Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014

by Penny Publications

  SHOT 2: The hills they traverse are verdant, rushing headlong into their southern hemisphere summer. They roll with fractal curves. The composition of the photo mimics the topography of a hand: vein and muscle and sinew and bone.

  SHOT 3: Three identical vehicles, white pickup trucks wearing similar coats of dust. The building behind them is long and low, its roof thatched and its walls mud. It looks newly built. A satellite dish nests in the thatching, an incongruous note.

  "When do I get to meet them?" Yona asked.

  Odwa lifted his cap and scratched his head. "Tomorrow. You should rest first."

  She debated arguing, but exhaustion was creeping over her again. They were still in the same time zone she had left uncountable hours before, but the recycled air in the plane and the sleeping pill had taken their toll. She was relieved to discover that her hut had running water and a cleanish bathtub. She had bathed under much worse conditions. The deep tub was luxury as far as she was concerned, even if the water was only lukewarm.

  SHOT 4: The photographer's blurred legs resting on the rim of the tub, the bed in sharp focus beyond them. Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman.

  She only soaked for a few minutes, afraid she was tired enough to drown in the tub. She fell asleep with the lights on, a camera beside her, always watchful.

  In the morning, she wandered out of the hut with her little Panasonic in hand. The staff of the facility, the anthropologists and whichever scientists were on this project, greeted each other as they stepped out of their own huts, all ignoring her.

  SHOT 5: A tiny dead chameleon on the porch, desiccated but still holding onto a twig with its tail.

  SHOT 6: Breakfast in the staff hut, on a small table in the kitchen nook. Rooibos tea in a china cup, buttermilk rusks on a saucer. Grenadilla juice, syrupy and sweet even in a photograph.

  Odwa joined her after she had assembled and photographed her breakfast, handing her one of her own Malarone pills and a glass of water by way of greeting. "Did you sleep well?"

  "Yes, thank you." She swallowed the pill and drank the water. "Best I've slept in weeks, actually."

  She stirred some milk into her tea, then warmed her hands on the chipped teacup. "Will we go this morning?"

  "You can meet me at the bakkie in one hour." He grabbed a rusk from the tin where she had found hers and disappeared out the door again.

  She had nothing to do for the intervening hour other than nurse her tea and biscuits. She repacked, stuffed a few granola bars into her pockets, filled her water bottle and clipped it to her camera bag. There was a wooden bench outside the main building and she situated herself there to wait. She waved at the people who walked around, but none gave her more than a curt nod.

  SHOTS 7–35: Photos of the staff going about their business. They laugh and joke with each other, fill the trucks with petrol from cans.

  Yona was surprised Odwa didn't blindfold her again, but she thought it better not to ask the question. She guessed that once inside the compound, it didn't matter any-more. She wouldn't be able to find her way back here again if she tried. Even now, clutching the door as the truck careened down the rutted path, knowing the time and the position of the sun, she could no more say where she was in relation to the previous hill than to the huts they had stayed in the night before.

  SHOT 36: The path is clogged with goats. The goats are in no hurry.

  "Why did everyone back there ignore me?" she asked Odwa. "Your colleagues?"

  "Not everyone thinks you should be here."

  "Me personally? Or a photojournalist in general?"

  "A photographer. They say we take our own photos for our own work. Why do we need someone from outside?"

  She played with the focus on her lens. "And why am I necessary?"

  He grinned at her. "You know the phrase 'seeing is believing,' ja? Here, that is not true. Believing is believing, a separate thing entirely. Your eyes will lie to you."

  "I don't understand."

  "Does your camera ever lie?"

  "I try not to let it."

  "But you can foreshorten a distance, so a man looks as if he is standing on the edge of a cliff when he is in fact in no danger?" He took his hands off the wheel to demonstrate foreshortening. The truck lurched to the right and he grabbed the wheel again. Yona searched for the seatbelt, drawing it across her lap. "Well, yes."

  "And you can choose a frame such that a small group of people can look like a crowd? Imply that there are more behind them?"

  "Yes."

  "Your eyes will lie to you here, in that same way. I will tell you the truth, and hopefully you will choose to believe it, but it will not be the same thing that your eyes tell you. Belief is the opposite of seeing; it is trusting something you cannot see at all."

  She tried to make sense of what Odwa was saying. "But if that's the case, I really don't understand at all why you need me here."

  "We bring you here, and you tell the rest of the world what you saw. What your pictures show. And they leave us alone here to do our work, and they send us money to continue our work, and they say their prayers of thanks that such mysteries exist."

  "That's a gamble, if you're suggesting there's something I shouldn't be photographing. I won't compromise myself."

  "It will not be a compromise. You'll see."

  His self-assurance was starting to bother Yona. He didn't know her. "And you?" she asked. "If so many of your colleagues are opposed to my visit, why am I here?"

  "I am the project manager. I win. Unless I'm wrong about this, as they think. Then I will be angry with myself, and my project will not get a chance to get over it."

  Yona wasn't sure how to respond to that statement. She lifted her camera to her eye to disguise her silence.

  SHOTS 37–51: Yona's fastest shutter captures the caprice of springbok on the adjacent hills.

  Odwa snorted. "Why would you waste film on springbok? If you want nature photos, I can find you animals worth photographing."

  She shook her head. "It's digital. No film wasted. I can delete them later if I don't like them. But I do. I like them because they're here, and they're part of the story of my journey, even if you're indifferent to them."

  He shrugged, but a moment later pointed to a waterfall in the distance. "For your nature album."

  SHOT 52: A waterfall cuts through a steep rockface. Typical of those found in other areas of the Transvaal escarpment.

  It took them twenty minutes more to reach their destination. Yona would not have imagined that such a large area might be fenced and closed off. They had not been traveling at highway speeds by any means, but the size still violated her sense of scale.

  And then they were there.

  IV. The Horsemaster Rabbis of Mpumalanga Province:A Multimedia Exhibition

  SHOTS 1–8: This exhibit opens with the photographer's descent into the tribe's land. A soft-bellied curve, then a steep switchbacked trail ending in a grassy valley. Small horses graze behind a rough stone wall. Their necks are thin, their bodies wiry, their joints large. Their coats glow with good health. A narrow stream bisects their grassy pasture. They raise their heads as a unit: wary, curious.

  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 i
n 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?"