Ukiah scanned through the conversation again, wondering. Who were these people? Why were they watching silently in the dark? Who was Hex? How did he know Dr. Janet Haze? Ukiah found no answers in the short cryptic conversation. It was only as he started for the third time, from the very beginning, that he realized something amazing.
The conversation hadn't been in English.
With his odd photographic memory, he could recognize and name many languages: Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Chinese. It wasn't any of these. It had been so familiar to him that he had translated it unconsciously. Odder yet, he could find no instance when he had heard it spoken. The knowledge was there, deeply buried, lost but not forgotten.
The only time in his life he could not recall with complete clarity was his early childhood. Who were his real parents? Where had they gone? How had he ended up running with the wolves? The answers had always been lost behind a veil of unremembering darkness.
He sat up in the hospital bed to stare out his window, across the dark landscape of Oakland to Schenley Park.
They knew the town where he had been found. They spoke a language he knew from that dark forgetfulness. They claimed he was one of them.
He had to go now, while the trail was fresh, and find these people. . . .
end.