them was not to be played with. He worried because he had seen several children around, and he decided they were probably as hyperactive as human children.
He had just gotten to the scout car, and had opened the door when a tap on his shoulder startled him, causing him to drop the empty boxes. "Goddamnit." He swore in English again. He turned around to see the lupar called Pavlo standing behind him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," said Pavlo.
"That's alright, just next time try to make some noise when coming up behind someone you don't want to surprise."
Pavlo chuckled, something that sounded more like its human counterpart than his laughter. "I suppose I should be lucky that you didn't bring out another weapon to aim at me."
Van Horn grinned a bit. "Well, yeah, I would have but you didn't have a sword in my back this time."
They both chuckled that time, then Pavlo got serious. "I do wish to ask you, would you really have killed me?"
Van Horn thought about lying, but decided that the truth was best. "Only if your friend had decided to kill me, then I would have made good my promise to take you with me. I am sorry," he continued, "but some things..." His voice trailed off.
Pavlo waved his hand. "Think not of it. My brother and I are soldiers, and understand such things."
"That was your brother in there? The one with the bullet wound?"
"I do not know this word, 'bullet,'" Pavlo said, reproducing the English word slowly to get it right, "but yes, the one with the leg wound. Not to mention, Kanu, whom you've helped greatly. That is why I came here now, to thank you for your help."
Van Horn blushed a bit. "Honestly, it was the least I could do after seeing that attack."
"Yes, you mentioned that you saw it, yet you took a day to get here?" Pavlo said, a bit of curiosity mixed in his words.
Van Horn sighed. "It's hard to explain. Although all of you seem very smart, the kinds of things that my people use require a knowledge base that we learn from the day we are born, practically. So it would take quite a bit of time to explain just the basic concepts. The best answer I can give you now is that we have... devices, hidden near your villages and towns to watch you so that we can learn about you without letting you know we're here. Basically, it can send the images to places far away."
"But why?" Pavlo asked. "Why do you watch us? You have all these wonderful things, and seem to know more by yourself than a thousand learned men from either of our races combined."
Van Horn smiled. "You do not give yourselves enough credit. While true, you do not know as much as my people, you are yourselves important to us. You are some of the first species that we've found that share the gift."
"The gift of what?" Asked Pavlo in confusion.
"The gift of..." Van Horn searched through his head for a word or phrase that would work. "Ah, yes, the gift of abstract thought. To be able to recognize that you yourselves are different persons that you can talk to one another in a complex language, and that you can recognize such thoughts as honor, duty, courage, and love. These make you Lupar, and the Gatón, and my people so much alike.
"And yet, you are different enough that we don't know all about you. We like to learn, my people, and we want to be ready for when the day comes that you will join us in the gulf between worlds." Van Horn grimaced then, thinking I got a little too poetic there.
Van Horn could see that Pavlo was having a time trying to understand, and so he gave another grin. "Try not to think about it too much now. I've often found that one of the best ways to understand something is to learn about it, then not think about it, instead letting your mind work on it behind your back." He picked a different idiom than he would have used for English.
"Ahh, I think I understand what you mean. Sometimes my brother Mikula just takes a nap, or sleeps for the night, then comes up with a new way to think of something."
Van Horn nodded. "That's right. See? We are not so different, and in understanding each other, we can understand ourselves better. That's why my people came here to study you."
Pavlo thought about this, then nodded. "I think I see your point."
"Anyway," said van Horn, "I was about to put these things away and bring out the food rations I have. Care to help?"
At that, the young Lupar smiled. "Indeed. I certainly would not be adverse to tasting what you consider a delicacy."
Van Horn had to laugh at that. "I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand the word, 'ration.'"
"Oh?" Asked the lupar.
"Yes, it means, 'stuff too old to be sold, so we give it to soldiers to dispose of by eating.'"
Now Pavlo had to laugh. "Quite right."
Van Horn turned and pressed his palm against the reader next to his door, causing it to again open up. "Come in," he said to Pavlo as he climbed on board. The lupar followed after only a second of hesitation.
