Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014 (21 page)

Odwa cut the truck's motor, and they sat for a moment in silence. Yona switched to her old Leica for a few shots, just for the chance to hear a shutter click. The sound of the shutter would keep the horses interested. She took pictures until she sensed Odwa's impatience, then returned her camera to her lap. He was right; they were not her subjects.

Her host started the truck again, and they traveled the length of the valley, be tween steep rock walls. On the other side of the path from the pasture there were crops growing in neat rows: maize, sugarcane, groundnut. The fields gave way to a small orchard, and beyond that, the village itself. Yona counted eighteen small sandstone dwellings.

SHOTS 9–13 take in the little buildings, their orientation to each other and the central commons. They have no windows. The entrances to the huts are wide and doorless, with carvings in the doorframes. There doesn't appear to be anything stirring except for the goats. There are goats all over the clearing; a ghost town of goats.

Odwa got out of the truck, so Yona did the same. A gray goat wandered over to lip the buckle of her bag. She shooed it away.

"Where are they?" She didn't lower her camera.

"Just watch. They left when they heard my bakkie."

She watched the doorways, still expecting to see a face peek out of one of them. She held her camera ready. "What do you mean 'left'?"

"Watch," he repeated.

They stood in silence. The air carried the mingled scents of stew and goat and horse, a combination that Yona found surprisingly pleasant.

SHOT 14: Ears of maize piled on a rock, half of them shucked.

SHOTS 15–17: A small yellow bird alights on the stone and flies away with a tangle of cornsilk.

Somewhere, close yet far away, Yona heard voices. A moment later, there were people everywhere. Yona nearly dropped her camera.

"What the hell just happened?" she asked.

Odwa grinned.

"Take your pictures, photojournalist. Plenty of time for answers."

He was right. If she had been paying attention, maybe she would have had a picture to prove what her eyes suggested she had seen. What had been an empty clearing a moment before was suddenly filled with people. They hadn't walked onto the scene. They appeared in mid-action, mid-conversation: talking, laughing, sharpening knives, beating blankets. These were not the South African tribespeople she had expected, either: they looked more Middle Eastern than Ndebele. Their clothing was loose and light-colored, suited for the desert.

She took pictures as if the people had been there all along. As if they were an ordinary farming collective, which they seemed to be.

SHOTS 18–38, and CONTACT SHEET 1: The people of the lost village go about their chores: pounding meal, calling goats, stoking the fire beneath the stewpot. A child shimmies up the narrow trunk of a tree to pick fruit. She looks directly at the lens, conspiratorial, before dropping a guava on the head of a boy below.

"Really," Yona said when she paused to switch memory cards. "Where did they come from? How did you find them?"

"A team of archaeologists discovered an abandoned village, and was starting to examine artifacts they found there, when all of a sudden it was full of people. Poof! Not abandoned after all. Your first question is harder, and I do not want to color your experience. Do you want to meet them?"

"Yes, please. I assume they don't speak English. One of the tribal languages?"

He shook his head. "None of the local dialects. Theirs is derived from Syriac, as best as we can tell, but parted from it long ago. We have an expert here working on that puzzle alone. Most of us can speak a few words, but we need to learn so much more."

Behind Odwa, a horse stuck its head out of one of the huts and whinnied. A nearby child mimicked its call even before the horses in the field could respond.

"They let the horses in their homes?"

SHOT 39: A small bay horse stands in the doorway of a sandstone hut.

SHOT 40: A young woman appears beside the horse, an arm draped over its neck. They lean into each other.

"They do, but not all of the horses get that privilege. It seems to be the favorites, the way Arabian sheiks brought their favored mounts into their tents. You will see they have a lot of commonalities with desert peoples, even though they have been settled here and farming for so long. We still have so much to study. Come."

Odwa strode across the grass toward the village, with Yona a few steps behind him. She was watching the goatherds when she saw them all flicker and disappear, then reappear. Yona snapped several pictures in quick succession, then stopped to page backward through the photos. Even at her highest speed Yona couldn't explain the occurrence. She considered shooting video with the Panasonic automatic.