As van Horn carried the empty kits to the storage area in the back, he decided to satiate some curiosity. "By the way, Pavlo- may I call you that?"
The lupar nodded. "Certainly. What may I call you in return?"
"Just Earl is fine."
"Okay, Just Earl." The lupar said with seriousness that van Horn found a bit funny. He chuckled and responded. "No, I mean 'just' as in to use Earl only."
"Ah, of course." Said Pavlo sheepishly. "Now then, you had a question?"
"Yeah," said van Horn. "I wanted to know, about your family name. Do you know of its origins?"
Pavlo looked puzzled as he tilted his head to the side and his ears twitched a bit. "Why do you ask?"
Van Horn paused, trying to frame his words right. "You heard the shaman Forbasa speak of humans in the gatón's oldest stories?" Pavlo nodded. "And you heard me mention that my own people have been here only a short time?" Another nod, and van Horn took a breath. "Well, your family name... It's from an old language, one that comes from my people's oldest world, where we were once like you."
Pavlo looked more confused than before. "I am not sure I understand."
I guess I've pickled his brain enough for today, thought van Horn. "Never mind. I think I'll talk to your mother about it. If, that is, it is proper to do so?"
Pavlo shrugged. "In some circles, it would not be. However, my family and our clan as a whole have never been ones to stand traditions unless they've proven their worth. And besides," he continued in a more somber voice, "things aren't exactly normal, anyway."
"Indeed," replied van Horn as he went to the rack holding the field rations. "How many people are there left? I mean-" he bit off his words, realizing that they sounded cold. "I am sorry, I didn't mean to sound uncaring."
Pavlo nodded a bit. "Don't be sorry. Like I said, I and my brothers are - or were - soldiers." He paused for a minute. "About half died, I think," Pavlo said and his voice took on a detached quality. "The other half, some have fled and not returned, though I cannot fault them. Of those who are in the caves, I believe that there are about six score."
"Really?" Van Horn asked in surprise. "I didn't see that many."
"Most of them are deeper in the caves, or in the other entrance some distance away. For protection, you understand, against being attacked from behind."
"Makes sense," said van Horn as he looked over the rations. A paltry sum, to be sure, he thought and cursed himself silently. "If that many are around, then I don't even have enough to feed everyone once."
Pavlo looked crestfallen, but didn't sound too disappointed. "That is unfortunate, though I suppose one cannot carry so much food around on trips, even in such a conveyance as this."
"You are, unfortunately, right." Van Horn knew he only had so much, yet it was barely enough to feed him for a while, let alone 120 people. Then he realized that he did have weaponry, after all. "Pavlo, is there much game near here?"
The lupar thought for a minute. "I think there must be, since some of the gatón I've talked to here make their living as professional hunters. They apparently do not know enough about animal husbandry to raise them as food."
"So I understand from my studies." But I had to make sure, van Horn thought. "Is there a good amount of food stored here?"
The lupar nodded. "Yes, we managed to grab some food from our wagons and that gatón had some stored here when they first heard of the attack on my brother's unit."
Van Horn heard the pain in his voice. "You're brother will be okay. The wound was nasty, but it will heal fine."
Pavlo nodded a bit, but he still seemed sad at something. Van Horn decided it could wait, however. "Well, I should talk to some of those gatón hunters to find out where some game is. I have some weapons that would let me try and help bring food in here."
The young lupar nodded. "Sounds good. I'll ask them to talk to you, though I hope you can use gatonese better than I can." He said with a bit of his cheerfulness coming back. A good sign thought van Horn, as he grabbed a pair of MREs and headed back towards the door, indicating that the lupar should precede him.
Outside, van Horn locked the door down again. "How does it know when to open?" Asked Pavlo.
"The gray plate is a special... I don't know the word," van Horn said and paused to think. "A device that can see things that you or I cannot. In this case, this one can look at my hand and tell if it is me or not."
The lupar looked impressed. "I would ask how it does that, but I suppose that you'd say that it would be beyond my understanding."
Van Horn sighed and shook his head. "It's not so much that you cannot understand, it is more like that we don't have the kind of time needed. Though," he went on while sitting down on the steps to the door, "in this case, I could explain if you'll give me some of your time."
Pavlo thought for a second. "Well, I have nothing else pressing..."
"Mainly because you're too lazy for your own good." Came the joking reply from behind the lupar. Both Pavlo and van Horn looked to see Mikula and Alexis walk up from the cave. Mikula had been the one who spoke and he had a lopsided grin that, van Horn was realizing, constituted a major part of his normal facial expressions.
"Ah, Mikula was it?" Asked the human, and the indicated lupar nodded. "And Miss Alexis. How nice to see you two, though," he again looked at the wounded lupar, "I thought I told you to stay off that leg."
Pavlo and Alexis chuckled while Mikula rolled his eyes in a fashion that gave van Horn a chill down his spine. So very human-like. "I tell him that all the time, yet he doesn't listen to me." Said Alexis as they came to a stop near where van Horn and Pavlo stood. The former gestured for them to sit down. "Come, sit and rest that leg, and I'll share you some of my rations. Deal?"
Before Mikula could say anything, Alexis spoke first. "It is a deal." And he sat down. Mikula shrugged, dropping his grin but sitting down as well.
Van Horn picked up a ration and threw it to the two new arrivals. "Catch."
Mikula did catch it, though he had to lean back to avoid having the brown package smack him in the nose. He gave a sour look to van Horn, then turned back to sniff the package. A strange smell it has, like nothing else I've smelled, he thought, and then looked up to see what the human would do with his.
It was fascinating to the natives, as van Horn pulled in the brown wrapping and it came apart to reveal several packages inside. Mikula emulated him and pulled on the ends. He got frustrated, as the thing did not do what its fellow did for the human.
Van horn chuckled, drawing Mikula's attention. "It takes some getting used to. Try pulling it from another angle, like this," van Horn said and he took the other end of the wrapper he had torn off, and displayed the correct way to pull, with the folds away from the stitching. Mikula did this and was surprised at how easy it was to open then, and was startled a bit when the packaging inside fell out onto the ground.
"Great, dump the food in the dirt, that will make it taste better," Pavlo said in an amused voice. Mikula just gave him a challenging look that broke off when the startling laughter of the human came again.
"Well, it might taste better that way, since these are rations," van Horn was saying after he finished laughing, "but in either case, it does not matter, since the packages are wrapped to prevent their contents from... getting dirty."
Alexis reached over and grabbed one. "This has writing on it," she said.
Van Horn nodded. "Yes, how else is a person supposed to know what's inside?"
She looked quizzically at him. "But what if someone doesn't know how to read?"
"Not a problem," van Horn said, shaking his head. "Everyone is taught how to read and write from the time they're old enough to hold a book."
At this, the three others looked dubious. Van Horn sighed. "Well, I know you may not believe me, but it's true."
Alexis decided to not push to far into that, for now. Instead, she picked up a package from the ground. "What does this say, then?"
Van Horn squinted to read the small lettering from a few feet away. He grinned greatly and said. "Well, you're lucky, aren't you ma'am? That's the best part of the MRE, the dessert."
She tilted her head. "Em are ee?"
"Sorry. It's a... Well, again I don't know the word. Hell, I don't think your languages have a word fir it." Van Horn tried to think a minute. "We call it an acronym,'" he said in English slowly. "What that means, is that we take the first letter from each word in the name, and we combine them to make a new name that takes less time to say than the full name."
Both of the lupar looked a bit confused, but Alexis got it. "Ah, so you mean an 'acronym,'" she too said it slowly to make sure she said it correctly, "is used where using the full name would impede rapid communication?"
Van Horn nodded. "Yes, exactly right. In this case, it is easier to call it an 'MRE' than to call it by its full name, which is 'Meal Ready to Eat.'"
"But..." She paused in thought.
"Yes?"
"You said you took the first letter from each word, but you said four words in its full name."