Odwa had outdistanced her by several meters. He sat down next to the person shucking maize, a sturdy middle-aged woman with a long braid, black flecked with grey. He gestured to the ground on the opposite side of the woman's stool. Yona copied his position, lowering her camera bag to the grass and placing the Nikon on top of it before settling herself.

"This is Nura," he said, gesturing to the woman beside him.

"Nice to meet you," Yona said at Odwa's prompt. "My name is Yona."

Nura put a hand on Odwa's arm and asked him a question. She spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable. He turned to Yona, an embarrassed look on his face.

"She says you look sad, and wants to know if someone died. May I tell her?"

Yona nodded. Odwa hadn't asked about Oliver at all, but she realized that he had spoken to her editor and researched her before her arrival. Of course he knew. He turned back to Nura and said three words, pronouncing each haltingly. Nura spoke again, and he spread his hands and took off his cap to scratch his head. She tried again using other words.

Odwa settled his cap back on his head before speaking. "I think she is trying to say that she is a widow, too."

The word "widow" hit Yona like a physical blow. She had avoided using it, had avoided looking at it full-on, even when it had presented itself on paperwork in the weeks after Oliver's death. She had only just gotten used to the word "wife" when that one had been taken away.

Nura grabbed Yona's hands. The woman's hands were dry and warm around Yona's own. Then they were gone as Nura flickered away and back; in her peripheral vision she saw the others all disappear. Yona was unnerved by the sensation of being held, then free, then held again. This feeling cemented the knowledge that what she was seeing, whatever it was, was not illusion. Nura reached down and wrapped her arms around Yona. Yona sat awkwardly in the embrace, not sure whether to allow it or break away and risk offending their host. She stayed until Nura released her.

Some of the others came over to where they sat. Nura spoke to them. One by one, the villagers introduced themselves and embraced Yona as if they had known her all their lives. Yona, who had once been hugged by Amma, the Hugging Saint, felt as if each of these hugs was a thousand times more healing than that one had been. She wanted to weep; it didn't seem fair that she got assigned to a village of hugging saints, while Oliver had been beaten to death on the streets of Kampala. But then, those were choices each of them had made. She had been to war zones too. She held the tears back and accepted thirteen embraces.

When they were done, the others returned to what they had been doing. A young man, Razal, gestured for her to follow him. Odwa nodded, and she went over to where Razal was repairing an ornate leather saddle. She was surprised at the decorative carvings, when so much of what she had seen so far was subsistence-level. Razal's invitation seemed to have opened the others up to sharing as well, and Yona found herself with plenty to photograph.

SHOTS 41–57 and CONTACT SHEET 2: Afternoon in the lost village. The children chase the goats, the goats chase the children. Tack is cleaned and repaired. Supper is made, horses are fed.

"There are two more important things for you to see," said Odwa.

"I'm ready," Yona replied, though she couldn't imagine what might top the things she had seen already.

Odwa led her to one of the huts. Yona peered in, and a small horse peered back from the darkness. One of the children who had been playing with the goats ran up and flung his arms around the horse's neck, swinging himself up onto its back in one movement. Odwa raised his eyebrows at the boy. The boy grinned.

Yona didn't see him prod the horse in any way, but it leapt through the doorway like a battle charger. She saw the child shift his weight backward; his horse stopped in its tracks. Odwa clapped his hands and said three words. The little boy laughed and called to one of his friends. Others, children and adults, moved toward their huts.

Odwa grinned at her. "We don't know much of their language yet, but I've heard them say 'what can your horse do?' enough times to be able to get that one across."

SHOTS 58–70, CONTACT SHEET 3, VIDEO #1: The tribespeople demonstrate why the anthropologists have nicknamed them "Horsemasters." An impromptu display demonstrates not only their riding skill, but the intense bond they have formed with their mounts. The children ride without bridle or saddle, while the adults deck their horses out in tasseled finery. The colorful tack is decorated in sharp contrast with the monotone clothing of the people. Their communication with their horses is near-perfect, at once more precise and more natural than modern dressage.