"Oh," van Horn said with a smile. "That's because articles like 'the' and 'of,' amongst others, are usually not included in the acronym unless they're needed to spell something... specific." He saw that even the young gatón looked confused now, and shook his head. "Let's just eat a snack now, okay? We can talk more about words later."
Alexis nodded and opened the package with her hands like she had seen Mikula and van Horn do. Out popped a rectangle-shaped object that landed in her lap. She picked it up and sniffed it. "Why, this smells very strange... Yet it doesn't smell that bad at all."
Van Horn just grinned, and opened the other MRE, taking out the packages inside and setting them out, giving some to Pavlo.
The next few minutes were spent by van Horn to teach the others on how to use the chemical heaters and which food was which. After they were all starting to eat, Pavlo spoke up. "You said you'd tell me about the door, how it opens up at your touch," he said almost reprovingly, but with a cant to his head that showed he wasn't too serious.
Van Horn just nodded and began to speak. "Well, the idea behind it is simple. Basically, every one of my people have a different pattern on our hands." He held up his hand palm outward to illustrate. "I know you can't really see it, but there are tiny lines on my palms and fingers that are unique to me, and maybe two other people in all of creation only." He exaggerated a bit, but knew it wasn't much of a one. "That panel," he pointed to the reader next to the door, "is a special device that takes an image of my hand, then compares it with its... memory to see if I'm supposed to be able to get in."
"Memory? How can a machine have memory?" Mikula asked incredulously.
"Well... it's not like memory you or I have..." Van Horn tried, but failed to come up with a way to explain PROM chips, integrated circuits, or even electron theory. None of which he was particularly schooled in anyway, so he couldn't tell them much anyway. "Let's just say it is a kind of memory only machines can have? That's all I can really say, since I am not especially learned in that field."
"I suppose," again the dubiousness came back, though they were still interested.
"Anyway, so the machine 'remembers' my hand print, and then it sees if I can be allowed in or not. If not, I don't get in. If I can, however, come in, the device sends a... signal to some other devices that open the door."
Alexis looked at the door on the metal wagon again. Wait, does it have another name? "Mr. Vanhorn, sir, might I ask a question?"
"You already have," van Horn said with a smile that was reflected when Alexis realized the joke. He talked again. "But seriously, unless I tell you to leave me alone, or stay quiet for some reason, you can always ask a question. They are, after all, one of the best ways to learn."
She nodded. So much like the Shaman, she thought. "In that case, I was wondering what we should call your wagon? I don't think you call it a metal wagon yourself."
Van Horn continued his smile. "Well, you can call it a 'vehicle,' or 'scout car.' But the official name is the 'Darter.'" He had to use a mix of English and Lupari, but he managed to get the names across. The natives, he noticed, liked the last name best.
"Darter, an interesting name," said Mikula. Why call it that, though? It hardly looks like it can dart like a person can."
"It's called Darter because, compared to other vehicles, it can dart pretty fast." Van Horn paused to eat the last of his snack. "But you are right, it cannot dart like a person. We have... Other toys to do that." He smiled mischievously.
Mikula looked a bit vexed, but then gave his lopsided grin again. "I would hope you can tell us about those sometime."
Van Horn's smile died then. "Well, if the enemies that attacked you do not leave on their own, then I think you will see those 'toys' soon enough." He said soberly.
They all quieted down, and the locals didn't know what to say just then. Van Horn grunted and stood up, prompting the others to do so. "Well, I am sorry for bringing down the mood a bit. If you do not mind, I would like to rest, since I've been awake for nearly twenty hours now." He had been traveling at night to keep his movements secret from the Blakests, and so staying up into the late afternoon was tiring, especially after the emotionally draining events of the day.
The others nodded agreement and bid their goodbyes. As they left, van Horn once again opened up the vehicle and climbed inside and closed the door behind him. Walking into the back compartment, he grabbed the cot he had brought with and set it up in the control area. They can pound if there's an emergency was his thought as he lay down on the cot and promptly fell asleep.