VIDEO #2: The sun has already set. There is no flash, and the picture is grainy, the hand holding the camera shaky. The villagers are gathered in their common. The one identified as Nura begins a chant. The others add their voices to the song at what seem to be ritual intervals.

"Was that the Kaddish?" Yona asked, stopping the camera. "It didn't sound entirely like Hebrew or Aramaic, but it somehow sounded a whole lot like the Kaddish." She didn't really have to ask; she had recited the mourners' prayer every day for the thirty days following Oliver's death in the hope it might bring peace of mind.

"Very similar," Odwa agreed.

"Is this another group claiming to be a lost tribe of Israel? Like the Lemba?"

"They don't claim to be anything at all. But one of the first anthropologists out here was a Jewish woman, from Sandton, and she noticed the similarities. Here is what we know: they have several characteristics that are more in line with desert peoples than the native tribes of this area. Semitic practices, skin tones, etc. Their butchering practices are similar to those of kosher or halal; the only meat they eat is goat and fish." He counted off the similarities on his fingers.

"But they're led by a woman?"

"No. All of the adults take turns leading rituals. Their prayers do sound like some of the oldest Jewish prayers: the Kaddish, the Shema. Their language derives from Syriac or Aramaic, but diverges from both."

Yona kept her eyes on the villagers as she spoke. "So they really may have come from the Middle East?"

"We believe they traveled down the length of the continent, ja. Their horses are genetically nearly identical to the Caspian horses of Iran, one of the oldest known breeds."

"And the people? Genetically?"

Odwa sighed. "Hard to tell."

"How so?"

He looked at her in the dark, then took a moment to remove his cap and reshape its brim. "You saw them disappear. We have not been able to convince them to let us do the types of testing we need to do. Yet. So we make guesses, for now."

"And what do your guesses tell you? About their origins and their—talent?" Yona reached for her water bottle to hide her impatience with his answers.

"I believe they must be from that area. But how do we explain the disappearing? We use the label 'transdimensional.' Transdimensional for the way they wink in and out. Here and gone. Zap. We think that wherever they go, they spend time there, too, even if they are gone from here for only an instant."

"And do the horses wink out as well?"

"Not that we've seen. Nor have we ever seen anyone drop a baby or appear in a fire, if you are going to ask that. Things they are holding go with them. They all leave together, every time. Group decision, but how they decide? We don't know." He shrugged.

"So you're telling me that I've spent my day taking photographs of 'transdimensional' beings who think they are ancient Jews? And all that talk about choosing what to shoot means you want me to keep all of the disappearing stuff out of what I bring back to my editor? You're going to ruin me."

Odwa smiled. "No. You are here to take photographs of a lost and isolated Semitic tribe, and convince the world that it is to this group's benefit to remain lost and isolated. My job is to stay here and protect them and someday figure out what they are and where they are from, and ja, why they have picked up certain Jewish rituals along the way."

"You know this all sounds ridiculous, right?"

"I know. You can choose not to believe me. You can keep taking pictures and decide later. I thought it might inform your photos a little bit if you realized exactly how isolated they are."

"Transdimensional," Yona repeated. "Precisely."

"And what do they want for themselves?"

"We are still working on getting an answer to that. They leave when they are afraid for their group's safety, so we know they don't want to be overrun. They made it down the length of the continent, but they have been settled in this valley for some time, so we think it is reasonable to believe that they would like to stay here. Of course, that will not be possible if the complexities of their situation get out."

Yona thought about her options: documenting what she saw, or documenting what people expected to see. She wondered what Oliver would have done. The loss hit her again, fresh and bright and blooming. She wondered how long it had taken him to decide to put down his camera and become part of the story. He couldn't have had much time to make up his mind. An instant.

Maybe these people had an advantage over the rest of the world; maybe those times they disappeared really did last longer on the other side, wherever that was. Maybe when they blinked out together they had a chance to discuss with each other the ramifications of their decisions, to do more than hold each other and whisper reassurances and promises that could not be kept. Yes, you can intervene, but this will be the last moment we have with each other. Yes, my love, your life for his. I will try to understand.